Fitness Business School – Collecting Relationships

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about collecting relationships. Let’s get to it.

Welcome to the fitness business school podcast. The show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their end impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen to the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Collecting relationships. That sounds kind of like an odd way to phrase it. You know, a lot of people talk about creating relationships or focusing on relationships or building relationships, but you know, I wanted to kind of change the wording or the language up a little bit and talk to you about collecting
relationships, because if you’ve ever been around somebody who is a genuine collector of something, I don’t care if it’s baseball cards or stamps or comic books or, you know, vintage cars or whatever else, it’s like those things are their most prized possession.

It’s like those things get the most TLC of almost anything in their life and sometimes of anything in their life. And when I think of the, the impact relationships can potentially have on our business and maybe more importantly, our life you know, it, it becomes this wonderful reminder that maybe we need
to think more in terms of collecting relationships. Because, you know, I think a lot of people create or build relationships, but then they leave them untended. They build something and move on and, you know, kind of leave that, that relationship to deteriorate and, you know, it collects dust or it
atrophies or whatever you’d like to think of. It is this kind of imagery that, that gives you the idea that, you know, just because you meet somebody doesn’t mean that that relationship is cared for, right? Just because we make that connection, we wouldn’t do that with anything else in our life, right?

If you have a home, you tend to that home. You do upkeep, you do upgrades, you take care of it. I think that’s true with most things that we value in our life, right? Like, there’s preventative maintenance, there’s upkeep, you know, there are renovations and improvements, and it makes no sense to say, okay, but relationships are the foundation of everything and relationships are the key to professional success. And, you know, they’re the key to
everything from longevity. If you study anything like the stuff written about the blue zones to opening doors and, and growing your business or pursuing new opportunities or getting a better job or forming strategic alliances or whatever else, relationships always are at the heart of this or at the centerpiece of
this. And I think, you know, it, it seems almost contradictory, right?

Like, it seems like it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for somebody to say, well, relationships have this kind of impact on literally everything in my world personally and professionally. But then we think of them as this thing that just kind of happened instead of this thing that we need to nurture care for e
even facilitate the improvement of. And so if you change your perspective, if you change your viewpoint man, I think that so many things potentially change and improve with it. If you think about the prospects that come into your world as potential clients, and you say, okay, well, how can I build a
better relationship with that prospect? And, and you actually are intentional about doing that, then a much higher percentage of them become clients. And not just a client that is this transactional a occurrence it’s a client that feels at home.

They feel like they’re in the right place. They probably get a much better result. They are more likely to stay longer, they’re more likely to refer other people. So from a purely kind of fundamental business standpoint, that makes all the sense in the world. But if you think about this from the team that
you have, I think that one of the things that has helped me along the way when it’s come to you know, having team members stay around for a much longer time than the average business does, or, you know, along the way where businesses that I’ve owned have won awards for best places to work or
whatever else, or franchises that had the highest franchisee satisfaction score of, I mean, one franchise had the highest franchisee satisfaction score of all the franchises with under 500 locations in North America.

And all of that, I think kind of could be tied back to caring about the people, not just their professional kind of impact or role in my life. And you know, being genuinely interested and curious about them, caring about their families, their dreams, their hopes, the, you know, the challenges they were going
through. And I think that, you know it, so it helps in that standpoint. So many people talk about the challenge when it comes to new hires or finding good people or the cost associated with that. Well, I mean, if you think about this from like in, in the inverse, well, if people stay longer, if people you know,
are having a better professional experience, then they’re more likely to stay. And so those are, you know, pitfalls that you have to navigate less often than the average business. Not that they go away entirely, but they definitely happen with less frequency than most places deal with.

And if you think about the opportunities that come your way, I know at least for me, most of the, the opportunities that, that I have had to either get involved in another business. In fact, if I think about it, I’m not sure I can think of any opportunities that I’ve had to get involved in another
business that didn’t originate from some sort of relationship I had with the owner. So, you know, when you are thinking about, okay, how do I level up, you know, I get it. I, see the same ads on social media that you do. I see all the, Hey, we’ll add a hundred thousand dollars to your gym in 90 days. Heck, half
these people apply to be in my free Facebook group to go kind of try to siphon off prospects because they can’t generate their own.

And, you know, I see that stuff. I see people promising that they’re funnel or advertising technique or, you know, the way they approach a a certain, so like certain social media platforms or whatever else. That’s the answer. That’s the ticket. And, and I’m not saying that they can never have any impact
because, you know, I think that a lot of tools or tactics deployed the right way can certainly help a business move forward. But so much of that, almost all of it is temporary. It’s, it’s a band-aid, it’s a stop gap solution, and relationships are really the thing that’s gonna stay in the test of time. And so I tend to
gravitate towards what I think of as timeless businesses or timeless strategies you know, perennial successes. And I want to know what allows for that, because I don’t necessarily want to have to reinvent everything like every four months.

And if you build around those things that have a bit of a timeless quality to them, then yeah, you can kind of swap some tactical stuff in and out, but it’s not the foundation of everything that you do. So if you are open to that way of thinking, I can think of no better way to build a successful business and set
yourself up for long-term success no matter what kind of changes occur, whether it’s an economic downturn or you know, some other complete upheaval in society like we faced with a, a pandemic or changes in social media platforms or the ways that people connect or changes with artificial intelligence
or whatever else. I mean, the one thing that I am confident is not going anywhere is that because we’re serving human beings, having a relationships with human beings is always going to be paramount to your success. So you want a better business collect relationships.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

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