Fitness Business School – 3 Ways to Stand Out

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about three things that can help you stand out from the crowd. We’re now in a more competitive fitness market than we’ve ever experienced. So I want to share three different things that can help you a lot. So let’s get started.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

You’ve probably noticed there’s more competition than ever before in the fitness industry. Yes we’ve seen some people, fall off, file bankruptcy, some of the bigger, less personal businesses, but just before the pandemic, we were seeing a bigger surge in franchise group training businesses than we’ve ever experienced in the fitness industry. And now we’re seeing this massive uptick in online or virtual training based based operations. And you know, what does that mean for us? It means that we’re going to have to work harder or probably more appropriately work smarter than we’ve ever worked. If we want to, to succeed and thrive moving forward in the future of the fitness industry.

So I’ve got three different things to share with you that can help you really stand out from the crowd and make marketing simpler, make marketing easier for you to execute at a high level and attract more of the right clients. So the first of those is to create your own community. All too often, we, we really just try to jump into somebody else’s community and run an ad. We run a Facebook ad for, for something that we’re doing, and then we just make an immediate offer and we’ve never really cultivated our own community. Now, the way that I’ve always thought about this is, you know, you’re in a city, you’re in a town, you’re in a market and you’re trying to draw a group of people from that market to become clients. So if you’re in a town of 20,000 people, you’re trying to grab a hundred or 200 of those people to become your clients. You’re not getting the whole community, but you need a community to draw from, to build a successful, sustainable business. That’s why, even though the real estate would be way cheaper, nobody’s building their business in the middle of the desert. So how does this work for our purposes instead of just jumping into an existing community, how do we build a, that gives us the highest probability of growing our business and sustaining it. So we always have this pipeline of new qualified prospects. Well, for me, it’s been building an email list over the last 15 years. I’ve sent a daily email without fail, without missing. I’ve sent a daily email and this audience has grown from what, what started as a couple dozen people to now around 60,000 people. And so that community has grown and they’re all people who share some common traits. Yes, they’re all different. Everybody’s an individual. Everybody has their own unique challenges and goals and the business model they want to run. And whether or not they want to be a solo-preneur or have a big operation. All those things may be different, but there are some unifying characteristics, right? They all must have an interest in health, fitness, sports, performance, businesses. They all are driven to improve in some way, or they wouldn’t invest their time and energy in reading what I have to say or downloading the lead magnet that that allowed them to then. So that’s why community and I continually connect with that community and send out what I’m hoping is valuable content in a couple of different formats to, to help those folks move from where they are, to where they aspire to be. Now that’s my community. I mean, you can do this with a Facebook group. You can do this with a podcast audience, which obviously you’re listening to this as a podcast. I’m basically trying to, to build a stronger community by having a separate form of connecting with people rather than just the written word. But you need to have your own community because what, what happens is if you’re just trying to market in somebody else’s community, whether that just be a Facebook ad or, you know, back when people were running TV spots or radio spots more frequently, you’re kind of an interruption. You’re not ever the center piece. You’re not ever the person who, who can significantly influence the conversation. But beyond that, you’re also not speaking to a community that has a shared interest. And if you have people that have this shared interest, you’re going to get a much higher uptake of the offers that you put out. So the first way to stand out from the crowd is to build your own community. And think of this is kind of this wider circle of a different type of client that you serve. Yes, you have your clients who are part of your everyday business that pay you for your coaching, pay you for your services. But then there’s this bigger pool of people that you serve that are clients aren’t paying you yet, but you’re still providing value to them and still helping them. So that’s the first way we can stand out.

The second way that we can stand out is to think in terms of how can I give more than the competition. Now, one of the ways that you can do that is what I just alluded to providing massive value inside this community. How can you provide coaching for people until they pay you to coach them? How can you give them solutions to their problems? How can you make their life easier? How can you help them achieve their goals? Well, if you’re giving more than the competition, giving valuable tips, advice, insight, tools, resources, I, I know I’ve given away pretty much every book that I’ve ever written for that same premise. Okay. Give more than that competition and build a relationship through generosity through to, through leading, by, by saying, look, I’m going to give it, I’m going to deliver results to you in advance of you ever paying me. I’m going to take the risk off your plate and put it on mine. I’m going to make this the opposite of what most people do, where they say, Hey, I’m going to sell you this high ticket thing. You pay me before you’ve received any benefit before you have any confidence that I can actually help earn at least any proof that I can actually have. And that’s a completely different way of approaching this leading by giving. And if you give more than the competition, you’re going to stand out in such a big way because just, you know, let’s face it. Most business owners don’t think that this way they’re in continual take mode instead of ever thinking about how they can give more and serve better.

And then finally, and this has been a battle I’ve tried to play a part in leading the charge on, in the fitness industry ever since I got in to our industry. And that is making it about the client. All too often, we get caught up in talking about our credentials and our process and our schedule and our facility and our equipment. You know, all the certifications that we’ve gone through, all the things that we’re passionate about. And we like, and it’s understandable, right? I mean, we got into this because we do love it. We are passionate about it. It’s something that really kind of lights, lights us up when we’re, when we’re involved in it. Otherwise we wouldn’t have taken this career path because it’s definitely not the easiest or most direct path to building a meaningful income to, to creating financial security. It, it takes a little bit more to obtain those things in this industry. So, you know, we, we have to love it if we’re going to do. And so it becomes very, very common for us to talk about the things that we love. But the reality is if you want to stand out from the crowd, talk about the person that you’re serving, make it about them, make everything as client centric. As you can talk about the things that are important to them, answer the questions that they have answered the questions they should be asking, but maybe aren’t informed enough to ask yet, make what you’re doing about the benefits that are important to the person that you want to serve. And you’ll have a much higher likelihood of being able to serve them as an ongoing client. So if you want to stand out from the crowd, there are three really straightforward ways to do this. And honestly, they’re pretty simple. Make no mistake. That doesn’t mean they’re easy building your own community of prospects, creating your own little virtual city, whether it be an email audience or people that follow you on YouTube or people who subscribed to, you know, your your, your podcast or, or belong to your Facebook group, it takes work. It takes nurturing. It takes cultivating this, this wonderful group of people that you get to be the leader of. You get to be the mayor of your own little community, but it takes a lot of, a lot of effort. The second, you know what I mean, giving let’s face it, your, your you’re giving before you’re receiving. So you’ve got to play the long game. You have to understand that, you know, delivering results in advance, delivering value before somebody makes their value exchange. It’s, you know, it’s not the traditional way that people do business, but it’s an easy way to stand out. And it’s also a very simple way to make selling simpler, because you’ve already proven that you can help. And then lastly, if you make it about the person you serve, you’re going to be far more likely to be able to gain their attention in the first place and maintain it over the longterm. So three ways to stand out from the crowd that if I’m running your business, these are what I’m going to be focused on when I’m doing my marketing.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.