Fitness Business School – 4 Critical Advantage You Have

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in this episode, I want to talk with you about the four critical advantages your competitors can never have. Let’s get started.

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

When I talk to business owners, a lot of it, a lot of times they’re looking for an advantage, right? They’re looking for an edge as they should be because the landscape, the market is becoming more and more competitive. There are new you know, group training facilities popping up everywhere. I know just in my neighborhood, I mean, we’ve got an Orange Theory, an F45, a CycleBar, Club Pilates, a different barre experience. We’ve got, you know, a planet fitness, anytime fitness, and then a couple independently owned facilities. I mean, the, the industry is really booming in spite of the, the, the pandemic it’s, it’s really grown like crazy. When you think of how many people have gotten involved with the online stuff like Peloton and mirror and everything else too. So how do you set yourself apart? Well, there are four advantages for competitive advantages that you have at your disposal that your competitors can never really have. And they’re your knowledge, your marketing, your relationships and your systems. So we’re going to unpack these a little bit and I’m gonna help you understand what I mean.

So let’s face it, you may be the first in your market to have a particular type of business. I mean, I know when people were first launching boot camps back, you know, 2007, 2008, when it was becoming more common first to market with such a huge advantage, you’d have people just running, just thriving boot camps, charging, you know, probably 50, 75% more than people charge now for group training just by being first. So you may be able to to be first with something and have an advantage, but eventually people catch on. They say, well, you know what? That looks like. That’s working. I’m going to model that. But there are some things that you can do that will allow you to always stay ahead. And, you know, and, and the first big one is your knowledge, your, your personal knowledge is really the foundation of your success, the knowledge that you have and the knowledge you gained, distinguishes you from the crowd. Remember those people that earn, you know, 10, a times more than you, or I, they’re not 10 times or a 10 to a hundred times smarter, and they’re probably not working 10 to 100 times more hours. Right. But they do know more. They have the, the, the knowledge they need to operate the business that they want to have to earn the amount of income that they want to earn. And they’re always learning more.

I mean, how powerful is knowledge, if you think about the people who are the leaders in the fitness industry, the people that, that you likely go to listen to, to Vince, like perform better. I don’t think you ever walk out of those thinking, man, that person just doesn’t have a depth of knowledge. I’m always just astounded by how I can listen to the same person, give talk after talking to always learn something new. And, you know, so many people have gotten so much depth on things in their various channels, and they built these powerhouse businesses because of that. You know, I mean, if you commit to, to really continually being a lifelong learner and really diving deep on improving your knowledge, not just when it comes to, to, to training, but, you know, improve your knowledge of behavioral psychology, improve your knowledge of sales, improve your knowledge of marketing, improve really your knowledge of anything that’s going to help you move forward to where you want to go. I mean, it is a, an absolute game changer. I mean, realistically, how much could that be worth to you? Well, specific knowledge could be the difference between struggling along in business for as long as you stay in the industry versus building you know, literally, and I say this with no hyperbole, a seven or eight figure type of business, right.

And obviously, you know, most don’t get there, but most don’t dive deep either. So even if you say, Hey, I’m not even pursuing that big business. Maybe I just want business that allows me to have a six figure personal income. Well, you know, I mean, successful people know this and they’re aware that they need to continue to learn to stay ahead. They, they, they know that gaining knowledge allows them to maximize their opportunities and minimize their mistakes. They get to learn from other people who, who have gone ahead of them and blaze the trail. So that’s number one. Number two, your marketing can be your second critical advantage. And you may say, well, marketing, anybody can knock that off. Anybody can you know, copy what I’m doing. That’s, that’s only true to a point, right? Like if you’re running a, a promotion through an ad on Facebook, sure.

Somebody can copy your ad, but we saw this. I mean, time and time again, we saw this when people were using deal the day sites and people just knock off the offer that was there, but that’s just one small sliver of somebody’s marketing, right? Marketing is the machine that drives your business and let’s face it, good trainers and coaches can fail. And some second rate trainers can dominate a market because of the power of marketing, good marketing is going to bring leads in and move them to becoming prospects and eventually convert those prospects into clients. And they’re going to be happy to exchange their time and money for solutions and a guide to help them achieve their goals. And it can be the make or break for any business. I mean, nobody wants to be that, that kind of hidden gym in a community that nobody’s ever heard about. And the reason that that marketing can be your kind of unique competitive advantage is that it’s an aspect that people, you know, people can only copy very simple fragments of it, right?

They can’t be you, they can’t have your before and afters. They can’t convey your personality. They can’t answer questions in the way that you answer questions. And really they’re not going to be you. I mean, frankly, let’s face it. There have been, I’ve been doing this for probably business coaching now for about 17 years and over time. I mean, I have seen people literally cut and paste things that I’ve put to market and sell them as products, right? Like cut and paste things that I’ve put out. I’ve seen people really mimic exactly the, I mean, names of our programs, benefits of our programs, knock off things that we would do left and right. And you know, I, I don’t know that it’s ever really mattered much because I think that there, the, the things that I can do in totality kind of make my marketing reflective of me, really all marketing is, is letting somebody know you before they actually do business with you, right. They know about how you can help. They know what problems you can help solve. They know whether or not they connect with your personality, with your values, with your approach. And, you know, I think my approach to marketing is frankly, something, a lot of people don’t, don’t have the patience to, to model because it’s, Hey, I’m going to coach you until hopefully some, you know, some of the time somebody may pay me to coach them. So I’m going to give them value on a podcast or an emails.

I’m going to do my best to help them and deliver results in advance of us, technically doing business together. And that’s not the marketing people try to copy, right? People try to knock off the easy stuff that doesn’t require any sort of real heavy lifting, right. They try to knock off ads and funnels. They don’t try to knock off relationship building. They don’t try to knock off follow up because that actually requires a little bit of work. So it can be the thing that is a huge differentiator for you. If you are willing to see marketing is your mechanism to connect with somebody and build a relationship with them, not just some tactic that you swipe and deploy. So that’s the second one. The third one are your relationships and frankly, your relationships, or you are probably your greatest asset, not, you know, not in the way that an accountant would define assets, but your relationships are things that, that are more valuable than any piece of equipment, any specific type of a facility, anything like that. You know, your relationships are, are, are the people who are, you know, either the clients that you already have, the, the people who can be ambassadors to introduce other prospects to your business, people that can open doors for you to you know, get public speaking engagements, to form strategic alliances, to have all sorts of new opportunities.

And in truth, if you approach marketing in the way that I think about marketing, you are going to be able to follow up with people and your, your list of people that you communicate with on a regular basis. Those are relationships. Those aren’t just names on a spreadsheet. There are people who are growing to know like, and trust you and are potential clients down the line. And you know, this really kind of relies on you. Treating every person you meet is a key to your business’s success. Treating each prospect as if they’re already a loyal client, each client though, they’re a trusted friend. And if you do that, you know, you’re not going to be one of these people who are leaving tens of thousands of dollars worth of opportunity on the table every year. Because people, I mean, you know, to, to put it, simply people buy people and remember those, those relationships, aren’t just, Hey, this person may hire me to train them, though. It could be, this person can become an advocate for me. They can become somebody who opened doors for me. Your, your clients can, can be your best marketing vehicle, but then again, your relationship with your employees can be what dictates whether your business can ever grow beyond your own personal shadow, and you can scale and impact more people. So understand that the time you spend on relationships, we’ll pay you back 10, a hundred, maybe even a thousand fold. I know it has for me. And then the fourth of the kind of competitive advantages, the, that your competition can’t ever really borrow would be your systems. And let’s face it. Many fitness business owners are confused about systems, what they are, why they’re important. I mean, they’ll say, Hey, I want systems in my business. But really what they’ll say is I don’t want to feel overwhelmed and stressed out, but systems are this, this wonderful collection of tools that allow you to guard your valuable time yet replicate the things that work, right?

Whether it’s making you more efficient. So you can do the same thing more quickly, more consistently at a high level or so you can hand something off to somebody else and they can do it at a level that allows your business to grow without you always being the do work. You can be the facilitator of things getting done. And without systems, it’s just a bit of a crap shoot, right? Like you don’t know how the business is going to operate. And frankly, you’re undermining the likelihood of it operating at a high level, but what’s great is high quality systems are just, you documenting the things you do well, right? It’s not making a business, lack, personality and lack kind of individuality. It’s, it’s more of a, a way to replicate the winners to replicate the things that, that operate at a high level. So other people can do them in many ways. I think of systems as setting other people up to Succeed. And if you have them in your business, it will allow you to perform at the highest possible level, whether you’re the one delivering the service, or you’re the one doing the sales session, or if you’re on vacation and something’s operating without you. So make sure that your spending time developing your personal knowledge, that your crafting a marketing approach, that’s reflective of you, your values, the type of client you want to serve, make sure you’re developing your relationship. And then also make sure that you’re designing and installing systems. If you do those four things, you’ll have a compound competitive advantage That no other facility or business in your market can ever overcome.

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