Fitness Business School – A Different Way to Scale

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about a different way to scale. 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.

The word scale has become kind of popular in the, the business world as of late, and, and it’s always been popular probably in the corporate type of business world, but it’s done what a lot of things do, and it’s trickled into the smaller business world. Like how do you scale your, you know, your business to multiple
locations? How do you scale your agency? How do you scale? You know, I mean, it’s just growth, right?

Like, it’s just another way to grow. And what I think what’s always being been kind of peculiar to me is there are so many different ways to do it, but it, it’s almost like if if you coach somebody or you teach somebody, you write a book, you act as if, man, there’s only one way and it’s your way. And it’s, I mean,
it’s kind of silly, right? Like I think a lot of us early on just because of the period, and it’s still very popular you know, we read the E-Myth and Michael Gerber and all that stuff, and it was, you know, create systems for everything and work on your business and not in your business. And then, you know,
if you’re a franchise or then you’re gonna tell people scale through getting multiple locations or becoming an area developer or something like that.

And if you are a business coach, then, you know, it may be, oh, scale by selling high ticket, and then you can get somebody else to be a salesperson on your behalf and you can scale to even making more sales. And you know, I mean, it’s just silly if you, if you think about it, because any one of those is probably
kind of valid, right? Like any of those can work. But they’re not gonna work for everybody. And I kind of figured this out early on because when I was a college baseball coach, I modeled this mentor of mine. There was a gentleman. I was really young, you know, I was you know, I was the youngest
head baseball coach in the country for a couple years.

It was, you know, I had just turned 23. In many ways, like the thought of some university giving that much responsibility to a 23 year old seems kind of
terrifying in hindsight. But, you know, I understood that there were plenty of things I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to run the type of program that I, I wanted to run because I hadn’t done it. The program had not been that, like what I had been exposed to was not that. So I reached out to a mentor
that I had some connections with. He, I mean, he knew of me, I knew of him through mutual contacts. My best friend played for him. My a a a couple guys who’d kind of been local mentors to me, had good relationships with him, and he was, you know, willing to kind of take me under his wing and mentor me
a little bit. And you know, so I kind of just adopted his stuff verbatim.

It was like, if this is how he runs practice, this is how I wanna run practices. If this is how he communicates with players, this is what I want to do. And, and we got better the first year and had the first winning season in school history, and then we did even better the following year. But it was clear
that that was like the ceiling, right? It, it was not, I couldn’t go any further than that because I was trying to fit this square peg into this round hole. I was trying to be somebody. I wasn’t, I was not playing to my strengths. And in fact, I was kind of magnifying a few things that I was probably weak at. And only after I
kind of, kind of remodeled everything in the program that we become nationally competitive. And same thing with you know, my first training business.

You know, I had some ideas and I hadn’t come from a traditional commercial gym setting. It’s not like I grew up in a 24 hour fitness or something like that. And that’s how I learned business. So, you know, I had some different ideas about things, and I remember running those ideas by, at the time, the guys
that were probably the two leading consultants, they weren’t like the internet marketing guys, so to speak, like the Ryan Lees or whatever, but like the two leading consultants in the industry. And both of them told me I was going the wrong direction, that it wouldn’t work. And in fact, one of ’em was pretty
condescending about it, and the other one was just flat out rude and abrasive about it and told me I was an idiot. And and, and it was like, hmm, you know, that’s, that’s interesting.

But it was you know, it didn’t take long. It took probably two years before they were both teaching kind of the model that I had and in, in some of their cases, kind of trying to take credit for it. But, you know, it was just this idea that, you know, there’s not only one path to success. I’ve had just a bunch
of different businesses at this point. I’ve owned or co-owned like 35 different businesses, everything from franchises that did pretty well to certifications to man, I mean, people talk about I wanna build recurring revenue stuff. I mean, I’ve had, you know, like 55-ish recurring revenue programs. It may be
closer to 60, like subscription things. And every one of them just came from being different. And I don’t think it’s like being smarter. I don’t think it’s cracking the code and having this perfect formula because there’s so many different ways to do it.

I think that you’ve gotta find the right path for you. I know some people who are just incredible operators, but they just want the, they want the plan and they wanna follow it. So they need stuff like, you know, they need a turnkey system, whether it’s a franchise or a license or somebody giving
them the blueprint, and then they want to go out and bring that thing to life and be just a world-class operator. Other people, you know, they need that creative element to you know, to, to drive them and be inspired to do great work. Some people you know, they, they can kind of do a mix of both. Like, I
think in my case, I love to adapt ideas and systems from other environments outside of fitness and say, okay, how do we apply that here? So it, it is kind of a mix.

I’m not having to completely reinvent the wheel, but I get to inject some creativity. I get to inject some of my own perspective and experiences, and I just think it, you know, it comes down to being self-aware enough to know who you are and not just lean into marketing hype or something like that, but it’s like,
okay, this is who I am. This is what, you know, what excites me. And kind of figuring out your formula and that self-awareness is key. I think that somebody like Doug Spurling, who is such a detailed guy and such a, you know, such a master of managing and leading a business by the numbers, like using
that, not just, it’s not just information to him. He can see the story that it tells and turn it into action. I think that he has figured that out and, and done amazing things.

And not only has been he’d been able to do that in a gym, but now he’s replicated that with his short term rental business. For me, that’s probably not exactly the way I think. So in part, that’s why I like to compliment myself and have Doug work in tandem with me on some things that we do. But for me, I
think that, you know, I’m pretty, pretty adept at understanding people and the way that they actually operate, not the way that we wish they would operate. I am pretty decent at solving problems and thinking at things differently, or looking at things that are different lens and aggregating ideas and something somehow distilling it down to what is useful. I think that I’m curious and interested and enjoy coaching, not just instructing, telling people what to do, but actually, like, I want to solve their problems and help create bridges from where they are to where they wanna be.

And I think I’m pretty good at simplifying that stuff. And in fact, I would say with all those things kind of, you know, if you stick a plus sign between all of them, I think I’m the best at that combination of traits and applying that, not just in our industry, but in any industry of the people that I know. But if you
separate ’em out and say, well, are you the best problem solver? There is no, not even close. You know, there, so we have to know us. What are things that are, you know, key traits for us? You know, our unique combination of strengths and, you know, if we can combine a few above average skills and
talents and experiences and push them forward towards one opportunity, man, that’s where the opportunity to scale and grow really is. So, you know, if you scale, like if you build around your strength, scaling becomes fun, it becomes exciting.

Instead of feeling like, man, you’re just building something that makes you miserable, because you can always be bigger, right? Like bigger is not nearly as challenging as some people like to make it sound, but are you creating more displeasure or more stress by just, you know, basically adding on it? It, it’s like
adding on to dysfunction in many ways, right? So you know, that’s my perspective, right? Like, I’m not saying that like franchising may be the perfect way for some people to grow. You know, just documenting processes and being absent from the in the trenches work may be the best way for people
to grow. Each person gets to decide. I think the key is you need to decide what’s right for you. And if you, man, if, you do that, if you are willing to kind of go down that path and do some discovery, you can build something really great and love every minute of doing it.

So, if you’d like my help, if I can help you do that, kind of create your own unique opportunity map, if you will, shoot me an email at [email protected] and we’ll see what we can put together for you. Okay. Talk soon.

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

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