Fitness Business School – Assuring Mediocrity

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about how to assure yourself of mediocrity. 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 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.

It’s always interesting when people inquire about our coaching programs. Sometimes they join, sometimes they don’t based on our conversations, but you’ll see a lot of people that are married to the way they’ve always done things. They’ll say, well, I already know that. Well, okay, do you know it? Or Are you doing it? And if you say, I already know that, then that means you’re usually resistant to changing to what we’re trying to tell you. And we’ve seen this time and time
again, people being married to things that used to work, things that maybe worked before the pandemic, things that they had some success with when times were good and not being willing to evolve. But I can tell you that pretty much every success that I have ever had has come from stepping away from the, the commonly accepted practices.

The way that I built the college baseball program that, that I led in, in my first kind of leg of my career was very much the way that college baseball programs are built now, where we relied heavily on strength and conditioning. We had our own approach to the way that we were gonna play the game
that was kind of progressive. We used some metrics that maybe other people didn’t use. We brought in players recruited a lot of transfer players at the time. All of this sounds very much like the day-to-day norm now, but I mean, if we’re talking 20 years ago the way that we were doing things were,
it was very different. And it was really, in my opinion, the only way that we could be successful in a program that was probably bottom five from a resources standpoint at the division that we played.

And we still ended up finishing fifth in the country. And that’s how we just stepped away from the way things had always been done in my first training business. We sold 12 month training programs, and we did the subscription recurring revenue stuff that, again, the subscription stuff seems very norm now,
right? Like it’s always what people are doing. But I remember distinctly going to who were the, the two gentlemen who were at the time the most prominent consultants in, in the fitness and training landscape. Names that undoubtedly you would know one of the two. You may very well know two of
the two, though. One of them has, has kind of become less well known over time. And they both told me I was crazy. And they both said it in a far less polite way than I just articulated it saying that, no, you have to sell packages, you have to sell programs.

People would never pay for training with a subscription. And it didn’t make sense to me kind of being a newcomer in the commercial fitness industry because that’s what health clubs were. It’s like, well, why would you sign up on a subscription to improve your health and fitness for one side, but you wouldn’t
do it on the other side? And selling 12 month programs, again, health clubs were selling a lot of them. Were selling 36 month memberships at that point. So selling a subscription with a commitment wasn’t all that crazy. Then we got involved with group nutrition coaching program, or a nutrition coaching
program. We became a licensee of a program that had about 1200 locations and we were the first nationwide to deliver in a group. They were all doing one-on-one. And we soon became the top selling of all 1200 locations, even though we were in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky.

We did franchising. When I founded, well, co-founded a franchise and led the franchise. We added 116 franchisees our first year. And it was largely by doing co-branding and conversions. Almost all the franchisees were that. And we were able to get big name people to come on board and become franchisees. People like Cressey Sports Performance. IFAST, you know, IFAST at the time it was a Men’s Health top 10 gym. I mean, obviously Cressey Sports performance is an icon in this industry now. And we had those guys as part of our franchise program, but we didn’t ask people to completely rebrand. We just said kind of powered by, partnered with. And we were able to grow a franchise very quickly because some people did better by adopting our brand because it had more local brand currency than what they were gonna be able to do on their own.

But then other people, they had already built up that kind of brand notoriety in their market and they could continue to leverage that, but lean on us for systems and infrastructure and support and that allowed us to grow very rapidly and become a nationally recognized franchise in a pretty short period of time. And converting gyms that already existed in the fitness industry to date. Still, nobody really does that with any great regularity. There’s probably one company
that does it some, but it was very common with people like if you’re familiar with like auto care franchising, Midas does that a lot and just convert standalone auto repair centers. But nobody was doing that in our, in our industry. And so we took that approach and we’re able to go very quickly.

Me doing daily emails, again, is not the way that normal people do it. People would regularly tell you that it’s too much. But clearly it’s been a real driver for my business. I do what I consider like mid-tier pricing. I’ve been very much a proponent of high value pricing, not necessarily high ticket
pricing. And I’m all for things that are expensive as long as they share equal or greater value. A lot of people have really defaulted to quote unquote high ticket, which usually just means a value exchange that is very favorable to the seller and not very favorable to the buyer. The other thing that I’ve done that’s not been a, Hey, the way we always do it is I do a lot of trials and a lot of risk reversal stuff because I believe what we do is something that it is just better than
what other people experience.

And so I want to get people involved. I want to mitigate the risk and say, look, the risk can’t be all on you. The risk can be more on us because we believe that you’ll have success when you come get involved with what we’re doing. And those are the way, like some of the ways that I’ve been able to say,
okay, I’m not gonna approach things the way that we’ve always done it. And, and I think that you see that a lot in the fitness industry. The people that were first movers with bootcamps did really well. The people that were first movers with semi-private training did really well. The people who are early
adopters now to small group training do well. The training businesses that are integrating nutrition and not just being a host for workouts do do quite well because let’s face it over time things kind of die out.

Trends change, consumer behavior and consumer desires evolve. And if you stick to what’s always happened, you get left behind. You can’t run the same ads that you ran in 2017 and 18 and 19 and expect the same results. You can’t be just a host of workouts and expect that not to
become a commodity. The way that health clubs that used to have 36 month memberships at $49 a month now in our selling month to month memberships at $10 a month. So you have to be willing to get out of the norm if you’re going to be successful. So my recommendation to you is to look at your
business and say, okay, where am I doing exactly the same thing that everybody else in my market is doing? And then where am I different? And I think in some cases you’ll find that you’re incrementally better than other people usually for the people listening to this, it may be in programming, it may be in
relationships with clients, but it’s probably not a lot of the front facing stuff.

It’s probably not. In letting the market know about how you’re better or different in ways that stand out from the crowd, it’s probably usually, if it is different, it’s incremental. It’s not completely different. You know, if you want to win, a lot of times you have to get away from the way that everybody else does
things the way quote unquote, we’ve always done it. ’cause If you don’t, you’re gonna get stuck in being mediocre. It doesn’t mean you’re not gonna have any success, but it means you’re probably not gonna get the success that you originally sought when you got into business. So you’re looking for a way to
stand out, like I said, put your business under the microscope, explore all those things that are common practice for everybody in the industry, or ways that maybe you’ve always done things and say, what would happen if I did this in the opposite fashion? What would happen if I did this differently? My guess
is you’ll find some ways to stand out and escape the norm.

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

Before you go, I’ve got a quick announcement. When I first connect with fitness business owners, they almost always ask me how I can get more clients and make more money. Well, I’ve got an exclusive offer for you and it’s gonna help you do just that.

And as a listener of this show, I would love to invite you to a conversation where you and I can talk about our new program, the Business Growth Sprint.

The Business Growth Sprint is a one-of-a-kind program where you get everything you need.

We actually work with you one-on-one, unlimited, one-on-one coaching and support.

We design a marketing plan for you. We give you assets to execute the plan.

It’s unmatched in our industry between the level of coaching, the frequency of accountability, the simple step-by-step nature and the completeness of how it’s gonna guide you to making more money and improving your personal income fast.

Imagine having every tool, template, ad, and script that you need all ready-to-use. Plus you’re going to get one-on-one access with me and the other coaches on my team to make sure that everything from your business growth plan to your marketing and sales system is done, turnkey, ready to go.

And what’s great is there is zero risk. We guarantee that you are going to add at least $4,000 a month in recurring revenue, or $20,000 a month cash collected as part of this program in just four months.

So if you are interested, if you’d like to discuss and see if this is a fit, just shoot me an email at [email protected] and put Sprint in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details.