Fitness Business School – Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I wanna talk with you about why bigger isn’t always better. 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 to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

When it comes to building a business, a lot of times we get tied up in those vanity metrics, those things that everybody tells us we need, right? The, the 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a month recurring revenue, hundreds of clients the likes, the followers, all those kind of bigger numbers, more locations, you name it. And I’m not saying that there’s not a value in growth, because obviously there is. We want to grow our business, but we want to grow it strategically and not just make
this assumption that all growth is equal, right? So I wanna give you a couple examples of things that have happened along the way that really kind of clarified this for me. So the first was in my own business when I was a co-owner, CEO of a collection of businesses a group, there’s like a holding company.

We had ownership stakes in well over a dozen businesses. There were a couple franchise organizations, equipment companies, education, certification type companies, you name it growing it at that stage of my journey, it was fun, but there was a lot of, hey, put the money back in the company the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow type of thing. And just all focus was on this building. It was, it was exciting. It was kind of new and novel. But I will tell you that the top
line revenue certainly didn’t directly correlate with the benefits that it might have to my family, to my quality of life. And you read stories about that with all the
the, the founders of these big Silicon Valley type companies or whatever else that talk about working, a hundred hours a week and everybody’s got a hustle and put everything else aside and all that.

We got to a point where we had over 275 locations franchise franchise wide the top line revenue was very substantial. Franchise wide revenue was probably approaching, you know, $60 million annually. It was also bigger when it came to stress and responsibility and time committed. And I felt personally, I felt very spread out. And the point when I disassociated myself with these vanity metrics, like top line revenue or some of the stuff, I never really got caught up in vanity metrics, like the social media numbers or something like that. But really the number of franchisees or number of subscribers or number or top line revenue, when I disassociated myself from that sort of stuff, or from meaningless awards from third party companies my happiness dramatically increased, but then again, my personal income also increased.

My hours worked decreased. I could be more strategic about what I chose to pursue, who I worked with. So the quality of the work and the quality of the relationships with clients and team members improved too, because that’s some of the stuff that you don’t think about when you talk about top line revenue.
You’re focused entirely on quantity and not necessarily quality. Like, where does this come from? Or if you want to grow bigger, then man, you’ve gotta hire faster. And so you can be less picky about who you’re bringing onto your team. You bring in clients because they’re a metric instead of
saying they’re the right fit. This kind of bigger mentality at all costs is just not a great choice. But I’ll give you another way of thinking about this. I remember having a client, actually a husband and wife team, wonderful business, great, great people, great great small business, and they kind of hovered
in the 115, anywhere from 110 to a hundred and high teens.

When it came to like semi-private small group type clients, they had it in their head that they wanted to grow to a point where they had 150 clients. And so I just asked them, I said, well, why 150? Why 150? Because they kept coming back to that every time we’d talk. And they had these assumptions that, hey, all their problems would be solved in 150 that have better cash flow, that have better profit. Some of the money related issues would go away. And there were all these kind of assumptions that they would get these outcomes that they wanted by having that many clients, not considering the added responsibility of staffing those sessions or the added client management responsibilities or customer support type responsibilities that come with that. And
I just said, okay, well, if the goal is more personal income, are there other ways to get there?

Can you raise your prices? Can you sell more to the people you have? Can you add one corporate contractor because they were effective or even successful in the corporate side of things? If that’s the goal, more clients isn’t always the best path to get there. And I’ve seen people kind of say the same thing with locations. It’s like, well, I’ll get a second location, a third location, assuming that getting that second one, it’s going to be the same as the first one. It never is. That doesn’t mean it, it’s bad. It just means that, I think sometimes we make these assumptions that when we hit certain milestones, that means all this other ancillary stuff comes with it that’s really predictable and it’s not. So when you’re thinking about building the business you want, I would encourage you to be more
strategic and focus on better, being better.

And you can still grow, but grow pursuing the actual things that you want. Pursue personal income, pursue growth without it coming at the expense of maybe quality of life. Pursue getting the right type of clients, pursue putting marketing out there and reaching more of the right people, not just necessarily
having more likes or followers in general, because there are a lot of different paths to bigger, but there are far fewer paths to better, and you need to find the ones that fit you the right paths. Because here’s the thing I’ve seen it many times over and I’ve experienced it myself. Sometimes you create a success that you just don’t enjoy at all because it’s a success to the outside facing world, this bigger thing. And then you peek under the hood and you’re like, man, yeah, they’ve got a lot of revenue, but they’re not profitable.

They have a big business, but the owner is stressed out like crazy. They’ve got poor relationships at home because the business is taking a toll there. They never spend time with their family. They don’t have a quality of life at all. It’s eating away at them emotionally and physically. So make sure that you’re pursuing what you actually want, not what other people tell you. Is the right number or the right answer or the right type of business, not what you assume comes along
with those bigger numbers. Pursue what you want, make sure that you’re choosing better, over better And, and you’ll be on the path to having your ideal business.

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.