Fitness Business School – Build Your World to Build Your Business

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in this episode I wanna talk with you about building your own world to build your business. 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 til the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

In today’s episode, I want to maybe present a different way of thinking about something to you than, than what you normally hear. And, and this is a way that I’ve kind of thought about marketing man, as long as I can remember, but it is thinking of marketing as building your own little small town. Now, if you’ve paid much attention to fiction with whether it be movies or books or whatever else authors, screenwriters, you know, the creators are all really, really good at creating their own worlds, right? I mean, star wars has this really rich ecosystem of characters and scenes and, you know, know everything. Everything is very detailed. Harry potters the same way. I mean, I, I had the good fortune to spend the last weekend prior to when we’re recording this you know, watching my stepson, Tyler put together a short film and, you know, he, he’s a fiction guy and that’s, it’s a lot of what I kind of get snippets of is the, the world he’s interested in the, the idea of creating those. And, and I think it’s very much similar to what we should be doing with marketing. And the goal with, with our marketing is to attract people who want to be part of this small town. And I, and I’m using small town as the example rather than world, because I think world probably can feel daunting or whatever else. And, and most of us, you, we only need a small town of people to to build a great business, but we want to attract people who wanna live in our small town that, that you know, probably our type of people, so to speak the, the people that, that have similar values or have similar interests, that sort of thing.

So, you know, when I think about marketing you know, the, the, the first thing that I think about is who do I want to be in my small town? Like, who do I want to attract? Who do I want to be surrounded by? You know, people that, that I, I think in, in many ways, the people that I, you know, all the ultimately want to become friends with in my small town, the people that are joining coaching programs, I always want that person to be somebody I’d be happy to invite over to my home. And, you know, I think we need to be clear about who we want to attract the type of people, the type of, of goals and desires that they have, the problems they’re trying to solve. But you know, the, the things that they kind of gravitate to. So, so what do these people care care about? What do they, what do they feel is important? You know, what, you know, what are they interested, stood in fitness for? Is it purely a vanity thing? Is it health? Is it alleviation of pain? Is it you know, is it a performance thing? Like why are they here? And the messages that we put out, the, the post on social media, the lead magnets, everything that we’re doing should be designed to attract that type of person. And frankly, in some cases to kind of repel people who, who don’t fit, that, that type of person that we wanna live in our town. And then we gotta think about, you know, how are we going to make this hour for me? It, it really kind of starts with, you know, I’ve got these, I, I guess you would call them values or kind of principles or concepts that, that everything in my business world is focused around.

The first one is, you know, relationships over transactions, right? Like it’s relationships matter most. And, you know, with the relationships mattering, most it it’s important to me that, you know, the people that come in they’re people, I want to have a relationship with they’re people who are relationship focused with their clients. Like I, so I don’t want to have somebody in my so-called town that is really transactional because we’re gonna have a disconnect. I, we’re not going to see eye to eye on the things that I’m teaching, the, the things that our coaches do, the, the culture that we’re trying to create. So relationships matter most, I mean, sure. It’s the business. So ultimately some of those relationships are going to be associated with a value exchange of, you know, money for expertise and coaching time and all that. And I’ve gotta be able to do it profitably, but everything’s built on this foundation of relationships. And then the second thing is just coach them all, treat them all like paying clients within, you know, the context of what you can do. Like, I, I’m not a big believer in holding a bunch of things back.

I remember years ago another business coaching organization, they, they had this kind of ascension model, which was very common at the time, and it’s still, you know, relatively prominent in a lot of marketing circles, but it was like, okay, you, you join at this level and you kind of figure out that there’s not a lot of substance to it. And so their goal is to tell you, Hey, all the good stuff at the next level. And then when you join the next level, they kind of do the same thing to you’re like, well, it’s not quite as good as we promised, but all the good stuff at the next level. And I always felt like that, you know, that eroded trust and it, you know, it was unfair to the people who were making those investments in many cases really meaningful investments at each of those tiers for the people that it were getting involved. And I, I kinda went the other direction. I said, okay, I’m just gonna coach everybody until some of ’em pay me to coach ’em. And it, it’s a really simplistic way to think about it. But you know, if you feel like, Hey, I’m gonna go out there and give people the best I can give them at this stage of the relationship, knowing that if we’re talking about reaching thousands of people, there can’t be a lot of personalization. There can’t be a lot of customization for each individual.

So things are a little more general coaching, but it’s always the same type of concepts and ideas that I would give to somebody if they were sitting right in front of me as a one-on-one client. So to coach them all would be the second, the third is building your ideal business and understanding that better is better, not just bigger is better. And I think that’s something that I really try to drive home in our, in our community, in our town, is this, this I idea that you should be building the thing that you want. And in some cases that definitely is associated with more right, more clients, more revenue, more personal income, but that’s not the only way to measure it. For example, for me, there, there’s definitely a needs to be a harmony between personal and profess. It needs to you know, it needs to work together so that I’m able to prioritize family things. And it, it, it many, many stages of business that, that I’m just not interested to get to. There would be a lot of sacrifice on the, the personal side. And so that’s me. And my goal is to help each person figure out what ideal is for them and build that thing. Whether it’s the business model, the approach to marketing the, the type of service, the hours, the type of client, all of it. So that’s number three.

Number four is simpler is better. And looking for ways to continually make lives simpler for my clients, for them to make lives simpler for their clients to, to focus on the actual execution of things, rather than making people jump through a million hoops. I think a lot of people in the coaching landscape, whether it be coaching business owners or coaching clients, think that they, by making things more complicated, they’re creating more need for themselves. They’re creating a on themselves because, well, Hey, this is too tough for you to figure it out on your own. My, again, my approach is pretty different. I, I want it to be simple, and I want that quote unquote dependence to not really be dependent, but more of an allegiance because they like doing things this way. And so they gravitate to doing things this way, so they wanna stay. And then finally for me, the, the last one is very much family focused. And you know, whether you’re talking about your immediate family or in my world, like, I think of, you know, those important people in my life that may not be biological relatives, but they’re, they’re the people that are quote unquote my people and making sure business revolves around that. So when I’m thinking about how do I make it mine, that’s a big piece of it. In fact, you know, I asked a question the other day in our business growth accelerator group. I said, okay, well, gimme something you like about the, this coaching program.

And, you know, the things are you know, genuine and kindness and the desire to see each other succeed and people who I can succeed and authenticity. And you know, the, you know, the, the idea that, you know, relationships are just littered throughout the, the responses you know, the, the the, the that this is about the people and everybody wanting each other to succeed. Man, I mean, it you know, in fact, there’s even references to people feeling like this is their family, and it’s just, you know, spread around the country or around the world. And that’s, that’s what I want my world to, to be, or my small town to be. So that’s the stuff that I have to create. That’s the stuff that I have to facilitate in, in my world. And then the last part of this is how am I going to engage people to not only bring them into this town, but to make them feel a part of it on a continual basis. And for me, you know, I use lead magnets that I perceive as being very high value, you know, books that sell on am on, you can get a digital copy of the book instead. And, you know, these aren’t fluff books that somebody calls a book that has 26 pages like these are, you know, really thorough texts that are very much aligned with all the things I just sh you know, just shared the, you know, the approach, the philosophy, coaching people. I mean, you can, I’ve had plenty of people say, Hey, I read your book. And that’s what helped me build my business, who weren’t in paid coaching programs.

And then, you know, beyond that, I follow up daily with email newsletters where I’m trying to you know, add value to people’s businesses into their lives. I have over the last couple years really made putting together the, these podcasts of priority. So people could consume things in a different format for them, but then also a again, if I want to make it mine, you know, they’re, they’re hearing me talk in a very organic way, the same way they would’ve. We were together on a coaching session on a zoom, a call or in person. And, you know, it’s, it’s very much the, the exact same type of thing, because I, I think one of my pet peeves in this whole kind of online world is the, you know, the people that you see online don’t match up very well with the people who actually exist when you meet them. And so I wanted the podcast to be that, and then we’ve got, you know, free Facebook groups for people who, you know, have moved to the town, but aren’t necessarily in, in my close knit like neighborhood. And, you know, those things combined, that’s how we’re gonna engage people. And it allows me formats to meet people where they are.

So it’s not just about me and my preferences, but it also allows me to kinda stay in my lane and do things that I’m comfortable with. So when your be building your own town, so to speak, remember, that’s kind of what this is. And not everybody in the town. I, if you think about it that way, you get a better visual, you know, not everybody in the town is ready to do the same thing at the same time, everybody’s at a different stage of their journey. Different people have different things going on, and it allows you to see these people as being real, rather than just this kind of abstract general, Hey, I’ve got a list, I’ve got an audience, I’ve got a group. No, I mean, a town is something most, all of us have experienced. And in, it allows us to think about the people that we’re interacting with, but instead of the town’s kind of boundaries being based on geography here, they’re based on interest they’re based on common goals, common desires, common interests and in a lot of cases to similar values. And if you can build your town accordingly, it makes marketing so much simpler. It makes it so much more fun. It, it, it really, I think is the, the perfect way to think about marketing as a way to feed your ideal business. So if you haven’t considered marketing with this kind of town approach, I would encourage you to start now use the lessons that I’ve shared and watch your business grow.

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