Fitness Business School – Building a Successful Online Business

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about the truth when it comes to building an online business, we’ve got a lot to unpack here, so 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.

So let’s talk a little bit about online business. Now this you know, this certainly isn’t a scripted episode and I’m probably going to go a couple of different directions with this, and it may even feel a little bit like a rant it parts, but I want to give you some context, some background seat, online fitness businesses, or online training businesses are far from new. We were delivering an online training program to clients that moved away all the way back in 2004. And there were services that supported that there were a couple different online training platforms that I’m sure by today’s standards would be considered kind of crude, but, you know, they existed. So this was not something that I was the only one trying to explore dabbling, but you know, over the past, let’s call it 15 years. Any number of people have delivered an online fitness solution, whether it be eBooks or video programs or membership sites or some form of online coaching.

My wife for a time had the most popular fitness for moms product on the internet. And this was, you know, this was a little bit over a decade ago, but served tens of thousands of women even back then online. So, you know, I had kind of, I think distanced myself from the fitness to consumer like business to consumer side of fitness online to a degree because we had spent a great deal of time trying to work primarily with offline gyms or training businesses or what, what we’ve kind of come to call a hybrid business. But at the beginning of the you know, at the pandemic, we decided to give away a a program, a very extensive and thorough course called the online coaching specialist certification that, you know, it was designed really the offer was designed to, to help people make that move because so many of the business owners, the we’re in the market, we’re going to have to now become proficient at delivering a coaching service online. Well, fast forward to today, many of the people who opted in and took advantage of this program that had previously sold for several hundred dollars.

And now we were gifting to people. It is a kind of a display of Goodwill. Many of them really were just people who wanted to have a fitness business online, but didn’t really want to do the work. Right. And I think of this as kind of hobbyist versus owners and, you know, and so I think that I want to spend a few minutes on today’s episode, just talking about what it really takes. If you want to build a truly successful online training business. Now I will say I’ve helped a number of people build really successful, multiple six figure online training or coaching businesses. I’ve helped a handful of people build seven figure businesses in that same kind of vertical. So it’s possible, but you know, the things that I see, the red flags that I see coming my way, when people will reply to emails that I send out, or when I asked them about their business, they’ll, they’ll talk very much about passive income or, Hey, I just want to create a course and not actually provide coaching and support and accountability, or, you know, when I asked them about what they’re actually doing, they’re not treating it like a business. They’re treating like a hobby. And the reality is, you know, I think that people are being sold. I guess you would just call it a bill of goods, right?

There are plenty of coaches and experts and gurus or whatever. You’d call them saying, Hey, go build your business online. And they charge some sort of substantial fee, several thousand dollars all the way up to 15, $20,000. And they tell you, Hey, I’ll help you create your online business. I’ll help you create your signature course and become a successful online coach is if having a course has anything to do with coaching, but really what is actually happening is these people are just extracting money and then not really delivering a whole lot of meaningful stuff that can be measured, right? They’ll say, Hey, let’s go. I identify your avatar and talk about your signature system and all these fun buzzwords, but really a business only exists. If you were making money, if you are actually serving clients, if you’re serving customers, if you’re serving patients and they don’t get you to that stage of operation, right, they’re there, they’re always talking about the soft stuff, the, the fluff, and that’s not a business, it’s a hobby. It’s an idea. It’s a dream. And it’s interesting because most people that have gone going into this idea of building an online business, they, you know, they, they don’t ever gain any traction at most. They get one or two clients and they move on. And the, the irony here is, is we’ve all seen this before, right? I mean, if we think about direct marketing or, or multi-level marketing, if you want to call it, those companies, the, the fail rate for people who actually engage and start those businesses, you know, they sign on, they pay their enrollment fee, they become a distributor or have their own independent consultant business or whatever they want to call it.

Like, well, over 90% of them fail, actually the numbers are probably the last I saw above 95% of people spend more money operating than they ever make. And sure there are a few success stories. And the truth is though the reason most people fail is they just kind of dabble in it. They don’t understand that to be a business owner online, offline your own storefront type facility, a brick and mortar business, being an independent contractor. It doesn’t really matter the format you’re going to have to operate as a true business. You’re going to have to be committed. That’s why people who own brick and mortar facilities probably succeed at a much higher rate, many multiples of the people who get started trying to build an online training business because they’re committed. They signed a lease they’ve either purchased or leased equipment. They are essentially quote unquote on the hook for having to do this sort of stuff up. You know, in many cases to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, actually the first lease I signed on a storefront business, a, a health club that I own, you know, I, and, you know, business partner at the time were on the hook for seven figures for lease obligation and equipment commitment.

And you know, that sort of thing kind of forces your hand. You have to show up in generate new business each and every day, you have to go get new leads. You have to convert and get more clients. You have to deliver a service that keeps people staying in paying and ideally such a, a good service or a positive experience that they refer. And that sort of commitment is the difference between the people who do well. And don’t, and it’s not exclusive to offline business. If you apply that same level of commitment to an online business, you can do great. If you thought in terms of, Hey, I have to go connect with new prospects each and every day, I have to convert people into paying clients every day. I have to coach these people up and actually make sure they’re getting the result that I’m promising that the experience is so good that they want to stay, that they want to refer that perhaps they want to even elevate their relationship with me and work with me at a higher level. If you’re doing that, you’re going to do just fine and whatever format that that you want to operate, but that’s not the stuff that sells the stuff that sells is, Hey, identify your perfect client, avatar and craft your signature course, and people will come and flock to you. Well, I think that anybody who is savvy and actually understands business and anybody that has been around successful businesses in the past understands that that’s just not how things work. So whenever you kind of think in terms of building a business, whether it’s online or offline, but for the purposes of this episode online, understand that you don’t just get to have this wonderful business. What I call an ideal business. You don’t just get to arrive at that place. By putting aside out, by putting a course out by knowing who your target market is by posting a few videos on Instagram or something like that, you don’t just get to arrive. There it’s work. In fact, it’s a lot of work. It takes a true commitment. Now, can you ultimately build a business where you’re going to move into a position where you can play the role you want to play in the business, and maybe you can pay other people to do some of that work. Sure. But the work still has to be done. It’s never completely passive. It’s never completely turnkey and automated because somebody is doing the work. It just may not be you. And you’re paying somebody else to do that. And beyond that, if you want to have a business that actually lasts and is sustainable, and isn’t just a quick money grab, you have to deliver. People have to get a result. They have to get the, the type of outcome that they want.

They’ve got to be able to solve the problems that they want to solve and achieve the goals they want to achieve. So, you know, maybe, maybe this is you know, a bit of a wet blanket conversation for you, and it’s not, you know, that, that uplifting, Hey, anybody can just turn on a website and make millions. But honestly, I would be doing you a disservice if I told you something that wasn’t true. And I assure you that that’s not how it works. I’ve had the good fortune to know many of the people who’ve built some of the most prominent online fitness businesses in the world. And every one of them were committed. They worked. And in fact, many of them still work very hard to operate at a high level because they’ve set a standard that they want to maintain and even escalate to, to being even better now that the market’s become more and more competitive with people like Peloton and mirror stepping in and spending millions of dollars to gain market share.

So can you have an online business 100%? Is it still a business and require everything from a commitment standpoint that business ownership requires? Yes, sure. The investment may be a little bit lower, but you still need like a online facility, whatever software platform you’re using, whatever client management system you’re using, you still have to generate new business. So you’re going to have to advertise or do great organic or guerrilla marketing. You’re still going to have to convert sales. So you’re going to have to have some sort of true sales conversion process that moves people from prospect to client. And if you’re not doing these things at a high level, you know, the, this kind of pipe dream of having a, an easy passive online business, you’re, you’re going to learn the reality. And it’s probably going to be a very expensive lesson. So that’s the truth about online business? Is it possible to do great 100%? Is it going to take some work for sure.

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