Fitness Business School – Building a Successful Online Business Pt 2

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. In today’s episode, I want to keep talking with you about building an online 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 to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

So I ended out having more to cover when it comes to building an online business than I probably initially anticipated when I started the last episode. So I decided to carry this over and do a second part of this and dig in and see if I could share some of the many lessons that I’ve learned. I mean, we’ve done so many
things with online businesses and, you know, serve tens of thousands of customers or clients or members, generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue, made countless mistakes, and hopefully ended up doing a number of things, right?

So, you know, in the last episode, I shared some simple ways to kinda get in motion the ways that we started some things and really got things moving and did it in the simplest possible fashion to avoid overwhelm. You know, the next kind of step for this is to think about how you’re going to build your own
audience. And for me, I’ve used pretty much the same basic core approach as my number one driver in building my audience for over 15 years. And that’s been using a lead magnet, not always, but often a book, a lot of times a, a book that I’ve written is a lead magnet, and when people opt in, they
join my email list. And I’ve sent a daily email for over 18 years, and that has been the driver. That system alone has been responsible for tens of millions of dollars in, in revenue.

Now, we’ve added other things on, we’ve had free Facebook groups, we’ve had, obviously we have this podcast, and we’re fast approaching 500 episodes of this, you know, which is probably an achievement in its own rights, considering only like one or 2% of podcasts make it to episode 21. So, you know, but for
us, the email has been the driver. And that doesn’t mean that you have to use the email as your driver or anyone specific channel it. I’m, to be honest, as much as I like email, I feel like I’m channel agnostic. It’s just that one worked. But if that one stopped working tomorrow, I would pick a different one. The more important part is I’m running ads to this lead magnet every day, pretty much 365 days a year. I mean, obviously there are hiccups along the way, you know, if, you know Facebook disapproves an ad or something like that.

But otherwise, it’s run ads. Fill the pipeline, continually nurture those people, build a relationship with them, educate them, motivate them, demonstrate that you can help, give them some evidence that you can help and then make offers consistently. You know, it is the simple kind of pipeline like that that has
worked for me. But then the offers that I’ve made, I mean, they’ve kind of varied throughout the years. I know a lot of the time now I adhere to a couple things that a mentor and friend Dean Jackson has taught me this. Having a PS with a super signature at the end of the email with, you know, a couple offers there
and then some direct invitation style offers. I do those a lot. And my logic is really simple. It’s, I want to put it out there a lot because you never know when somebody’s ready.

It’s, I see those as my radio spots that I used to run for businesses that I owned offline. I see those as the road signage, you know, my, my big billboard or backlight sign on a road that you would drive by continually. I want to have an offer visible to somebody with a great deal of frequency so that whenever
they are ready, it’s really low friction for them to choose me and at least take that next step and learn about what I offer. And I’ve done some variation of that for a long time, and I’ve had various points of entry for a long time. I know a lot of people talk about, Hey, just have one offer or whatever. Now I’m a
big believer in having one core program. I think that’s great, but having varied points of entry so people don’t get numb to the offer, I think is important.

I think that, you know, you can pluck out pieces of your core offer and sell those as kind of a sample of how somebody does business with you. I think that you can do workshops or things that have kind of an implied deadline to them. So about the same things that you would teach if somebody join
your core program, I think that making it easy for people to do business with you, it is key. And I think that it’s, again, harder than ever. I mentioned this in the previous piece of this two part series. It’s harder than ever to get somebody’s attention and maintain it. So anything that we can do to get their attention is a
big deal. The idea that, you know, we don’t wanna give away valuable stuff for free or whatever else. There used to be plenty of people that touted that.

I don’t hear it quite as much anymore. Well, it, I mean, it, it’s silly if not fully absurd, because the har, it’s harder to get somebody’s attention than it is to probably get their money. All you have to do is look at how many Kindle books people buy versus how much time they spend reading them. It’s a lot easier for
somebody to go spend 2 99 on a Kindle book than it is for them to commit four hours of their life to actually reading it, or five hours of their life or whatever. So, you know, keep in mind that anything that we can do to get somebody’s attention and maintain it so we can demonstrate that we are a good solution
for them is a really key driver in building this kind of online business that you wanna build. So that pipeline I is huge in creating something.

And you know, I I’ll say there are plenty of people who do better work than me in a inconsistent way, right? There are plenty of people, man, they’ll put out great stuff for two or three months and then they’ll disappear, and then they’ll come back and they’ll put out great stuff for another month and then they’ll
disappear. And it’s very much the whole tortoise in the hair mentality. The thing that I have won many times over with is just showing up, being dependable, being consistent and kind of being the same guy. You can probably look back at stuff that I did 15 years ago, and I am in many ways still the same person.
There’s not a, you know, I haven’t created a caricature of me to go out there and be the marketing face, right? And that it’s not, that doesn’t work. It’s just that, you know, I wanted to build a business that’s durable, that lasts and is relatively timeless so it can support the people I wanna support and support my
family for, for a long time, really for the in, you know, the duration of my professional life.

So if you are building a business like you, you need to pick your strategy, but you need to understand that if you are not committed to filling the pipeline every day, eventually it kind of dries up. And a lot of people aren’t, right? A lot of people, they’re not intent on saying, okay, it’s my job to fill this pipeline
every day. For me, it’s a lot of the ads, and then it’s emails, and then on a secondary way, it’s podcasts like this to nurture that relationship and hopefully grow the relationship to a point of working together. So that’s the next kind of piece of this is, okay, we launch something out, we have an
offer, we’ve got some simple ways to get it to market. Then the next step is we have to build a pipeline that we can consistently fill.

And this becomes our community. If we were a local business, we, you know, we have a town or a city or a neighborhood or you know, a suburb to draw from, well, us building our own kind of suburb of qualified people, or at least partially qualified people on an email list, or as a Facebook audience or
members of a Facebook group or something like that. Now we’re gonna be marketing those people the same way that we would if there was a suburb that we were gonna market to or a small town. And then we put offers in front of them with regularity, and we figure out, okay, how do we build a business around
solving their problems? And you can solve big problems for people and charge a premium. You can solve lots of small problems for people and get lots of transactions at lower, you know, dollar amounts.

Again, it’s up to you and we’ve done a little bit of all of it. You know, we’ve sold really inexpensive solutions to people who may be early stage in their journey or, you know, they solve small problems and we’ve sold things all the way up to franchising or premium price coaching to solve bigger problems for
people, giving them a complete business model or a turnkey solution or something like that. Again, that’s kind of up to you. And then, you know, ultimately the next decision is how are you gonna deliver this? And, you know, do you wanna scale it beyond your own shadow or is this gonna be a kind of a
solopreneur gig? Or are you going to bring on other people to fill roles in your business? Whether it’s people to fill marketing roles in your business, people to fill fulfillment roles in your business.

It’s entirely up to you. But understand that if you don’t have a plan, an online business is every bit as challenging to operate as an offline business if you don’t have a consistent pipeline of people coming in. Building an online business becomes a little bit like trying to set up shop in the middle of the desert. You
know, you build it, that doesn’t necessarily mean people will come. So having that in place and then deciding, okay, do I wanna do all this myself? Am I gonna be the one writing programs and doing accountability and doing coaching calls or delivering workouts personally, or doing live streaming stuff
and doing the marketing and doing the follow up and doing the finances and operations, or am I going to get help? And it’s a personal preference thing. I know that in my case, part of the reason I think I’ve been able to have as much longevity as I’ve had is I’ve tried very diligently to play to my strengths and kind of
stay in my lane of the things that I’m relatively good at.

The, you know, I’m simplifying strategy. Do you know, finding simple ways to be consistent at doing things, creating coaching, you know, developing plans for people, solving problems for people, the connecting, coaching, that sort of thing. I love when it comes to a lot of the granular, tactical stuff, it’s
definitely not the stuff that I prefer when it comes to a lot of the technology stuff. It’s definitely not the stuff that I prefer. I mean, I’ve had people running my ads for me for as long as I’ve been running ads. I’ve had people actually taking the emails that I write and going out and testing and formatting and deploying
them. 80, 90% of the time that I’ve sent emails, I’ve outsourced a lot of the financial stuff to an accounting firm. I have gotten help to scale the coaching. So I wasn’t responsible for all of the coaching, and I can kind of stay in my lane and grow the business the way that I want.

And some people, they don’t want to do that. They want to keep it small. They want to keep everything in house. I’m not gonna tell you there’s a right or wrong way. I think that you have to pick the right or wrong way for you. And you know, admittedly, there are pros and cons to both, right? Like a business that is all
about you certainly isn’t all that saleable or all that scalable, but it can be a great cash flow business. It can be a low overhead, low risk business. You don’t need as many clients to pay the bills. You have a little bit more of a sense of control. And if you don’t enjoy managing people, then you know, you get to avoid that.
On the flip side, having people around allows you to play your best role. It allows you to really kinda scale without the fear of painting yourself into a corner.

It makes the business more saleable because it is an entirely dependent on you. It just creates some other avenues. But it definitely has more overhead and more responsibility when it comes to the people side. So when you are building your online business, that’s the kind of stuff that, that you need to consider. Now, I
know between the two episodes I’ve gone through a lot and I haven’t really, you know, tried to deconstruct just one model. Instead, I’ve tried to talk about how you can go from beginning and the things you need to think about as you move forward. But you know, what’s great is, I think the online business
model. There, there are different ways to fill this role in whatever your entrepreneurial journey is, whether you want to make it a part of what you do or all of what you do, whether you want something small or something that, that scales, and we’ve kind of done it all.

We’ve had businesses that have been, you know, low six figures, and then businesses that have scaled to franchise, which for us was probably 80% online or remote, you know, that, that had franchise wide sales above 50 million. And so it is, you know, there are different ways to approach it,
depending on what your preferences are, and a lot of opportunity and a lot of people that, that you can certainly help, but it, it’s not as easy as some people would make it. You still have to treat it like a business and have a plan. So if I can help you craft your plan and figure out what the right strategy is for
you, and figure out how you can map it out, you know, I’d love to just put online a subject line. Shoot me an email at [email protected], and we’ll talk through and see if I can help you put together your own ideal online business.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

In this diagnostic, we walk through everything and we do an evaluation and can instantly pinpoint what you need to do next to build that business that you want. I’m going to extend this opportunity to get on with either me or my team and take you through this evaluation and fix your business’s most vital needs fast.

So if we take you through this, you’re gonna be able to make those vital changes that you need to finally have what I call your Ideal Business. If you’d be interested in going through this entirely free, risk-free diagnostic with us and learn what you already have in place, what you’re doing well and where are your greatest opportunities for rapid improvement are just shoot me an email with diagnostic in the subject line to [email protected].

Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.