Fitness Business School – Building and Managing an Audience

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in this episode I want to talk with you about building an audience and what
we actually do once we’ve built that audience. So 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 end 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.

The most common request I get from
people when I say, Hey, what do you need help with is leads. I need more leads. If I get leads, I’m
golden. I’m doing great. Now, the reality is that’s usually not an entirely accurate statement. There,
there’s a thread of truth in it. Sure if you get people to walk through the door and
experience what you do a meaningful percentage of those people probably become clients.
But the reality is, a, a lead is just somebody who is interested and we don’t need ’em. All right? We probably need to think about this whole process in a different way. So I’m going to kind
of telescope out and talk about leads in general, and then I want to bring it kind of back home to what
actually needs to happen on a daily basis. So, bear with me, but I think we’re gonna touch on some
things that might be pretty useful to you. So when I talk to somebody and they say, well, I need leads.
What, what I think of as a lead is somebody who is potentially interested in solving the problem that you help people solve if they wanna lose weight and you help people lose weight, that’s fine.

That, that kind of checks the box. If you help people get out of pain and they’re experiencing back pain, that’s probably a lead if you come in contact with that person and they give you permission to follow up. So that’s what qualifies as a lead in my world. They have interest in the types of things that you help people accomplish, and they give you permission to follow up. Now of that pool of people, there are all sorts of things that can happen, right? They can lose interest in that goal. They can decide that it’s not a priority for them now, so they can just not pay attention to you. They can unsubscribe if they’re on your email list. They can certainly have a different direction that they want to, to go because maybe it’s just weight loss, felt like it was important for a while, and maybe it’s not.

Now they can kind of self solve the problem. They can say, okay, I’m gonna go on a diet at home. I’m
gonna start walking around the neighborhood. They can find any number of solutions online, on YouTube, or through any number of web searches and or, or apps, and kind of do it yourself. Then they could potentially seek and find an alternative solution in your market. Maybe they joined another gym, maybe they hired another trainer, and then obviously they can choose us. Now, when a lot of people talk about a lead, they think about this very differently. They think in terms of, well, a lead is
somebody who comes in and is deciding whether or not I’m the right solution for them. And for me,
that’s like, that’s at a different stage of the relationship. That’s a genuine prospect, somebody who’s
making a decision, and we are part of that decision making process so if we think about leads, our goal is to build a pool of leads and demonstrate that we can be
helpful, that we can in fact, solve that problem, that we’re credible, that potentially we’re
solving that problem in a way that aligns with this person. So what I mean by that is maybe they’ve tried other things before and they didn’t like that approach. Maybe they tried deprivation diets and that
wasn’t for them. Maybe they tried, large group training and that wasn’t for them, and you do small
group training or one-on-one training. And so we want to demonstrate that we can help the
people that we aspire to help. We wanna make sure that the way that we go about doing this is
interesting. Those people, and it’s, available to them. We want to have social proof so they can see
that it’s not just us saying it, but there’s some evidence that other people like them have gotten a result.
But when somebody tells me they have like an email list or something, and they’re not getting
engagement, they’re not getting people to say, I’m willing to interact with you. I
think that’s a, again, people are focused on the wrong stuff. They’re focused on what they want. And so
we’ve got this pool of leads. Well, in any given day, ideally, we probably wanna be having conversations or abilities to have some sort of interactive demonstration with 1, 2, 3 of those, leads. We don’t need all of ’em. I, I mean, I live in, uh, an area where in my zip code there are about 33,000 people. Well, if any small business in this area that sets up shop in this town or in this suburb, if you will they probably set up shop here because they felt like this would be a viable market.

These people are prospective leads for their, their business, whether it’s a service or retailer or
whatever else. None of them could support 33,000 people walking through the door today, none of
them. Now, you may be thinking, well, sure, you see how efficient Chick-fil-a’s drive through is,
they can handle ’em all, but no, nobody could do it. And so we don’t need ’em all, especially in, in one
day. We need a few today, and we need to move that relationship from lead to prospect to client. And
so if you’re starting a conversation with people, think about how you would actually have a conversation with somebody if they were in your local neighborhood. If you met them on the street and you were in a conversation about health and fitness for whatever reason, maybe they saw your logo for your business on your shirt, you would probably ask them one question at a time.

You wouldn’t ask them 10 different questions, and you certainly, I hope wouldn’t try to pitch them
before they even learned how you help people. Like you wouldn’t hard sell them and try to get them to
sign their name on the dotted line. Well, there, there’s a flow of conversation that if we start a, you
know, 1, 2, 3 conversations a day with people that are in this bigger pool of leads, some of those people
become prospects and they, they are ready to make a decision. And by demonstrating that we can help,
and by actually being interested in them, being interested in what they want to learn, what they need
help with, what problems they have that they’re trying to solve, what pains they’re trying to eliminate.
Now we have the highest probability of getting that person in the door and actually getting them to be a
client. Now, that is not always what people want to hear because really what they want is an ad that just delivers people with credit card in hand to the door. But that’s not how human beings work. And all you have to do is think about the purchases that you’ve made, the buying decisions that you’ve, you’ve made and the process you went through to arrive there, right? Odds are with meaningful decisions, not impulse buys, but actual commitments that you were going to have to invest a lot of time into that you were gonna have to get out of your comfort zone about. You probably put a little bit of thought into it.

You probably did a little bit of research to make sure it was right for you. And whatever research you
did, whoever won out, whoever demonstrated that they were gonna be the best solution for you, that’s
usually who we choose. Now, best is a really kind of personal thing. Best is a combination of value and price and convenience and all the emotional things you’re gonna get out of it. Not only can it solve the problem, but is there a status element there? There are all sorts of things that go into it. So your demonstration is your ability to put forward what you want people to know about how you can help and what your culture is. And then there has to be a fit, right? Not everybody is right for you just as you are not right for everybody. Now, I tell you all this because you are probably going to need more leads than you think. You’re probably going to need to go build a little bit bigger pool of leads than you originally, than you originally think. If you want to get your ideal client, because you wanna have a big enough pool of people to draw from that, when you demonstrate what you do, when you go out there and put your message out there and you show people how you help and who you help and what you can help people accomplish, that’s gonna narrow, right?

Everything that you put out, people are gonna say, well, that’s interesting to me, or That’s not,
that’s what I’m looking for, or that’s not, and over time, people are gonna take kind of an off ramp on
this journey towards where you’re trying to get them to go, and that’s totally fine. Personally, I would
rather have plenty of people take off ramp before I ever have to invest a ton of time sitting down with
them individually. If it’s already clear that it’s a bad fit. I wanna sit down with people and talk to people
who are possibly a good fit. They don’t have to all be a good fit, but the ones that are obviously a bad fit, I’d kind of prefer that they opt out before we ever invest time together, which probably ends up being a waste for both of us. So build your audience, put things out there that would be attractive to the people that you would like to serve.

Build a list up accordingly. Follow up like crazy, but then start conversations. Don’t think in terms of,
Hey, I need to, to put things out that are always going to make people buy because of the email that I
sent. Sometimes it’s just getting people to lean forward because of the email you sent. Sometimes it’s
getting people to answer a question and become interactive because an email you sent. And if you do
that enough, you mix in those conversation starters. With traditional offers, you’re gonna get more
people to move forward with you. You’re gonna get more yeses, and so there’ll be more people moving
through your pipeline. So if all you’ve did been doing in the past is saying, Hey, we’ve got this program
that starts on Monday, or we’re running a flash sale on this training package, or whatever else,
sometimes you need to just ask questions like, Hey, are you still interested in losing weight?

Are you still interested in getting healthier? Are you still interested in eliminating back pain? Hey,
are you somebody who exercises at home? Or do you like going to a gym? Start conversations with
people, get them to engage with you, because conversations often lead to conversions. So when we’re
thinking about leads, when we’re thinking about moving people through that pipeline that’s how I
view it. I don’t think that there’s only one path. I think that this idea of your one funnel away is overly
simplistic and make no mistake, I, uh, I, I’ve used things like ClickFunnels for years and I appreciate the simplicity of the concept, but a lot of things get lost in the shuffle there. I think that we’re
dealing with human beings that make decisions on their own time in their own way. Our job is to help
them make the best decision. And if we play our cards right, a lot of times that best decision ends up being us.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Fitness Business School. Before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owner they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more leads and client?”

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