Fitness Business School – Business Mistake #2 – Being an Event-Only Producer

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here, and in this episode I want to talk with you about a specific challenge that we can overcome. And that is being an event only producer. We see that a lot in our industry, people relying on big events, like transformation challenges to really drive all of their business in. And they’re really kind of hanging their hats on these big events. It’s a mistake, but it’s a mistake we can fix. So let’s get to it.

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So let’s talk about, about being an event only producer and really what that means. Well, we’ve seen this in our industry over the past five or so years where people were so reliant on transformation challenges to really be the source of revenue in their business. They would run challenges four or five times a year. And that would be the only time they were bringing in new clients. And for a while it worked right because they were novel in a particular market because maybe there were only a couple businesses running challenges, or at least a couple of businesses really aggressively promoting them. But then before long, the market became saturated and it looked a lot like some of the things that we’ve seen in the past, if you’re familiar with the internet marketing space to speak up, like your seeing these product launches that used to happen five or 10 years ago, where everybody would rally around this specific launch, that’d be all promoting the same thing for a couple of weeks in whatever vertical they were in. And you’d see somebody run a product launch that might generate almost all of their revenue for the entire year.

I know for me back then, if I would launch a new product or program, I might generate more business or more new revenue from that launch by five or 10 fold from what I would do if I launched the same thing today, because the market has changed, the market has evolved and coming from a baseball background, you know, you know, we would talk about kind of waiting around for the three run Homer for all of the runs that we needed to win a ball game or something like that. When the reality is we need to go out and push every inning and try to generate some runs. Yeah, we want the three run Homer. Yeah. We want the bigger launch or the bigger promotion, but if that’s the only tool you have in your tool box, if market circumstances change, if the landscape or the environment changes a little bit, now your business is going to be weakened significantly. And I saw people really in this challenge heyday expanding, adding location after location, because they were hanging their hat on this one thing. And before, you know, it locations are filing bankruptcy. They’re going, you know, they’re going out of business as a whole. People are even leaving the industry and this isn’t new in our industry. I mean, we saw this when people were so reliant on things like Groupon, they would say, okay, I’m going to rely on getting a Groupon or Living Social. And that’s going to be my primary lead generator for the next six months.

So what’s like, what’s the plan? What can we do to make this still work for us and take advantage of these waves that can really kind of carry us towards the business we want to have, but then have a second and a third or fourth marketing strategy in place to keep our business moving forward. Well, go ahead and build out a marketing counters. The first thing that I would tell you and figure out when you’re going to plot in these big hits or at least things that we hope are big hits, right? Maybe you’re going to do three or four challenges each and every year. Totally fine. And I still think challenges have a, a really meaningful place in our market. Just maybe not what they were three or four years ago. So plot those in, but then we need to back them up with other things.

Maybe the following month, you’re gonna, you know, you, you do a, a challenge in January the following month, you do a big referral campaign because you’ve got more people into your program. Then the next month, maybe you’re pushing you know, a shorter term, lesser commitment front end offer instead of a six week or an eight week challenge. Maybe you’re doing a 21 day or a 28 day front end offer. And then all the while we’re list-building we’re audience building and really gaining more people that we would call leads that we can market to, that we can follow up to ensure we’re going to put those challenges in front of them. But we’re also going to put our evergreen offers in front of them. We’re also going to put opportunities to just get on the phone and have a success session in front of them. We’re going to keep varied offers in front of them 52 weeks a year, so that whenever they’re ready, they know that you are available to help them. And you haven’t made them feel like, Hey, these guys are only taking new clients these four times a year. I mean, it may seem like common sense to us that the market would understand that, yeah, we want new 365 days a year, but the reality is the they’re not looking around paying attention to what you’re doing each and every day, your prospects, aren’t keeping tabs on you to see when you’re bringing in new clients. And when you’re not, they’re just seeing what’s put in front of them.

So we need to have a plan to consistently market. And we need to really take those in between periods between the bigger events, the bigger challenges and plan them and treat them with the same level of diligence that we do, the actual challenges. And if we do that, plus if we work a little bit harder to make the most out of every challenge, we’re making sure we’re spending one on one time with everybody that comes into our business during a challenge, we’re still going to have the same type of growth and maybe even better in sustainable growth over time because people aren’t coming in just for 42 days at a time they’re coming in because they believe you’re the best person to help them achieve their goals. So if you’ve been bitten by the challenge bug, and you’ve put all your eggs into that basket, these big event driven promotions is the only drivers to your business.

Having a consistent marketing calendar, having things that happen during those periods between challenges planned out, dialed in and executed. That’s how you’re going to be able to overcome this. That’s how you’re going to be able to have a sustainable successful business, no matter what circumstances change and happen, and really what obstacles come your way.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.