Fitness Business School – Grow Your Business Without Leaving the Gym – 01 – More Clients

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to kick off a three-part series about three ways to grow your business without ever leaving the gym. So let’s get started with part one.

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.

Early on in my time as a business owner, I studied a handful of people that that really helped out, and they weren’t in the fitness industry. I didn’t really feel like there were a lot of people at that time that, that, that I kind of meshed with, that were teaching things in the fitness industry. So I looked outside the industry and one of the people that really made an impact on me was a gentleman named Jay Abraham.

Now Jay is the, the guy behind, like making Icy Hot, this national or international brand. And he’s just one of the smartest marketers and business minds I’ve ever encountered. And I, ironically enough, later on I got to to speak at the same event with Jay and sat next to him at dinner and got to to know him a
little bit. And he was just as compelling in person as he was in print and products, which is kind of rare if you’ve ever kind of been in that environment. Well, one of the things that Jay would teach is this concept that there are really only three ways to grow a business. You know, you can get more clients,
customers, patients, you can get them to buy more, or you can get them to buy more often. Well, obviously because our model is a little bit more of a subscription based thing, there’s a slightly different way to look at that, and I’m gonna talk about that in a moment.

But I want to kind of reinforce a couple ideas in this first part of this three part series. And the first is, if you’re not growing, if you’re not playing offense in your business, I mean, sad to say you’re dying, like your business is regressing because there’s natural attrition you can’t avoid, you can’t help the fact that people move, that their lives change, that, that, you know, people just are not all going to stay forever. So if you are not offsetting that natural attrition, you’re losing ground. So we have to be playing offense at all times. But I’m a realist and I understand that there are times that you may not
have the capacity to just turn it on and play full blown offense and get outside the gym and network and public speaking. Maybe you can’t, um, do everything because your, your plate’s full.

You know, you have full client load, you’re taking care of the facility, you’re creating programs, you’re doing client management tax tasks. Maybe you are understaffed. I mean, I was just talking to a client the other day that had a trainer leave. And so, you know, the recommendations that we kind of came up
with for what he needed to focus on were, were certainly things that were, um, in the gym things, right? Because there was just only so much time available. So if we adapt Jay Abraham’s idea that there are only three ways to grow a business for us, that means well, we can get more clients, we can get more
revenue per client per month, or we can have a more valuable long-term client relationship. So maximizing lifetime client value, which most of that is about retention, but it’s not entirely about retention. So in this episode, I’m gonna talk about more clients without leaving the gym.

And then over the next couple episodes I’ll talk about the more revenue per client per month, and then the maximizing lifetime value of that client relationship. So if we’re kicking off with more clients without leaving the gym, the first place that I would tell you to start is we need to be more proactive in asking for
referrals. All too often I see business owners say, well, hey, I, my clients aren’t referring enough. How do I get more referrals? And they mistake referral with word of mouth. They haven’t coached their people to ask for referrals. They haven’t created a referral culture. So simple things that you can do just right
out of the gate. Well, we can certainly ask each of our clients individually to bring a friend. If you run a group training based business, we can have a bring a friend event and, you know, promote it internally.

We can talk about it during sessions. We can send out texts and broadcast emails. We can post it in our client only Facebook group. But there are lots of opportunities to encourage people to bring a friend or even doing things like partner challenges or, um, you know, things that friends can do together beyond
just a session or a week. So that’s the first easy kind of asking for referrals tactic. The second would be a gift to allow our client to give somebody else, whether it’s a gift card for a hundred dollars of your services or a guest pass to your gym, or even if you’re gonna run a short term program or a challenge or
something like that, that you’re selling publicly, you may give each client the opportunity to gift one to somebody else in their life. So, hey, we’re running this 28 day program to get ready for summer.

It’s normally $99, but here is a gift invitation that you can extend to one person that you think would enjoy it and you would like to be part of our community here. So that’s another simple way to think about more clients without leaving the gym through referrals. And then finally just asking our clients in a
really informal way, Hey, is there anybody you can introduce me to that might be a good fit for what we do? And just have them send a text to you and that person, it’s really common at this point.  I mean, I introduced somebody to my accountant yesterday in that format. Hey, meet this person, they’re looking for a little bit of help. It’d be great if you could reach out and connect with them and see if you guys are a fit.

So three simple things you can do. None of which require you to leave the gym, frankly, none of which require a whole lot of time, um, that you would have to allocate to that specific task. So that’s asking clients for referrals. The second thing that we can do without leaving the gym to generate more clients is
just driving social media connections through our current clients. Your current clients can share your content, whether it’s a lead magnet or just demonstrative stuff where you are out there showing how you can help, they can share your stuff on social media if you ask. And, and it’s the simplest thing. You
can just, you know, at the end of a session say, Hey, I just posted this. I would love to get as many people to see as possible. Could you help me out and jump online and share that, um, in your feed?

And it’s not them really asking anything of anybody. So it’s low friction, easy to get them to do. The other thing that we can do on social that way that’s really easy is catch your clients doing things right and publicly acknowledge them, right? So one of the, the, the guys that I know really well that does well
with, with baseball stuff every weekend when one of his clients, one of the, the kids who come through his program that, that hit with him, hit a home run, they send a picture over holding the home run ball, and he acknowledges them on Facebook. He tags the, the parent. And you know, obviously if it’s, uh, an
older kid that has a social media feed, he, he may tag them. Well, now everybody in his ecosystem sees that person succeed. Everybody in that parent athlete family’s ecosystem sees this person succeed.

And so for all those people who may not have had as good a weekend as that kid did, they’re like, oh, wait a minute, I need to go see him. So really easy. And now that person’s getting some public recognition. I don’t know about you, how old, how old you are, as a listener here, but when I was growing up, getting your name in the paper was a big deal. You know, you were getting acknowledged for things like, you know, playing well in a game or being in an honor roll or something like that, and your parents would cut it out and they’d save it and all this stuff. Well, this is today’s
version of getting your name in the paper. So you can use that as a way to be introduced to the other people in your client’s lives. All right, so number three, more clients without leaving the gym, ask your clients for social proof.

Ask them to give you a Google review. Ask them to review you on other platforms. If you’re using other platforms where there’s a review component, ask them for case studies or testimonials and coach them through it. With our clients, we give them a step-by-step checklist of here’s how you ask somebody for a
referral like you, or ask somebody for a testimonial. Like you tell ’em here, answer this question, answer this question, answer this question, and make it super easy for them. Because obviously this is not something that a lot of people do all the time. So we’re making it really simple. But having a bunch of
reviews on your Google business listing is one of the most powerful ways that you can drive business in your door without having to do something in that moment. The more reviews you have, the more positive reviews you have.

They push you up the, the Google rankings. They, they help your algorithm obviously, or in the algorithm obviously. And they, you know, they, they basically take this listing and, and think of Google Business listing like the old Yellow Pages. Well, now they’re making your ad the biggest ad on the
page by you having more reviews. So, that’s really a simple one. And, you know, we can tell people how wonderful we are and how much we can help, but them being able to see somebody and know that, hey, wait a minute, this other person accomplished this there’s evidence that this would work. This person like me had success there. I can do this too, man. That goes a long way. All right, so the next thing we can do without leaving the gym, outreach to
prospects.

There are plenty of people in your world, probably, uh, if you’ve been in business for any period of time that had inquired about your services and haven’t actually become a client. Well, any inquiry we get, if we follow up fast, we follow up every day and we follow up in a a multi-channel approach if we can. So
like email and text, phone call and messenger, um, reach out to those people, follow up. I see a lot of people that, you know, they’ll get an inquiry, they’ll reach out one or two times and then they’ll just let it die on the vine. Even though every sales and prospecting booking course I’ve ever seen over the 20 plus
years I’ve been doing this because I was studying that recruiting in college baseball. So it’s more like 30 years would tell you that you need seven to 21 follow-ups to even have a chance to maximize sales.

So again, every inquiry follow up, remember we’re asking somebody to do something different. We’re asking somebody to change behaviors, we are probably gonna have to lead the charge here, right? We can’t put all the burden on them. And then prospect outreach also can be just personal connections.
People that you know, and think of the fact that in, in the past, networking might have always been thinking of, Hey, I’m gonna go out to lunch with somebody. I’m gonna go get coffee with somebody. I’m gonna attend a BNI or Chamber of Commerce event. Well, social, social media is networking. So connect
with people first. Be interested in them. Introduce them to what you do, demonstrate how you can help, and then invite them to experience the the things that you have to offer. But don’t circumvent that first part. Connect and be interested first, right? If you’re interested in somebody else, most of the time just
out of courtesy, they’re gonna reciprocate and extend some sort of interest in what you do.

And that’s when you can introduce what you do. That’s when you can start to demonstrate how you help. But don’t lead with that. Don’t be the person that is trying to cram what you do down everybody’s throat and turn them off. But if you do that in a social, like a social media setting, this way, man, you can
build a, a great following. You can build powerful relationships and never have to leave your facility. And then finally, if you want to generate more business without ever leaving the gym, pick a social platform and get good at it. Now, whether this is a paid use of a platform like Facebook ads or Instagram ads, or
picking something and just being good at it and being consistent, way better to say, I’m gonna be great at this use of Facebook, or I’m gonna be great at YouTube, than to dabble in a bunch of them and get ignored in a bunch of them.

Own one channel. Be the best in your market. Be consistent. Demonstrate how you can help. And then make consistent easy offers. Very simple invites. You know, Hey, by the way, if you’d like my help, just private message me and I’ll follow up with details or use something like my super signature where I talk
about the varied ways I can help or give away a gift that somebody can message you and access. But pick a social platform, paid or free and get good at that one channel and be the market leader in your respective category, in your respective area. And you never have to leave the gym. So, covered a lot of
ground in this first one because I gave you all the preamble to the three ways, but there are some simple ways that you can get more clients without ever leaving the gym.

Things that you can fit into your schedule, fit around training sessions, a lot of those things are things that you can do that are not schedule sensitive. They don’t have to be done at a particular time of day. A lot of them you can, you know, you can do during your downtime, during off peak hours. So use the
things that I told you, even just a few of them. And you’re gonna see more leads come through the door. More clients, you’re gonna see your business grow and you’re gonna do it in a way that’s probably palatable no matter how busy you are. Now, I’ll be back in the next episode talking about the second
way to grow your business without leaving the gym.

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

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