Fitness Business School – Identifying Your Ideal Client

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about identifying your ideal client. A lot of people get bogged down with this and they get confused and they don’t want to narrow. Well I’m going to help you clarify everything today with two simple questions. So let’s get to it.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

If you’ve ever gotten stuck, when it comes to identifying your ideal client, whether you weren’t sure where to start, or you didn’t really want to exclude people, or you were just not even sure how to go about narrowing, the right person to market to this is going to help. This is going to help a lot in fact, because I mean, let’s face it. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t help people when they come to you. What I’m telling you, when you’re thinking about your ideal client, it’s the person that you are actively pursuing to bring into your business. You may find people who hear about you from a friend, or just find you through through chance, but you know, ultimately you have to invest your time and effort and resources in marketing to, to really pull somebody into your business magnetically. And if you get enough of the right people in your business, you’re probably going to have a really strong culture that starts to multiply on its own.

So how do we start to clarify who our ideal client is? Well, I’ve got two simple questions that we can work through that if you ask those of yourself and you actually take the time to answer them, and you’re not just flipping about it, you’re not just kind of rushing through this. You’re going to really have a lot more clarity than I’m guessing you’ve ever had before about this topic.

So question number one is something you may have heard me say before on different episodes or through emails or if you’re involved in any of our programs, I’m sure you’ve heard me say it. Who would you serve and what would you help them accomplish or achieve if you only got paid for the results that you delivered? And the, the magic in this question is really, it’s a clarifying question that, that lets you kind of think about, okay, who do I know I’m really good at helping who do my skills and experiences lend themself to, to really best serving who do I have the right mentality or temperament to, to really connect with and stay the course with to make sure that they persevere that they go from where they are to where they want to be. Maybe you’ve got an incredible talent for getting those people who’ve been stuck on this yo-yo diet cycle and kind of have that up and down weight loss, weight, gain thing happening in their lives. Maybe you’re the one who just has a knack for helping them finally break through and build the habits and the lifestyle that keeps them on track moving forward. Maybe you’re the person who is incredibly skilled at working with young athletes and helping them through some long-term athletic development approach. And, you know, you’re the person who kind of just, just infuses them with not only better performance, but more confidence. And, you know, it helps them kind of see all the lessons that, that sport can teach them. Maybe you’re the person who is, you know, really, really well equipped to help busy moms who feel like they have to juggle all sorts sorts of things. Maybe you’re the person who gets them to spend a little bit of time taking care of themself, right.

But you have to understand that people come to us for a result. They don’t come to us because we’re hosting workouts. I mean, the people that are in the business, so just hosting workouts, it kind of makes me laugh because, you know, when I first got into the commercial side of the fitness industry, probably back in late 2002, early 2003, after a kind of first leg of my career as a college baseball coach, college strength coach you know, you can go into any health club really anywhere you could find. And there were group exercise classes as part of it that have body pump that have kickboxing that have cycling. And it’s almost like these clothes asses have been pulled out and put in standard loan facilities. And instead of getting a whole menu of dozens of them a week for your $39 membership fee, you’re asked to pay for, you know, one of them offered maybe 10 to 15 times a week week, and you’re paying $150 to $200 a month. And, you know, ultimately leave that bubble’s going to burst. Right? I think that just like planet fitness kind of showed the man and renting access to equipment without any coaching isn’t worth paying $39, $59, $79 a month. You’re just renting access to stuff. And the same thing’s going to happen with group training programs that are nothing more than a workout.

So if you think about the people that you can actually deliver a result to, they come to you because they want an outcome no different than if you go to a dentist and your tooth hurts. Well, you don’t feel like the dentist was successful. If the tooth still hurts after you leave, if it still hurts the next week, right? Well, this is, what’s going to be the case with you. So start by dialing in our ideal client and figuring out who we can deliver results and this kind of mental that like, Hey, I would only get paid if I got this outcome, you know, that is a real simple thing to hang your hat on. And before I move to the next section of this, I mean, honestly, this is how we built our business grows accelerator program. We basically said, look, we’re going to really only build people based on our performance and people that aren’t getting results aren’t paying. So, you know, I’m not saying that you’re going to take that same approach, but I think that it would be wise for business owners to take that same mentality.

So that’s question number one, question number two: What has to be true about these people for them to really be your ideal client now, really the simplest way for me to explain this is to give it, give you an example. Like for me, for somebody to be my ideal client, they probably need to be in business currently in business. I, you know, I’ve certainly helped plenty of people at startups. I mean, I founded two franchise organizations, so there were certainly startups in that and I’ve had resources for startup businesses, but my ideal client is somebody who’s already in business. They need to be service minded, frankly. That’s why I’m so attracted to serving fitness business owners because the people that I tend to connect with best and most frequently are the service minded ones, the ones who you really, if anything are probably service-minded to a fault. And they’re so good saving that we got to be able to turn that into marketing and client growth. So, you know, working with people who are service minded is a fit for me, people who are really committed to getting results for their clients.

As I kind of alluded to, I’m not really much of a fan of the people who think that their jobs, just the host work and then, you know, they need to be willing to act. I mean, I’m not going into anybody’s gym and posting up for the next six months. I mean, we’re going to be coaching them and provide tools and resources, but they got to be, are you willing to apply that, got to be willing to implement. They gotta be willing to take action. Sure. We do super simple things like even implementation days every week to make it easy to implement, but they still have to be willing to act. And then finally you know, they have to have the belief that they can grow and improve. I mean, if they, if they don’t believe it, it’s not going to happen no matter what we provide for somebody, you know, they, they have to believe in them, you know, believe in their own ability to, to move forward. So for you, you may have some similar things that have to be true about the people that, that fit your ideal client profile. You know, maybe they have to be, you know, willing to actually follow a plan. Maybe, you know, they, you know, they, they have to be coachable maybe. Yeah. I mean, it could be as simple as if you’re a local business, Hey, maybe they need to live within a certain radius. So it’s easy for them to be consistent. They can show up multiple days per week, but you need to think about what has to be true about the people that you want to serve.

Now, what’s great about this is, you know, in a separate episode, I talked about defining your marketing message. So you could say, you know what? I help busy moms who want to lose the baby weight in the time they have. You know, I help people clarify that single sentence, but the magic isn’t in a single sentence. It’s not in a tagline. It’s not in some, some thing that fits on a bumper sticker because the magic is in knowing that who you’re serving and what’s important to them and how you can help so that everything that you put out there, every ad, every social media post, every conversation, you’re able to shape it around that. And if you can answer these two questions, you know, you, you have all the clarity you need. You can kind of call out the person that you serve. You can talk about them. When, when you’re making posts, when you’re running ads, you can answer the questions that type of person would have. You can answer the questions they should have. And if you’re speaking directly, somebody to somebody you’re going to be far more likely to get and maintain their attention in a way that motivates them and educates them so that you are the only obvious choice to help them reach their goals.

So if you’re identifying your ideal client, right, really leaning into these two questions, who would you serve and what would you help them? If you could only get paid for the results that you helped them achieve. And second, what has to be true about this person? What kind of traits, mindset, belief needs to be true about this person for you to feel like you’re going to really be able to serve them at a high level. And you’re going to be excited about doing it. You’re going to be excited about going to work and helping them. So you answered those two questions. You’re going to be real clear about who your ideal client is, and you’re going to be able to go and attract them.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School. And 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 clients?” Well, I have an exclusive offer for you and it’s going to help you do just that. As a listener of this show, you can test drive Fitness Lead Academy for six full weeks for just a dollar. Fitness Lead Academy is a one of a kind program where you get done-for-you marketing tools and coaching to attract more qualified prospects and convert them into paying clients. Imagine having three marketing emails written for you each and every week for easy-to-deploy promotions provided to you that are proven to convert and they’re ready to use and proven ads and social media posts given to you each and every month as well. Plus you have access to three weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your brand to navigating things like building funnels and getting ads approved. You get all of this and more when you join Fitness Lead Academy. And to prove that FLA can serve you as your virtual marketing department and not only save you plenty of time, but also consistently bring you more leads and clients, you can get access to the entire coaching program for six full weeks. Again, for just $1. If it delivers for you in the way that I expect it will, you can continue on for just $199 a month. So basically, just one additional client each month and you’re ROI positive. And I’m sure that if you apply what we give you, you’re going to get more than just one additional client each month. And you’re going to likely save at least 10 hours a month to take advantage of this special offer. Just go to TestDriveFLA.com to try it out for six full weeks. If it’s not what you’re looking for, you can cancel it any time.

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