Fitness Business School – It’s Crowded Down There

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about how it’s crowded down there. 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 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.

I get to help my seventh grade son with math periodically, and, and I don’t enjoy it a great deal. But admittedly, there are certain things that you learn when you’re younger that have a little bit of carryover later. Most of the stuff that I’m seeing now, I’m like, man, that’s not gonna have a lot of utility later in life, but maybe the actions and behaviors that the disciplines that you have to learn to get it done might be useful.

But one thing that I think back to is like the bell curve and the bell curve, it invariably ha has been one of those things I’m like, man, that helps me understand some things that happen later on. Because the middle always crowded, right? The most people fall in that kind of average bucket. When somebody tells me,
man, there’s so much competition, or My business I is kind of struggling or whatever else. Most of the time, I mean, if somebody’s struggling and they’re actually putting in the effort, it usually comes down to they’ve picked a market that they just that they’re fighting an uphill battle ever breaking
through and connecting with that market. They’ve picked some something that those people are hard to find or they’re not really looking for the solution that the person’s providing, or that’s one side, and that’s a smaller piece of it.

But the more common ones, that kind of middle section of the bell curve. And it’s just jumping into the most common, busy, competitive, crowded space in the market that, that middle where, Hey, let’s do large group training. Let’s be 99 to a 159, a 179 a month, depending on what market you’re in. Let’s be kind of indistinguishable from the F45s and the burn bootcamps and those types of people other than the fact that they spend more on marketing and
have maybe more brand awareness. So you are kind of considered downstream from them. And tell people repeatedly, it’s very crowded in the middle and it is easier now than it has everbeen to knock people off and kind of just mirror what the masses are doing. I had a conversation with somebody the other day about my time as a college baseball coach, and we did a number of things that were relatively uncommon in that era, like very aggressive with strength and
conditioning did a lot of kind of player development stuff that all of it would feel very common now.

And it wasn’t that nobody else was doing it, it’s just it was rare and there wasn’t Instagram or Twitter where everybody shared ideas and everybody disseminated information so regularly. Like I’ve said repeatedly, I am quite sure I would not do nearly as well now, because the ways that I
would’ve gone about gaining a competitive advantage, they wouldn’t have been as easy. Yeah, I had no problem being different back then. But staying different is harder now because people are quick to kind of borrow what you’re doing. And if you are in the large group training market, it’s very common. You
know, people, if they see an ad you’re running, they can go to Facebook and, and really borrow the ad almost instantly. If they wanna see what you’re sharing on social media, it’s easy for them to go replicate that, find somebody on Fiverr, open up Canva, clone it, and do the same thing.

There’s so many things that it’s very easy for somebody to just knock off, and that’s why it’s crowded in the middle. So the thing that you will never hear is how crowded it is at the top. And the beauty of that is most people won’t work hard enough or smart enough or differently enough to get to the top. So if you’re
willing to do the things that most people won’t do, then I don’t wanna say it’s easier to stay at the top, but it’s definitely simpler because you’re thinking differently. You’re operating differently, you’re marketing differently, you’re creating a different client experience. You have been willing to get out of the middle
lane. You’re, you’ve done the thing. Most people won’t, because the one thing most people in the middle won’t do is change. They won’t get out of that kind of comfort zone. And in fact, that’s part of why they chose the middle, because they feel like it’s the safe, secure route.

It’s common and everybody does it, so I’m gonna do it. The pricing, I’m afraid to get outside of the norm with pricing, whether you’re higher or lower. But if you stay in the middle, the market can’t distinguish between you and the competition. They’re not experts. They don’t have this deep seated knowledge in why you might be a little bit better than this other business or whatever else. But if you’re willing to change and get out of that kind of middle lane, if you will, and operate differently, they’re not gonna be as likely to follow you, because that’s a big change. It’s not as simple as, oh, wait a minute, I can
just go borrow F45’s ads, or burn bootcamps ads or fit bodies ads or whatever. No, this is, oh, I’m reinventing my business model. I am totally transforming my client experience.

I am getting outside of this kind of comfortable little window of pricing. I’m gonna position myself differently and try to market to a, a different audience, a different crowd. It, it is easier to be proactive and to stand out once you break free from this kind of one size fits all. Do exactly what everybody else does.
And I would tell you that if I look at my business history, the ways that I’ve done well, the decisions that I have made, the things that have led to most success have always been one. I’ve avoided the middle when I’ve done things differently, when I’ve been willing to change, when I’ve been willing to look a little
different, operate a little differently. And the places where I have probably enjoyed far less success is when I made decisions that kind of blended in. Everybody had this thing, so I was gonna do the, this approach.

Everybody went about their business this way, or even back when I was a baseball coach, everybody ran their program this way and their strategy was this way. They recruited that way. And it’s just the way that you win. If you’re like everybody else is, you basically just have better resources than
everybody else. But if you’re willing to get out of the norm, if you’re willing to do the things that most of them won’t do, most people wanna stay behind their computer. So if you’re willing to get out and market and in your community public speak network from strategic alliances, you’re gonna do better. If you are
willing to really do some of the heavy lifting for let’s say 12 to 24 months and really say, I’m going to build something awesome, most people won’t do it. Most people are reactive and they won’t build.

They’re comfortable maintaining, but they’re not willing to build, because build means every day you’re a little bit outta your comfort zone because you’re doing something new, you’re putting yourself out there, you’re risking you know that, that kind of fear of what if this doesn’t work? So if you want something
better, you have to accept the fact that it’s crowded in the middle, and you’re gonna have to do something differently. You’re gonna have to be different than the competition. You’re gonna have to do a little bit more than the competition. You’re gonna have to operate a little smarter than the competition.
But if you’re willing to do that and just take the off ramp and go your own direction within 12 to 24 months, you are going to absolutely be so happy that you did, because you’re gonna be operating in, in a way that feels a in a completely, it’s just gonna be a completely different experience for
you that will be a springboard to you finally having that ideal business that I think we all want.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

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