Fitness Business School – Learning Lessons from Other Businesses

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about lessons from other businesses. 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.

So I’m recording these episodes on the heels of taking two trips. We just got back from Hawaii and we were there for 10 days on a vacation. And then just a couple days before we left for Hawaii, we got back from a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. That was a baseball trip for our youth baseball team, but definitely had a pretty heavy vacation vibe associated with it too. But in, in both cases, whenever you’re traveling, you’re interacting with so many different businesses and businesses that you kind of aren’t in a comfort zone with yet, right?

Like you are not going to the same grocery store, or you’re not going to the same place you get your hair cut or whatever else you’re interacting with new places. When it comes to the travel, when it comes to lodging, when it comes to meals, when it comes to any sort of other activities that you partaking in, and I
don’t know about you, but I do a lot of observing when it comes to these businesses. I try to just see like what are the common traits of the, the better businesses? What are the things that businesses maybe don’t do particularly well? What are some things that that may be kind of neat twists that individual businesses
may do that just kind of stand out? And I think that as I reflect back on these two trips and the dozens of businesses that we interacted with along the way there, there are a few things that I thought were common traits of businesses that did a good job.

The first is they were really proactive communicators. They were businesses that did from, from the moment that you engaged with them, they were sending out lots of confirmation stuff, instructions, directions, expectations. There. There was a lot of that even in advance. Like if we, we were going zip
lining, there were details on what to expect, details on directions to the facility, how to dress, how early to arrive, being prepared with things like sunblock or whatever else. And that may sound like common sense, but you’d be amazed at the number of fitness businesses that don’t prepare new
prospects that are coming in for a consultation or a free trial or a front end offer, or new clients not really preparing them with that same type of, of detail or care. They take a lot of things for granted. They skip over a lot of things.

And so being proactive communicators like that, I think it helps a great deal. And then once somebody is actually in the door, again, being really proactive in the communication process as far as, Hey, this is when we’re gonna start. This is what to expect if you’re going to be suited up on something, or if we’re
gonna be going out on this excursion or whatever else. The really good businesses did a great job in again, just explaining everything, making you comfortable, not leaving any stone unturned and setting you up to have a really positive experience. And I think that when I look at great training businesses, if
they’re getting into a training session, they do a really good job, especially if they’re in like a group training environment where there’s a lot of uniformity between what everybody’s gonna be doing, really coaching people through what to expect or what the next session is gonna look like, what each exercise is
gonna be, what the transitions may look like between things or whatever else.

I remember when I was doing consulting with Iron Tribe Fitness, I felt like they did a wonderful job with preparing the clients in the room for the session that was coming up. And then during the experience, being great at keeping people engaged and making them feel connected or important, and not just letting
them feel like it was a transaction, asking questions, being curious or interested, having a conversation, being entertaining. And so, so it was never really, Hey, you’re just going to go on this snorkeling excursion, or you’re gonna go on this site tour, or you’re gonna do this or that. There, there, there was
definitely a personality, a way of differentiating themselves and making people feel connected. And you may not see the importance in that until you realize that people want tips and people want positive reviews and everything else. And you can’t just be a transaction if you want to get the best possible
review, if you want the best possible tip, you have to go over and above, you have to exceed expectations.

And in our business, maybe we’re not getting tips or that sort of thing, but we’re definitely hoping to get Google reviews or reviews on whatever other platforms that you’re pursuing your reviews. And a lot of that just comes with adding value, doing something differently. I think that weaving in stuff in the
margins too is another really valuable thing. So it’s not only the transactional expectations, it’s telling stories between, it’s adding little things that that may be unexpected, giving people some behind the scenes knowledge. And I think that great coaches can do some of that, that also it positions them as more
of an expert. You see somebody’s true expertise if you understand the why behind the exercise and how the exercise can be done and how sometimes people make mistakes with it and some of the maybe unexpected benefits of performing certain movements or that sort of stuff.

By you weaving that into what you do, the same way that other people take the margins and fill those in with something of value or interest, you get to differentiate yourself from people who just seem like they’re reading from a script. So I think that sort of proactive communication is a really big deal. I think
that really proactive customer service and proactive problem solving is immensely valuable too. I think that the minute that somebody expresses a need or a want, or even if there’s an unexpressed need or one, sometimes you go to a restaurant and somebody’s refilling your glass before you ever ask for it, or
proactively making a suggestion before you ever request it. I think proactive customer service is something that, that we can do a lot of, right? Noticing things and being attentive and being interested in somebody having the best possible experience or responding when something doesn’t go well.

There were a couple occasions where maybe you order something or something isn’t going exactly as planned and you ask for help and you can immediately see the look on somebody’s face is like, okay, hey, I want to make this right for you. I wanna help, or I just want to get this situation over with and you’re a
bit of a nuisance, right? And we see that all the time. And we could see that with somebody who, I mean, it could be at a restaurant if somebody didn’t bring silverware to the table after they brought the food, right? If you ask them, do you know, do they quickly resolve it or and, and do it with a smile, or is it kind
of this sluggish, slow thing that takes away from the experience a little bit? I think that proactive customer service is especially valuable if you are in a volume based business, if you’re in a group training, small group, large group, anywhere where you’ve got a lot of people who are part of what you do.

Making people feel important in a time of need or perceived need at least, I think is tremendously valuable because those are the times when it’s really easy for somebody to feel like just another face in the crowd, just another credit card, just another number because it’s important to them. They’re seeing this
through their eyes, their own individual experience, but they also recognize if they’re one of 150 clients, that they’re just one, 150 50th of the revenue coming in. So they’re not being perceived as that important. It’s a little easier to stay on top of if you know you’re doing one-on-one or something like that. So you get
a lot of individual experience time with people. And so everybody does feel like they’re treated as being unique or being individually important. So adding that in I think is a big deal. The third thing that really comes to mind is kind of having an identity, being a, being differentiated.

Because when you go places, sometimes it’s just, if you’re new to businesses and you aren’t really familiar with what’s good and what’s not, you’re kinda left to your own devices. If you don’t have great referral sources to to point you in the right direction, you’re kind of lifting your own devices and saying, okay,
how do I choose? And you need to do something that that’s relatively unique, right? There are like when we were in Hawaii, there were any number of places that did various types of excursions. So if you go to somebody’s website, is the website inviting? Does it articulate the brand and why they’re different than
competitors? Does it speak to a specific market? Do does their Google business listing have recent pictures? Is it updated? Does it have all the information you want? Are there a high volume of positive reviews? Is it easy to, is it easy to order?

Is it easy to do business with? So if you can spell out how you are different and if you can put your best foot forward, and sometimes if you’re not dramatically different, then you at least need to appear better. And that’s where the, Hey, my website is updated and clear. And there are plenty of testimonials and the
reviews are on the website and it’s easy to order and it’s simple to navigate. And the brand story is here and it’s interesting and compelling. And if you can find ways to separate yourself, the uninformed consumer, and in my case, that was me each time, right? I didn’t have a bunch of preexisting experience.
I’d only been to Hawaii the one previous time. My wife didn’t have a bunch of experiences there. So when we’re looking around if, whether it be, Hey, where do we want to go eat?

Or what do we want to do? Or that sort of stuff, we had to make some decisions based on whatever was front facing to the public and the, Hey, this sounds neat, this sounds interesting. This sounds like people really enjoy their experience here. We are having to vet those things as uninformed consumers that are
probably not really highly educated in the excursions or the type of excursions that are there. And I think that’s a lot of what happens in the fitness landscape, right? We may know intuitively, Hey, we’re better than the competitor. We know why we’re different. We know why we’re better. We know how we’re
differentiated. Well, the consumer doesn’t have that depth of expertise. So they’re going to see your website, they’re gonna see the testimonials, they’re gonna see how you speak about the client experience and how you help people solve their problem and reach their goals.

They’re going to go on your Google business listing and see that things are updated or they’re outdated. They’re gonna see that everything’s clear and easy to understand, and they’re gonna see that you’ve got 50 or a hundred or 150 reviews and your competitor has seven. So that’s another easy lesson to, to kind of
learn from it. I mean, there are plenty of other little individual things, right? By taking advantage of how you stand out and maybe using the distribution channels available, I mean, you’d see most of these businesses finding joint venture partners, whether it be local resorts or other excursions or food trucks,
promoting excursions and excursions, promoting food trucks or restaurants. And they found all these collaborative opportunities because they knew, okay, these are where our people are located. How do we get in front of them? How do we meet them in a way that’s convenient for them to find us?

Well, again, we are not necessarily working with vacationers, but we can certainly do the same stuff. If you know that there are grocery stores or spas or salons or health food stores or re retail establishments or e even doctor’s offices, insurance offices, whatever that are in your local area that are convenient to the
people that you want to serve, that HOAs, that people who potentially your clients would be a part of, schools or churches or other organizations that people that you would potentially wanna reach or involved in being involved there, being visible there, having a way for people to learn about you. There is just
another simple way for you to grow your business and really get in front of your target market with great regularity. And sometimes you get plenty of direct hits that way, and other times it just serves to kind of reinforce your brain and create more awareness.

And that coupled with the things that you’re doing on Facebook or that coupled with the public speaking you’re doing or whatever else, it allows you to create that kind of repetition, even though it’s kind of asynchronous repetition, right? It’s not, Hey, I’m hitting somebody at the same time on the same talk radio
show with a commercial every, every day. No, it’s I’m being in front of somebody and almost surrounding them with our business, with our brand. So they clearly know who we are, what we’re about. So if they’re looking for a solution like us, we are the first people that they look at. So there are a few
lessons or takeaways that I got out of the good businesses that we experienced, and frankly, there were definitely more good businesses than not during our time on both of these trips. So that was a wonderful thing, and I’m excited about it.

But if you don’t do that when you get out of town or when you’re doing something different and don’t just kind of have that, Hey, I’m going to the same businesses, and it just becomes kind of by memory almost. If you’re in new environments, kind of keep your head up and notice and see what other people are
doing. There are a lot of people doing some good things out there you can learn from and apply in your business to make it better.

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

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