Fitness Business School – Making a First Impression

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I wanna talk with you about making a first impression. 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 till the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

I think along the way, we’ve all heard different takes on the importance of making a first impression and how people make decisions about you in the first 15 seconds or something like that. But on the flip side, we also see how people show up on social media. Then when you meet them in person, maybe it
doesn’t match the persona they created. And so I wanted to talk through this for a minute because I think there is at least a way that I think about this, that if nothing else is gonna give you a roadmap to create your own way of thinking about this.

So basically, if we are thinking about a first impression it for like, we’re trying to meet clients, for example, like we’re trying to generate clients. I think of this as any other RA relationship we’re forming. I don’t care if it’s, you know, making a friend or finding somebody to date or anything like that.
It really comes down to, you know, okay, if you think about the beginning, you know, like with the end in mind, where are we trying to go with this relationship? And, you know, all too often we see a lot of people that make first impressions that just aren’t congruent with where they’re trying to go. They
you know, they put something out that casts a really wide net and it doesn’t match up with where they’re trying to lead somebody and they wonder why they don’t get good conversion rates or you know, I mean the example that I always come back to, and so I’ll talk through this and maybe
you’ve had a similar experience, I know I’ve had this experience dozens of times over is, you know you see the way that somebody portrays themselves on social media.

You see the, the glamorized profile. You see all the filtered pictures, you see all the posts that are essentially their, their highlight reel, their sizzle reel, and then you go and meet that person, you engage with them live, and you’re like, man, this just did not match what I saw on social media. And it’s kind of like seeing a trailer for a movie that looks awesome. And then you get to the movie and the movie stinks and, you know, so if the goal is to actually get a client, to me, that makes no sense at all. To me, that is actually the opposite because you are spending so much time and effort and energy m make a first impression that does not lead towards the desired outcome. Now it, let’s say I’m translating this to the idea of fitness. Well, if I want to build a big email list, the easiest way for me to build a big local email list is to essentially just give people something that would have mass appeal that doesn’t necessarily have any sort of congruence with what I’m trying to sell them.

So if I say, Hey, I’m gonna give away a gift card. I live in Louisville, Kentucky, so let’s say I’m gonna give away a gift certificate good for two tickets to, you know, for million millionaires row at the next Kentucky Derby. You know, these are really expensive tickets, really premium stuff, something that is hardwired into most native Louisvillians. And you know, so that would probably get me literally thousands of opt-ins, if not tens of thousands of opt-ins. And I could probably get those opt-ins relatively cost effectively as far as ad spend goes, because I think that sort of thing would be very viral and, you know, people enter to win a contest to, to get this stuff, it’d probably get a bunch of people. But the drawback to that is those people did not join my email list being interested in health or fitness.

They didn’t enjoy or join my email list with any consideration to maybe joining a gym. They were not necessarily in somewhere that would be like located in an area of Louisville that would be convenient to get to me. Because, you know, there are plenty of places that are 20 plus minutes away where they’d
have plenty of other options closer to them. So you can see, like that’s not that, that may be building a big list, but it’s not a congruent list with what I’m trying to accomplish. And I see this all the time you know, and, and I’ve even tried things and then in hindsight, saw where they, where they fell short. I
remember, you know, I did a contest where I gave away a high-end treadmill as a lead magnet, you know, something that a lot of fitness professionals would, would want.

It was you know, a really kind of an expensive premium thing that frankly, I don’t think at that time the main mainstream market knew a lot about. But once that thing gets out there and people start sharing it and everything else, it, you know, I look up and I’m like, man, half of these leads aren’t even fitness professionals. So you know, that was a good reminder, even though I had tried to pick something that would be relevant and interesting to fitness professionals who, who, you know, might have a business and this would be a useful tool in their business, but you know, live and you learn there. The flip side of this is, you know, I kind of prefer to just say whatever my first impression is going to be. It needs to match up with not only what they’re gonna see when they meet
me at, at that moment of, you know, decision making, what we would call like a conversion opportunity.

You know, whether it’s a consultation or a phone call, or they’re gonna see me at an event or something like that. Those things need to match up the philosophy, the tone, the language, all of that. But in my mind, everything in between has to match up too. I try really hard to make sure that
anything somebody connects with me with, like through, through the internet very much like this podcast, right? Like this is me sitting at my desk talking the same way that I would talk if you were sitting in the chair across from me. And that way there, there’s a lot of congruence. And now, now I
understand that that may filter more people out in the beginning because they don’t like how slow I talk or my silly accent or anything like that. But that’s okay because I would rather them make that decision at this stage of the relationship than further down the road when they you know, are, are on a phone
call with me that takes up both of our time for a scheduled appointment.

Like I’d rather for them to opt out and go find the right fit for them, and then I can spend my time pursuing people who are the right fit for me. So when you are thinking about your first impression, this isn’t about casting the widest possible net, this isn’t about putting a filter out there on everything that
you do, so you’re trying to put some foot forward that is just something that you can’t match if somebody were to actually meet you face to face. Don’t try to spend all your time appeasing the audience. Try to be, you know, I kind of chuckled the word authentic, but you know, you, you’ve gotta
be real. Because at some point we’re gonna say, look, you know, I wanted to get to a point in this relationship where I’m working with you personally, or my team is working with you personally to help you reach your goals.

We’re gonna be really working together and we’re gonna spend a lot of time together. And man, I think that it’d be a mistake for me to not be the person that you were having to make this decision about spending time with. As, as we move, move through this process. And I’ll tell you one last way of
thinking about this. You know, a few years back there were literally hundreds if not thousands of gyms around the country running these lose 20 pound and six week free challenges that weren’t really free. You know, there was the, you know, pay a deposit thing and all that. And the gentleman who originated
those was a client of mine and a good friend. He’s since passed away. And then you know, some other people took them and used them as a tool to, to go plug into to gyms and, and made a lot of money.

But I would repeatedly hear from gym owners who never thought this through. And I’m not blaming this on the people selling this to the gym owners because, you know, I don’t know that they’re not telling people what to expect, but I’m, but I saw time and time again, people that had this wonderful
culture in their gym and, you know, had a nice small group or semi-private atmosphere, and they’d bolt on this high volume kind of completely different clientele challenge on the, on the front end, and it would just kill their gym. They were not people that wanted to stay long term. And the types of
programs that, that these gym owners offered and the current clients, the, the experience they had, the things they liked about the, the gym all of a sudden just disappeared overnight. And, you know, you’d see time and time again, dozens of these gyms going bankrupt.

And it’s because the first impression there, this thing that they bolted onto the front of their business was attracting people who didn’t want what these guys really wanted to offer on the back end. And they thought they, they fell in love with this idea of, oh, I’ll flood your gym with 50 new
clients, or a hundred new clients, or something like that. Like, well, did you think about what those clients want, who they are, what their expectations are, and how this is gonna affect the clients that you have? And if you wanna reinvent your business and be this other thing, maybe this works. But if you
don’t understand that this is oil and water and they’re not gonna mix, and you’re probably going to have three groups of people really frustrated, the the people coming in are not gonna want to continue on into the thing that you wanna sell them.

The people that are currently there are going to be very resentful about the changes that you’re making. And then you and your team are going to feel like you’re just putting out fires all day long. And this, again, I don’t think this is at the fault of the people selling the, the program to gyms. I think the gyms
just don’t think through, okay, what am I, you know, what am I starting this relationship with and is it the thing that is gonna lead the relationship to where I want it to go? So if you’ve not given any thought to crafting the right first impression, understand that in my opinion, the way that you build a first
impression that attracts your ideal client and fills your ideal client pipeline is to think about where you want that relationship to end. Do that, and you’ll be well on your way to having your ideal business.

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

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