Fitness Business School – One Big Lesson

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to share a big lesson with you that I think can truly transform your business, but may even change your life. So I know I’m going to leave you in a little bit of suspense, but we can start now. And I think you’ll really appreciate where we’re going with this episode.

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.

So today I want to share one lesson with you that I hope you’re going to really embrace because I think it can transform your business. I think it can improve your life. I think it can really be a game changer for you. And that lesson is that you decide, see we’re all granted you know, a finite number of years to do with what we choose to do. Right? And we all, all too often though, we let a fear or a lack of confidence or external forces, naysayers, whatever, prevent us from pursuing what we really want to pursue.

Well, I want to tell you that if you want something and you’re willing to do the things that it takes to have it in more cases than not, you can probably succeed. Sure. You know, what if you’re five foot eight, you’re probably not gonna play in the NBA. You know, if you’re listening to this now and you’ve never been involved in politics, you’re probably not gonna be president. But with so many things, success simply boils down to deciding and going and getting it. And you know, it’s been quite a while, but let me, let me give you kind of a backstory and example, the, that recently came to mind. So man, it’s been 25 years, but it’s, it’s about as fresh in my mind as if it happened just the other day, the head baseball coaching position at the university I graduated from came open. I’d been an assistant the previous season. It was a relatively new like young program that had really only been around for four years. It had had two different coaches for two seasons each. And in spite of each of them having great resumes, neither coach had enjoyed really any success at all. There was one season that was a 500 winning percentage. And then the others were a little bit below that. So when I wanted to apply for the job, not too many people thought I had a chance to get it. And the number of people who thought I’d actually succeed, if I got the job you know, I could count that the head on one hand, in fact, when I did get the job, I was the youngest coach in the country for my first two seasons. So let’s face it. The, the, the expectations were, were pretty modest and it was justified, right? I mean, I was going to be the youngest coach. I didn’t have the, the big resume. Like the previous two people. One was a hall of fame high school coach who made the leap to college. He was actually my high school coach. And then the other had been a major league all-star and if a major league all-star and a hall of fame coach couldn’t win, how could I, I heard it from literally dozens of people and I’m sure that there were hundreds more that I just never had face to face conversations with that thought I was going to fail miserably. And you know what? We had a winning record my first season just to, you know, a couple of games over 500. And then we won every season thereafter and became a nationally successful program, even finishing fifth at the world series, the best finished from any team in our conferences, history, any team in our state’s history.

You know, so, so obviously we did some pretty grand thing, grand things, even though the program had some of the most limited resources of any program in the country. So we’re those people that were naysayers or doubters just being mean. Were they trying to undermine my confidence? No. I mean, they had their experience and they had their own opinions and their own fears. And a lot of times I think they were just projecting them on to me. And I think that happens with each of us. Right. other people they’ve not seen assess it, the things that your trying to achieve. So they have no reason to believe somebody can do that. Right? Like it it’s you know, it it’s them being limited by their own experiences. And so they’re just sharing that and projecting the way they feel about themselves and their own personal expectations and accomplishments on to us. And, you know, and that’s fine in some cases they’re there probably trying to protect this. They’re probably trying to keep us from being hurt and you know, and sure. In other cases, maybe they just don’t want to see other people achieve, but more often than not, I think, yeah, that, you know, when people doubt us, it’s not to harm us. It’s just because of their own experiences.

But guess what? They each get to decide what they want to do with their lives or not do. And so do we, and there are failures or fears or missed opportunities should never hold me back. They shouldn’t hold you back from what we want to achieve. When I wanted to start my own business, I heard it all again. Yeah. Hey, you’re a, you’re a coach. You should be coaching baseball. That’s what you were meant to do. Ironically, some of the same people who told me, I wasn’t going to succeed as a baseball coach were the ones telling me that, well, Hey, you’ve made it as a baseball coach. You should stay in this field. But you know, I mean, same thing. They, they had never had their own successful business. So they sold their world from their view, not from my view, not from where I wanted to go. And then, you know, I heard it again when, you know, I wanted to move from an offline business to having more kind of online driven business so I could reach more people and have a little bit more flexibility, see it in my schedule and, and making it just a more family friendly career. Most people didn’t understand it. They were familiar with offline businesses at the time. So they try to shoot it down again, not being mean not being malicious. They were just viewing things from their perspective. But fortunately by that point it was already it was already something I knew. I knew that I’m the one to decide, right? So, you know, I, I think that we just have to accept that we, the ones who are largely in control of our own destiny, there are plenty of things outside of our control, and it would be foolish or naive to ignore those.

But if we take charge of the things that we are in control of man, we can do so much more. I get to see it every day with the fitness and health and sports performance business owners that I coach. And you wouldn’t believe the amazing success stories I get to see. I mean, they’re, they’re really impressive. And you know, sometimes they keep me on my toes thinking, man, I need to push a little bit, a little bit harder, but in so many of those cases, the person achieving these great things, they simply just decided to go make their dreams happen. Didn’t matter if there were long odds or naysayers or even personal fears, they wanted to do something big, something significant. And they did it really, that’s one of those things that have driven me at times, just not wanting to be ordinary. I remember after leaving coaching, I was offered a couple of jobs that were just sales jobs. And they were both probably to pay me twice as much as I’d been making as a coach.

But I asked myself this. It’s like, okay, when I retire, well, I really be satisfied looking back and saying, that’s what I did with my professional life. Will I be proud of it? Will it be something that, that I want to share with grandkids? Or will it be something that I’m leading by example for my own kids? Just because I settled for kind of what seemed comfortable and easy at the time. And I just decided no settling, no, I’m going to try to build something on my own. I’m going to try to achieve something and leave a legacy for my kids and hopefully impact lots and lots of people. It’s just kind of the default now, no settling. And so, you know, in the whole grand scheme of things, turning around a small college baseball programs, a pretty small achievement, right? But it gave me the confidence to know that if you’re willing to do something that most won’t do well, you can accomplish a lot of things that most people won’t accomplish. And you can probably accomplish a lot of things that maybe you and plenty of other people didn’t even think were possible. But the key is you just have to decide. So, so I’ll leave you with this, decide what you want and go get it.

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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