Fitness Business School – Pat’s Biggest Mistake

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a business owner. Let’s get to it.

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.

Looking back, I’ve had a really strange career in many ways because both of the big first two legs of my career, it was a bit of a whirlwind in both cases, right? I went from trying to get a job as a GA. And applying to about 100 different schools. To becoming the youngest college head baseball coach in the country in a matter of days. And so I was thrown into the fire and was pretty unprepared for all the responsibility came with it. Even though I had been a, an assistant coach as I finished up my undergraduate degree, I was still really unprepared for all the responsibilities, all the obligations that came with that.

And then the second time through, when I started my first training business, it went from. zero to 420 clients in about 18 months in a second location during that span, probably about 14 months in. And that location grew very quickly and within another, Six to eight months, the foundation of a pretty, pretty significant online business that grew quickly and then sprung a lot of different kind of tentacles with the IYCA and with two different franchises and with ownership stakes in a handful of other companies.

It all went very fast and. If I look back I think that it, especially the second time through with the business stuff, my pursuit was always more. How do we get more clients? How do we get more franchisees? How do we get more locations in the beginning before we even got into the online stuff? How do we have an ownership stake in more businesses?

How do we have more gross revenue, top line numbers, just So many things that were associated with more and bigger and it, when you’re younger, and I’m not even sure I was in my early mid thirties then. So it wasn’t as if I was fresh out of college. Like I was when I was coaching baseball, the thing about it was more just seem like the viable path, right?

There was always this kind of underlying assumption that. Hey, if we got to 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, 10 million, whatever the, all the ancillary rewards would be there. If we got to a hundred locations or 200 locations, then everything would be good. It was like the awards that would pursue, whether it be trying to make the.

Inc 500, which by the way, never made, got to five 93 in the Inc 5, 000 small business awards or the entrepreneur franchise 500, where multiple years of having two franchises recognized there, even a year, we’re both in the, we’re in the top 300. And always thinking that these kind of benchmarks of more or bigger.

We’re going to somehow accidentally yield better. And I think in hindsight, I look back and I’m a little ashamed to think that after the first two or three instances of that, I didn’t do a better job recognizing that. More isn’t the same thing as better. And if I want better, I have to be clear about what better is, because there are all these unintended consequences that come with more.

And there are all these things that can happen, or maybe we allow happen in the pursuit of more. I remember A friend of mine who, who certainly helped me a lot during my time as a college baseball coach. I knew him a little bit after I still know him, but I was talking to him about business after I got into business and he had a multiple eight figure chain of stores that was losing money.

And there was even that mindset that he had that, Hey, if I get this other location, it’ll put us over the hump and thinking that more was going to be the answer instead of looking back. So, Hey, if we’ve already got. Seven or eight locations. Why aren’t we over the hump? What is the issue here? I didn’t learn that quickly enough.

I kept thinking, Hey, more will be the answer. If we get more than all these other things that I want, whether it’s personal income or long term financial security or quality of life to have the freedom to do the things that I want. Personally or any number of other things. I just accidentally, or maybe thought that they were going to happen by accident or something.

And I watched so many other businesses. I remember a client in the midst of the Groupon era that was doing 11 or 12, 000. Every month, all of a sudden get this surge of business because Groupon was very popular in their market and they had a compelling offer. And within five or six months, they were doing 40, 48, 50, 000 a month.

And the owner’s personal income hadn’t improved at all because overhead had gone up and they had gotten really careless with All they were spending, whether it was on equipment or personnel or space or whatever. And again, that’s just one more example of how more just wasn’t going to be the answer. And then ultimately, I think I figured it out when I started to think about what I actually wanted for my business and from my business.

And those things, once I got clarity on that, it became much easier to say, okay, my focus is Am I getting closer? Am I moving closer towards these things each day? Am I moving closer towards them year after year? Am I closer to where I want to be? And what I came to realize is in the absence of clarity, in the absence of clear goals and priorities, more seems to be the default for everybody.

Because it’s an easy pursuit. It’s bigger than what we have today. And there’s always this kind of thinking that, Hey, if I have more clients, then I’ll probably get all those other things that I want, whether it’s freedom or a better quality of life or more income or whatever. But that’s not how it works, right?

There’s, there are unintended consequences for all the decisions we make and actions we take. Um, The more clarity we have in the more precise we are with where we’re trying to go, then we have a destination and it functions very similar to the way that we would if we were going to plug some sort of destination into our phone and say, okay, Here’s where I am.

Here’s where I’m going. Am I getting closer? It doesn’t matter if you’re going five miles an hour or 85 miles an hour. You can be moving towards that and having confidence that you’re getting closer. And frankly, that should give you some peace of mind and it should enhance your motivation. You get more excited, the closer you get.

But if you just hop in the car, don’t plug in any destination and just start driving, it’s probably a little bit less likely that you’re going to end out somewhere that you’re really excited about. And it doesn’t matter how many miles you drive, you can always drive more and it doesn’t mean you’re going to arrive at where you want to go.

And somehow, even if you accidentally do, you will have taken a much longer route to get there. Now, maybe that sounds great because you want to take a scenic drive, but obviously you don’t really want to spend 40 years building to finally arrive at the business that you want if you could have done it in four.

So. When you are thinking about building your business, be very purposeful. Be very strategic. Try to get as much clarity about what you actually want for your business and from your business. And if you do that, then it becomes a much easier task to simply move closer each week, each day. And if you do that, you’re gonna find yourself.

gaining confidence, being happier. You’re going to see some of the stress and overwhelm melt away because you’re going to know that you’re gaining ground towards where you want to be. So one of my biggest mistakes, hopefully you can avoid yourself. Sacrificing the idea of getting closer each day for pursuing more.

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

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