Fitness Business School – Riding the Wave

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to teach you about a concept that I call Riding the Wave. 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 end 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.

The fitness industry is kind of funny in some ways because the majority of our population, at least here in the US, does not belong to a gym. They do not take part actively in a fitness program, and so many of us spend our time trying to get people to kind of change direction on that. We try to convince people that they’re wrong and we, we aspire to convince them to our way of thinking.

Now, I’m not much of a political guy, but obviously if you pay any attention to politics, that seems like a failing battle to convince people that their way of thinking is the wrong way. So sometimes maybe our best opportunity is to serve people who have already started to believe something and are acting on it. Now, let me give you some examples of what I might mean here. So for one example, we’re going to a local amusement park here in a couple weeks, and we had already made that decision. Uh, we already have annual passes, but we are taking one of my younger son Alex’s friends, so we needed to buy him a ticket. Well, obviously for us, we don’t go there that often. So when we go, if we think it may be busy, then they have this thing called a fast lane pass. And what that does is allow you to kind of skip the longer line and get on rides more quickly. And, you know if you’re only going to a place like this two or three times a year at most, then you don’t wanna spend an hour waiting on a ride. You’re gonna be on for two minutes if you can avoid it. So most of the time these fast lane passes are between 70 and $85, and it kind of fluctuates a little bit, but it kind of depends on which one you choose and that sort of thing, which is already almost double the price of the ticket to be admitted to the park. But what I noticed for the upcoming trip, which will, as I record this it’ll be like the last weekend. They are open
during their Halloween season.

Well, the fast lane tickets for that are $140, so they are almost double what they usually are and almost three times the price of just getting into the park. Now, they wouldn’t be selling them at this price if it wasn’t profitable, if it wasn’t working for them. And that’s just evidence to me that hey, there are these are only available to people who have already made a decision to come to the park, right? So this is just somebody saying, okay, I’ve already decided to come to the park. How do I make my experience better? How do I get more from this commitment that I’ve already made? And I think we, we have the ability to do that in any number of ways in our business, and a lot of times we, we overlook it. Now, some of these that I’m gonna run through as ideas, they are things that
you’ll just say, yes, sure, that makes sense, or, I’m already doing that. But my guess is if I go through each of the, these handful of ideas, one of them, you’re gonna be like, I could do more of that, or I could do that even better. So, the first is, showing up on Google, uh, having a great Google My Business listing or running Google Ads, because if you are doing that for certain keywords like running ads, then you’re probably showing up for people who are
searching specifically for a fitness program, a gym, a personal trainer. And so you’re just showing up with somebody who’s already in motion, selling things like nutrition coaching or supplements. A again, if somebody’s already in your gym, in your facility, they’ve already said, I want to improve. I’m investing time and money and effort and energy into losing weight or feeling better or getting healthier.

So offering something that is very much in line with their current way of thinking makes a ton of sense. Being proactive about getting our clients to bring friends as training partners, not just, Hey, go refer this person, but you’re already coming to the gym. You already like spending time with your friend. Let’s mix the two. Bring a friend along for the next month. Now you may be thinking, Hey, that’s a lot to give away for me. I’m thinking more in terms of what if somebody brings their friend and they build this routine of coming to the gym for the next month together, then that’s probably somebody I’ve got a high possibility of keeping as a client. Now, clearly that’s a capacity thing, just like nutrition coaching, you’ve gotta be equipped to provide that in some sort of ethical and successful way.

But with some of these, you’re gonna be able to say, yeah, I could bolt that on today. if clients are already training, you could always ask them to upgrade the frequency or move into a more personal setting. So if they’re training in a group, maybe they want tack on a one-on-one or a semi-private session once a week. if you need to do more cash collected, you can always get people who are already coming and already committed to paying to prepay at a discount, and you can collect money up front and they get to save money that they’ve already personally committed to spend. For people who are active and already see themselves as improving and already trust you, you can offer workshops for things that are congruent with your core program because they’re already used to coming to this space. They already see you as a trusted resource.

So if you want to add in workshops on recovery or mindset or going in depth on training stuff that maybe doesn’t fit into your normal program, that works great as well. if a client indicates they’re having success, ask ’em for a review and then here’s one that I think is, uh, an easy one that I used to do a lot when I own local fitness businesses. And I don’t know that a lot of people do this now but marketing directly to people who already go to a gym but want some, want something
different. Now, I’m not saying that you’re marketing specifically, uh, about a singular gym and you’re saying, Hey, leave this place and come to my place. It’s more of a kind of, Hey, are you looking for a change going into New Year, would you like to join a different facility? Are you looking for a different environment to reach your goals? Are you looking for a better fit? You know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with running ads or sending out emails doing that because
those people have already committed time and money and effort and energy to going to a facility. They’ve already fitted into their schedule. So now we just need to move ’em over to our facility. And I, I think what, what I wanna say to tie all this together is we’re not trying to tell people they’re wrong. That’s a failing battle. My my approach to sales is usually get somebody to sell themselves and kind of ride along with that. I want, I’m not trying to convince people of things as much as I want them to convince themself of something. And arguing with people is probably not the best way to win them over.

Find out where they’re already headed and be a guide, be a partner on that journey with them, and you’re gonna have so much more success. So that’s riding the wave.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Fitness Business School. 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 leads and client?”

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