Fitness Business School – The Owner-Operator System

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about the owner operating system. 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.

If you spend any time around consumers, you’ll find that a number of them that are trying to move away from something and move towards something, whether they’re trying to lose weight, whether they’re trying to build a better business, whatever it may be, a lot of those people they spend time chasing Kind of what, what is often been called like shiny objects, right?

The they’re chasing a tactic. They want to cut and paste program. They want to, they’re one funnel away. They want something that they think is going to fix everything. And I remember even back during my very early days as a college baseball coach, I remember going to clinics and thinking, okay I’m going to go get this new drill or I’m going to pick up.

This thing I can add to my practice plan and that’ll make all the difference and I think What I learned over time was it became really obvious that more, it was far more about the people executing the drill than it was the drill. And it is a business coach. It is far more about the owner and the way they operate than it is about which specific marketing tactic they choose, whether their sales process is done in person or over zoom or in a group or one on one, those things I’ve seen people do well with all of it.

I’ve seen people. Lead with free offerings and thrive. And I’ve seen other people say you can never give anything away for free. I’ve seen people build great businesses with one on one training. I’ve seen people build wonderful businesses with only large group. And the challenge I think that we run into all too often is this idea that there’s only one way to do it.

And. I think that if you just stop and observe, it’s just completely untrue. There, there’s so many different ways to do it. I and I would see that as a, in my time as a baseball coach, you’d see people become great players who had completely different skillsets. You’d see business owners be very different.

Like I just, just mentioned. And they may even have different, just. Human traits, right? Some have been introverts, some have been extroverts. They’ve been in different markets. Some have had big commanding presences and others just blended in. I don’t think that’s where the magic lies. I think that your owner operating system, which is something that I’ve taught for as long as I’ve done this, which is now.

18 years plus coaching business owners, but I don’t know that I spent a lot of time trying to package it with a name until recently, because of all the systems that we help people install and we help people install everything from lead generation systems to the other one 65 client. Client success systems for people who are already on board and in your ecosystem.

And the most important system I believe that we install is the owner operating system, because the business is not going to go further than the owner is. That doesn’t mean that the business doesn’t outgrow somebody in their one to one impact with clients. But, If you want to be a, own a better business, then you have to be a better business owner.

If you want great things, then you have to be somebody who deserves great things. And I think that gets lost a lot. I think that people think that there’s some finish line with installing these systems and if I’ve got this thing and that thing, then I am great. I. I’m on Twitter is probably my preferred social media platform as a consumer in social media, and I love Mike Boyle, and he’ll talk about things like the fact that if you look back at your programs that you wrote 10 years ago, either you were writing amazing programs, if you’re still proud of them, or you Or they look a lot different, but you’ve got 10 years more experience, education, insight, that everything’s better.

You’ve continued to learn. The smartest people are the lifelong learners. Actually, just recently, one of the people who I’ve tried to study a great deal, Charlie Munger, often known as Warren Buffett’s business partner, but just a brilliant man, arguably one of the best thinkers of the past century. He would just talk about the most successful people are relentless learners, continual learners.

Now there’s something to be added with that. Like you have to apply what you learn. And I think that obviously to build Berkshire Hathaway to behemoth that it is, they’ve applied plenty of what they’ve learned. And. I bet there’s so much truth to that. Like it’s never a finished product. If you install the best referral system in your business, I assure you that people will change, the landscape will change.

The way people communicate will change. You will have to continue to update it. So it’s never finished, but. You can be the type of owner that is continually upgrading your business, leveling up everything that you’re doing. You can be the person who doesn’t settle for mediocrity. You can be the person who continues to push forward.

And that’s the common thread of all the people who’ve done well that I’m around. I can tell you that. I draw a blank. If I try to think of a single person that has had sustained success, that did not have a strong owner operating system who did not have drive and perseverance and some degree of consistency.

And when you strip everything else away. That’s the foundation because tactics change. I’ve been doing work in the commercial side of the fitness industry. So post college coaching career time for about 20 years now. And. We’ve passed through eras where email wasn’t a really powerful marketing tool for a local business in the beginning.

It was just starting to gain a little bit of traction. Facebook didn’t exist. Yellow, the yellow pages certainly mattered a whole lot more than Google business listings. We’ve seen MySpace. We’ve seen plenty of social media platforms come and go. We’ve seen Groupon. We’ve I’ve gone through all sorts of different things that impacted the way that, that people bought, the way that they connected and communicated in the beginning of my business journey, people used to phone like a phone now it’s their lifeline to the world.

And. It is very different. So if somebody says, okay, I’m done. Imagine the person who ran a business then that didn’t adapt and evolve and didn’t have this kind of hardwired capacity to keep improving they would be a dinosaur, they would fall by the wayside because frankly, businesses that have been some of the best businesses in the world at one point.

They usually, many of them, if you look at the S& P 500, if you look at just historically the most successful companies in the United States, the best companies in 1980, many of them are gone. The best companies in 1950, far more of them are gone. If we want to build something great and durable, then we have to be the type of owner that, that deserves that and continues to earn it.

And I talk often about working smart, but for me, working smart and working hard are synonymous because working hard doesn’t necessarily mean grunt labor. It doesn’t even mean, Oh, putting in 90 hours a week. In fact, some of the people who work the worst work the longest because they never improve. They never gain efficiency, but you have to continue to work.

And hopefully you get to a point where you. Love the work that you’re doing. Now, this idea of, Oh, we’ll just follow your passion. I think it’s misguided because frankly, a lot of things that are worth having, they’re challenging, right? They’re hard. And so you’re probably not great at them in the beginning.

And most people aren’t passionate about stinking at things. So you’ve got to have determination and perseverance, and then you’ve got to stay the course. And eventually over time you begin to really enjoy what you do. I think back to my time in the beginning when I started writing and I wouldn’t tell you I’m a great writer now, but I am a very consistent writer now.

And I churn out more writing than 99. 9 percent of the people on the planet. And. It was a painful experience for me in college in my early days as a professional in my Beginning days as a business owner. It was drudgery because I wasn’t good at it and I wasn’t Practiced and so over time you earn the right to get better and you earn the right to get results And if you want to have a better business, this may not be the thing That is easily sold through a Facebook ad.

It may not be the thing that people jump at and they buy on an impulse or they have that kind of desperation response because so much of the marketing that we see for programs, these guys that say, Hey, we’ll add a hundred, 200, 300 members to your gym in the next month or two. Not in the people that respond to that are usually pretty desperate because logically.

That’s a terrible idea. It doesn’t change the way that you operate. There’s no longevity around it. It’s a temporary Band Aid solution, and there’s no qualifier as to who those hundred, 200, 300 people are, how they’re going to affect the culture, whether or not you can service them, any of those other things.

It’s a desperation play. But I also know that’s more likely to sell than me saying, Hey, you know what? If you want to have a great business, you need to be the person who deserves a great business. But. That’s the reality. And that’s why a lot of people who’ve been a flash in the pan with things, they didn’t do what it took to earn and deserve things.

So if you want to be doing this for the next decade, the next two decades, if you want to even

build a way of operating that even if you don’t want to continue doing this, you want to succeed in the next decade. thing that you do, you’re going to be way better off optimizing your operating system than chasing some shiny tactic.

So maybe it’s a little bit of a rant for my podcast today, but that’s totally fine. I think it’s something that isn’t said often enough because it doesn’t sell, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sell. It won’t work. So you want to improve, upgrade your owner operating system.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

In this diagnostic, we walk through everything and we do an evaluation and can instantly pinpoint what you need to do next to build that business that you want. I’m going to extend this opportunity to get on with either me or my team and take you through this evaluation and fix your business’s most vital needs fast.

So if we take you through this, you’re gonna be able to make those vital changes that you need to finally have what I call your Ideal Business. If you’d be interested in going through this entirely free, risk-free diagnostic with us and learn what you already have in place, what you’re doing well and where are your greatest opportunities for rapid improvement are just shoot me an email with diagnostic in the subject line to [email protected].

Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get
you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.