Fitness Business School – The Secret to Neverending Content

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about my secret to never ending content. 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 to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Anytime I’m in a group of new people, whether it be like me speaking at an event, or I am Invited on a podcast or something like that. The topic comes up of how I sent a daily email for 18 years without missing a day. And what they probably don’t even grasp is I’ve also done well over 500 podcast episodes and written articles for various publications for years.

Really? I’ve probably. for at least one online site or publication every year since 2007. And so the idea of creating more content is, it’s something that seems very overwhelming and difficult for a lot of people, but Frankly, it’s just never really been that way for me, probably past the first year or 18 months.

I started writing a newsletter and I thought today would be a great opportunity to share how that works. And the first thing that I would say is if you are paying attention to your input, Then there’s no shortage of content ever. Every day, pretty much every working day, I spend a lot of time with clients.

I’ve over the last 18 years, without question, I’ve spoken one on one to more. Fitness business owners than anybody else on earth. And every one of those opportunities isn’t just an opportunity to maybe help somebody move forward in their business, whether it’s a prospect or a client or something like that.

But it’s also an opportunity for me to get input that I can turn around and use to help create output. So part of my willingness to have so many conversations when frankly, I think a lot of people try to graduate from having those conversations, they want to put an army of coaches out on the front lines and just be the figurehead.

For me, it is a never ending environment of learning. It is a never ending source of. New ideas for content, different ways of looking at things, different perspectives on how we may solve a problem. It’s just essentially like an idea factory and there’s a book. It was written a few years back that I don’t think ever really got a ton of popularity, but the premise of the book I thought was pretty good.

It was, they ask you answer. And if you get frequently asked questions, then you build content around that. When people ask you questions about things, the person who wrote the book, I think owned like a pool store or something. And he just made a bunch of YouTube videos about, All the different questions people had about pools, the questions they had, the questions they should have had.

And this wasn’t really a unique idea to him. I remember content formula guy came out with at least two. 14 or 15 years ago called like the 10, 10, four formula. And it was like 10 questions. People do ask 10 questions they should ask. And I don’t even remember what the fourth one was, but, or the four was, but it same thing, the idea was very simple.

If people are asking you things, odds are they are not the only people who have those questions. We see it in mastermind meetings all the time. Somebody like we do our masterminds a little bit differently than most people. I think most people, it becomes more like a seminar where there are lots of presentations and we do a couple of presentations at each meeting, but we ask each client to share the things that they need help with, whether it’s just, Fleshing out an idea or solving a challenge or whatever else.

And we solve those in that environment and everybody benefits from everybody else’s questions and answers. It’s not just each person gets their own stuff taken care of and it’s unique. I don’t know anybody else who approaches it that way, but we, I’ve done that from my first mastermind group way back in like 2008 and.

Again, it’s, it was a good learning environment for me because you would see these light bulbs go off over people’s heads that weren’t the people who asked the question. They’re like, Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Or that gave me an idea or something else. And so if you multiply that out, that’s true with anything.

If you’re in a conversation with a client or you’re in a conversation with a prospect and you help them with something, or you answer a question or you provide some insight or you teach them something, they’re probably not the only person that would benefit from that thing. That’s the first thing that I would say, if you’re looking for more content, some of it’s just paying attention to those conversations.

The second way that I’m very much a person who has no shortage of content. Ideas is I tend to enjoy consuming other people’s insights from outside my industry. I’ve, I don’t think I’ve ever read a full book from somebody in our industry on like the business of fitness, but I’ve been an avid student of everybody from.

historical figures to, to successful sport coaches, to people in other small service industries, to just general business or personal development. I’ve been a student of all of those things. And early on, there really wasn’t. Anybody in our industry approaching business in the way that I thought about business.

There were a couple of people doing business coaching consulting, but I didn’t, their message didn’t really land with me for our offline business. There were a couple that I did like quite a bit. Ryan Lee and Eric Ruth. Did things that I was interested in that Ryan was more of an online guy and Eric focused almost exclusively on direct response marketing.

And I was getting input from so many other places too, and the, that input, I don’t know if other people operate this way, but if I am listening to an audio book or read a passage in a book or something. I, my mind tends to spiral off and I, it just triggers all these other ideas. And so I just jot down the ideas and it’s rarely ever directly related to what was in the book.

It’s more or less just this catalyst for creativity and new thought. And so I just, I make sure that I’ve got good input happening regularly. I don’t really count the number of books I read anymore, but I used to. And I try to read. Between one and two books a week. And it was just such a easy kind of connection to the benefits it was having for me that I just did it relentlessly.

Now, yeah, I probably don’t read quite as many books, but I’m constantly. Consuming input, whether it be podcasts or courses or from mentors or something like that, and just using those ideas and brainstorming those ideas. The third thing that I do is I recycle what I consider good content and update it.

With the new information I’ve learned and hopefully all of us a year down the road, two years down the road are smarter, more well informed, more experienced than we were before. So I’ll go and look at things that I might have written a couple years ago and say, how would I update this? How would I change this with what I know now?

And maybe the bones of it are really relevant and useful, but the details of it. Maybe a little dated. And so I’ll go freshen something up and recreate it. So those are the ways that, that I. Have a never ending kind of input of content, but more importantly, it’s not just creating something new all the time.

It’s distribution. I think some people fall in love with the idea that, Hey, I need to create something new every day. At this point, I certainly don’t need to create something new every day. And frankly, the daily email thing is almost one of those. It’s just a habit now. It’s not a necessity. But. More importantly, it’s if I create something really valuable, then my goal is to get distribution.

I want to get as many people as possible to see it and consume it. Because that’s how relationships are built. It’s not from what you create. It’s from somebody consuming it and it’s sparking ideas or curiosity or interest. When you’re thinking about creating more content and growing your business and expanding your brand.

Yes. You need to have good ideas to come in and you need to. Take things and make them your own. Even if you’re borrowing content, we share done for you material with clients all the time, but I encourage them every time. I’m like, make this your own kind of shape it around your voice. Use this as the raw material and shape it because ultimately.

The goal is for people to connect with you. So we want to make a good first impression and one that’s congruent with what they’re going to see when they come through your door, do that. But also understand that the better the distribution, the more you get the message out, the more you canvas your area, the less invisible you come, the more well known you and your business become. So it’s not just more content. It’s not just better content. It’s better distribution of the right content.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

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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.