Fitness Business School – Wanting vs Earning

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about the difference between what we want and what we’ve actually earned. It’s kind of a big concept, but it’s an important one for you to acknowledge, especially right now, when circumstances may be a little bit more challenging than you’re regularly accustomed to. So with that in mind, let’s get to it.

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 I really regularly have questions about business owners who want to build their ideal business. Now, you know, this ideal business concept is something that I coined and trademarked a number of years ago. And really it’s just building a business that you, that you love to own something that pays you, what you deserve to be paid. It allows you to have the impact you want to have and allows you to you know, have the, the flexibility and the lifestyle that you want as a business owner. And not just as an employee. Now, some people will tell you this whole concept is a fantasy, right? That you kind of have to settle for making these, these compromises and at least one of those three areas to have a business of your own. And, you know, I’m here to tell you that you can build your ideal business. You just can’t have it. It’s earned. It’s something that is built kind of brick by brick, if you will. So let me give you an idea first of what I think we’re shooting for.

So what’s an ideal business? Well, let, let’s start by talking about what it’s not, it’s not a business that it’s just going to have you laying on a beach doing no work and having kind of that laptop lifestyle you hear about it’s not exclusive to being online. It’s not exclusive to being offline. It’s not exclusive and being hybrid. And you’re probably not going to just work for four or five hours a week. I mean, I don’t know how to build something that doesn’t require real work. And I’m not sure that regardless of what people are selling you, that anybody else knows it either. So if those things aren’t ideal, what is ideal? Well, an ideal business is something that allows you to work with the people you want to work with. You should be training the people that you want to train, the people that you’re best at training. You should be employing people you feel are good ambassadors for your business and you’re working with. You should be contracting with people like your accountant, or if you have an attorney or, you know, any other service provider that you’re contracting with, you should have people that are aligned with your vision, right? So that’s kind of the people side of building your ideal business.

When it comes to the role you play, what you do, I mean, there’s no one size fits all path either. If you want to run small groups, if you want to run one-on-one business, if you want to be online or offline or a hybrid model, that’s up to you. If you want to be in light industrial space or have a retail space, if you want to be premium priced or value priced, if you want to train athletes, if you want to train adult to want stress relief or fat loss, again, up to you who you want to train, how you want to train them, how your position in the market, all these things you decide. And when you want to scale, if you want to grow multiple locations, if you want to grow online, if you want to license or franchise, if you want to have more employees, if you want to just package up your intellectual property and sell it virtually any of that is potentially up to you. And if you want more income, again, you focus more on being a producer. If you want Saturdays off, then you block them off.

See you’re not a victim here. Your life’s not a product of your business. Your business is a product of your choices. When someone tells you, you can’t have your ideal business. What they’re really saying is you are incapable of making good choices and following through on them. And honestly, it’s a bunch of BS. You certainly can do this. And it’s a reflection of what you want. And it’s an impact of how diligently you’re willing to pursue it.

But I do want to throw a bit of a disclaimer in here, if you will, like it’s a process. You need to understand that in the beginning, you’re probably not going to be able to train just the clients. You love training. You’re probably going to have to train some people that might be outside of your ideal target market, right? Because ultimately the first prerequisite is being able to sustain this as a business. You need to be able to pay the bills. You need to be able to put a roof over your head and put food on your plate. You need to be able to pay the rent in the facility you have, or for the, the, the sublease that you’re paying or, or whatever other expenses that you have to operate. And I’ve seen this during the pandemic. I’ve seen people who were, were not willing to get outside of what they had done in the past, even though what they had done in the past, wasn’t really always available to them anymore, right? They had traditionally trained in groups. And when I’d recommend, Hey, pick up a few one-on-one clients, because you can do something at a premium price point. You need fewer people to do it. It’s still a service you can offer. You’d see people balk at this. You’d see people balk at training. Somebody who might not be their perfect ideal client. And the reality is is that you gotta be willing to do things that the average person isn’t willing to do.

If you want to have the things that the average person isn’t gonna have, if you want to build a truly great business, you’re probably going to have to do a few things that aren’t a ton of fun in the process of getting there. Now, again, when I started to, to talk with you about this during this episode, I said, okay, you can’t have your ideal business. You can build it. You can earn it. Well, this is part of the earning process. If you don’t love selling tough, I mean, you need to kind of just get over it because that’s a prerequisite to having your ideal business. Somebody has to sell. Maybe ultimately that’s something you hand off, but in the beginning, it’s probably going to be you. If you can’t pay your bills, doing the things that you want in the format that you want to do them right now, then you’re going to have to do something that services a bridge to go from where you are today, to where you want to be. Maybe you don’t love the idea of messaging, the people that you know, on Facebook or the contacts you have in your phone, or doing a bunch of organic social media that just takes a ton of work.

Well, if you don’t have the budget to pay for advertising and you don’t already have the established place in the market to, to go out there and just kind of have a steady flow of leads coming to you naturally through referrals, through word of mouth, through reputation, or, you know, you don’t have the built-in referral mechanisms, then you are going to have to probably get out of your comfort zone. You know, I know when I started the online version of my business, I didn’t have much of an advertising budget. So I wrote an article a day and search engine optimized it for long tail keywords that would rank well on Google. Now at the time ranking pages on Google just wasn’t nearly as challenging or daunting as it is now. And so before long, I had 70 or 80 pages that ranked on the first page of Google for keywords that were relevant to my target market. Did I want to do that? Would I have rather just paid somebody to deliver me leads each and every day? Well, of course, but it an option.

So you do what you have to do so that eventually you can do what you want to do. You operate the business, you need to operate under the circumstances that you’re currently facing so that you eventually can have the business that you want to have and create more optimal circumstances. So when you’re thinking about building your ideal business, don’t ever lose sight of the word build don’t ever lose sight of the concept of earn. These are things that you’re going to have to do. And if it’s not comfortable, if it’s not fun, if it’s not easy, that’s probably a good sign because it’s going to weed out the competition. It’s going to weed out the people who aren’t really committed to this. And you know that you’re probably on the right path. So when you’re thinking about having what you want to have, don’t ever lose sight of the need to earn it, wanting it is not enough. You have to do.

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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