Fitness Business School – What it Takes to Grow

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to talk about a quick look at what it takes to grow. 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
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In the last couple of days, I had conversations with people that it reminded me of the disparity between business owners who are growing their business and owners who say they want to grow, but their behaviors and actions don’t necessarily align that professed or dream or whatever.

And one of them is actually a former baseball player of mine. He and another former player in mind are partners in a behavioral health Business. And in the last four years, they’ve grown to 17 locations and it doesn’t seem like growth is stopping. It seems like at this rate, they may very well get to triple digits in number of locations, depending on their path to growth.

They probably have a number of avenues available to them from. Corporately owned to franchising to whatever else. But when I was talking to the former player of mine. Yesterday we spent some time together and he was just talking about he had to drive, he lives in my hometown or around my hometown about three hours from here where I live in Louisville and he had to drive here.

We, we were going to go do something together and He was on the phone the entire way here making calls for work. And that was late afternoon. And then he said, look, I’ve got a bunch of calls to make on my way home. And so he was doing calls late in the evening on the way home. And he said, I even have, even though he’s married, he’s got three wonderful kids, he, and he is very involved.

Coaches, sports and everything else, but he also has an apartment. Three hours from his home where he has to go to do site visits at some of these other locations. And he is just relentlessly in meetings. In on calls doing to grow this stuff. And it is that kind of breakneck pace because he wants to build something big.

He and the other people involved are really getting after it, opening new locations, navigating all sorts of stuff from staffing challenges, because the qualifications that, that they need somebody to have to hire them to site build out and that sort of stuff to just. The daily operation of the business.

And I think the easy path would have just, he had worked in that field. He had been a successful employee and certainly had forged a nice livelihood in that field. The easy path would have just been to stay the course and earn a nice living and have the security of that type of career. And Spend his time with his kids who are all, I think, between the ages of 15 and 20.

Before they are completely off into adulthood, he chose this more challenging path and he’s got to get after it. He makes time for the family stuff. That’s a priority, but it’s a relentless kind of pursuit of this next. Kind of achievement. And then when I talked to Eric Cressy the other day for a podcast, we talked about the fact that he’s got the facility in Florida that’s growing by leaps and bounds, and they’re going through an expansion that we talked about in a separate episode.

He’s got the facility that he’s.

Massachusetts that was the origin of CSP and that’s maybe a little more hands off because he’s got a business partner and a great team there that do a lot of work. And, but he’s also a, an employee of the Yankees. That after we, we recorded a podcast on eight o’clock at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening, and then he had Yankees work to do after the podcast and he’s balancing all of that stuff and balance is completely the wrong word, but he’s juggling all of that stuff, maybe with being a dad of three.

Three daughters and a husband. And, but he doesn’t compromise doing what it takes. He does the things that are priorities and sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s odd hours and sometimes it’s navigating things that maybe you’re not incredibly excited about. Like some of the. construction work that they have to do to build this expansion for their facility.

But that’s the thing that I don’t think that enough early or intermediate stage business owners or even pre open is aspiring business owners appreciate. They want what they see. These people have plenty of people that say, man, I would love to have a business that has 17 locations. Imagine how much they’re doing and what that business would be worth if they were sold it or something like that.

But they ever peeked behind the curtain to see what it takes to build it, to operate it. Plenty of people. It’s man, Cressy has this gorgeous facility in Florida and has this world class indoor space. They’ve got outdoor field space. They are in a hotbed for the market they want to serve. Are they familiar with the fact that he started in the back of a batting cage and that he went through a variety of expansions and took a risk and moved his family 1500 miles to, to, to an area that was completely new to them away from their extended family and dove in head first.

And it’s, I think a lot of people Lose sight of the fact that man, he was up doing content. He’s always been a guy that he’d be up doing content early in the morning before he’d be training sessions. And it’s just one of those things that people like, like the end result and they see the highlight reel, but they lose sight of what it takes to build it and not just build it, but to operate it.

There’s something that it can be a little daunting. I know that even when. My former player talked about their business and saying they had 120, 120 staff members. I’m like, man, I don’t personally want to manage 120 staff members. And it’s a lot, but you have to. Decide, okay, am I willing to do what it takes to have the things that I say I want to have?

And if the answer is no, there’s no shame in that, right? There are plenty of things that we decide that about all the time. There, there are plenty of things that say, Hey, I would love to, for me, there were plenty of instances where I thought, man, I would have loved to have worked in the front office in professional baseball.

But I also, after knowing some people. Who worked in that setting? I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed the lifestyle associated with that. I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed the constantly being on call for work stuff that, that I see so many people experience with that. Maybe it sounds like a fun job until you see that, and there’s a lot more to the job than meets the eye.

So when you’re identifying what your goals are for your business. Identify what you’re willing to invest to achieve those goals. Identify what you’re willing to put in to build this and understand that there’s a building process for every person that you see. Like a Doug Sperling that, that has built a business that largely operates independent of his day to day action.

You there, there’s, A decade of Doug Sperling building that type of business and going through the work and the hoops and the risk and the stress to get to that point. And that’s fine. I think that most really significant things require commitment and sacrifice and effort. You have to decide if you’re willing to make that kind of effort to have the things you want to have, because if not, And you are going to be frustrated and disappointed because you’re going to have Expectations that just aren’t able to be met with the effort that you’re putting in.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

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you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.