Fitness Business School – What it Takes to Succeed

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about the critical decision to succeed. And honestly, it’s something that a lot of business owners don’t take seriously enough. So we’re going to go into what it takes to be a success as a fitness business owner in this episode.

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.

In a time when people are really kind of looking to pass the buck and blame somebody else or circumstances or whatever else for their failure or their inaction, you need to take responsibility for your outcomes. And in, in my time as a business owner, I’ve had plenty of wins and probably just as many losses, but really the reason I started a business was I wanted to be responsible for my own success or at least a result. And that was a real driver for me. And it shouldn’t be for you too. I mean, you can hire mentors or business coaches. I mean, you can read books, go to seminars, but ultimately your responsible for doing the work for implementing, for executing and how you respond to challenges and obstacles.

That’s whats going to determine whether or not you succeed or you fail. Now think about this as coaches, we create the road roadmap to help the people that we serve. But sometimes we need to kind of take our own advice because we need a roadmap to follow and we need to execute it in the same way that we steer our clients towards that. And if you want to build a successful business, the, there are a few things that I think are, are just musts. Now I’m not really going to get into tactics so much in this episode, but there are a few things that I think have to be in place for you to set the foundation for success. And you need to really take responsibility for these instead of drifting into them, the first would be define your goals for success, right? Everybody has a different picture of what their success is. Some people haven’t, you know, think having tons of money, lavish lifestyle that’s success, others, you know, they, they would rather just focus on having more impact or more freedom.

You need to decide what you want your business to be and what you want it to for you, for the people that work for you and for the people that you serve, right? You need to write it down. You need to define it. You need to clarify it. And then ultimately everything that you’re doing from a business development standpoint is developing strategies and executing those strategies to reach it. So you need to be specific. And the more specific you are, the more focus you are going to have. And if you want to be successful as a business owner, focus is a prerequisite. The second thing that we have to do is develop our vision right now. If we know kind of what the goals are, the next step is figuring out the message you want everybody involved to, to know about your business, right? You need to determine how to deliver your services, the vision for you know, what people’s experience with you is going to be, you know, is it going to be online, offline hybrid? Is it going to be delivered in a specific format? Really it, your vision is this clarifying tools. It gives everybody a sense of purpose and direction. So people are pulling rope in the same direction together.

Now, the next thing that we, that we really have to do, and I’m kind of starting top down, right? We’re, we’re thinking about our goals. We’re thinking about how the business is going to help us reach which those, then we need to define who we’re going to serve. You know, who, who do we want to train? Who is our person, our ideal client, what characteristics about that person need to be in place? The way that I think about this is, you know, if I could only get paid for results for serving a specific person and addressing or solving a specific problem, who would that be? And what problem would I be solving? That’s my market. Now, if you are offline, some of this is determined by geography. You don’t probably have to narrow your niche. When it comes to the problem you solve or the person you serve quite as much, if the, the geography component is in play. Now, if you’re online and you can really reach anybody, then we have to be more specific about why they should choose. So, you know, if you, I can identify who your target market is, you know, everything about them, you get great at serving them. It’s much, much easier to be the best for that respective person. And that’s what we need to strive for. We need to seen is the best option available, not just another option available. And then, you know, we’ve got to figure out you know, what our plan of attack is, how are we going to reach the people in, get the right message in front of them, because we may know who they are, but we have to make sure that they know who we are and how we can help. And that comes down to having a magnetic message, but then choosing the right marketing tactics. So if we think about who we serve, we’re basically saying, okay, I helped this person achieve this result. And then we can take it a step further by saying, okay, I help this person achieve this result through this specific process, right? So now we’ve narrowed it down. So if we say, you know, I help, you know, I help people feel 10 years younger through, you know, your, your in-home one-on-one training program.

Now narrow this down. If I don’t want to train in home, I know you’re not for me. If you know I’m not somebody who feels like, Hey, I need to turn back the clock. You’re not for me. We want to weed out the people who aren’t for us and be more attractive to the people who are, and then we got to think about where those people we’re trying to reach are located. Sure. They’re probably on Facebook or Instagram, somewhere like that, but where are they offline? What, what websites do they go to if they are online and they’re not on social media, what places do they shop at? What other service providers do they use? What neighborhoods do they live in? What other affinity groups are they a part of? We need to know where they are so we can reach them. Now what’s great about this is if you are a local business, it’s not hard to figure out you have some clients it’s. Now we just need to learn about their habits, where they live, what they do, what they’re a part of, and then know, no, if you drop a pin in those areas, basically we can just kind of draw a circle around that and say, okay, well, there’s a higher probability that more people like them are located in this same area. Or, you know, if they have kids who go to a specific school, there are probably other parents that have kids at that school too.

Who’d be a good fit for you. And then we want to really over-deliver now this, this is cliche, but I understand most of my audience is comprised of independent fitness business owners. Now I’ve founded two franchises. I’ve been a franchisee of another, and I’ve consulted with a handful of franchises as well. But most of the people that I serve now, and honestly, the, the audience that I am most passionate about helping is an indigenous trainer and independent coach driven business. So it doesn’t matter if you’re an owner that has three locations or you’re a solo preneur that subleases, you know, you want to stand out by over-delivering. You want to make this about the client, be client centric and not just deliver a workout that people can be part of. Right? There are so many franchises out here. Now that really are just selling a program. They’re selling geography. They have great real estate. They they’ve got big ad budget. It’s they they’ve got this kind of assembly line training program. You need to take a different approach. You need to over deliver. You need to make people feel important. You need to make them feel valued. You need to make sure they understand that you can solve the problems that they have. And then finally you need to embrace change. In fact, you need to be excited about change as much somebody can be and change can be very scary, but change is opportunity know, in fact you know, change is probably where every positive thing that I’ve personally experienced as an entrepreneur has happened, right? And going into it, it might’ve felt scary. It might’ve been challenging, but it always served as an opportunity to be better to focus me too, motivate me to move forward. Now change could be things about the way that we’re communicating with our clients. It could be the format that we deliver service.

It could be the landscape that we’re operating, but we need to be willing to change and be adaptable. That’s one of the great things about being an independent business owners. We don’t have to wait for the entire organization to change. We get to decide. We get to be kind of like the, the difference between a speed, about making a turn in a cruise ship. We get to be the speed boat. We can be more agile and that’s an advantage for us. So look, if you want to be successful, you’ve got to take responsibility and you’ve got to embrace all of these things, because ultimately there are so many rewards for being a business owner. There are so many positives, the impact you can make the, the income, you can earn the lifestyle you can live, but that stuff doesn’t happen by accident. It doesn’t happen haphazardly. It basically comes down to you driving the ship. You making sure that it happens. You surrounding yourself with the right people, you taking proactive steps and being a producer each and every day to move towards where you want to be. If you do that, man, being a business owner is one of the coolest things that can happen, but it all starts with making that decision to succeed.