The Fitness Business School – Adding Online to Offline

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here and in this episode we’re going to be talking about things that you’re going to want to carry from the way you are managing your client base now, the way you’re retaining clients, the services you’re delivering, things you’re gonna want to carry from this period into the future of your business solution. Get into 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.

Hey everyone, I wanted to talk with you in this episode about really carrying some of the things that you’re doing now, some of the things you’re learning about serving, servicing your clients online, and really how you’re going to integrate that into your future business if you plan to move fully back to online. Now you may be thinking, Hey, this is a band-aid. This is something that I just am kind of getting through to plug the holes in the dam until I get back to normal. Or on the flip side you may be saying, Hey, I’m going to have an online or a hybrid type business moving forward to make sure that I’m covered if this ever happens again. Well, let’s talk in this episode just about, you know, if your plans are to have the core, the foundation of your business be offline, not to be dramatically different from what you were doing previously, what kind of things do you want to change? What kind of things do you want to integrate to make sure that you are in the best possible position moving forward?

Well here, here are just a few thoughts that I think are, are really going to position you well to move into whatever this kind of new economy and this, this kind of new set of social norms looks like. So the first thing that I would say is, you know, all great training businesses moving forward I believe are going to have five different components. They’re going to have a live workout component, whether it’s offline or online, they’re going to have an on demand workout component. They’re going to foster a sense of community, at least all the group training businesses that isn’t specifically about one-on-one. They’re going to really drive a sense of personal connection between the business, whether it be the owner or the team and the individual client. So the client is going to feel important and connected and then they’re going to have an accountability component. Not necessarily, Hey, we’re going to manage your macros or that type of thing, but some sort of accountability that the client knows that they’re being coached during the time that they’re not in person with the business.

So now the, the live workout component, that may very well be what your business looked like to begin with, like what it looked like before we got into this pandemic. You were delivering a live workout, maybe, you know, a number of times a day, a couple of dozen times a week. And that was the real core of your business. Now, it may still be the core of your business moving forward and that’s perfectly fine. Now you may choose to add a live workout component that people can join virtually as well. Um, whether that be for clients that can’t make it in for whatever sort of reason, maybe they’re traveling, maybe something’s going on in their life and they can’t make it into the session. Or it could be that you want to market some live services as an ancillary kind of hybrid type offering. So that’s an optional way that you could expand your offerings just by adding an online live component component where maybe you’re just filming or are really live streaming the workout you’re doing a few times a week.

Now the second piece of this puzzle I think is going to be a big shift for a lot of people and that is having an on demand service component. Now, sure people in a lot of cases have been delivering travel workouts, they’d been delivering some pre-packaged thing that people can do if they’re on the road or on vacation or whatever else. But I think that having a library of things that people are going to do, whether it just be, um, kind of a little movement flow or matrix, some off day activity workouts that people can do with just body weight or band so they could be used in that kind of travel or uh, at home format. And then some stuff that they can do if they just want to work out at their home gym on the off days. They compliment our core program, the live stuff. Well I think that we know people are really, really shifting towards more of an embrace of things being convenient. They, they liked having food delivered. They like having Amazon prime one and two day shipping. They, they like the convenience factor and this would allow them to benefit from your services whenever it’s most convenient for them. And it wouldn’t limit them to benefiting from your services just two or three days a week. And so now you have the opportunity to kind of be a coaching part of their life where they can see you on video and, and get some sort of, um, coaching and real direction on making their life a little bit better, making their day a little bit better each and every day, not just the two or three days a week they come in and see you in person. So I think that’s going to be a big move and an opportunity because so many of the people that I’m seeing have a lot of success right now in retaining their clients. Those clients aren’t just having touch points two days a week. There’s some sort of contact, um, almost daily it, you know, in, in many cases actually daily. And I think that’s big. So that’s the second piece of this.

Now, if we’re talking about the community side of this, in the past a lot of Facebook groups were just, Hey, I’ve got a private Facebook group. I’ll buy some sort of prepackaged Facebook group content and I’ll just drip it in there throughout the course of the year. It’ll have memes and recipes and things like that. But I think what we’re seeing now is people want to have a sense of connection. They want to have conversations, they want to feel, um, like they’re part of something bigger. And so we’ve seen people integrate coffee with the coach or wind down Wednesdays or, um, you know, some sort of event on Friday evening. I know even with my clients, um, last Friday we had an evening with Sinbad and I hired Sinbad to come on and, uh, have a little bit of a open Q and A/comedy night on Friday. And, you know, I think there’ll be opportunities for people to do all sorts of community things, whether it be, um, you know, fitness or health related, like workshops or kind of almost like in-service type trainings that we do for our staff, but for our clients. But then also just things where people get to be part of a community. They’re opting in to say, look, I want to share a little bit of my life with these people. They’re friends, they’re not just workout associates.

And then that fourth piece of the puzzle that I think that so many of us can really do a better job with is making clients feel less like this is just a transaction. They pay a fee, they get access to workouts, you know, two, three, four days a week. But instead feeling important, having somebody checking in on them saying, Hey, how are you doing? How did you do this week, staying on track with your goals. What’s up for next week? Do you need any help with anything? Um, just having personal connection where you know that somebody’s looking out for you, somebody thinking about you, somebody cares about you. I think that is going to be such an opportunity for differentiation especially as the landscape gets more and more competitive with a lot of franchised competitors that are going to be really good at delivering the in-person, um, kind of program based offering. But they probably aren’t necessarily equipped to have as much personal touch as a lot of independent businesses can have. So that’s an opportunity for you to separate yourself and to continue that on if that’s something you’re doing right now.

And then finally, accountability and really accountability can be some of what I just alluded to that personal touch where you’re checking in with somebody now. Yeah, we can do challenges. We can do different things to get people to take a step forward in some facet of their life. Periodically, I know my wife does a great job with her community, not just doing the traditional transformation challenges, but she’s done challenges about like win your morning. So setting up a morning routine or love your summer challenges where people are making sure that they’re not just kind of losing track of the days and the summer goes by too fast, but they’re actually accomplishing what they want to accomplish. I think you can provide any sort of accountability that’s going to make somebody’s life better and weave that into what you’re doing. It’s just a shared goal, a shared experience. And you’re providing the framework for that. And then clearly we can do one-on-one accountability. We can have people check in and have little win the day challenges. Hey, did you get movement in today? Did you nourish your body today? Did you do something to improve your mindset today? It just happened. People check in. But those sorts of accountability I think are really just another way to make people feel connected and also give them incremental sense senses of accomplishment.

A lot of times, you know, we set these big goals for people. I want to lose 20 pounds, I want to, you know, get to a point that I can do five chin-ups or something like that. But so much of what we have the potential to do is giving somebody a daily sense of accomplishment that, Hey, you know what? I did a good job today. I move forward, I did something for myself today. So if you can integrate these five things into your business, that’s how you’re going to really have a lot of success in carrying forward some of the things that we’re doing now to preserve our business. Well, we can use it to propel our business into the future. Hope that was valuable for you. I’ll be back with more in future episodes about how you can kind of pivot and set your business up for future success. But hopefully these kind of transitional ideas can get your wheels turning and help you enjoy now.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.