The Fitness Business School – Creating High Priced Programs

Full Transcript

Welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss creating high priced programs that add to your personal income and deliver massive value to your clients. So stay tuned.

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, Pat Rigsby here and I want to talk with you about how to create high priced programs that sell. Now I need to preface the video with what we’re talking about by saying, I don’t mean this kind of new trend in the fitness industry about high ticket selling where people are over-promising and under-delivering or they’re saying, Hey, you know what? I’m going to coach you and it’s going to cost seven thousand, ten thousand, sixteen thousand dollars and I’m not actually going to do any coaching. I’m just going to give you access to a course and maybe some group Q and A calls and that’s going to be it.

That’s not what I’m talking about. And frankly, while that may work in a short sense, it’s not a sustainable model because ultimately the market figures out who the frauds are. So what I want to go over with you today is really pretty straightforward. How do you create high priced but high value programs to sell? So let’s go through what I consider the three core steps of creating programs like this that seem like wins for everybody involved.

So the first key step is you need to solve a relatively big problem. I mean, ultimately people hire service providers to solve problems. Whether we’re talking about a dentist or a hairdresser or an accountant, a service provider is solving a problem for the client or the patient or the customer that they don’t want to solve themselves. Or maybe they can’t solve themselves. So you need to solve big problems. So if we’re just talking about getting swimsuit ready or losing 10 pounds or something like that, in all odds there, there’s just not going to be a enough of a problem, enough magnitude to that problem to really move somebody forward and make them invest a premium price. So we need to think bigger. Are we going to solve a problem for somebody who has a health concern, somebody who has a really significant goal, maybe somebody who just doesn’t want to work in a group setting? So they have similar problems that other people want solved, but they’re unwilling to do it in the traditional environment. So if most people are going to a group training business to address fat loss and improve their health and improve their self image, maybe they want to solve this problem in a very individualized, very personal way. So if we think about what the problem somebody wants to solve is, I mean the bigger the problem, the bigger the value it is to them, the more they’re willing to invest. Let me give you a really pertinent example that hits home when it comes to health. So, you know, so much of what we do in fitness and health and sports performance, they’re kind of siblings to one another, if you will. Well, not too long ago, my younger son, Alex was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And for us it was a big problem. It was a big challenge that we wanted to solve. Obviously we wanted to get our child healthy and so really any price would have been a bargain in our eyes if we can get the outcome that we wanted.

And there are so many people out there that are going through similar things. They’re going through a health concern or maybe a physical or a weight or a body fat concern that really not only holds them back from maybe wanting to wear a swimsuit or something like that, but it really drags down their self esteem. Maybe it drags down their health and their doctor’s pushing them to do better. But if we can do something for somebody that really solves a big problem in their life, they’ll pay a premium for this and do it happily.

So the second of the variables that I consider key to successfully selling high priced fitness programs is being a specialist, which kind of piggybacks that first point. But think about in any field, a specialist commands higher fees than a generalist. Whether we’re talking about a brain surgeon versus a general practitioner in medicine or an attorney who might solve very specific problems for people or corporations versus just some sort of general practitioner. Any time that we can move away from general to specific, we’re going to command higher prices simply because those people see us as a trusted expert in authority that can address these specific need that we have. So if you think about the problems that you’re best at solving, if you think about the people you’re best at helping and the experiences that you’ve had and the education that you have, what it lends itself to as to what sort of specialty that you can address, you’re going to be way better off. I see it in our industry with people like Eric Cressey who may specialize in helping baseball players. I see it with people who help seniors and baby boomers, people like the Functional Aging Institute or people like art McDermott. I see people in all sorts of very narrow verticals being the trusted expert for somebody rather than just being a generalist.

And I think that’s what we all want in reality, right? We want somebody who’s the best at what they do. And most of the time in our industry, people are left to sort through that themselves because no person in their community, no business in their community is raising their hand and saying, look, you know what? I specifically help people like you. I help people that have the exact problems that you have, have similar lifestyles to the ones that you have and really, you know, I understand you and the challenges you are facing and the places you want to go better than anybody else. People will pay a premium for that. Now again, we sometimes as professionals, get in our own way when it comes to this stuff. We think that price is the main factor for people and it’s not, all you have to do is look around at restaurants people eat at, the places they shop, the cars they drive. People will always pay a premium, at least a percentage of the market will always pay a premium to have something better, to have a different type of experience, to have a different type of quality, whether it’s for their own self image, whether it’s because they think that’s the best. Maybe it’s just how they self identify. They think that they’re a premium customer, so they want a premium solution. People will pay for that, but we need to address those big problems. We need to be specialists.

And then the third variable is we need to deliver massive value. We need to really make sure that no matter what we’re charging, the person that we’re selling to feels like it’s a really good value exchange on their part. People don’t mind paying premium prices if they feel like they’re getting a good deal.

Nobody wants to pay $50, $60, $70 for a bad steak, but they’ll happily pay that at a high end restaurant with what they consider to be a premium cut of meat. Nobody really thinks, Hey, I need to spend $100,000 on a car and then comes away with an economy model, right? People want to feel like if they’re spending $5,000 with you, they got six, seven, eight, $10,000 in value. So when you’re thinking about putting your programs together, when you’re thinking about who you want to serve, the problems that you want to solve, you have to think about how much meaning, how much impact, how much value this brings to that perspective client’s life. And for a lot of people, increasing their longevity, improving their quality of life, improving their self esteem, improving their performance, it may be way more valuable than anything you would consider charging, but if all you’re doing is delivering a bland workout, if you’re a generalist, if you’re delivering something that feels like it’s just one size fits all and there’s nothing unique or special about it, then it’s impossible to deliver something high, high value.

With that kind of feeling wrapped around it, what you need to do instead is say, okay, if I’m going to be the premium priced offering this market, how do I stand out and be the premium service deliver in this market? Now if you put those three things together, you’re going to be able to sell things that are high priced and you’re going to be able to do it with integrity, which is not necessarily the approach most of the people in our industry take when it comes to selling high ticket offering. So employ those three things, solve big problems, become a specialist in delivering massive value and you’re going to have great success.

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.