The Fitness Business School – Deliver feat. Scott Rawcliffe

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.

How are you doing today? Well, um, I’m excited. It’s a, it’s fun for us to, uh, sit around and talk marketing and probably, uh, run off on various tangents and everything else. But I think we got some good stuff in store for the day. We definitely, definitely do. So I know today we’re going to conduct, carry on from our, our first two episodes. So today we’re going to talk about deliver. Yeah. So, you know, I think when I talk about building a business and it’s usually, you know, this simplified, attract, convert and deliver format. A lot of people think of deliver as just, um, okay, I’m going to help somebody get the result they want to get. I’m going to deliver a workout. I’m going to help them lose weight, whatever else. But I think if we play our cards right, um, deliver can actually be a catalyst for business growth, not just sustaining the business that you have. And to be honest, most people I don’t think look at it that way. They just think of, okay, my responsibility is now to give this person what they paid for, instead of saying, okay, how can I increase the value exchange in the relationship with this person? How can I get this person to introduce me to the other people in their lives? How can I, um, so solve more problems for this person? Because odds are there are other things that they’re doing to reach their goals, um, that fall outside of what’s happening within your four walls right now. So there are a lot of things we have at our disposal that maybe we don’t capitalize on, at least to the level that we potentially could. So, uh, I think we can dig into some of that today.

So what I mean, we talk a lot about like getting people like a quick win, whether it’s our own clients or just, you know, teaching people how to like, you got them when they come in, to give them something straight away. So maybe that’s where we start is like, what would be like the quickest, easiest thing someone could do from a delivery standpoint they can implement like by tomorrow? So the easiest thing is for every new client that walks in your door, um, sometime within that first week, create a scenario where they can introduce your business to somebody in their life because they’re obviously really excited about being part of this. They’ve, uh, you know, they’re excited about this life change. It’s something that odds are they’re talking about to other people because there’s a novelty to it. Um, so give them a gift card, give them an invitation and they can hand to somebody else. Give them the opportunity to bring somebody else in and experience what they’re going through. And what’s kinda cool about this too is there’s, they’re not so far into this where if they invite a friend in, their friend feels like they’ve got a big headstart, right? So they’re, they’re kind of starting at the same point. So for both of them, it potentially would create a more comfortable atmosphere, a nice support system, if you will, where, you know, I mean anywhere where we go into an environment where we’re new and we don’t know, people can be uncomfortable and, and this alleviates a lot of that. So not only is this creating a referral opportunity, but it’s an opportunity for you to strengthen the experience that the new client is already having.

Now the key, I think to any referral opportunity is understanding how referrals really work. Referrals are not about us. The business referrals are about the client, the client, the clients, friends, family members, coworkers, the other people in their lives. Um, and if they start to think about us, it’s simply because the experience they’re having, they’re not a commissioned sales rep. and a lot of times when we think about referrals, that’s the way that we treat them, right? We say, well, if you bring in somebody, we’re gonna give you money, we’re going to give you X. Right? And that’s a commission sales rep. you make this say, Oh you get a commission. And they didn’t come to us for a business opportunity. They came to us to make their life better. And if we do our part and we really kind of exceed expectations, then they’re going to talk about this to other people because they like being able to share cool stuff with the other people in their lives. They liked that kind of positive feedback. It’s like if you or I go to a new city and you say, man, you should check out this restaurant. It’s like you get to be kind of helpful and you get positive feedback from that, right? You, you get some sort of validation from being a resource to the other people in your life. And I think that if we create this opportunity for them to just give an experience to somebody else, now they get to get that positive validation by helping somebody. But they also get another win by having a partner in this experience. So that’s the easiest thing you could do.

Make this a rule of doing business. Every new person that comes in your business, sometime within their first week, you give them the opportunity to invite somebody else in literally at no expense to that new person. Now you may say, well what happens if this person paid me to join? You tell them like, Hey, the reason I’m inviting them in it at no cost is to make your experience better. This is for you, right? So if they don’t want to do it, they’re not going to do it. If they don’t feel good about that, that’s fine. But now you’re saying, look, I want you to have the best possible experience. I want you to have a support system. I want you to be able to train with your friends. Cause we know that if this is just kind of part of our social circle, we’re going to have better results, we’re going to stick with it, we’re going to be more consistent with what we’re doing. So I’m willing to invite somebody else in here at no expense to them for their first 21 days or whatever else. Um, simply to help you get off on, off on the right foot. And if you like them, odds are we’re going to like them. And I think that’s the key there. Like what you said about like telling them like w like conveying it as in what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you, like and that thing like the support system or just, you know, having someone else there with you and it’s, you know, cause again like for 50 bucks or whatever they are going to get or an extra week, like it’s not that motivating for them, but like, but saying like, Hey, I want to help you. I think that’s the thing a lot of times that, that we miss or, or just making it so bad.

And I know I did this when I first started, I was like, do you know anybody that might want to come in here? They’re like, yeah, I know lots of people. Can you invite them? Uh, and they just kind of like, well, there’s a lot of people so I don’t know who to deal with. Whereas you can just help them like, like find that one person. Then it helps them kind of narrow down and B and then explained to them why? Because it’s for your benefit. Um, yeah. I mean it’s duplication, right? Like we’re trying to duplicate the person that we have because this person is already a good fit. So we’re just trying to duplicate them. We’re not asking them to go invite an army. We’re, we’re asking them to duplicate themselves. Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t reward that person for this act of duplication. I’m saying that shouldn’t be the motivator. That should be like this unannounced reward where you get to go say, look, you know what? I love that you invited somebody else in here to experience this. I wanted to say thank you because obviously it’s good for our business. We have more people like you here. So here’s a gift card to X, right? Like here’s a gift card to Starbucks. Um, you know, here’s this, uh, you know, custom swag of whatever format that you prefer to use. But now you’re doing this and you’re reinforcing that behavior and it doesn’t feel like a bribe. It doesn’t feel to them like, okay, somebody’s gonna give me a gift card to Starbucks and now I’m going to go wrangle my friend in here to work out. So you see the different way that this kind of interaction happens. So, so that’s probably the quickest win we have at our disposal. But man, there, there are a number of other things that we can do to create this kind of duplication and use this deliver unit is a vehicle to grow our business. And in fact, if we play our cards right, it can be our most valuable business growth platform. Um, go ahead.

I was going to say, I think a lot of people like we, we discount that or we just forget about the fact that like, it’s almost like, okay, we got them in next. Like looking for the next person outside of that as opposed to be like, let’s nurture this person and see if they can get one. Because at the end of the day, like most, most personal training studio is like, you just need a couple hundred people. That’s it. It’s not, it’s not a lot of people. So it’s like how can we get that person to stay, but then again, bring one more person. Because if every person brings in one person, you don’t have to get that many people in the door before it just, you’re, you’re, you’re expanding. Yeah, for sure.

So, so if I’m thinking about the way that referrals should work, um, all I’m doing is asking you to introduce me to somebody else in a positive way. It’s not your job to sell my business, my services, whatever else. All I’m asking for is a positive introduction. So here are a few ways this could happen, right? So the, the next kind of most simplistic way to do this would be to just tell your client to notice conversations and give them kind of a follow up plan when they notice them. So, so I can say, Hey Scott, by the way, if you’re ever talking to a friend or anybody that talks about wanting to lose weight, that they need to join a jam, they’re looking for a different jam that you know, any sort of health and fitness thing and you think that’d be a good fit for what they do, just shoot me a text and I’ll send them a copy of my book. And that way we can, we can help them. If there’s somebody in your life that you think we can help, I want to be able to support you. So just shoot me a text and I’ll send a copy of the book out to him. So now what’s cool about that is you’ve kind of conditioned them to notice conversations and you’ve given them a very simple next step. You’ve not said, Hey, make sure you have this gift card with you or send them to this website or whatever else it’s you send them, you text me if they say this and then I’m going to make you look like a big deal because I’m going to send them a copy of a book simply because you texted me and I, and I think the key there is like is telling them what to do. Like we assume that people know what to do and it’s funny, literally this morning at the gym I go to, we just finished up a big charity event. We’re saying, Hey, let’s get some people to to express how they felt about it and they’re like, well just ask them. I’m like, no, like just get a couple of words or like, Oh we can just ask them to say like a testimony. I was like, it’s not going to work. I’m like, let’s ask this like, cause there’s a woman that was there. I’m like, ask her right now and see like, Hey, if you were to say about the event, like tell us all about the game, where would you say she’s like, I don’t know. I said what if he was in two words and instantly he did two words. So like giving people like be like, here’s how to do this. Like here’s how to talk about this or here’s how to make this work. Because now they don’t have to like figure it out because at the end of the day, what we forget about is like they want to help you so much. Like they’re like, they understand why, why you’re asking that because it helps you as well. So they want to do a good job, but if they don’t know what to do then they’re just like, I won’t do anything cause I might mess it up from them. Right. Yeah. And if you don’t have a book, like I use that as an example because that’s a low risk thing for this person to get. It’s not a a really big leap, but you can say, Hey, you know what? Text me and I’ll send them a gift card and they can come in and try us out whenever they’re ready.

So another really simple way to do it where it kind of makes you look like a big deal because you’ve got a guy you can just text this person and they’re going to respond and help. Right? I mean that’s, that’s a pretty cool thing to just be able to shoot a quick text and get help. Um, so along those same lines, we can make it easy for them to introduce us to their social circles by just saying, Hey, you know what? I’ve got this gift card offer. I’ve got this really cool lead magnet that I’m sharing on social media. You ask them to just share it with their friends or you give them a kind of template email that all they have to do is send out or a template text message that all they have to do is send out. So now you’re giving a gift. They’re not having a big ask where they’ve got to go say, Hey, do you want to join this transformation challenge? Do you want to come join my gym? It’s, you know what, Hey my, my coach Scott just put together this really cool report. I thought you might enjoy it. Or, um, my coach Scott just gave me a gift card to share with somebody I thought might benefit from it somewhere along the way. So I wanted to give it to you.

So again, we’re just giving them the opportunity to introduce us to the other people in their lives. It’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward. But man, is it effective. That’s surprising that you would share something simple and straightforward. I’m not smart enough to do complicated. So, um, so, so those are easy kind of next steps, right? Easy things that we can do to multiply, um, the audience that we have and if they’re like a lead magnet or a digital gift card, somebody has to download, or even if it’s like, okay, you’re going to send them a gift card, will they have to give you their contact information for there to be somewhere to send it? So now we have the ability to follow up and we don’t have to go to through our client. The referring party is kind of that middle man and that’s just such an a nice transition. It’s like a handoff where they’re saying, look, you know what I’m going to introduce you to and I’m going to let you take it from here. And if we do that, man, that’s easy. Now if we want to take it a step further, we create a zero risk opportunity for them to invite somebody into. And that can be a charity event. Like you just mentioned a a charity event. The gym you go to was doing this past weekend. But it could be bring a friend or it can be a challenge or a short term offer that you’re marketing for a fee, but you’re giving your clients the opportunity to gift that experience to a friend of theirs. So now if they’re giving something away, they’re absorbing that person of incurring risk. Right? All they’re doing is saying, you’ll look, I’m inviting you to this thing. No obligation, no risk. Come in, experience it. And again, it’s kind of that introduction, but it’s even another step up the value ladder, if you will, because instead of the followup happening, you’re not having virtually, it can actually happen in person. And that becomes like, I know we talked about this, I think this week that becomes like an irresistible offer too, right? Because there’s, there’s not, there’s no risk there and you get to come in. And one thing that, not every finished rational dislikes, but I know there’s a fair few, they don’t love selling. Um, but we all know like that makes a referral, makes it so much easier to sell that person. It kind of ended that program.

So it’s, you know, it, if you don’t like selling, and this is something you have to do too because it makes it so much easier to get someone in the door that’s like kind of half sold on it anyways. You know, so many people say, well, my business grows by word of mouth. So all we’re really doing is being proactive in facilitating that word of mouth versus just being reactive and hoping it’s happening. So it’s not philosophically any different than how your business probably grows in some ways. Now it’s just you saying, look, I want to grow faster, so I’m going to be more proactive in creating these conversations and creating these opportunities for people to introduce us or invite people in now, um, beyond that. And if we’re doing that proactively, we can probably literally create somewhere between 50% and 80% of our lead generation through that mechanism. But we have to kind of dot the I’s and cross the T’s if that’s going to happen.

Now the second thing when we’re talking about deliver being a way to kind of grow the business would be, okay, how do we get this person to go from basically having this value exchange with us of may be training with us three days a week to us training them four days a week to us moving from group training to one-on-one or semi-private or us solving other problems that they have. Because odds are if they’re coming somewhere to train three days a week, they’re taking a supplement there. They’re doing something differently nutritionally, right? So these are things they’re addressing. And it’s pretty obvious that’s happening. I mean, you can go to Costco and they sell any variety of supplements. Well, they don’t stock millions of skews. They stock the things that sell. So if they’re stocking fish oil, it means the average person is buying fish oil. Right? So your clients that already are saying, look, Hey, I’m in, I’m committed to health and fitness to the level of, I’m paying over a hundred dollars a month to be involved in that type of program. I’m giving up at least three hours a week to do it. So if they’re investing in these other things, can you solve the problems they need to solve better? Can you perhaps offer supplements that you recommend? And if they’re not supplements you recommend, fine, don’t, don’t do it. But if, if there are things that you buy into, can you offer supplements either that you inventory on site or that you recommend that they can order virtually? I mean, you could have a simple display and a tablet that they could order online right there on the spot. Um, if they’re making some amendments nutritionally, do you have any sort of nutrition coaching program available to them?

I don’t care if we’re talking about um, something where you’re doing a lot of hands on work or you’re using something like coach catalyst or pro coach to automate some of this stuff virtually and then you just kind of work in the background to facilitate some of it. But remember that person probably didn’t come to you saying, I just want to work out more. They probably are working out as a vehicle to achieve a goal there. There are things that they can do nutritionally supplementation wise, recovery wise, to move to quicker and they need expertise, they need guidance to do it. So if we can do what I call value capture at a higher level, then this is going to be a pretty, a pretty seamless transition.

And let me, I’m going to give you kind of a little backstory about what really made me understand this better. Um, so the CEO prior to the current CEO at Disney, so Michael Eisner was there before the current CEO is Bob Iger. That’s been buying up all these things like Marvel and star Wars and all of that. Well, when the previous CEO took over Disney, he looked at like the theme park in, I’m in Florida and there were two parks. They didn’t really have many hotels. They didn’t do a lot of, uh, you know, they didn’t have a lot of restaurants. And so they, they did some research and they said, okay, the average family is spending $4,000 to come on vacation to see us, but we’re only getting a little bit more than $1,000 of that. We’re the destination. We’re the, the bait that gets them to come here, but they’re not spending their money staying in our hotels. They’re buying souvenirs other places. They’re going to SeaWorld over here for a day. They’re doing other things. So we’re not getting much of that money. And so they kind of changed the way that this works. They’re like, okay, is there something that we can do to keep them on our property a higher percentage of the time? They’re here. Can we get them to spend the money they’re spending on food with us? Can we get them to spend the money they’re spending on souvenirs with us? And so they kind of restructured their entire business model to say, okay, how do we become the comprehensive vacation for this person when they come here and now they, they capture over 80% of the value of somebody who comes because they’re staying on on property. They’re staying at their resort. In fact, Disney will pick you up at the airport and bus you to the resort so you don’t have a rental car. So there’s less likely less likelihood that you will leave property. They, they have the restaurants, they have the souvenirs, they have everything there in one spot. And yeah, we’re not theme parks, we don’t have 70,000 employees, but somebody wants this result just like somebody wanted a vacation. How do we capture as much value and helping them attain this result is possible?

All the things that they’re going to do, the changes they’re gonna make in their life, the purchase that they’re gonna make, the behaviors that they want to adopt, how do we serve is the go-to solution for those things. And it has a value to them, right? So there’s, we’re giving them more value. So in turn we’re capturing more value in exchange. Well then everything you said there too, there’s, there’s a component of convenience on there as well. Like the convenience of, you know, not having to go somewhere else to pick up their supplements or not having to figure out what they need. The convenience of not having to get a car or an Uber, whatever. It takes a theme park or like, and I think that’s an easy way to start thinking about like, what else can we add? It’s like, how can you make this more convenient for them so that, you know, because let’s face it, a lot of people will pay for convenience. That’s why, you know, some people don’t clean their house because they’re like, well, I’d rather have that. Or I mean, look at Amazon. Amazon is a great example of like convenience where they have, I don’t have it in Canada, but you get those little buttons, you can press like, Oh, I’m out of toilet paper, I’m out of tide pods. You just press it and then it’s there that same day. So it’s, I think that’s a nice way to look at, well, what else could I do? Like, yeah, supplements, what else could I do? It’s like what, how can you provide more convenience for your clients and just ask them and I’m sure you’ll figure it out real quick.

So, so we’ve kind of covered how to introduce or invite other people in. We’ve talked about value exchange there. There are really kind of two other things. One, I’m just going to kind of scratch the surface on and then one weekend and talk about, and maybe a little bit more detail, if that makes sense. But scratching the surface, there are a lot of people in your business as a client now that maybe they’re a business owner, maybe they are an influencer in a particular, um, organization, community, whatever else. So when we think about introductions and invitations, um, it’s not only person to person, it might be person to organization, right? So it could be, Hey, we’ve got a mom who is an influential member of the PTA at this local elementary school. Can she introduce us there in a way that allows us to create, uh, uh, a win-win arrangement with that PTA? Um, we’ve got this person that owns a small business. What can we do to serve their audience? What can we do to serve their employees? How can we make this a win for them? So think about the people that you reach, not just the, the referral of an individual that they can kind of execute, but what doors can they open for you? Whether it’s public speaking opportunities, whether it’s connections with groups where you don’t ever have to cold call again, whether, you know, it’s even introducing different programs like corporate fitness programs or something like that. They can get your foot in the door or maybe even swing the door wide open if they’re a decision maker and a business. So see this kind of little ecosystem you’ve created as something more than just, Hey, this person can introduce me to their neighbor who would be a good client. Um, so, so that, you know, that probably merits a podcast by itself because there’s so many cool opportunities there. And I’ve seen people literally build second businesses off of that sort of thing.

But then the, the other side of this is how do we kind of maximize the, the term of the relationship with somebody? Because as much as we would like people to, to stay with us forever, we have to understand that life evolves, people change. I mean, you just moved continents. Um, for me, you know what I mean? Things, things may change along the way. Our kids get older. So my schedule probably changes with there different activities and responsibilities. People are going to kind of move in and out of your business and that’s okay. It’s fine if somebody doesn’t train with us three days a week for the next 15 years. So how do we see this as an opportunity for the person who spent $2,000 with us? To maybe over time turn that into 2,500, 3000, $4,000. It may not be just a thousand dollars a year in this really clean, linear fashion. Maybe it’s kind of pieces here and there. Maybe it’s the person that left six months ago, you inviting them back in for a transformation challenge in January or a short term program that you’re doing in the fall. Um, but always making these people feel like they’re welcome because now what’s cool about this is just because they left, they’re still more comfortable with you than they would be the competitor, right? They already know people here. This is already part of their comfort zone. So always doing, I mean, we call it reactivation, but sometimes it’s just reaching out to a friend and catching up, right?

I mean, we have to see it that way and just because like a friend that we, that we had for four years and maybe we interacted with a lot, maybe life changed a little bit. We don’t talk as much. It doesn’t mean we’re not friends anymore, but it’s okay if we catch up a little bit less frequency frequently. So I think making sure you have kind of that email newsletter to stay in touch with them, making sure that you kind of send out offers. Just saying, Hey, you know what? I was thinking of you. We’ve got this thing coming up in the fall. Didn’t know if you might want to be part of it, but I definitely wanted to invite you in case you were. Um, and then also understanding that if they need to take a little bit of time off, better to, to help them think of it as a pause rather than quitting because if they quit, there’s some finality to that. But if we accept the fact that maybe their life kind of changes and has some ebbs and flow to it that like, look, you know what? You can’t be here this summer. No problem. Let’s pause. We’ll start back at this day and make it comfortable and easy for them to do that. In fact, I’ll take it a step further. You want to really kind of shift the paradigm here for people. When somebody tells you they need to leave, give them a gift. Say, you know what? Cool. We want to make sure that you’re successful, so here’s some stuff on nutrition. Here’s some workouts you can do at home because just because you’re not training with us now doesn’t mean we don’t care about you’re getting the results you came to for us in the first place. If you do that now, if we take this approach where we be like, man, when somebody trusts us to be their coach, we’re their coach for life, then we’re going to keep following up. We’re going to keep doing things and you’re going to see these people that were clients of yours four years ago, pop back into your life.

I can’t tell you how many of the people that I had as clients in 2008 2009 still around. Hey, I’ve got a guy that was a business coaching client of mine in 2006 it came back and is is a client now over a decade later. But if you don’t play the long game, you don’t get the opportunity to have that kind of relationship. Yup. And, and some of that you said there, and it made me think of something that just happened recently is like treating it, treating it like it’s not ending, it’s just a pause and just treating it like, yeah, there’s not that finality to it. And I just, it was with a design, which is an, I don’t know if it’s an app in the US too. I think it is. It’s like a sports, you can just watch sports live stream, but a lot. So when you go to cancel, they don’t talk about canceling and they just talk about like how long do you wanna pause for it? And they, they relate it to like seasons. It was like, Hey, like do you want to pause until football season starts? So that’s eight months from now or whatever. And then the last options, like you just cancel forever, but it’s okay. But just how they frame it was just like, well, how long are you just going to pause this for? Um, so just having that mindset and just treating everything, not like it’s, Hey, we’re done. It’s like, yeah, cool. Like, so how long would you just like, you know, we just pause this for six months or, and, and I think switching that mindset really, you know, alters our relationship when that happens. No, I think that’s, that’s a missed opportunity for so many fitness businesses because we see somebody leaving is like this personal front on us. Like we did something wrong. Like there’s some animosity instead of saying like, look man, you know what, what we’re asking if somebody is a lot, we’re saying, pay us, rearrange your life. Come in here. Give us hundreds of hours a year. And things change. Things happen. I mean, I, I’ve watched my life kind of ebb and flow based on the, the activities my kids were involved in, the different things that were happening in my life and Holly’s life. And you know, I, I would say that the frequency in which I would do other things had nothing to do with those other things. It had to do with the things that were going on in my app.

So, you know, I think it’s important that we see the way that people make decisions and the way that they kind of allocate their time and what’s a priority as kind of this ever changing, ever evolving thing. Because when you think about it, like they don’t, like most people spend more time with you then what was the other people in their life except like the people that are really, really, really close to them when they’re coming in, you know, two, three, four times a week, like four hours a week. That’s, that’s a lot of time. Like if you think about it on your half, like how many people do you spend four hours a week with other than the people you live with in the house? It’s thinking of that too, right? Yeah.

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