The Fitness Business School – Discussing Marketing with Scott Rawcliffe

Full Transcript

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.

Pat, are you excited as I am? I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been looking forward to this since we’ve been talking about this for quite a while and we’re finally getting around to it. And if you know Pat at all, you know, it takes a little bit to get him excited. So just to hear that inflection in his voice if you know him, you know, he’s really excited.

Yeah. That or I’m over-caffeinated either way. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve talked about, um, various points where we just think, you know, where we’ve talked about something saying, man, that would make for a really good episode, we should be sharing that. I’d say it’s fair that to say that we just wanted to get together and talk about the things that are happening, what we see working, where we see things trending when it comes to lead generation, when it comes to conversion, business growth, marketing in general.

When we first started talking about it, we’re like, imagine if we could just like just read, just sat down, have a conversation and recorded like just us chatting and we’re like, that would make a good podcast. I wonder if people listen. So I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? Oh, uh, yeah. We’re going to hold up our end of the bargain. Hopefully you and your listener will hold up yours. Um, so what’s on tap for episode number one today, Mr Rawcliffe?

So today we’re going to talk about kind of the first, well we kind of have a similar idea of kind of how we, um, kinda go about what we think about marketing. You know, a line, I’m a little bit more social media driven. You are kind of the whole thing. So when I talk about, I talk about the three Cs, um, it’s call them out, right? And that’s to kind of get awareness. And I think that’s the word on who’s, I mean we wanna capture them. I want to try to pick some or get them on our list, that sort of thing. They want to convert. So we’re going to talk about the first one, but give me your, your three acronyms for kind of what you go with. So when I talked to somebody about growing their business, it basically falls into this, this process where we attract somebody, we convert them. So you know, a lot of follow up through the selling process and then we deliver that dream come true result through an experience they enjoy.

So, I think it all kind of starts with that same mentality, that attract mentality that, that you had kind of alluded to in your own verbiage. You know, I just like to be different. I think that’s the thing a lot of people miss because when, you know, when, when new platforms evolve, like when Facebook first came out, um, and then, you know, when Instagram started to kind of a little bit bigger, it was a lot easier to get, gain awareness or gain attention. Uh, but then with like anything, when more people go to that platform, it gets a little bit harder and people start to wonder, you know, why it’s not working? Or I feel like they just are like, Hey, I’m really good at what I do. Um, why are more people coming in? But it’s the fact that, you know, people just, just don’t know who they are. And I, and I like to use the analogy of when you see like that random post about the person that’s going to help you get, you know, um, at $100,000 your business in 73 minutes and you’ve never heard of them. Like you just ignore that. So it’s kind of the same thing. It all starts with you need to kind of know who someone is and trust them a little bit before you’re going to pay any attention.

Yeah, I think there, there are a variety of things that kind of play into why I’m attracted and I tend to try to translate the way that people behave offline into how we approach things online. Because realistically we’re dealing with somebody who is in fact offline and they’re living their life that way. They interact with other people that way. Um, they interact with other businesses that way. So basically what we’re trying to do is really connect with those people. There are people out there in every market. I don’t care if we’re talking about, you know, a local group training business, a local one-on-one business, um, you know, uh, a health focus business, a medical practice or, or online training. It doesn’t really matter. There’s somebody out there that wants to solve the problem that you can help them solve. They want the benefit you can provide. It’s just currently they’re probably invisible to you and so you need to become visible to them and at the same time, they need to become visible to you so that you can connect with them.

A lot of people approach this, I think in some ways thinking of people is, um, you know, an avatar or uh, you know, their quote unquote, you know, ideal prospect when in reality, I mean, maybe a better way to think about it is who is that person that, that you can help the most? Who is that person that has, has this, this problem that’s just weighing on them? It’s keeping them up at night, it’s making them uncomfortable, they think about it a lot and you know, who is that person that you’re like, man, if I connected with that person, I know I could help them. I know I could solve the issues they’re having and I could really take them from where they are now to where they want to be. If we think about that person, it makes them, you know, and become a lot more tangible. It’s not this abstract kind of thing where, okay, they’re uh, they meet this household income, they live within this radius. I mean above all there they’re a person that has a problem that they want to solve and they don’t feel like they can solve it on their own. Yup. Yup. And kind of the thing that they can help me understand or really kind of dive deep into marketing and kind of really get a grasp of what it really was because I was the typical fitness professional way back when that I thought sales were dirty and marketing was terrible and it was deceitful and that sort of stuff. But I built my career and kind of built everything I’ve done off relationships, I like building relationships. And when I was able to kind of start to think about marketing is just, just how we have normal relationships in the world and how we build that up. Because in, in fitness, you know, we ideally want someone to come in for more than three sessions. We want to have them for 12 months, for two years, that sort of thing. So when I kind of relate everything to to relationships, it’s the same thing. Like you’re not going to just, you’re not going to try to find someone to marry you or find your next best friend by just going up and saying like, Hey, what’s up? My name’s Scott. Like, so we should probably get married now. Right? Like it just, it makes no sense and it feels wrong. But I find that when we think about, you know, things, how do we build a normal relationship and then how does that, how do we kind of model that online or, or does that kind of make sense?

That’s what we’re doing and if we miss too many steps, then it just, it gets creepy. Just like how, you know, if, if people don’t know who you are and you’re trying to sell them in your high ticket or you’re trying to sell them on 12 months, they’re like, I don’t want to make a commitment to that. Like I don’t know if I like you yet. And that’s kind of, I think why, why we forget that. Like, I feel like a lot of us look at it like just like, Hey, people know who I am, but not realizing that no, most people actually don’t get no or you know, people assuming that just because it’s important for us that they want to find that or that we want them in now because we, we’ve got rent to pay, we’ve got, you know, we got salaries to pay, we’ve got our own expenses to cover. So we think everybody should be on our timeline, which it’s just not the way that consumers work. And in fact, you know, one of the, the things I ask clients to work through is to think about themselves as a consumer whenever they’re not experiencing, um, things as a business owner, it’s not a business to business thing.

It’s okay, you’re going out to buy a new car or, um, maybe you’re trying to choose a new pediatrician or, or something like that. You think about the process you go through, you become kind of aware initially the, the thought crosses your mind like, okay, you know what? We’re going to have a baby. We need a pediatrician or my car is breaking down, I need a new car. So you start to, to explore, you start to do a little bit of investigation, you ask friends, you look at reviews, you browse the internet and maybe when we’re talking about. Either of those two types of things, you might even go in and do a test drive or you want to go in and actually see the practice before you make a buying decision. So if we think about that natural flow over relationship, it’s a lot like, I mean, if you’re going to meet somebody, you start with small talk, introduce yourself, right? And there’s this really kind of small talk. It doesn’t have much depth and then you get a little bit more depth. You get to know one another and the relationship of evolves as far as it’s going to go. And I think if, if we approach marketing that way and we say, okay, I’m using my terminology, which I obviously we can kind of retrofit it to yours too. Um, it’s um, you know, that attract part is okay, what can we do to become visible to the person that we want to reach and make them visible to us?

How can we get them to kind of self identify and get them to raise their hand so we can start a conversation. And I think that’s key now. Um, I think there are, at least from my experience and you do so much of this with Facebook ads specifically or social media there, there are two kind of things at play here. Like the ultimate goal is to get them to give us permission and contact information to follow up. This is not a new thing. We talked about it with like opting in or something like that now. But permission based marketing has been a thing for, for decades and decades. So we want to build what now we call a list. But you know, it’s always been a database, a mailing list, whatever. Um, so we want that so we can control the continuation of a relationship rather than just doing the internet version of handing somebody a business card and hoping they call. Um, but what often happens is a precursor to that is they need to become kind of aware of us, how we, how we help and maybe start to trust us a little bit before they’re ready to give us permission of followup to, to, to basically say, I’m willing to give you a little bit more of my time and attention. So that’s where putting out good information, not just bland general cut and paste content that you know, you, you, you grab from some bundle or package and mind you, I trust me, I, I get it. I’ve sold those always with the disclaimer. Like, Hey, this gets you 80, 85% of the way there, but you need that add you to the mix. So you put something out there, they’re like, well, you know, Scott knows what he’s talking about. I like his personality. I kind of meshed with that. So maybe I want to follow up here. Maybe I want to learn more. Oh, wait a minute. He’s got this cool guide on how to rank high in the search engines locally or how to use social media and 15 minutes a day to grow your business. Sure. I’m going to go check that out. So I was waiting for you to go on with something deep with Facebook and I, I was like, Oh I can’t wait to hear what he says. We’ll see. I used to, I used to say like the first level was like awareness, you want to gain some awareness. But I feel like just even in the last six to nine months it’s more people putting stuff out there.

Again, it’s getting more crowded and it’s kinda, that’s why I shifted to like a call out because it’s almost like you want to like when you whistle out your dog or you, you call it something like they turn around, like they just swing their head around and look at you and it’s kind of, that’s almost like what you want to do by putting stuff out there and you know, like you said, moving away from just the cut and paste and all that sort of stuff. Like add some personality. I know, you know, we’ve talked about this at a couple of your masterminds is just being like, Hey, like how can you share what’s, what’s like who you are so that people can either connect with you or not and not just share like, Hey, three tips to a flatter stomach or stuff like that. Like share, um, like I remember bill, the whole factor was he started to share more about his family and do videos about his family and they have people reach out and say like, Oh, like, you know, I’m a family guy and you know, I need to get in shape and, you know, just sharing that other stuff so that people can know that you’re not like MR, like, I am fitness robot, I eat broccoli and chicken. Right? So it’s, it’s that like getting their attention, get him to turn around and actually, you know, put stuff out there that shows you’re just more than everything else out there. Because, um, I forget where I heard this recently, um, on a podcast and it was a quote saying you can’t out Amazon, Amazon, but like there’s so many people out there that, so many e-commerce companies, but they’re successful because they don’t try to be Amazon because there’s no way you could be Amazon.

So it’s the same thing, you know, even if you’re complaining about, you know, orange theory or, or, or 24 hour fitness or whatever fitness first in Australia, um, it’s like you have the advantage because you’re a personality. You can show your personality where they can’t. So it’s like, how do you, what do you put out there to gain awareness? Oh, who you are so that you’re something different than, like I said, like the fitness robot. Yeah. I think that, you know, whether it’s people’s kind of internal fear of being rejected for being authentic or the not necessarily knowing where to start to gaining a little bit of momentum.

You know, people are apprehensive and so it’s always easier to be bland to be general. But you know, I mean the, the internet is such that these days is not a differentiator. There was a point where if you are the only person putting out credible information in your market, you were going to win because people saw you as an expert and that was going to be the thing. But now you can put out information if it’s really specialized, right? Like, um, you know, somebody like Eric Cressey can go do things very specific to the baseball landscape and it becomes, um, a differentiator or you know, you can just interject some of your own personality so people connect with you. But now, I mean, man, you can go find pretty much whatever you want on YouTube for free. So that’s not, we want it to be any sort of differentiator. You have to have something that’s better yet to have something that’s different. And often something that’s different is just somebody connecting with you and feeling like, you know what, that’s somebody who I can trust that somebody, I mean, well let’s face it, people buy people and if they, if they think, well, wait a minute, I can trust that person. I can kinda see me having a conversation with that person. You, you’ve got a leg up and where, where I think this helps so much. I mean, everybody talks about pre-qualifying in our industry and they get so caught up with pre-qualifying based on income, um, or demographics or whatever. When in reality pre-qualification kinda starts with your message.

Like, I know for me, I just kind of wear who I am on my sleeve and all this stuff. Anything that I do and my newsletters and videos and podcasts doesn’t matter. And so by the time I get to a conversation with somebody, they kinda know what they’re dealing with, they know who I am, what I’m about. And if I was a bad fit for them, we would have never gotten to that stage of the relationship. And to me that’s a much more impactful pre-qualifier because let’s face it, if something’s important enough to somebody, they’re going to find a way more often than not. So desire trumps demographics when it comes to pre-qualification above all else. I think totally. And like, I mean, if there’s like someone that’s like baller status and wants to drive a Ferrari and live the high life and make it rain, like they’re, they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna show up at your doorstep because I actually had that.

So last week, somebody who ironically found me through a referral and like a Facebook group. So this is a really rare, like normally everybody comes to me because they’ve been on my newsletter for ages and, um, and she told me specifically because she didn’t see me in front of like a Lamborghini or a jet or something like that. I seemed more trustworthy and honest and I’m like, that’s the person I want, right? So if I’m out there and there are videos of me playing catch with my younger son Alex there, there’s a lot of me just kind of being me with my slow talking Kentucky drawl and everything else. And for the people that that’s a turnoff then great. You know, I mean we don’t ever have to work on this and I don’t need everybody and there are plenty of other solutions out there. So we all want more of the right people. The easiest way for you to get the right people is for you to put the authentic you out there so they can kind of know what they’re getting into and the people that are going to be that great fit for you are already going to know who you are before they ever actually meet you. And I want to kind of come back to something you were saying about people. Being kind of nervous or afraid to put like put themselves out there, be themselves, put kind of their message out there. And my brain, I don’t know if it’s a, it’s the way I am or it’s a dysfunction of some sort, but I just think of analogies all the time. Like that’s all that comes into my head is analogy.

So I mean with that, with someone being afraid to put themselves out there and it’s almost like I look at it when you’re with a client, like there’s people out there, you can help and there’s people out there that need will resonate with you and you’ll help them get to where they want to go or, or help them just get off the couch. But if you don’t put it out there, you’re never going to help them. And it’s kinda the same thing. Like are you willing to in your business to actually like call out your client and say like the screening. We’ve got this goal and you keep eating fried chicken every day. Like you’re not going to get there. Like how do we fix this? Cause that’s kind of by putting yourself out there, that’s what you’re doing. But I’m pretty sure everyone listen to this. Like if they have a client is trying to lose weight and they keep coming in saying, I’m not, I’m not eating right. I’m not training, they’re not gonna be like, it’s okay. Like just, I don’t want to like rock the boat or anything. So just like you’re good. Right. So to me it’s like the same thing. It’s like put something out there and let’s let someone not just be like bland and it’s, you’re not really helping anyone cause you’re just doing the same shit that’s out there. It’s the same as you just let your clients slide for weeks on end, not training, not eating right. It’s, yeah. So put yourself out there. Jeez.

So if that’s kind of the first component of um, you know, the attract the, the second stage after being authentic and making sure your message is, is better in unique and different, um, we’ve got to give somebody the opportunity to give us permission to follow up with them because otherwise we’re, we’re just hoping they’re going to find this through posts that Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whoever else controls or, I mean, again, it gets back to being like handing somebody a business card and hope. So the way that we kind of close the attract unit to transition to convert is we have to get somebody to give us their contact information and in turn basically say, okay, I’m going to give you permission to follow up with me to have more of my time, more my attention. Now when it comes to doing that, I mean, whether you want to call it an opt in gift, a lead magnet. It doesn’t, I mean it doesn’t really matter. I mean, the terminology internally we use is typically lead magnet. Um, but the idea here I, I think is to give them something. Did they feel like, okay, this is specific to me. This is what I’ve been looking for, this is actually something it’s going to help me. And in, in reality, ideally it would be something that they’d even be willing to pay a little bit for. If, um, you know, if you’re giving something, does somebody have high value, you’re certainly making a good first impression in that relationship. I know on my, on my end I give away a lot of books, like digital copies of my books. Um, but we also use things like scorecards with function, a lot like quizzes. We give away, I mean, I know one lead magnet that we’ve used a lot in my business has been like 52 newsletters. Like don’t few newsletters that ideally you’re going to take out there and you’re going to customize the add your voice to and everything else. But I mean, there are other people out there selling the same volume of newsletters for like $97. And so those types of things are big. It’s funny cause I was just at a workshop with Joe and Sarah, so I was teaching their group up in near Toronto and a guy would I use that as an example, right? And one guy goes, Oh, he goes, he raised his hand. I’m like, do you have a question? He goes, no, I just wanted to say they’re really good. He’s like, I’ve used them for I think three years now. They just rotate every year. And so the thing is like something of high value like that. Like he remembers like he knows who you are because he’s taken it, he’s used it and he’s continued to use it. Right.

So things like also like your books too. Like if people, if there’s rate information that I have it by their desk or they refer to it. Like you’re also, and I think people forget about this is my giving them something so valuable. You’re staying top of mind too. You’re staying relevant for them as opposed to, um, like a pointless PDF that they look at for the one thing and then they, it gets lost in their computer until they clean up their computer. Not that I’ve ever downloaded a thousand reports and never looked at them and had to do that, but just saying it, but actually about myself as a consumer because of like what you just alluded to, I think about myself as consumer and when somebody has this over-hype um, you know, really cool ad and landing page and then you download it and it’s just garbage. I’ve already written that person off, right? Like if, if this is the first impression, I’m never going to give you money. And I think we have to be conscious of that, that every step in the relationship, it’s like a good sales letter where they’ll tell you that, okay, the headline has to get you to the subhead line and the sub headline has to get you to the lead and then the lead has to get you to the next sub headline. And it basically every step in the sales letter has to pull you down the page. Well that’s basically what’s happening in this relationship.

Everything that you do is designed to pull somebody further along in this relationship. And so if we drop the boat or drop, you know, drop the ball by not giving somebody something valuable up front, then we haven’t really held up our end of the bargain and they’re not going to give us that continue to time and attention that ultimately it shouldn’t be resulting in them coming clients. So, um, you know, I, I think things like, um, guides and um, and books and even like scorecards have been really, really effective. I’ve seen smaller PDFs, Oh, like checklists and various things do really well. If a, they were very specific or B, um, you know, they were just, uh, you know, high value. They weren’t just kind of this garbage little word document PDF thrown together. So you could actually hand somebody something. It needs to feel like something that somebody would say, you know what I mean? It doesn’t have to be worth $97, but somebody would say, you know what, I would’ve paid three or four or $5 for that.

Sure, yup. Yeah, totally. Like yeah, it’s something like with a checklist and like that like is it something they can use and reuse and have value on it and not like three ways to burn seven more calories. Right. Like it’s you’re like that’s a, I was looking, I’m like is that, is that a blog post or is that like a lead magnet? That’s kind of like my kind of filter on that stuff now. Um, one thing kind of like I look at too, cause I do tons of social media marketing is it’s almost how do we maybe not get them on the list yet, but we try to like move them across, move them along that path too. And I think sometimes people forget about that is we can still follow up with people, but ultimately we always want to get their, their details like their email so we can follow up and we’re in control of that asset. It’s an asset for us. But also looking at like, how do I get people to, you know, uh, follow me on a platform or how do I get more of my website so I can pixel them? Or how can I, you know, get some good video content. So like, you know, they watch a certain percentage, then we can be targeted on that. So it’s also looking at, we can almost them into groups and then kind of move them along to get to that lead magnet as well.

So also thinking about, you know, when we’re trying to gain more awareness, like how are we taking them one step closer, even if it’s not to that lead magnet so we can start to, you know, see their desire. If they watch, you know, we put out a two minute video and they watch 90% of it and it’s on nutrition, we know that, okay, this was a person who is highly interested in nutrition and maybe you want to a nutrition lead magnet. But also thinking about, you know, that little kind of micro-commitment or, or how do we collect them into groups so that we can continue to ascend them on their, it’s almost like I look at it again, relationships always. That’s kind of how my head works. So it’s almost like you, you’re a little bit too anxious and you’re like, Hey, we should go out sometime, we should go out for dinner. And they’re like, ah, yeah, well, and you’re like, Oh actually like, no, let’s just keep talking a little bit longer. So cause I kind rushed it a little bit and that’s why I think sometimes people give up on things because they, they pushed so much stuff out to an audience that doesn’t know them, that they think, okay, this doesn’t work. But it’s just like, well no, it’s just, it’s not working for where that audience is.

Yeah. There, I mean, um, I, I think there, there is the opportunity to follow up with somebody and get repetition in, I mean, if we think back, and this, I’m sure it goes well beyond most of the people listening a bit. Like when radio advertising was edits heyday, they would talk about, I’m just getting, you know, a number of impressions that, you know, getting repetition. So you’d want your ad heard at the same time over and over and over. Was somebody going to be listening at drive time? Well, that’s when the most, um, popular, most expensive ad spaces were. So you know, that’s all changed a little bit with satellite radio, but um, that repetition really matters. And so yeah, you can re-target somebody or pixel them and you’re, you’re able to stay in front of them repeatedly. Um, you know, I use email a lot, but I mean I do things like podcast, I do Instagram, we recycle a lot of what I write through various platforms. Really any platform that I’m on because I know that, yeah, maybe I get a certain open rate on email, but I’m going to bump the consumption of this content. Um, if I spread it over these other distribution channels.

And so ultimately I get the repetition and build the relationship over time. It’s funny when you say that like it’s, it’s glass half empty or half full. Like, Oh, only like 2% of my fans see my posts on Facebook. It’s like, well that sucks. Or no, like great. Like I can reuse that content six more times or a hundred more times over the next year to get in of people. Now I don’t have to make a whole bunch of, pardon my French shitty content is just make some really good content and try to get people as many of the people that follow you across everything, email, social media, all that stuff. Try to get everyone to see it as opposed to just kind of pumping out content just day after day after day and then getting frustrated and never, yeah, I do. Yeah. So, so I think that if, if we understand in the attract unit. That the goal is okay, how do I connect with my right person and make sure they understand that I can help them solve this problem. And, and you know, I try not to be over the top when I, when I think about that, um, because I think a lot of people make it this extreme thing or they talk about the avatar or whatever else.

But I mean, I think we all experienced this ourselves. Okay. If there’s something kind of nagging at you that you’re thinking about something that’s been on your mind a lot. Then you know, I mean, if that’s on somebody’s mind repeatedly, you want to be what’s popping up in front of him. And they were like, Oh, wait a minute, this person can help me or maybe they can help me and I’m willing to kind of dive in a little bit and learn more if we take that approach and then follow up with them ultimately wanting them to opt in, but at least following up with them in a way where we’re facilitating, um, they’re reading what what we have to say, listening to what we have to say, whatever mechanism you’re connecting with them on. And we do this over and over and over. Then when they are ready to buy, which we’ll get into that and the next episode and we talk about conversion stuff. Um, I mean they don’t have to shop around. They’re not choosing based on price. They’re choosing what they’re already comfortable with, which is what we all kind of default to, right? Like we go with the most comfortable option more often than we ever go with the cheapest option. So, um, we want to be that comfortable option that they trust, they feel good about and it’s just not as complicated as people make it.

But you know, in the business coaching I do, and there’s never a week that goes by that I’m not on the phone 15 or 20 different times with coaching clients. Invariably people will say, well, I get all that. I get all that. And so I’ve been running offers direct to a challenge on Facebook. I’m like, you know, I mean, it’s fine, but people SI or here about 7,000 marketing messages a day and you’re just not getting enough of their attention for them to make a great informed decision about a commitment that is pretty meaningful. I mean it’s a lot of time, it’s a decent amount of money, a lot of effort and lifestyle change on their part. It’s just tough to get somebody to do that while they’re scrolling through their phone, whether in line at Starbucks and especially too when we’re trying to get them to commit to something that sounds the exact same as typically five other gyms within a five mile radius of you too. So that’s definitely something to keep in mind too. Um, so I want to give something, I want to give something like some stuff that’s, they can kind of go in and take away right now. And I mean we could literally talk about this for ever, I think, no stopping it.

So here’s what I propose. I’m going to, I’m going to give a couple of little tips for some great like awareness or kind of call out stuff. Um, cause I think I kind of know a little bit about that. And then I think maybe if you can give a couple of tips or action items that people can go and use for their, um, you know, building up their list. Um, and then I think we could probably come to a wrap on this. So my kind of thing is video use video, everything’s shifting there. It’s an easy way to get people to get to know you a lot better. Um, so here’s, here’s kind of my thing. If you’re kind of afraid of video, you get someone to stand in front of you and and and hold the phone and just stare at the person. They hold it at their chest and do your videos like that. If you can’t find someone to actually film you, I know that sounds crazy, but put a picture of someone on the other side of your phone and stare at the picture of the person because it is super weird to talk to a phone cause not a human being. So I get that that’s uncomfortable. What to share or what to do. Just start off, pick three topics, three topics that have to do with you, your business, who you are and start to share those topics. If you’re super like uncomfortable with, Oh my gosh, I don’t know how to do video. Scott make one of the topics, client testimonial. So you’re standing there with another person and ask him that and then take two other topics. Try not to make the two topics, just fitness tips and nutrition tips. Maybe like, you know, we talked about Billy, maybe talk about, you know, family fitness or um, you know, you, you could talk about kinda anything, but just start to film some of that stuff and put that out there. So again, it’s not the cookie cutter stuff, it’s giving them a little bit more into who you are, what you do so they can connect to you. Because I know, I remember, I give the example of like, maybe you like bourbon, right? Maybe your, your name is, you know, Pat beef and you’re like bourbon. If, if you’re trying to find a trainer, right? And you love bourbon, you’re like, this is my guy. He’s gonna let me drink bourbon. Probably two. If not, at least we can talk about something I like when I do this atrocious thing called exercise that I hate. So don’t be afraid to share something that’s just outside of what you do. But that would be my tip. You’re, you’re afraid to kind of, you’re not putting up awareness stuff out there. You’re afraid to do video. Just start doing it. Make one video testimonials with your clients. That’s one of your topics. Pick two more topics. Just fill them. They only have to be short. Pick one single topic per, per video because it’s easy to remember one topic and just speak about that one topic. When you have like three or four tips you’re going to share, you typically just kind of work your way through and try to remember them as you. So just make it short, sweet to the point. That’s how people are going to consume that content. So that’s my, uh, take this, go do it straight after this episode. Tip for everyone. Well, that’s fun. I like that. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go with the, uh, I guess how to get people to opt in, how to give, get them to give a contact information. So the first one I’ve already talked about is writing a book. Um, and, and I get it, it feels super daunting. It feels, uh, overwhelming to a lot of people. I don’t know if I have any of my little books on the shelf over here or not. You can just give them away. Here’s the thing that you said before though, that it makes it to, to kind of maybe push someone over the edges is it’s hard and that means probably no one else in your market’s going to do it. That’s the stuff to do. That stuck with me when you said that ever since to just do this stuff that is hard to copy and someone can’t copy your book. Yeah. So you know the, but the idea here, yeah. Is I want to have a book because in the way our society works is, you know, they’re, I mean they’re like common phrases like he or she wrote the book on that implying that you have a great deal of knowledge on that subject.

So if you want to differentiate yourself, be an author, be the person who wrote the book on a particular topic, and if that book speaks very clearly to the person that you’re wanting to reach, right. It’s clear. The title talks about the problem they want to solve or the problem or the solution or or goal they want to, um, attain. You’re going to get their attention. And then yeah, if you’re holding it up in a video ad where the author is actually holding the book and they have a copy for them, you know, that’s pretty appealing. And what’s so great about books at this point is it’s just not that hard anymore. I mean, you can record an audio, you can have it transcribed and edit it and remember it doesn’t need to be worn piece it, it can be 75 pages of transcription, which is probably going to boil down to an hour and a half of audio recording. And you just edit it so that it reads like the written word, not the spoken word. And you’ve got a book on your particular topic. You can easily kind of smooth that out and just go down and outline. And maybe the book is the 10 most common questions or misconceptions about whatever it is, the problem you’re trying to solve. So a book would be number one and it’s a huge differentiator and there’s a huge drop off between one and two because the book is like the Swiss army knife. You can use it so many different ways. The second would be something of a guide, something that just provides valuable. We probably neutral information about a topic that somebody wants to learn more about, something they’re interested in. I mean it could be a guide on how to get an athletic scholarship. If you train athletes, it can be a guide on, um, I mean I’ve helped people create healthy dining guides for their local market. It can be a guide on pricing for fitness facilities in your local market because these are things that people actually are going to be looking for online. These are things people would Google, right? These are things that people would be trying to figure out. Like, I mean they would Google restaurants and look for paleo specific options or ketos specific options. They would look up, okay, well how do we, our kid is really good soccer player and he wants to play at the next level. Us as a parent, what do we need to know? What do we need to know about the NCA? What’s realistic? I mean, do people give full scholarships? How does all this work? Or you know, I mean it might be as simple as, I mean the common question that so many people get is, well, how much does it cost? So if all you did was create a local guide for, you know, 30 of the local fitness facilities and you just documented, Hey, here’s what’s on the website as far as the amenities, here’s what it costs.

You don’t have to persuade somebody with the lead magnet. You can persuade them in the follow up. A lot of people feel like they’ve got to sell them on that first contact. No, the, the first contact is just them raising their hand and identifying themselves. In fact, I can tell you when I was writing books, I wouldn’t get so caught up in the books. I mean, I got to figure out how to get them to consume it. I break it up, send it in emails and everything else too. The reality is I don’t necessarily know that they have to love being a reader. For me to help them solve the problem they want to solve. They just have to say, look, I want help with this thing. And if they do, then we’ve got a shot. So those are the two big ones that I would always start with a book or some sort of informational guide. Awesome. Yeah. And they’re, like you said, they’re not, we’re not as hard or as daunting as kind of people make it out to be. You can, you can get it done. Even a book without, um, you know, having to lock yourself away every weekend for two years, like a Stephen King or something.

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.