Fitness Business Owner Of The Month – January 2012

January 29, 2012 By admin 6 Comments

A fitness business owner success story by Pat Rigsby

greg Fitness Business Owner Of The Month – January 2012

Each month here at FBI we’re going to start recognizing a Fitness Business Owner of the Month. We hope to not only recognize fitness entrepreneurs for their successes but also to inspire other fitness pros to move forward in their business endeavors.

The winner will not only get a public ‘pat on the back’ in the form of a post like this, but they’ll also receive a 1 hour coaching call, free admission to the live event of their choice and a product of their choice from what we offer here at FBI.

Grow Your Fitness Business In 5 Simple Steps

January 18, 2012 By admin 8 Comments

A post on how to grow your fitness business by Pat Rigsby

There are hundreds of ways to grow your fitness business and we touch on plenty of them here at the Fit Business Insider. But sometimes when you want to get more clients, generate more referrals or increase your income it really boils down to taking action instead of just knowing what to do.

So with that in mind I wanted to help you grow your fitness business today by getting you to take action.

24 Productivity Tips For The Fitness Business Owner

January 9, 2012 By admin 4 Comments

A Post On Productivity For a Fitness Business Owner by Pat Rigsby

Like you, I’ve got a lot going on. We’ve got a number of rapidly growing businesses that I play a significant role in. I have a wonderful family that I am committed to spending quality time with. I have personal goals and things I enjoy that I need to have time for.

Because of those things I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient, more productive, and to make my time more valuable. So here are 24 productivity tips for the Fitness Business Owner that I think you’ll get al lot out of.

Plan your day ahead – I prefer planning it the night before.

Always work from a list. You should actually have different lists for different purposes. A ‘Goals’ list is for your big picture objectives. Your monthly list is a list you make at the end of the month for the month ahead. Your weekly list is for the upcoming week and your daily list is your weekly list broken down into daily tasks.

Planning a project will likely cut the time spent on the project by at least half. List every step from start to finish, organize by priority and sequence.

By now you know the 80/20 rule- 20% of actions account for 80% of results. With that in mind, get your most important stuff done first.

Think long term. Before starting a task or activity – determine what the long term benefits / consequences will be.

Set big goals. Be clear on them. It will make all your short term decisions much easier. Things either line up with your goals or not. If they do – act. If they don’t – omit.

Be willing to delay gratification and make short term sacrifices so you can enjoy greater rewards in the long term. Every successful person I know has taken that approach.

Average people do what gives them short term gratification. Great ones do what it takes to achieve long term goals even if it’s not as easy or fun in the short term.

Time is going to pass whether you use it to move closer to your goals or farther away. Only you get to decide how you use that time and where you want to be in the future.

Think about the consequences of your actions and behaviors. If you do that you’ll usually take the steps necessary to get where you want to go while those who ignore the ramifications of what they do won’t.

Review your list of tasks and projects regularly.

There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do. – What are my highest value activities? What can you and only you do, that if done well, will make a real difference? What is the most valuable use of your time, right now?

The things that matter most must never be skipped over for the things that matter least.

Continuous learning is a must for success. Make time for it. The need to grow and improve never ends.

Take responsibility and know that you and only you are the deciding factor in achieving your goals.

There is never the perfect time to get started, so start now.

Challenges are there to weed out the average. Keep that in mind when you encounter them.

One of the most powerful words in time management is NO! – You have no spare time, say no early and often to everything that isn’t high value.

If you don’t schedule it – that means you don’t see value in it.

Adding something new to your plate requires you to stop doing something old.

Do the most difficult task first, start it first thing in the morning.

Use time blocks. 25-50 minutes of no email, no phone, no distractions will get you to your goals faster than 8 hours of a normal workday.

Make every minute count. – Create a sense of urgency, an impatience that motivates you to get started.

Focus on getting things done now. Successful people get more done – and as you know…You Get Paid For Done!

There are 24 tips that have helped me and that I think will help you or any fitness business owner. If you have more to share – please add them below.

Filed Under: fitness business, Fitness Business Success, Fitness Entrepreneur, Personal Training Success Tagged With: Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Fitness Business, fitness entrepreneur, pat rigsby, productivity, time

My Best Fitness Business Building Tip

January 4, 2012 By admin 2 Comments

Fitness Business Building By Pat Rigsby

I had a coaching call with a fitness pro the other day and I gave him some advice that I consider to be the best advice that I can give someone – but it comes with a disclaimer: it is also advice that I’m hesitant to give because it could potentially give someone the idea that they don’t have to ‘do the work’ – which obviously goes against everything that we teach.
So the advice that I gave him and that I’m going to give you now is this:

Determine your strengths – then build your fitness business around them.

So let me back up for a minute…

The fitness pro I was talking with already runs a strong business and has enjoyed some success in his marketing efforts. He told me that he knew that I was a fan of public speaking and networking but he hadn’t really done much with either of those marketing tactics. Instead of telling him that he needed to dive right into those two – because they are two of the most powerful ways available to any fitness pro to grow their business…I surprised him and told him not to do either of them.

Did my thoughts about public speaking or networking change? Of course not.

But after talking with him a bit and discovering that he had some other real strengths that he could leverage to generate more clients – and would clearly enjoy more – it was obvious that the best solution for him wasn’t going the networking and public speaking route.

He needed to play to his strengths.

So why is this scary for me to give this advice?

Because given to the wrong person, it can be misconstrued as a free pass to be lazy.

This particular fitness pro has already used social media and his writing skills successfully to grow his business. Suggesting more ways for him to leverage his use of social media and his writing talents even more makes sense – because he’s already proven that it has success for him.

But put that same advice in the wrong hands and you get a situation where someone who’s never proven that they can write worth a damn and haven’t had any success with social media now think they don’t have to ever get out from behind their computer to build a six-figure business.

In fact, back in our old Personal Trainer U. days there was a guy on the forum that did just that…he got on the forum and whined about how he’d written 3 articles and submitted them to article directories, put up a couple blog posts – and he didn’t have any clients to show for it. The economy was to blame. There was no way that trainers could be successful right now.

My response was simple: “How many prospects are in your home office right now? If the answer is *zero* – then get off your ass and go where they are.”

Needless to say – he didn’t post anymore.

But that’s my fear when dispensing this advice – people mistaking their strengths for what’s just easiest.

But I’ve believed that this approach was the best way to go for quite a while.

When I was coaching baseball, it took me a couple years to quit trying to be a clone of the coach that I admired most. My strengths were different than his. Once I realized that, I became a much better coach and our teams got much better.

I followed this same approach when it came to dealing with our opponents too – instead of worrying about detailed scouting reports and trying to exploit opponents weaknesses, I wanted our players to focus exclusively on playing to their strengths.

Heck – we’ve built an entire franchise around this approach. Allowing fitness professionals to play to their own individual strengths instead of trying to churn out cookie cutter businesses.

Now you may not think that this advice is anything special – but here’s why it is…

Once you determine your strengths, buy going all in and leveraging them to the maximum you’ve done 3 things:

You’ve separated yourself from everyone else because you’re playing to your unique talents, assets, passions and skills.
You just made running your business a lot more fun because you can focus more on doing what you’re best at – and feel confident that it’s a good choice.
You just set out on the fastest route I know to build a powerhouse business.

Another way of putting this is ‘doing more of what’s working.’ Seems simple, right?

Well, most people don’t do it. They jump from one thing they’ve had some success with to something else that requires completely different talents or skills instead of finding more ways to utilize the strengths that led to the successes they’ve had.

To use our business as an example – one of our strengths is relationships. Really, everything that we’ve built has been founded on building relationships with fitness professionals and trying to provide the best solutions they need to build the Fitness Business they want.

So one we recognized that relationships were at the core of our business, we started to do things like:

Hold more live events to spend more time in person with the fitness pros we serve.
Do more coaching calls so we can learn more about the people we work with and how we can most effectively help them.
Create a Customer Experience position on our team so we could make sure that we’re providing the best possible service to the people who trust us to help them grow their business.
Build franchises so we could have a family-like relationship with a select group of fitness pros who shared the same values we do and what to work with us as closely as possible.

There are plenty of other examples, but you get the picture.

So how can you leverage your strengths to build your fitness business?

If you’re a relationship person, do more networking. Focus more on referrals. Create more complete solutions for the people that you already work with. Build a community in your business so strong that it attracts the type of clients you want more of.

If you’re great at writing, make sure you’ve got great copy on your site. Blog like crazy. Guest blog for local bloggers. Write a column for the local paper. Build out dozens of autoresponders. Send press releases every week. Send a great weekly newsletter. Write free special reports that you can get in the hands of prospects. Write direct mail sequences to send out in your area.

And that’s not even beginning to touch on how you can leverage your strengths as a coach to own a particular niche market.

So your goal should be this:

Figure out what your real strengths are. The things that you’ve proven that you’re better than the rest at – the things you’ve done well to grow your business. The things that you not only enjoy doing – but that produce results.

Once you’ve determined those strengths – figure out as many ways as you can to start leveraging them to build the business you want…and start implementing those ideas.

That’s how you can build a great fitness business that you’ll love owning.

Filed Under: fitness business, Fitness Business Success, Fitness Entrepreneur, Personal Training Business Tagged With: Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Fitness Business, Fitness Professionals, personal training sales

Tips From 2011 To Grow Your Fitness Business in 2012

January 1, 2012 By admin 3 Comments

A Fitness Business Building Post By Pat Rigsby

dreamstime xs 22564951 Tips From 2011 To Grow Your Fitness Business in 2012

I want to make sure you’re starting off the New Year right – in the right frame of mind, armed with the right information to be successful in growing your fitness business. So I’ve put together several of the most valuable, content packed posts that you can go back and review to make sure your stage is set to make 2012 your best year yet. Enjoy!

Large Group Personal Training – Vs – Bootcamps…What’s The Difference?

December 13, 2011 By admin 15 Comments

A Guest Post On Large Group Personal Training By Steve Long

Mastermind Member, Fitness Revolution & Athletic Revolution franchisee Steve Long just put together a great guest post on the differences between bootcamp and group personal training. If you train in any type of group environment – this is for you. Thanks Steve!

The other day I was invited by someone to attend a bootcamp that they had been doing. I gladly accepted the invitation because I saw that this could be a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about what is out there, and maybe have a little fun in the process.

Now as someone who has been running “bootcamps” for over 2 years and doing personal training for 8 plus years I know a little bit about how to execute group training. I’ve never actually attended a bootcamp before I started my bootcamp, but I’ve heard plenty about other bootcamps and I wanted to experience the difference between the norm and what I was calling bootcamp. This process has led me to consider not calling my bootcamp by that name any longer. Here is why.

Bootcamp

My alarm goes off at 5 AM to wake me up for the workout, which is no biggie for me, I’m used to it. Although, I would have rather done an afternoon workout, I can understand that a lot of people like to get their workouts in early so I was glad to join this group of go-getters for an early workout.

I show up early at the freezing cold park where the workout takes place to meet the instructor and fill out some paperwork. I understand paperwork is completely necessary to get to know your clients. I realized quickly however that I could’ve just slept in an extra 15 minutes because the instructor didn’t get there until about 5 minutes prior to the workout beginning. The instructor gave me a sheet of paper to fill out. Contact info, how I heard of the bootcamp, and if I’d had a heart attack lately were the depth of these questions. I was a little upset to see that after I gave the instructor the sheet of paper I had just filled out he just said thank you and put it in pile along with the other new peoples sheets. He didn’t even look at it. What was the point of the health history if you aren’t going to look at it, but oh well; I’m healthy, so lets move on.

By this time I’m already a little skeptical, but willing to put it aside to get a good workout on. Ugh, I’ll make this quick. The workout consisted of the following:

1. Running laps around the park for 10 minutes
2. Forming a line and doing random amounts of pushups, burpees, jumping jacks, squats, and lunges. I love all of those exercises, but the programming left a lot to be desired.
3. Running laps and taking breaks to do more jumping jacks, jumping on park benches, more pushups, and more burpees.
4. We finally ended with about 20,000 sit-ups, crunches, and more mountain climbers.

Even better yet, I had a non certified trainer who was a drill sergeant want to be, yelling at me the entire time telling me to work harder. Naturally when I started getting too tired to do the some of the exercises in good form I dropped down to an easier regression of the exercise. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get hurt, but that’s a no go in this bootcamp. Work hard and do what everyone else is doing in bad form maggot! That’s what it takes to get results. Sure, if the results you are looking for is bad posture and injury. This guy either didn’t know what good form was, or just didn’t care.

To give the bootcamp some credit however, everyone was working his or her butt off, and it was really cheap.

Group Personal Training

Leaving that bootcamp made me realize that I had to write this article. I had to let people know there is a better way to train large groups, but still get people to work hard, and work smart at the same time. I’ve been working hard over the last few years with some of the best in the industry like BJ Gaddour, Mike Robertson, Jared Woolever, Pat Rigsby, the people at FMS, and many others and have found a better way to train groups.

So what is the difference between “bootcamp” and group personal training? It’s huge. Lets begin.

Assessments: Having someone fill out a piece of paper and throw it into a pile without looking at it is a disgrace. Group personal trainers require some sort of screen or assessment. I currently use the FMS screen to make sure I know what’s going on with my client’s bodies. I will also go over the client’s health history and goals with them to make sure we know exactly what they want and exactly what they need.

Typically Inside: Workouts don’t have to be inside to be good, but it sure is nice. It also allows you to be able to have access to lots of strength training equipment, which is essential in a well-rounded training program.

Exercise Progressions: Everyone is different and everyone has different needs. If you aren’t going to do an assessment (which is crazy) you at least need to have different levels of difficulty for each exercise. At the bootcamp I tried to regress, but was yelled at. In group PT you are praised for being smart if you drop down. It’s about working as hard as you can at the appropriate level for your body.

Certified Personal Trainers: If someone who can’t put in the effort to get certified is training you please run as fast as you can away from that bootcamp.

Well Thought Out Programs: Random workouts that change by the minute may be fun, but if you want a real program that produces results it should follow some sort of training guidelines. You get results by learning exercises and tracking your progress. If you are just doing random exercises you will get random results. Programs should be based on your needs to get you the results you are looking for. How is a random workout going to give the 50 different people in the bootcamp the same results when each person is different?

Less People in the Workout: One coach can’t train 50+ people well. Indoor group PT typically has less people to make sure the coach can correct your form so you can improve.

Nutrition Intervention: I know a lot of group personal trainers and almost all of them include some sort of nutrition information or nutrition counseling in their programs. If nutrition is forgotten in your bootcamp, forget that bootcamp.

All of the Benefits of Bootcamp Without All of the Negatives: Outdoor bootcamps can be fun, low cost, and provide group support. That is the draw of bootcamps in the first place. Group PT offers all of these benefits without any of the drawbacks that I discussed above.

This article has been a long time coming. Anyone who knows me understands my strong dislike for generic crap training like the bootcamp I attended. It’s my mission in life to increase the quality of group training in America. I hope this article will make a small splash in that happening. I know the readers of this blog will understand the importance, so if you know anyone that may like this article please share it with them. If each person who reads this makes a vow to increase the quality of his or her bootcamps and/or group training I know I’ve begun to make the difference I’m trying so hard to make. Thank your for reading and for going the extra mile to do what is right.

Steve Long

Filed Under: Bootcamps, fitness business, Fitness Business Success, Personal Training Business Tagged With: Boot Camps, fitness bootcamp business, Fitness Business, Personal Training

Running Your Fitness Business Like Disney

November 30, 2011 By admin 3 Comments

A Post On Running A Fitness Business By Pat Rigsby

disney Running Your Fitness Business Like Disney

I just returned from our annual trip to Disney World and, as usual, I’m enamored with how well they do everything. While I obviously am focused on family and fun during these trips, I can’t help but notice how well they operate their business and any number of lessons any fitness business, big or small, could apply to what they do.

You Sell Experience and Experience Sells You – Disney World isn’t known for the tallest or fastest roller coasters, but the theme and the experience they wrap around the coasters they have are what separates them from the rest. It’s really that way with everything they do, from having popular characters in many of the restaurants for visits and pictures to offering ‘Fast Passes’ so you can circumvent long lines to enjoy your favorite rides.

Disney works tirelessly to maximize the guest’s experience – and it’s easily their best selling tool. From what I’ve read, over 80% of guests return – and that’s at a pretty steep price tag. Outside of return visitors, their best source of traffic is referrals – again, based on the experience they provide.

Your Fitness Business Takeaway: Focus on making the experience your clients have with your business stand above the rest. Remember, they probably aren’t experts in your craft so differentiating you solely by your skill as a professional isn’t enough. You need to find ways to make certain that they have a more enjoyable time with you than they could with any other trainer. Your rewards will be better retention and many more referrals.

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Filed Under: fitness business, Fitness Business Success Tagged With: Fitness Business

101 Fitness Business Tips

November 21, 2011 By admin 15 Comments

Fitness Business Tips By Pat Rigsby

With Thanksgiving coming in just a couple of days I wanted to start off by say Thank You for being part of the FBI Community. Nick, myself, all of our Team Members and our families are thankful that you choose us to help you build the type of fitness business you want.

I’ll be enjoying the week with my family at Disney World, but before I headed off I wanted to give you some fitness business tips that I think you’ll not only enjoy but will dramatically improve your business if you apply them.

So read the list through. Then read it again. Print it and post it in your office, because if you put these into action I can guarantee you’ll enjoy the results.

Here are your 101 Fitness Business Tips:

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Filed Under: Fitness Business Success Tagged With: fitness business tips

6 Fit Business Secrets To Success

November 15, 2011 By admin 3 Comments

Everyone loves lists of secrets or tips – me included. They’re bite-size things that you can implement and immediately see benefits from. So here are 6 of my favorite Fit Business Secrets that you can put into immediate action.

Fit Business Secrets

dreamstime xs 20109974 6 Fit Business Secrets To Success

Fit Business Secret #1 - To maximize the success of your business you need to have your 5 Pillars in place:

Pillar #1 – Lead Generation – You need to have lead sources in place that are effective enough that they provide you a minimum of twice as many leads per month as you need to need to convert into clients to reach your financial goals.

My recommendations are that you need a minimum of two external lead sources and two internal lead sources going each month as the basis of your fitness marketing plan.

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Filed Under: Fitness Business Success Tagged With: fit business secrets, Fitness Business

Fitness Pros – A Tip for Time Management

October 31, 2011 By admin 8 Comments

A few years ago I read a story about time management, and I thought It would help many of you fitness pros. It went something like this:

dreamstime xs 15013497 Fitness Pros A Tip for Time Management

A professor stood in front of a class told his students to prepare for a pop quiz about time management. He then proceeded to pull out a big jar and place it on his desk.

He then gently placed about a dozen large rocks into the jar one by one.

When he ran out of space in the jar to place any more rocks inside he asked the class: ‘is the jar full?’

Every student in the class said, “Yes.”

The professor said ‘are you certain?’ The then lifted a small bucket of gravel and poured some of the gravel into the jar. He shook the jar a bit so the gravel could settle.

Again he asked the class ‘is the jar full?’