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Welcome to The Figuring It Out Podcast.
At 22, I took the plunge to go on the entrepreneurial journey and start a fitness business, 7 years later I’d been the nutritionist for 2 elite sports clubs and private coach to some of the worlds best sportsmen and women.
Now it’s my mission to show fitness coaches how you can put yourself in a league of their own, become the go to coach, and finally eliminate the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that's holding you back from building the business of your dreams.
This podcast will help you figure out how to thrive and conquer the fear that comes with the lonely entrepreneurial journey.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's gonna be nice, short, quick, and simple one today. And it's gonna be one that will really help you if you're kinda struggling to sign clients up at the moment. I think that when you when you kinda go through a period of it just feeling harder to sign up clients, It's not necessarily just the financial impact that it can, you know, almost kinda have on us. I think mentally we can start to lose a little bit of confidence.
Speaker 1:We can start to almost kind of worry and panic and feel, is this going to be permanent? I think that's the main worry that when we go through just a little bit of a shorter patch or maybe even a prolonged patch of it feeling dry, it feeling harder and harder to sign people up. Maybe you've gone a month, couple of months without signing people up. Your mind starts to almost kind of like feel and think that it's going to be permanent. And that can be really scary, when all of our income is solely centered around, our business and signing clients up.
Speaker 1:But today's gonna really help you if you're in this situation because it might have felt harder and harder to sign people up more recently. And I think that the reality of it is that it is harder to sign people up now, especially if you're looking to market your business online. The beauty of marketing online and selling online is that it's kinda unlimited as to the number of people that you can actually be exposed to, But also, it's kinda unlimited as to the geography as to where people are. You know, that I remember during COVID, my main problem was that, just before COVID, whole business was in person. So the only people that I could work with were people in Birmingham, which also meant in terms of marketing, like marketing online from a social media point of view, the only people I could market to were people in Birmingham.
Speaker 1:Whereas now being completely online, like I'm in Bali right now, and I can market to anyone in the world and work with anyone in the world, which is the beauty of, being able to sell and market online. But I think we also need to look at the reality of it in the sense of the reality is that it has become harder to sign people up online. Why is that? I think that there's many a reason, and I'm not gonna go fully into those because I actually wanna use today's episode mainly as actually a cure and an action that you can take if you are struggling to sign new people up. And the way that I almost kinda wanna teach this as always is in a story and kind of a story of an example of what happened to me yesterday.
Speaker 1:So it was really interesting. Yesterday, was just walking down the road and, you know, we're in we're in Bali and I was walking towards a cafe to go and meet Alice for, for some breakfast. And this woman came up to me. So she was a local, she was on the side, she was homeless, and she was begging for money. And she came straight up to me and just walked up to me with like her handout going, can I have some money?
Speaker 1:And I was just like, no. Go away. No. And and the reason for that wasn't necessarily because like I'm cold hearted or because I'm not going to help those in need like I do. But it's because I don't know this person whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Now how can this help you specifically? Well, just stick with me here because the way that this can help you specifically is that in a different situation, if I'd have got to know this person. So let's say that instead of this person immediately asking for some money, I. Their first encounter of me is almost like, can I have this from you? But they actually spent a portion of time getting to know me, and I had a portion of time getting to know them.
Speaker 1:And off the back of that, let's say that we then had a conversation for a half an hour. Then let's say that the following day I walked to the same cafe which I do. We then had another encounter. Then the following day after that we had another encounter and a little conversation. We built up a relationship a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1:And then she then said to me, she said, look, you know, I've really got to know you. I've really got to kinda trust you. And I just thought I'd like let you know my situation right now that, as you know, we've spoken about how I have kids, about how, you know, I love to do this, this, this, and this. But right now I'm completely broke. I have no money whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And I was wondering, you know, would it be possible to potentially, you know, have some money from you to really help me and my kids out? Now, I know that's a little bit of an extreme example, but I am far more likely to give that person money off the back of the relationship that we've then built. Now, I then almost come back to another like situation. You'll understand specifically how this can really help you if you really kinda listen to what I'm saying. So another example of this was yesterday.
Speaker 1:I... I've been playing paddle on a weekly basis. Well, actually almost daily. Like, I absolutely love it love it. And it's such a great opportunity to meet people.
Speaker 1:And basically yesterday, I played paddle with a guy who I also had played with on Saturday. So basically, it was the second time in which I'd kinda played with him. You can do almost kind of like these open matches where you just like click on, you go, I'm gonna play today, and you just get paired with a load of randomers. And basically on Saturday, like I was playing in a tournament, and on this tournament, you you basically get like paired with a bunch of randomers. And there was this guy called Matt who I played on Saturday and we had a little bit of an interaction.
Speaker 1:We're having a chat, kinda got to know him. He actually like... He's from The UK. He was only down the down the road from where I live, which was really quite cool. But effectively, like after our first encounter on Saturday, nothing really kinda came of it.
Speaker 1:But then yesterday, which was Tuesday, I then played again and I played with him. And I got to know him even deeper. I got to learn about what he does from a work point of view. I got to learn about him personally. We had a joke.
Speaker 1:We had a laugh. And at the end of that, he then goes, oh, mate, give me your number. Because basically, there's like... There's five of others as well who are out here. We all run a business.
Speaker 1:Five lads. We're actually going out for dinner tonight if you wanna come with us. And also we're going we're going away for the weekend. We've hired a villa and we're gonna go white water rafting. Like, did you wanna come with us?
Speaker 1:Now my point is that that came off the back of the second encounter. That came... That invitation came off the back of a deeper relationship with myself. So the point is that like what we almost can kind of do is that we can really kinda come in with the ask really early. And I think that like what a lot of coaches are really kind of missing out on is the skill of patience.
Speaker 1:And having that patience and looking at it from a case of that like we are in the relationships business. As coaches, as marketers growing our business, our sole job is to deepen the relationship with us. Whereas what we do is we come in with the ask far too quickly and with the expectation far too quickly of making a sale. Whereas our job is to build up a relationship with someone where the sale becomes inevitable because they have built a relationship up with us, where they really like us, where they then trust us and they want to explore that relationship further. Think about dating that like, you know, and I'm gonna be quite stereotypical here, but think about being a bloke going into a bar.
Speaker 1:Like if I just walk up to someone in a bar and go, do you wanna sleep with me tonight? Automatically it's like go away. Go away you creep. Whereas what do I actually need to do to deepen a relationship with this person and potentially have them become my partner, in the long run? I need to actually like have a conversation with them, learn about them, get to know them, find some common ground, and actually just be a real normal person.
Speaker 1:And then eventually go like, hey, do you wanna explore this relationship deeper? Do wanna come out for dinner with me? Then we go out for dinner, we get to know each other even deeper, and then off the back of that, it's then like, oh, hey, do wanna go out for dinner with me again? Then it's like, oh, do you wanna go away for the weekend? Then do you wanna be my girlfriend?
Speaker 1:Then do you wanna live with me? Then do you wanna marry me? Then do you wanna have kids with me? And we need to follow that same path. But the problem is that like we've almost kind of lost this art of patience and this art of building a deep relationship with someone.
Speaker 1:And this also has a profound impact on the types of clients that you then, that you then attract to you. One of the main reasons as to why we can have problems from a retention point of view is because we're actually attracting the wrong types of people. I've noticed that with my business that when the the actual sales cycle has been significantly shorter, when someone has gone from knowing me to buying from me really really quickly, they've actually only stayed with me for a short duration of time. Whereas the ones who have taken a longer period of time to eventually become a customer have then actually stayed with me for a long time. And I always remember hearing Dan Kennedy say that like I'm in the relationships business and my job is to make the match, get the match right from the start.
Speaker 1:And the way that we get the match right from the start is by building up a deeper relationship with this person. Think about those business mentors that you really hate who are pestering you all of the time. Why do you hate them? You hate them because they swoop into your DMs and immediately almost kind of like ask for the sale or do you wanna jump on a call or do you want this? Like, and automatically it's like, woah.
Speaker 1:They're acting like the person in a bar who's standing there and then has a complete stranger come up to them and be like, hey, do you wanna sleep with me? And you're like, what? Go away with me. At least buy me dinner first. So my my task to you is ask yourself the question, am I being impatient?
Speaker 1:Like am I being impatient? And actually can I lengthen the time in which it takes for someone to become a customer and can I do that by building a deeper relationship with people? Because I promise you, if you just spent the next year building a solid solid solid relationship with 40 people. 40 people and you're charging £200 a month. Remember, 40 people at £200 a month staying with you for twelve months is £96,000 over a year.
Speaker 1:K? That's that's that's that's more than any of the money that you'll ever need to run a more than successful coaching business. So if you just spent the next year solely focusing on how can I build a deeper relationship with 40 people that I genuinely connect with and I want to really kind of position myself as someone of value to them, someone who is useful to them, I promise you you will not have a problem whatsoever? And how do you do that? Through the art of patience.
Speaker 1:So ask yourself the question, am I being impatient? And again, how you do anything is how you do everything. So if you wanna build up your patience muscle in your business, build up your patience muscle in your life. Think about it with your clients when it comes to the way in which that they can be impatient around their results. You get really frustrated with them because you're like, look, mate, like be a little bit more patient.
Speaker 1:Operate with the same patience that you have with your business. And also just with other things within your life, catch yourself out. Ask yourself the question, where am I potentially being impatient and how could I potentially be more patient? Because I promise you, if you can have patience and you can have depth, you will never have a problem from a business point of view. Never forget, if every one of your clients gave you just one new client, you've doubled your business.