The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
The Lost Art of Local Fitness Marketing
What if everything you've been told about building a successful fitness business is wrong? In this eye-opening conversation with Paul Waters, a 25-year veteran of the health and fitness industry, we challenge the conventional wisdom that bigger always means better.
Paul's journey begins with his unexpected thrust into self-employment as a young personal trainer who quickly built a thriving business with over 100 clients. Despite financial success, the 16-hour workdays led to burnout and a crucial realization: the lifestyle he was promoting to clients wasn't one he could sustain himself. This insight planted the seeds for what would eventually become "Balance" - a business structured entirely around personal values rather than growth metrics.
After years in the corporate fitness world, where he helped develop educational programs reaching thousands of fitness professionals, Paul found himself missing entrepreneurship's creative freedom and accountability. "I missed the fear," he confesses. "I like being scared going, 'Oh God, I've got to pay some rent next week.'" This drive propelled him back into self-employment, but with a transformed perspective on what constitutes success.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Paul reveals how he and his partner identified their five core values - time, nature, family, social connection, and health - and restructured their business to honor these priorities. Their approach challenges the "growth or die" mentality pervasive in business culture. "For us, we judge success by our values," Paul explains, not by traditional metrics like revenue or client numbers.
Perhaps most compelling is Paul's recent pivot away from digital marketing back to community-based promotion. While the fitness industry rushed toward online offerings during the pandemic, Paul and his partner discovered greater fulfillment and success through local engagement. Their innovative service model, offering clients flexible access to multiple wellness modalities, demonstrates how values-aligned business models can thrive without chasing scale.
Whether you're a fitness professional questioning your business direction or an entrepreneur seeking sustainable success, this conversation offers valuable perspective on building a business that supports your ideal lifestyle while making a meaningful difference in clients' lives.
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I missed the freedom of self-employment. I missed the fear. I like it. I like being scared going oh God, I've got to pay. I've got to pay some rent next year a week, I've got to pay some bills.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to the Fit to Grit cast where we sit down and talk through all those visionary ideas that come to us during our normal daily gym break. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and I have a special guest today, paul Paul, why don't?
Speaker 1:you tell everyone a little bit about yourself. Just get right into it, tell everyone a little bit about your story and we'll kind of go from there. Hi there, zach, thanks for having me on. Yeah, I am Paul Waters. I have been in the fitness industry or fitness and health and wellbeing industry, or however you want to term it these days for nearly 25 years I think 24th year this year, um, and I've done all sorts of stuff, uh, which is part of the fun, really part of the journey, right from a very, very lowly paid gym instructor on a very small wage, uh, right through to sort of running my own business for the past 10, 11 years. And again, in simple terms, it does all sorts of stuff. I do everything from health screening to one-to-one personal training for people with medical conditions, to teaching people and training people through fitness and personal trainer qualifications and courses, through to consultancy work for education companies, creating courses and assessments for them, do some corporate wellbeing stuff, seminars, workshops, events I like variety.
Speaker 2:That's a visionary thing. By the way, that's a true indicator of a CEO slash someone who's has all the ideas right and likes change. It's also part of being an entrepreneur. I think we all like to make change. It's just understanding when and how to, and if you can make those, make those pivots and changes in the business. Why don't you tell everyone a little bit about the pivotal point? When you first started your, your, your brand, started your business, what was the deciding factor? What in your life, like, got you to the point where you were? Like, you know, I'm just going to go out and do this on my own.
Speaker 1:It's probably a couple of times really, cause I've I've run a couple of businesses and then the first time sort of been drawn back into the employment world and then gone back out again.
Speaker 1:The first time really got a job as a gym instructor, like I'd said, um, and after not a very long period of time was made redundant when the gym announced that they were closing. And that was right back at the start of the the 21st century, when the the trend was just coming in for self-employed personal trainers in gym spaces. So never really been done before and it was right at the start of that trend. I got offered a couple of employed jobs that sort of paid okay and looked quite promising and gave a nice little pension. But then I got offered this opportunity to go and run my own PT business, much earlier than I ever thought I would, out of a big gym just on the edge of Birmingham, the old Fitness First chain, and they had five and a half thousand members and not many personal trainers in there and I thought this looks like fun, had a chat with my parents and my dad kind of said is there any money in?
Speaker 1:this and I said I don't know, but I'm quite excited to find out and also quite excited to do something that I just really want to do and really excites me. And I said if it doesn't work I've been offered a couple of jobs I could probably go and get another one. If it doesn't go so well, and within three months of going self-employed in there I think I had 106 clients on my books and I was working 16 hour days Monday to Friday, 12 hour day on Saturday and the odd few hours on Sunday just to really keep going. Basically it was a lot of PT and I kind of realized very, very quickly that I was getting paid to do something that I loved rather than having a job, if that makes sense and it was. It was just bloody brilliant really. It was exhausting, don't get me wrong, and sort of a few years down the line I realized it was too much and it was too intense. Too many hours, uh, sort of burning the candle at both ends and sort of getting to the point where you're not really living and reflecting the lifestyle that you wanted for for your clientele.
Speaker 1:Um, but I built the business as quite a young person, early 20s, just out of uni and had lots of energy and it was called Motivate and it was all about sort of pushing people on and encouraging people. But I learned quite a lot along the way about how hard to push people. When we'd been trained as personal trainers, we'd sort of been trained to don't smash people. Really it was all about interval training and pushing them to failure the words we use quite a lot and I learned quite often. I remember one client very early doors doing a session like that and him texting me the next day on a proper old phone saying I couldn't go to work today because I couldn't move, and me thinking, as much as we've been taught this, this doesn't seem like the right way to necessarily do this for everyone. And so I've got this idea in my head for a business that was more about well-being and this really holistic approach to stuff and I came up with a name for it and some logos and some strap line pieces and it sort of festered away in the background and then I ended up moving away from the self-employed piece, getting sort of invited back into the, the fitness and well-being world for some really exciting jobs. Firstly, in the hospitals doing some sort of medical health screening type stuff in private medical world, then into education and becoming a teacher, training others to be pts and then sort of gradually progressing my way through through that business, which was the biggest training provider in the uk at the time.
Speaker 1:Um, until eventually I was in charge of the courses and the qualifications that that we created and delivered and I think we put one year I think we put 11 000 learners in in the active leisure leisure sector, as we called it through and I loved all that stuff and I loved how much when I was a PT and I was helping 1,500 clients, it was great. And then when I was a tutor helping 20 PTs, helping 50 clients each, I was like this is amazing, because I can help 1,000 people if this course is good. And then when I was a senior tutor and I was helping six tutors help 20 people each, and then when I was curriculum manager and we had 160 tutors and trainers helping 11,000 learners a year, I realized that my reach for the courses and their impact was in the millions. Really we could change millions of lives if those courses were any good and that gave me a massive buzz.
Speaker 1:But at the same time I missed the freedom of self-employment. I missed the fear. I like it. I like being scared going oh God, I've got to pay some rent next week, I've got to pay some bills, best get some new clients on board, best get a new project over the line. And I missed that excitement of really, if it works, it's you, and if it doesn't work, it's you. And so at the time, the education company I was there's some other stuff in there the lady who worked for me at the time I was actually in a relationship with and it's quite claustrophobic for us. We work together, live together, et cetera. And so I decided to just. Some other things happened at work and I thought, oh, it's not going the way I really want it to go now. And so I just decided to take the leap and go back to self-employment and pull back that idea that I'd had 10 years before for this sort of well-being based approach. And that's when Balance was born and I've been doing that for 11 years.
Speaker 2:Last month, and it's great. So I want to go back a little bit here, because there's two things that I think that you learned in it. Yes, there's nothing wrong with going back to, of course, going back to the corporate world if you feel like a business failed. I mean, they always say, hey, if a business isn't working for you or something's going on, then you kind of have to either find out what's not working and fix it, and or go a whole different direction. And you know, it sounds to me. Sounds to me it just didn't live up to the values. You got to a point where, like, I love doing this, but still you're working 16 hour days, which shows that you know. You were at a point where, hey, it doesn't matter how much you love something Like balance is still key, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:absolutely. And balance, like you said, was the name that I'd come up with for this other business, and I wasn't kind of living the values that I wanted that to really reflect. I was living the values of a sort of 25-year-old smashing it out, pushing it hard. Don't get me wrong. It earned good money, early doors and that helped me in life. It's not a long-term sustainable thing. You can see why the industry suffers really with burnout and people doing a couple of years and then getting out of it and then partly there were just other things.
Speaker 1:It wasn't so much even about just the business. It was that some of the opportunities that came up were just really exciting to learn some new things. So going into the medical world and learning some well-being stuff and I learned to take bloods and do ECGs and all this really cool medical testing and I learned to blend that stuff with the fitness stuff I'd learned and it just felt like a really interesting thing to want to learn more about. It just excited me again. Sometimes when you've done something, you think I'm pretty good at this. Now I could do this forever and it would be fairly easy to just take it along. I kind of wanted to challenge myself a little bit and learn a bit more but a lot more, and that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Like you wanted to get deep in it. It's a lot like you know me, for instance, we're moving much more towards our main agency is focusing much more on education. So I had to take the leap to be like well, I want to be a better communicator so that I educate. So I have to do certain things myself to be a better communicator, which you know, um led me down a certain path as well, and so, for you, you went in, but back to when you started the new business, because I think that there's a correlation. There's a correlation here that you as a person kind of went through.
Speaker 2:That's very similar to even let's, let's let's take a hypothetical here. Let's say, you didn't shut down your business and you were just hitting some of those barriers that a lot of businesses hit at a certain level, especially in that environment, that need to make a shift Right. And the key thing that you kind of mentioned when you, when you reestablish the direction and the goals, was your values. You had to sit back and you had to say, hey, I have to live these value. I just, I just don't want to push these values, but I have to live these values. How has kind of bringing back that balance and bringing back those values in yourself and what you're trying to achieve now in the last 11 years? How has that helped you not just grow as a business owner but as an individual?
Speaker 1:To be honest, what you've just said is sort of exactly right the way that balance is run and actually my partner has now recently come on board with Balance we first and foremost do everything we do and make business decisions based on our values. About a year ago we sat down again when we knew she was going to come on board and we were going to tweak and play with some things and we said, actually, what is it that really makes us happy in life? And we pulled out sort of five key values that are really important to us but reflect the business as well and us. For us, business isn't about turning over huge amounts of money. That's not what drives happiness for us.
Speaker 1:We sat and we were like what are the things that are really important to us in life time, nature, family, people, social interaction and health and well-being and we were like how do we create and tweak this business to really reflect all of those so that we just really enjoy doing it? That was big for us. Obviously you have to earn and you have to pay for life and pay bills etc. But if you work hard and you're good at something, you can generally do that. Don't get me wrong, it's harder than that ever and they say it is.
Speaker 2:I don't't. I mean to interrupt you because I want to keep going on this, but it brings up a funny, a funny story, because I feel like so many people look online, um, look online, and they're like, oh easy, just start a business. Just start a business. And I've come to realize the reason they do that is so that you take that leap, not realizing that. Oh, once you're in it, you're like, oh, this is hard, man, this is hard and it is hard and it's funny.
Speaker 1:Business isn't necessarily, especially these type of businesses, where quite a bit of what you do sometimes is selling you and selling time for money in a sense and I know, I know there are models and you do things that sort of change it so that it isn't just flat v per hour, but you're still selling your. You're selling your energy as much as anything, you're selling your knowledge and your skills, but you're selling your time and your energy and your passion to to help people. And and business isn't always linear. It doesn't necessarily follow that it'll just get better and better and better. Every business gets through a lean spell and a harder spell and then you have to readjust and and then the environment and the world changes a bit and you go okay, what's different now? Oh, covid hit. Oh, this online thing's really trendy. Now, how are we going to blend to that? Do we want to blend to that? And and so you're constantly readjusting and reevaluating it.
Speaker 1:For us, it's just always been really important that we don't judge success by numbers necessarily. We don't judge by turnover, we don't judge by growth. Balance for us, was about finding a level and a size of the business that makes us happy and brings in money but allows us to live the life that we really enjoy living. Yeah, but that's our key and that's not right for everyone. Some people want to build a business that grows our key and that's not right for everyone. Some people, some people want to build a business that grows and grows and grows and they bring in people and they and they grow it to a size where it's bigger and they can sell it. And I get that. That's. That's a it's. It's the big model of business in in the capitalist world, isn't it? But it just it doesn't float our boat. We someone said to me oh, would you like to sell your business? I'd be like hell. No, why do I want to sell A?
Speaker 1:Working is really good for your well-being and I can see me working until I'm 95. Because actually, you look at the people who keep working the actors, the singers and things like that and they seem the happiest and the most content and the healthiest people you'll ever come across. So that's a really big thing for me. I'm not looking for an out, I'm looking for a way to stay in. That's key.
Speaker 1:And and as you said, it's what good is having any money if I haven't got time to watch my kids grow up and change. And they're, like my little one's, nearly three at the moment and we've got a six month old and I love it because I spend at least four days of my working week at lot and I hear their first words and I see them move and change. And the little one comes and joins me upstairs in the office now and joins in with little workouts. He smashed out a 10 K kettlebell deadlift the other day and I was thinking, wow, stronger than I am. Um, and those, and so we just we deliver everything and we think everything, we consider, we look at it and we go does that, does that fit with our values? Is it going to help us live how we want to?
Speaker 2:And if it doesn't, we let it pass, and I think that's a good way to put it. I think the biggest misconception that I see as a brander in this industry is, you know, we'll get a lot of clients that come to us and they'll be like, here are our values, and they'll just have a piece of paper that they had someone just write down these random values. And I'm like just writing down, creating a quick logo, creating you know that stuff, like just not really living to develop what those values in the guides look like, Right, and I think that, and I think that that, um, and and that hits all of us I do see a huge correlation between life purpose and what I call personal rebrands to you know, business rebrands. You talked about it a little bit.
Speaker 2:There are ebbs and flows. You have to change things. Sometimes. You have to find in that balance in your values are your guide to kind of hold you not just you on track, but the people that you're going to hire and work with. Right, Like, hey, like this is our guide, Like you, probably your partner, you sat down, you probably made sure when you brought them on board that you were like huh, do you match these values? Like, or this is this something, or you just knew they did and that's how you guys connected is. Because you guys connected in that way. And so you probably on your first business thing, you probably didn't, I take it you just probably weren't knowledgeable enough to understand that those points of of leveraging values yet I mean you are new at business it makes sense it's a model.
Speaker 1:When you're young, energy drives a lot, doesn't it, yeah? And I kind of like I love pt and I love helping people and I was in an environment where there were thousands of members and I found that if I talked to someone and had a chat and listened to them, more often than not they'd be fairly keen to have a proper consultation. And then they'd sign up and sort of the business became a bit like a runaway train really, it's sort of like. And then friends and family of clients that I'd signed up would say, oh so-and-so, said your sessions are really good, can you train me? And I'd sort of feel bad to say no. And it sort of ran away with itself. And I loved it so much, it was just so much fun to do and even when I was exhausted it was brilliant fun.
Speaker 1:Even when I started a session at 6am in the morning and I was doing my 15th of the day at 9pm at night, I still wanted to put as much energy into that client session as I did to the first one. It just wasn't sustainable in the long term for my well-being and that model itself. It doesn't lend itself brilliantly to change. You can put your prices up a little bit, but there's not loads of flex in how you deliver in those models. The clients are there. You have to go and attract them and I kind of I kind of, like you said, I needed to learn a few more things going into the wellbeing space and learning Actually, when, when we were doing it, a lot of it was always about fitness.
Speaker 1:Pt 25 years ago was about being fit and it's still a lot of it still is about exercise and blah, blah, blah. And I quite often found that when I was working with people, that that wasn't the barrier that was actually stopping them. It was their nutrition, it was their sleep. It was the barrier that was actually stopping them. It was their nutrition, it was their sleep, it was their stress.
Speaker 2:It was their relationship challenges.
Speaker 1:It was the sort of the fact that they didn't enjoy their work that was driving their stress, that was driving their bad eating, that was making them sleep badly, and it was all this holistic stuff and I was kind of like, oh, I need something that can address all of those points. I want to be able to, to offer something where we say let's look at your well-being from every different angle and that's where I created the balance idea and the the sort of the branding piece that sat around balance and we have this thing called think, eat, live, move, which is psychology, nutrition, lifestyle, exercise, and we look at the client as a real, as a whole, and we say what's your goal? What can we? What psychological tools have we got that we can get there? What nutritional tools have we got? What lifestyle and sleep and stress management tools have we got? What exercise tools have we got? And and when I went back into it with that approach, people seem to do really well. It's nice.
Speaker 2:They get results, yes, and and also they get to the point where they don't really need me, which I really love I think that, uh, I think you found a hidden gem because it's it's, it's one of those things that I'm seeing common in industry right now. Um, if you're an online company or you still have a brick and mortar, it doesn't matter. Um, I mean, we can get into that in a little bit here. But I think overall, like and that's the point of this podcast, right, this, the point of this cast in general, is the fact of the the mental side, but you're leveraging the mental side based off of what you've learned from the physical side Like I'm a big component, I'm a big component of myself.
Speaker 2:Like when I was younger, you know, I was very similar. Like I remember I would eat fake health. It was like fake healthy, right, I'm like I have to get 300, 380 carbs in a day. So I was like there's no way I can do that with vegetables. So I started eating, you know, spaghetti and all this stuff to get my, my carbs in in my, my large amount, so I can get my my workout on. You know, and you know, over time, you know, I of course went through my own trials and tribulations of learning that and setting goals, did keto three to four times and realized hey, it's about balance, it's not about extremes, you know. And now I'm at a point where I have three young kids myself. Right, I have almost a year year old, to pretty close to your youngest. I have a three year old, he just turned three and I have a five year old and you know, I lost the. I lost going to work out and my runs and all that. I lost all that stuff because I was so focused on very similar to you did in your first business. I was like I need to work this many hours and there's a lot behind that. You know, there's all about, like, when you start replicating things, you have to start bringing teams on, and when you start bringing teams on, things are going to fall through the cracks. You need to fix them constantly.
Speaker 2:But I tended to lose one of my biggest values, which was connection. You know, like that's one of my biggest values is, you know, I'm sitting behind the desk all day. Like you, I love meeting people, I love going out and not just connection with other people but connection with myself. So this bringing the studio back in, bringing my workouts back and bringing my runs back in was actually a time that brought my visionary time in and actually started looking at it from more of a mental, a mental side like, hey, this is just more for me, and more because I like my time and my space to be accountable for myself and to work on myself right. And so I feel like you found a hidden gem, because you found that that value, that kind of combines one of the things that's missing in the industry to begin with, which is, like you said, it's not just about physical, it's about, hey, how do you do the other things in your life that really hold that accountable? And you meshed it into the values of what you're trying to do as an organization, which just helps spread the message of what you're doing further, not just externally, but how you hire and all that. So it's really building, building up strong.
Speaker 2:And so I want to, I want to take a little detour here and I want to ask you a little bit about the differences, because I know now you are complete. You are complete, you work from home, you love that space, you create your own and I don't know, you may have a space I'm not sure, but you have. You live the more online lifestyle doing these programs, which means that you're trying to reach a whole bunch of more people, compared to, like a PT center where it's like, oh well, our audience is in this five mile radius. So what challenges or situations have you gone through in the last 11 years? Just kind of comprehending and understanding the difference in the way you market, the way you create your content, the kind of channels you use and really how the the goals that you've put aside for the growth of your brand.
Speaker 1:it's really interesting actually, because, again, we're we're very much, I imagine we're a very unconventional business, um, and I also imagine some people will look at our business and go well, that's not a big business, it's not necessarily a growing business in inverted commas and so it can be deemed as unsuccessful if you look at it like that. As I said, for us we judge success by our values and everything from there and interestingly, up till sort of covid pre-covid, a lot of my work was still what I'd call human, so a lot of it was in the classroom, teaching courses, traveling around the country, staying in hotels, one-to-one personal training work and a lot of one-to-one mentoring work with pts sitting in a coffee shop talking about what they want to do with their business and real personal touch stuff. And obviously covid changed the world, didn't it? Yeah, um, and it changed everything. So the one-to-one obviously drifted for a while because we weren't allowed the teaching face-to-face courses drifted because of covid. But then one of two things happened some of the training companies went bust and some of the other ones went. We could just film this as a video and we could just sell a personal training course, whereas the pit, where the pt never actually comes to the gym and learns it. They just watch some videos online and then after that they can make a video of them exercising and then they'll be fine as a personal trainer. And that's sort of how the fitness industry education piece evolved and I found myself kind of redundant in all aspects of the things that I was really good at.
Speaker 1:The human interaction piece, um, and I had to rebuild post covid to be to be much more focused on being a writer and a content creator for education companies and a little bit for balance as well and and I get a huge amount of sort of a big chunk of my work for the past three, four years have been people come in saying we want to create a course on x, children's fitness, adolescence, strength, core nutrition, sleep, whatever and I would say don't tell me, that'll take me 10 days. I'll have that written for you. I can go and I'd stand at my computer and write about it and I like that. I love writing. I've written a couple of books and I find huge joy in writing.
Speaker 1:But again last year I was sat talking to my partner. I was like you know what? I really miss people, I miss human stuff, and she's exactly the same. She's a yoga teacher by trade and a personal trainer and obviously you know this, when you have young kids it's a lot of work on mom and mom doesn't get much time necessarily, um, and so her own business had sort of just really been on freeze since covid, partly because of the covid thing and then and then because of the having children stuff. It just didn't work for us both to be self-employed.
Speaker 1:We'd moved out of the place we lived, and then last year we we sat down and we just said we need to change this. Uh, we need to change it for a couple of reasons. One, we need more human stuff again and we need to look at our channels and actually get away from Google ads and Facebook marketing and swim the other way. Every other fish is going down. Let's go more, let's just go back to human stuff. And two, we sort of said how do we get my partner back in the business? How do we find a model that allows her to do some work?
Speaker 1:So we sat down and we listed all the things that we have skills in and sort of abilities in and we had personal training me with a sort of medical health specialism, her with a bit of that and anti-postnatal and some other areas with a bit of that and anti-postnatal and some other areas. Nutrition and lifestyle coaching, which is sort of my area, the sort of motivational interviewing, behavior change piece. Um, we had health screening, which again is my area, the blood testing, the blood pressure, and and then we had deep tissue massage, which is lou's area, and we had yoga and we were like what happens if we made an offer that was human to our in our local city where we live, and we said to people, you can pay us for a monthly fee for one session a week, two sessions a week, whatever you want. But here's the thing every week you get to choose which of the services you you want. So if you say this week we want a massage because I'm achy, lu goes and and you have a massage next week. If you say, oh, can we want a massage because I'm achy, lou goes and and you have a massage next week. If you say, oh, can we do my health screening and check my blood, some my glucose, and I go and I run them a health screen for a session. The next week we do a personal training session and they choose whether they want me or lou, depending on the speciality the next week they say, oh, can we talk nutrition this week? So all they're doing is buying us and our time.
Speaker 1:And and we were like, how do we human brand this, how do we market it? And we're like let's just go a lot more, get out and talk to people again. Go out and talk to local businesses, go out and talk to community stuff. So I do what I've always done when business is tired. I went out and just walked around the high street in the city where we live and looked at different businesses and popped in and said hi, I'm paul, this is what I do.
Speaker 1:Would it be of any interest to you guys? Or is there anything you think we can work together on? And we did a little post on a community facebook page, which isn't really a salesy thing, but it's just a very sort of events going on in the area stuff, and we didn't sell it. We're very human, we're like this is us, it's our background. Here's a picture of us with the kids. This is what we offer. If anyone's interested, come and have a chat. And actually we've only been running it for a month or so and I think we've taken on sort of 80 clients already off it, which isn't huge numbers, but actually in terms of financials, it's the rent paid.
Speaker 1:Basically, we've managed to pivot away from a lot of online and me chasing projects and saying, right, who needs some work on this? To just something where we've got a really small niche client base that are really local and it lets Lou go out and do the odd hour of work here and there while I look after the kids, and it's really it's a really flexible work day for us. We can swap, she can go and have an hour away from being mom and I become dad for an hour, and then she comes back and I've got a client and and it and it isn't a huge. It's not a huge revenue model, but, as we said earlier, that's, that's not our goal yeah the values piece is beautiful for us.
Speaker 1:Bit of facebook marketing, bit of bit of local business connection. But networking. I've done a few talks and I've got a couple lined up next next month. So joining the local business networking group and doing the breakfasts, but just real.
Speaker 2:Real people marketing. Yeah, and there's two things there I want to bring up. One is because we've talked a couple of times about definition of success. I think so many people in today's market think that to be a successful business, it's all about that top line revenue. But I feel like when people start chasing top line revenue I mean and money is, of course, always important Money is what puts food on the table, it's what pays employees, it's what pays, you know, that flexibility of working from or working from home if you need to.
Speaker 2:But there's this, this thing in society that I think that we all have to get away from, because we all see these large corporations coming out here. Really, all these large corporations. Their biggest struggle is being more human, you know is how do we, how do we connect more with people? And you fall, people fall into this trap, which leads to the second point that you brought up, which I think is brilliant, which is what I call marketing fatigue. You see all these big fish, you know, coming out here and saying, hey, we need to do this, this, this, this and this, this is what this person's doing, we need to have this, and then they look at the budget it takes to do that. I mean, I run a team of of six to 10 people, right? So when someone comes in and be like, can you do this for 10 bucks, I'm like, I'm sorry, man, like I have to pay people, like, and a lot of that comes down to the fact that people think that they have to do that. I love how you kind of looked at your values, and the key point here is to look at your values from all aspects, even the way you market. So that goes back to your brand strategy. It seems like you've done a really good job at going back and thinking high level, um, to like what's really going to make an impact, what's really going to make a make a shift? Um, and not just doing it, for instance, for yourself, but using them as a guide towards even the way you market.
Speaker 2:And I'm very similar in that aspect. I don't believe in cold outreach, for instance. I'm a human connector and I'm like, I hate when I get random emails from people I never subscribe to. So I'm like, why would I do that to other people? It's not a form of connection, right? I don't care what anyone says to me. I'm like, I'm sorry, like, if you think that that's why I'm not doing it, but I'm not doing it because I don't believe in it. You know, and, and so that's part of my value of connection Right, and I told the team very similar, and so when you brought up that, you simplified your marketing strategy, made it more human.
Speaker 2:I think that in this day and age, even if you have old business, we're falling into this trend right now where everyone thinks transactional, transactional, and we need to, as people, to realize that those social interactions are going to be the key to connecting, building your brand, and so I'll be one of the first marketers you'll ever hear that says no, you don't have to do more, you have to do less. Like, really find what you're passionate about, and it seems like you've done a really good job at that and shown that you found what success looks like to you and been able to adapt it around the place in the style of business that you are at, and so I give you really kudos for that. If you were to give anyone advice right now with your journey, what you have, what kind of advice would you give people?
Speaker 1:I think the thing for me that always, that always helps me, is a bit like you were just saying, is for me, and it's not always the best way to run a business, but it works for me and it'll work for a lot of people in this industry. Do what you're passionate about and do what you believe in, because if you're passionate and if you love it, it shows. Like when I ran my first business, I got clients not because I was a great personal trainer, but because I was really passionate about it. Have you ever heard of the magic roundabout?
Speaker 1:no, I haven't explain children's television program in the uk in the 1980s and there's a character called zebedee. That was all just high energy and we just bounce everywhere. It's a bit like a jack-in-the-box type character and I was a bit like zebedee on acid as a pt in that 20s sort of. I was like, yeah, come on, let's, we can do this. Uh, I even I had rhymes, like when I was counting the reps I'd be like seven, I'm in heaven, eight looking great, nine looking fine and it was cheesy as hell.
Speaker 1:But it was energy that drove my business and actually really attracted people to want to come and work with me and that's what made it a success. Okay, I knew a bit about PT and I had a sports science background, so I understood the body and as I learned more, that fed into keeping the client. But it was the passion piece. And then last year we were doing stuff and I was spending money on Google Ads and I was trying to learn about Google Ads and trying to put some more online PT out there and actually as I did it I realized I just didn't like it that much. It just wasn't my first love. I've got a couple of online clients and we get on great and it's fantastic, but trying to scale an online pt business didn't make me happy yeah it actually made me miserable because I was having to learn more about online marketing, which isn't something I really love learning more about, just not me.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying it's a miserable thing. Some people love it and I, if they do do, do it but for us it was that human piece. And then when we did these things, literally we'd spend all this time on Google Ads. And then we, like I said, we did a couple of wonders down the street. We made a really nice postcard, like colorful postcard on Vistaprint, with a picture of us with the kids and a little introduction to who. We were Really light touch, not salesy, and just said like if you've got any questions or you want a free consultation, we're here. And actually that's driven our business through the roof. And whilst I was walking.
Speaker 1:We live in a really small city called Wells in Somerset, which is one of the smallest cities in in England and it's like a village and and whilst I was walking around and I had the little one on my my front, inner carrier, and just dropping the postcards through letterboxes, we were talking to people and saying hello and actually we found, by having the little ones with us when we did the marketing, it didn't feel like cold calling it and we weren't being pushy, we were just saying this is us, we're here, it's helpful to have a chat and actually we've got good business from it.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's a way to look at it from a reframe perspective, right, like, right, like I was talking about cold calling, there's nothing, I don't think there's nothing wrong to read to reframe it in a different perspective. For instance, what you did is you still tried to build a connection with people and get to know them up front by understanding their business, by giving them, giving them this flyer, not being pushy, by allowing yourself to, and you had that, that connection piece, that relationship piece, built in from your values. Right, so you could still do cold marketing. For instance, we do a lot of like, I do a lot of speaking arrangements myself. I go out there and try to do speaking. So I don't necessarily just go out and cold call, but I will find speaking arrangements and I will, of of course, pitch to them because they're author me to do that. So to me that business people have to know you're there, yeah, people have to know you're there, still, right, and so you still have to do what you do.
Speaker 2:You do just not looking at it from a from a perspective of what I like to call spraying the wall effect. Right, you know, as a lot of studios fall into this trap these days, too, where they're like hey, like, let's hire some sales reps and let's just call everyone in our local area. I'm like, and I'll get studio owners that are like you know, um, at the lower end of validation mode usually about 250 a year, 350 a year um, when they're like we just can't, don't know how to bring people, more people, and like we're having trouble. I'm like, have you thought about just creating a flyer and going door to door? And they're like I, I'm not gonna do that. I'm we're past that and I'm like digital marketing is is not cheap. It's like like it takes time and energy, right, you?
Speaker 1:you'll see this like. There's a big thing these days that people assume that selling online and doing online pt things like that is is a better and an easier way to make money. And, yes, it can reach a wider audience, but it also reaches a much wider competitor base. So your competitors are now in Buenos Aires and Sydney and Doha and Moscow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, your competitors are everywhere when you sell online, because because anyone can sell to anyone online yeah yeah, whereas when you sell local and if you've got a venue in a place, being the go-to and being being seen to have a really local presence is strong, it's it. You build a community out of it. Um, like we did things in the past in the first business, I remember doing one thing where we did we there was this new, really sort of nice new build housing estate on a couple of miles from the gym and me and another pt were like, well, let's be the first people in there and try and get the sort of be the pts for nice houses, four or five bedroom detached, big size. So we did all this door-to-door stuff and we just got nowhere.
Speaker 1:Really I think it's because we didn't have children on the front. A kid on the front or a dog went in and we were like, okay, what do we do next? And they were running a summer fete through the local church and we asked if we could put on a stand at the village fete and we did all these fun sort of fitness challenges with prizes for the families and and actually we I think we got like eight clients from that day just from being there and running this. Not salesy, we were just there part of the show, just running this kind of entertainment stall, if you like, and we picked up clientele cause we got to chat to people and cards were out and it was just a different way selling without selling, yeah, selling without, and that's really what it comes down to.
Speaker 2:That's really what it comes down to is it was. It was interesting I was talking to my wife yesterday because I just got off a prospect call the other day with um personal training studio out of I'm not going to say where because I don't want to, you know, out out them or anything but, um, you know, my wife's like, uh, some people that I know I was in the, I I'm in a group as well, I have an accountability group. I work with, you know, other business owners, blah, blah, blah, and they, you know I was talking about the cold calling thing and they're like I'm just, it sounds like you're just afraid to hear no, Right, Right. And I and I and I was telling my wife last night, which was kind of an aha moment for me I was like I'm just, I'm not afraid of saying no, I'm afraid of I mean hearing no, I'm afraid of saying yes. I mean the point like back to you with values, like I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to say yes to everyone. Not everyone fits our mold, Not everyone fits my values. And when I start seeing things shine through where it's like you're just a really not nice person, Like I don't need to work with you, but you still tend to want to help people and so I do. I have a fear of of saying yes to people more so, which I think is kind of which which is kind of funny. So it was back to your point on what you were talking about of being local and having a community right, Like that is kind of where it goes, and the difference between an online location, between doing something local, even if it's out of your home, is so many people with this online perspective you nailed it on the head Think, oh, if I go and I do, grass is greener.
Speaker 2:If I open an online business, my life will be easier, I'll be able to work from home, and it's like no, realistically, like you said, larger competitor market harder to close because you're not building a relationship and three online businesses don't have a brick and mortar, so they tend to have to spend. You know, I just say you're spending three times as much because you don't have all these other expenses. You need to spend that to market because you're, like you said, a broader audience. And if you don't like to market, like you said, learn how to do advertisement or get to the point where you feel comfortable hiring somebody to help you with that stuff. You're going to build the most traction by just going to your local community, building your community locally off those values, go to community events and kind of do it that way, and I think that's and the reason I'm so passionate about talking about it is because that's where it should be.
Speaker 2:You know that all this stuff and think that we're going to bring in all this business, I'm like you're really just deterring your time from actually making a difference in this world because you're limiting yourself and um, so everything that I'm I'm just ranting about it now, so I'll stop. But, uh, but what you're saying, I love what you've done and I love your. Your confidence in yourself too, which I think is a focal point of this whole podcast, is your ability to understand what you want. Let the outside noise not dictate the success that you want to bring in for you and your family and your clients and the type of person you are, because this is the way online marketing should be hybrid with community building and an aspect so online massively has its place.
Speaker 1:You can't not have an online presence in businesses these days, can you just? Sometimes you almost need it just to prove that the business, a bit like we said, still exists. Hey, we're still here, kind of we're alive, which is a big achievement in itself. Um, and also, online just offers so much benefit in terms of scale and scope and reaching different people. And who's to say, you can't have a bricks and mortar gym but also have an online offering because you say, well, actually we've capacity on the people in our gym space. Let's take that message out to the world and deliver it to people in five different continents that there's nothing wrong at all with that yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I would just say, just be. Uh, you know, I do see a lot of studio owners, uh, et owners, etc. Trying to do that too early, being like oh, let's try it. And it's like. You should have an understanding that driving an online business, even if it's from brick and mortar, is a completely different it's a separate business.
Speaker 1:It might run under the same limited company, but it's a different business, it's a different model. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think for us because we're are we lucky? We we made a choice that we always choose happiness over finance. To a certain level, we know what numbers we need to survive and those numbers are very clear in our head and they're tracked. But actually I remember years ago reading a piece and actually I've just read the update on it, but often a piece of well-being stuff that comes out about how much money equals happiness and there's a.
Speaker 1:It seems from the science that there's a tipping point, that up to a certain point more money equals more happiness, but actually beyond that point it tends to drop the other way, often because the amount of effort and time and other sacrifice you have to put in to make more money means that total well-being actually drops beyond a certain level. We also know, for things like you win the lottery, that you're happy very briefly, but that happiness wears off. Happiness isn't about cash in the bank, it's about habits. To be happy, you have to do the things like to be fit. You can't train for six weeks and stay fit forever and happiness is exactly the same. To be happy, you have to practice habits that are the things that make you happy. It's just a temporary mood state, like sadness or tiredness or whatever, and so we chose to live a life that that gives us happiness and we're like and if you ask me the question, am I happier now that we've gone offline a lot in the last few months, massively?
Speaker 1:it's joyous yeah it's just getting out the house seeing people just when they get their little wins and they send you a text saying I've lost two pounds this week, or I've I've lifted like five kilos extra on that way, or my run time has gone down, or whatever.
Speaker 2:The goal is, um, what a great thing to do with life well, and it's interesting because the correlation like I said earlier, personal growth getting to a certain number with money, I mean that's a direct correlation to what I see, multiple stages of business too. You get to a certain point in business. You know it is working a lot harder. For studios I usually see it's probably roughly around the 250 to $400 mark, where, for 100,000 a year mark, where they're like, oh, to make it to a million, like I need to shift my mindset and start becoming. And then this is what I always tell them I'm like how much do you work out still? And they're like no, I have no time. And I'm like, because you're like time equals money and I have a group, I have trainers, I have they do all that. And I'm like, because you're like time equals money and I have a group, I have trainers, I have they do all that. I'm like you need to bring that back in because that's what you love and you own a gym because that's what you loved. So bring back some of those personal things that made you open this to begin with and start to shift your job from being at that point, which is usually a manager role, to more of a visionary role right and start bringing back those things in your life that you can start to handle. And so back to what you were saying.
Speaker 2:I just thought it was really unique because there is there's a tipping point with money, and I went through it myself. I, you know, I was really big on. I was really big, I think, when I, when I started my brand this is before my business my I mean my children were born. I can't kind of ran it off fear, right. I kind of ran it off Like I want to prove to everyone I can do this. I'm passionate, like I loved what I did.
Speaker 2:But I was like I'm like I want to prove to people. And then I had my children and I'm like, wait a minute, I don't need to prove anything to anyone. This is, these are the people that love me, this is, this is my family. And so I had to find a different factor of success for me. And at that point I'm like, well, I have money, I don't have to worry about money anymore. And so like, why am I working so hard to go from this level to this level when I want to? Either I have to work really hard to make it to that level, or I can just kind of stay right here, you know and kind of like learn a whole, a whole economic foundation.
Speaker 1:It was sort of set up to believe that that's growing, is stagnation, is failure, aren't we like? Yeah, the whole economic model is kind of like the universe. The view is that it has to ever expand or you stay, or you just fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, absolutely. If you keep it the set the same for 20 years, then somebody would view your business as failing. I find that a really I don't know that. I think about it a lot these days and I think about the word that has, especially in the uk, certainly, and in europe. I think it was a slightly different perspective sometimes in america from we read over here, but sustainability is a huge thing now looking after the planet, protecting it, and everything's about sustainability, and sustainability means keeping something as it is, and we think about sustainability in terms of the health of the planet, but we don't necessarily use the term sustainability when it comes to business. It's growth or death and I find that really from a well, because I look at it through well-being eyes, I find it a really strange concept well, and it's funny too, if you have a and this is something that I want to go, because funny enough.
Speaker 2:Our model, what we do, is called the sustainable lead flow model, because it's, you know, very similar to you. I'm trying to bring people in to be like you know. Like you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads, you don't need to fight or flight Like you have. You run a membership model. Like we bring in two to three people a month. It's that's sustainable. Like you could still grow, but still also not. It's it's almost impossible. Why? Like people come in and they're like oh, I need a hundred new clients. I'm like do you know how many businesses grow 10,000% within the first like one year or two years? I'm like you'll be lucky if you get 10% growth a year. Like that's. Like that's a good, sustainable like let it happen, naturally, instead of thinking that you're the SaaS company that just got millions of dollars. That has to, you know, hire a million people tomorrow until it breaks right Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, if you're going, if you're trying to build a business where you want investment and you want to grow and you want an exit strategy, it's different, it is different, it is different. Yeah, you've got different pressures because other people are putting money into the business.
Speaker 2:Or to franchise. That's another thing too. If you're getting to a point where you're like, hey, I want to franchise this model, but even then you still have to look back and think about some of those things that you may be missing. Like, huh, now we have to build systems and now we have to build consistency and all that fun stuff, but we're ranting now. I do have to run here in a second.
Speaker 1:So, um, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about how they can find you and, um, where they can reach out to you at absolutely probably the least salesy pitch you'll ever hear from anyone in these conversations, but you can find me on wwwbalancehealthandfitnesscouk and you can get a feel for the things we do around working one-to-one with individuals. Um, a little bit about personal trainer education. Um, if people are in the personal trainer education sector and they're looking for advice on content and consultancy, work around developing your own training and education, feel free to get in touch. Uh, I also do a little bit of mentoring with personal trainers who want to develop small businesses, small sustainable businesses.
Speaker 1:If you want to work out how to earn a lot of money, I'm not your man, but if you want to work out how to stay in it for a long time, that I can help with. Yeah, and other than that, I'd say check out All Downhill From here on Amazon. It's a book that's got book. I wrote in COVID about cycling from one end of Britain to the other, uh, and also the complete guide to weight loss which I wrote a few years ago, which you'll find a few copies of floating around on Amazon and elsewhere.
Speaker 2:Well, paul, thank you. I'll put all those in the description notes uh description notes as well, so everyone can go to those links. Again, I really thank you for uh being on it's um, it was a real pleasure to talk talk with you today. Back to my value of connection man Like these, things always make my day, so I really appreciate it and know that there's other people out there that are seeing how the world and these models should start to be run, and so I appreciate you and I'm your host, zach Coleman, with another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. I hope everyone has a good day.
