Why Clarity Beats Luck in Growing Your Fitness Studio

Feeling like your fitness studio's growth is more about luck than strategy? You're not alone. 

The fitness industry is crowded with studios competing for attention, making it challenging to stand out and grow consistently. In this episode of the Fit to Grit Cast, we tackle this challenge head-on as we launch our Advanced Strategy Series. We explore how successful fitness studio owners transition from chaotic, unpredictable growth patterns to strategic opportunity creation.

The key differentiator between studios that thrive and those that merely survive lies in how they position their unique expertise. MindBody reports that studios with clearly defined expertise attract new clientele twice as fast as those playing the "luck game." But how do you identify and communicate what makes your studio truly special? This episode walks you through practical steps to leverage your authentic story, experiences, and strengths to create a magnetic brand identity.

We've created a comprehensive worksheet (available in the description) to guide you through identifying desired growth opportunities, mapping actionable steps, and creating environments that naturally generate "lucky breaks." Whether you're looking to attract higher-tier clientele, build strategic partnerships, or position yourself as a community leader, this episode provides the framework to shift from random success to intentional growth.

Download the opportunity vs. luck worksheet, complete it, and share one actionable step you're committing to in the comments. Let's build a community of fitness entrepreneurs who help each other thrive through intention rather than chance. Subscribe to follow our Advanced Strategy Series where we'll continue exploring practical approaches to sustainable studio growth!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Advanced Strategy Series
• 1:06 Opportunity vs Luck for Studio Owners
• 2:10 Defining Your Desired Growth Opportunities
• 3:51 Creating the Right Environment
• 6:32 Converting Luck to Intentional Growth
• 10:09 Call to Action and Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

As fitness studio owners, I know that you all struggle on really clearly communicating what truly makes your studio unique. And if you haven't, hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today starts our advanced strategy series. So we're going to kind of slow things down a little bit for this series because I really want to help you dive in and kind of get past all that hustle and bustle that happens during operations and growth of your studio or multiple locations, because I see it everywhere right, and one of the huge topics I really want to talk on today and delve into today is really clarifying your expertise as a business owner as you're evolving, moving away from certain hats, and really the difference between opportunity versus luck. As fitness studio owners, I know that you all struggle on really clearly communicating what truly makes your studio unique and if you haven't, you'll start to. You'll start to get to a point where you need to define what truly makes not just your fitness studio special compared to all the other fitness studios around your location or if you have multiple locations, but also what makes you special In today's world of AI and all the stuff that's going on. I would say that uniqueness and authenticity. As a studio owner yourself, you have so many stories, so many experiences that can help other people, and so over the next month here we're going to be talking a lot about personal branding and how you can really take advantage of your story. But let's really dive in to what I see is how do you clearly communicate yourself and how you start to differentiate yourself amongst the other studios in your area. When we talk about opportunity versus luck, success is gonna push away from chance and you're gonna actively start shaping your own path as a studio owner, and so we wanna help. Have you start to see that it's not luck and how to take advantage of those opportunities.

Speaker 0: 2:11

I know when I started my business and I continued to grow and evolve as an agency owner and as I've started to transition towards fitness studios, I had to start finding a way to separate ourselves, not just from the way I talk, but from my experiences and the way we focus on operations team, even our messaging. I really sort of let chance kind of guide the way we did our messaging, the way we put out our collateral and that's all good. At the beginning, I mean, chaos does really identify clarity, but we all think that that's the way it's always supposed to go. Over time, you're going to move away from operations mode and you're going to start focusing more on how can we dive into these opportunities right? So I started to really feel opportunities weren't falling in my lap. I kept saying why is this person lucky? Why am I not kept saying why is this person lucky, why am I not? When really this kind of just led to that unpredictable growth, frustration, not really having a pattern. Once I really started to commit and really define our unique expertise, it started to slowly start to shape and craft our momentum. It started to help us build and shape everything around what you would consider luck and turn it into great opportunities.

Speaker 0: 3:34

I don't know if you've watched one of my previous videos, but I was on a podcast at Gym Desk where I talked about the value of positioning and how that can really transform your fitness studio. If you'd like, you can go up in the comment section up here and you can watch that video. But those same principles kind of apply right Defining what really sets you apart, your unique story as an owner in a studio, how you built it, the frustrations, even though you deal with a lot of members and consumers and prospects that become members. This does become something that really shapes that community. So that's what we're going to really dive into today. As a whole, and because we're taking it a little bit slower, I will say that we do have a corresponding worksheet that we will attach down below and up here that you will be able to download. If you're watching on the podcast, make sure you go down in the description, you download that and you can utilize that throughout this process and help guide you as you continue to evolve and take it to the next step as a studio owner. So grab that worksheet, pause the video, pause the podcast and grab it. If not, listen to the video and we'll touch base on it again later.

Speaker 0: 4:53

But this worksheet is all about opportunity versus luck. How does that play into the role of the growth of your studio? We're going to kind of shift more towards your mindset and strategy. Why? Because when you're in the hustle, bustle of operation so much sometimes you forget that strategy is at the core of those execution steps. And so, number one here take that worksheet and what we're going to do is we're really going to start defining your desired opportunities. What are your desired opportunities for growth. What specific opportunities are you attracted to? You can think events, you can think partnerships, which we'll talk about in a future video and we'll lay back to this one if you need to. Recognition all about recognition. Or are you looking to start to move away from that lower end clientele, bring more pricing, getting more pricing strategy and really targeting a higher clientele? Or a more pricing, getting more pricing strategy and really targeting a higher clientele or a more defined audience? So on the worksheet, you're going to see a section that lets you put down, just brainstorming, thinking about some of these opportunities.

Speaker 0: 6:00

So I want you to go down and write some of your opportunities and what kind of opportunities are you currently seeking as a studio owner or even as a personal brand, and I want you to start identifying some actionable steps that you can take to slowly start to get you there. That luck turns into opportunity, because luck follows that preparation which creates opportunity. What steps can you start taking today? This is very good kind of system. If you've already utilized systems like EOS or other well-known business structure systems, you'll understand that there's a goal oriented system there. This is very similar to that, but this is much more on a personal, small level. So I want you to kind of think about this for a sec. What can you start today? What are those lower end type of things that you can start today to shift your patterns, to start getting those opportunities? Maybe it's clarifying your message, maybe it's things that you need to do and I want you to list out three actionable steps here on this worksheet. I want you to list out three actionable steps and what this is gonna do is gonna help you take action and I want you to kind of cultivate the environment for yourself.

Speaker 0: 7:14

Environment is a huge thing. If you're in the day-to-day still, you need to kind of separate yourself, maybe going to your office, maybe you do this on your own time, but you wanna surround yourself with these opportunities that you're writing down right. So how does luck turn to opportunity? Well, you always hear the saying be around the right people at the right time. If you want to be a million dollar studio, hang around a million dollar studio. And if you want to be a $10 million studio, hang out with franchise owners, et cetera, et cetera. Right Real estate people, whatever. So you want to influence your opportunity and move away from that luck and make it opportunity through surrounding your influence around the right people, around the right environment.

Speaker 0: 7:58

So, as you're sitting down and you're writing these actionable steps, think about that for a sec. It's not just going to your local chamber. Maybe it's saying, hey, I want to speak more, I want to be around more people, I want to build more influence. Maybe it'd be about partnerships. So here's a great example. If you're like, hey, how do I build more partnerships in my local area? Maybe you start by looking at small business associations that may have events and when you're at those events, you can find like-minded, corresponding non-vertical competitors that you can start partnering with. But you can look at certain things, like you know, industry events. You can look at online groups. You can even look into some other local business groups, like I was mentioning before.

Speaker 0: 8:42

So, on the worksheet, what you're going to do is you're going to list some environments that you want to engage with. What are some environments that you want to work with as you're going through this perspective Places I should be around. Think about it that way, and this worksheet's very simple. I'm gonna have my video editor kind of put up, you know, while I'm talking, possibly put me in the bottom corner here and show you a portion of this worksheet so that you can kind of look at it as you go. So if you don't want to download the worksheet, you can do it on your own sheet as well.

Speaker 0: 9:17

But try to list some places and this is actually going to increase your luck, increase your chances through consistent action. You know, networking, sharing your expertise and becoming more visible around your community, especially if you're trying to cultivate and build a community. You need to build your community, especially if you're trying to cultivate and build a community. You need to build your community, right. So how do you increase that luck? That's step four, right, you want to increase your chances through those consistent actions. So what are you going to do on this worksheet? Well, figure out what specific actions you can take to increase your luck, increase these opportunities. You know, just to try to really enforce this for you a little bit, mindbody reports that studios that clearly define expertise attract new clientele twice as fast as those playing the luck game. So you can turn luck into opportunities. You just have to allow yourself the space to figure out those actions that can lead you towards the opportunities that you want.

Speaker 0: 10:16

When I clearly started to define my expertise and proactively started trying to create opportunities. My client interaction shifted from random to predictable, right, because I started to be able to make a game plan towards certain execution steps. We began starting to draw more of our ideal clientele. I started opening more doors towards speaking and this doesn't happen overnight, right, but it's part of the journey of taking those opportunities and thriving with them, and this is really how you can start to become an industry leader within your certain environment. So, again, is really how you can start to become an industry leader within your certain environment.

Speaker 0: 10:53

So, again, I want you to go down in the comment section, download the worksheet, complete the opportunity versus luck worksheet and share one actionable step that you're going to take and leave it down in the comments below. Let's help build this community here on YouTube. Let's help get more student owners actively involved in helping each other find these opportunities and working together, and let's build clarity and stop relying on luck to grow our brands One intentional action at a time. Again, I'm Zach Coleman. This is the 50 Grit Cast, and thank you for joining this journey with me. As we continue to evolve, we're gonna continue to have a little bit more change within the advanced series. See how that works out and if it can help you guys as you continue to grow and evolve as studio owners, location owners and possibly even marketers or adjacent industries looking to work with the fitness industry. So again, I'm your host, zach Coleman. You all have a gritty one.