How to Build a Hot Audience

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 352. Today we're sitting down and chatting about how to build a hot audience of clients without living on social media. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super, super pumped that you're here. I cannot wait to dive in. Today's really awesome topic, how to build an audience of clients without living on social. So hopefully you got your pen and paper ready because let's get into it. Okay. Couple of things that I want to just talk about real quick is I want to identify the difference between followers and audience. And what specifically I mean, when I'm talking about building an audience. So if you remember from any or at all previous trainings, at the risk of being redundant or repetitive, if this is, if, you know, if you've heard this before, then let me invite you to just hear your, you know, open your heart and open your mind to hear this in a different way. Because repetition is the mother of all learning. No one squats one and never squats again. So what I'm talking about, when I'm talking about audience, is that all businesses need, whether you're starting, whether you're scaling, is they need to have people, prospects and purchases. Another way of saying this is traffic leads and customers. So you're going to have a group of people who've never heard of you before and we need to go and knock on doors. And when I say knock on doors, meaning we just need to introduce ourselves into the world and, and demonstrate that we exist and drive traffic because people cannot buy from the Internet's best kept secret. So now people get this really confused and they end up accidentally chasing popularity metrics instead of profitability metrics. What I mean by that is they end up doing things like I, you know, chasing views and chasing followers. So they're always trying to go viral and they're trying to go build followers. Now the issue and things that I always Talk about in my simple scaling training or things that I talk about with my clients is that you cannot buy groceries with followers. You cannot buy groceries with. With views. And so when you're trying to go after popularity metrics without understanding the back end of your business and how those. Those people, you know, fuel the business, that's like trying to fill up a bucket of water with holes in it. And so what I like to do is really help our people shift their perspective around what it looks like to really go after the profitability metrics as opposed to the popularity metrics. Now, however, once that gets sorted, once you build out the structure and the systems and you're clear on the strategy, now we get to fill the bucket up, and we do this by building an audience. And so what we have to understand when I'm saying the word audience is how do you define that for yourself? Because people get into their head and they're like, followers, followers, followers. But for me, I'm not thinking about followers necessarily as traffic or even leads. Some people use it for their. Their. Their leads because they think, oh, well, now this person is in my space. But the reason why is because social media, the way that it's used today, is changing. It's different. We are not seeing content from our followers. In fact, less than 3% of your current followers or audience right now even sees your stuff. And people hear that and they think, oh, that's a bad thing. Except that it's not. All that means is that it gives us more opportunity to be repetitive in what it is that we're saying. So now we can use less time and share our message more, and then not only get in front of our current audience, but also get in front of the people that need to hear us. Okay, so what we need to get clear on for you is to get clear on, what does an audience, audience mean? And so for the context of this podcast, I'm going to call audience as the traffic. So new people, and then also leads, people that have walked into your proverbial store. So if you're in the online space, you get to define this however you want to define it. Now, for me, in full transparency, I'll tell you that I define a lead as someone who's in my dm. I also define a lead as someone who's on my email address. Okay? And so traffic is, for me, views, eyeballs. So people that are in my, you know, seeing my ads, people that are seeing my organic content, and people that are listening to my podcast. And so what happens to A lot of people is they accidentally get blinded by numbers that they can see, which is like seeing the top of the iceberg versus the depth of the numbers that you know, versus the what's underneath the numbers. So every time I've said things like, I built a 500k business with less than 2000 followers, that's true, but that doesn't mean that There was only 2,000 followers in my audience. I use ads. There's. There's over 7,000 people on my email list. I keep that. Email is very tight, okay. And I have, you know, 5,000 downloads on my podcast a month. People are listening and consuming my content every single day, even when I'm sleeping. And I don't share that in arrogance. I share that in. In the fact that people underestimate how much content it actually takes to convert someone for a multitude of reasons, for the fact that they have experience that was not good. Okay. It's kind of like when you are cooking and you. You burn your hand on the stove, and then that doesn't mean you're never going to cook again. You have to go back to the stove. Okay? And so what happens is people spend so much time focusing on controlling or trying to. To convince or trying to, you know, change the way other people are perceiving you. But that's not your responsibility. You can't change that. That's something you actually can't control. Your responsibility is to show up powerfully and continue to show up and attract and bring in the people who are meant for you. So I read something from. I can't remember her name, but I saw something and it hit me like a ton of bricks, which is that your business is a direct reflection of the perception of your audience, perception of authority. And I was like, holy cow, that is so true. And then what? People hear that and they think, okay, well, I need to try and control the perception of my audience. No, that's not what you do now. Instead, what it is that you do is you just keep shifting perspective by clearly communicating what it is that you stand for and trust that you're going to bring in the people who are meant for you. That's your responsibility. That's what you can control. So the first thing you want to do and what I invite you to do is just really determine and define what it means to have an audience. Okay, that's number one, then. Number two, I want to look at something I said last week and something I've really been instilling inside of my accelerator clients and conversion content Clients, which is, is to really look at your relationship to not enoughness and also look at your relationship to the pedestal. And what I mean by that is sometimes we create these big lofty goals and we really look up to people in the Internet space for whatever reason, and we put these people on pedestals and we put these goals on pedestals. And I want you right now, this is your invitation to just knock out the pedestal. Just knock it out and just, and take it down. Take your goal off the pedestal, take that person off the pedestal, and then let's take a look at your relationship to not enoughness. So what does that mean? And I talked a little bit about it yesterday in a, or last week in a passionate piece which I was sharing that a lot of, and especially my high achiever, my high achieving, smart coaches or anything like me, you know, you operate from this sense of humility and operate from the sense of achieving and sometimes that is at the expense of feeling like what you have now is not enough. And that is a problem. And what we want to do is we want to live in the and, and demonstrate that what we have now is great. And I'm ready for more because, because number one, your worth is not determined by what it is that you do. Nobody held you for the first time and said, I'll love you when you have a billion dollar business. I'll love you when you accomplish. Nobody said that. Whether or not you internalize it, you know, that's, that's, that's not for today's conversation. But what we're operating from feeling like we're not worthy and we're not enough. And as soon as I, you know, sometimes it shows up as if this, then that this happens for your clients too. When they're like, as soon as I lose ten pounds, then I'll feel better, right? So, and then what happens is we accidentally keep moving the goal post and that is a reflection of feeling like, not enough. Sometimes it shows up. Okay, well, I can't help anyone now because I, you know, I just need one more certification and then I'll be ready. Sometimes it shows up and feeling like, oh, well, well, you know, I don't have enough followers. My business isn't working because there's not enough people. Your business is built one person at a time. There are profiles on the other side or there are people on the other side of these profiles. That doesn't mean that you can't have goals. It doesn't mean that you can't expand. We just need to also live in the end, and appreciate how powerful and awesome it is to have the people that are saying yes to themselves now. Because have you ever, you know, if you have 200 followers, have you ever been on a presentation and on a stage and talked to 200 people? That's what it's like when you're on, you know, when people are seeing your stuff. If you've had, you know, a thousand views, that's. That's a thousand eyeballs of people looking at your stuff and consuming what it is you have to say. Back in the day, in my day, laughing, but, but seriously. But, you know, back in the day, you had to go knock on doors, like, knock door to door, hey, want to buy these pampered chef knives? But now we have the opportunity to just powerfully show up. Okay, so, so that's number two. I want you to just take a look at your relationship to not enoughness and, and the pedestal and just knock it down. Okay? The number three. Okay, so now we can start talking about some, like, actual tactical stuff when it comes to, you know, social media. Okay, so the first thing that I'm going to say to you once you clear one and once you clear two is number three, just get really clear on the specifics of, of your compelling content. What is the problem that you solve? What is the way that you solve it? What is the outcome that you deliver on? Now, likely good news, you don't have to keep reinventing the content wheel. You can just pick, you know, go to your. Go to your. Your pillars of performance, your messaging, what it is that you stand for, and pick, you know, three to five problems or three to five core topics per pillar, and then just keep repeating it. Just, you know, you. Every time you change one variable, like you change a creative, you change a hook, you change a call to action, you change the way that you say it. I just did four different ways. That's four different pieces of content. Maybe you do long form and maybe you do short form. So now we have, you know, four times four, whatever that is. Because now you. You have another variable and you could do the same thing for one piece of content. So now what you've done is created, you know, whatever, you know, now you've created 16 pieces of content. Okay? And so let's just hedge for a little bit of, like, some of it's too repetitive, so maybe even 12, 12 pieces of content on one topic just by changing one variable. So when you get clear on maybe, you know, five topics that you can talk about, and then you just Keep rinsing and repeating, because in addition to the variables that you can change, repetition is the mother of all learning. And people need to hear things multiple times before it actually sinks in. That's good news. That means that you don't have to be on a content creation wheel. You can set a timer and you could do the same thing and be repetitive. And so then how do you know what to do? Well, go and look at your analytics. Go get support. Go get help. One of the things I love to do with my accelerators is we just sit and rift. We'll be on a call and we'll just take. We'll just go through hooks and we'll just rift, Rift, Rift. Riff on hooks. And then we guest test and assess. One time, I had a client that just went completely viral on one hook that we went together. And luckily we had layered in the structure and the systems and the strategy that once that happened, he just took off. And that happened within, you know, 60 days of working together. I had a. I have another client who was also very profitable when he had started with 200 followers, and now he has 15,000. And in fact, I just looked yesterday and I was saying to myself, I was like, oh, my gosh, we've been working together for three years, I think, now, and I hadn't even looked at how much growth he had done. I was so proud. I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it now. Proud. And not from the sense of, like, I did that because just, like, I don't take on my clients, you know, failures, I also don't take on their successes. I just keep showing up powerfully and sharing what's worked for me and for my clients to demonstrate that this process works. And the only reason why it doesn't is you're quitting on yourself because your success is inevitable. I've also worked with people that are so close, like, literally they're like one post away and they quit. And that's okay. I'm not mad. It's not. I'm not shaming. I get it, right? There's a. There's a reason you want to do this, and it's not easy. It's not easy. Simple. It's not always easy. And it takes a ton, a truckload of resilience and to trust that you can handle it and so not meant for everyone. And that's okay. It's a good thing because your work is needed. You could trust the desires of your heart. I was faced with adversary when I. When I was performing, and I got into this really deep, dark slump, and I was like, ugh, forget it. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm gonna do something else. Cause I once heard this, This. I once heard this advice, which was, if you love something else, do something else, because you're going to spend more time in the process than you are in the outcome. And then when I was faced with the same thing in my entrepreneurial journey, I was like, well, I could quit. And I thought to myself, no, the only way out is through. And that's what I knew. This is what I meant to do. That's when I went all in on me. That's when I showed up, when it. That's when I showed up, when I didn't feel like it. That's when I showed up and I didn't feel like it. And then still, after 10 minutes, I was like, you know what? Now it's not a good time because I've spent so many years finding out what those lines are for myself, when I need to give myself grace and when I need to push through, because the only way out is through. And I want to invite you to do the same. And then, number four, I use ads. I spend the time doing what we just talked about. Create, understanding my clients. And then I use ads. I use ads to help me, to help me share my message. I'm maximizing my leverage. I believe in delegating, automating or deleting. I'm delegating the sharing of my content and my focus, my energy on the specificity of the problem I solve for the people I meant to solve it for outcomes that they get and then in a specific way that they get it. And I, I use ads to help me, and I want to invite you to do the same thing. So. And that's how I can show up in my power every single day. Keep showing up. And then I, I release. I release, release, release. The burden of perfection. 70% perfect is done. I rinse and repeat because repetition, people need to hear it multiple times. And then I. And, and so then I can use my time in a. And then I plan time to save time because I'm more productive in very short chunks of time instead of doom scrolling. So get honest with yourself about how specifically you are using your time and, and make decisions based on the data and be discerning with the data. You know, really go in and look at what the data is really telling you. So if you need help with this and you want to go deeper, then there are a couple things. We've got free trainings or you can book a schedule. A free profit plan. Come hang out with us and we'll share with you more on how this process could work for you. So if this episode helped you, it would be a huge favor to me if you would share this episode with your friends. Share it to your socials. Come tell me DM me in my Instagram @bsimsonfitness where we're all linked us up in the show notes. Tell me what your big takeaways were and if you want to go deeper on a topic or you want me to go deeper on a topic, then feel free. Let me know. Great job here on the training and I'll catch you on the next.

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