S3 Ep 1: The New Way To Hustle For Your Fitness Business

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm Richard Deternji, and welcome to season three, and this must be episode eighty-one. Wow, pretty pumped for this season and pretty pumped. And when I say season, I also want to talk about life season, which I want to touch on in a second. Quick update of what's been going on. Heaps of different things been going on. And if you're, you know, been in a situation where things have been, you know, ups and downs, we started this year off Thinking, oh yeah, all this COVID stuff was over, but then, you know, weren't locked down, but a lot of clients had to cancel and move. And if that's been you, you know, welcome. It's been a rocky road of persistence and clarity that you've needed to get through this piece. And hopefully this whole little bump is hopefully turning towards the end of this particular little time of the year. And so that's been new. It has been a bit of a tricky part. New things happen and people have been canceling and starting and all those kind of things. But I want to talk about that a little bit more in detail. And in regards to season, I went to Sydney on the weekend to celebrate my wife Joey's birthday. Great trip, 24-hour turnaround, and it was just great times hanging out with some amazing people and In previous episodes, I have talked about some items that have helped me to progress and get in flow. And one of those things was to talk to amazing people daily—a friend or a family, someone who inspires you. Basically, that's one of the ways that I stay in the zone. That's in a past episode. Anyway, so that was kind of like you know twenty-four hours are like boom, some great conversations, and then. Today, my son started his big school for the very first time. They call it prep in Queensland, kindergarten also known as. And he had a lot of fear around going into school. He's been to smaller schools in the past, but really fear around going to school and fear of the unknown. You know, petrified, scared. And I had to explain to him these feelings of fear and being scared and what they mean, and they're normal, and probably every other kid's going through the same thing. And, you know, eventually, after a few tries, he went into the classroom and he's there now. And it kind of got me thinking about more of a wrap-up of what's happened, also what's about to happen. And, and I call this the season. And for someone who's young like my 5-year-old, he hasn't been faced with that many, um, fears or reason to be scared, um, in any kind of larger way. This is probably his largest lesson he's had to learn. But for a lot of us, this time, or the last 2 years I should say, has been many, um, different ways that we've overcome our fear, our worst anxieties, the fear of losing or closing or starting again or dropping clients and pauses and cancellations and the fear of the unknown, how to run virtual classes and so forth and how to generate more leads in this time. And by now, I like to call this— I like to call this a new season, not just in this podcast, but in life, in your business. And I did a post about this morning And I want to kind of expand on a little bit where the seasons come and go. And, you know, like the season of my son, the fear is here, and hopefully in, you know, 5 minutes or 5 days or 5 months, that will be gone and something else will arise. But if you haven't yet over the last 2 years decided what your new season will look like in 2022, My heavy suggestion is, is really look at that and look at it. Is this the right model process business for you and what you need to change to live your best life in 2022, to have your best business in 2022? There's less safety blankets than there were in the past. We know that. And so it means that in 2022, now is the time to figure out How will you move into your best years in business in this new season that we're in? Over the last 6 months, I've— I feel like I've been in a pretty good flow state, and it hasn't always been this way. For most of my life, I've always been in hustle mode, in hustle mode every single week, hustling. for the business, hustling for our clients, ensuring that everybody was taken care of, everyone was looked after. We had new business coming in and we had great retention and people were learning and there was just so many things to do like every business. Yet over the last 6 months, I really just thought about how I need to— how— what we need to do as leaders and you're a leader in your community, what you need to do to ensure that your clients get the results they are coming to you for, and also too, how you can keep going in your business, not short-term but long-term, and what your life needs to be looking like now. And I am going to get to, you know, generating quick, fast leads and efficient leads, but this is the pinnacle of this point, because most people who aren't in a flow state are exhausted, Because there's so many things to do. But the time it comes to marketing and sales, we're only spending 20% of our time doing that, if that, if that, if that. And so then on the other side, we're wanting to grow and retain our business, but we're not spending the time that it requires to do that. And so the first lesson here I want to teach in 2022 is really you need to readjust your timetable, your business yourself to figure out how you as a company— now, if it's just you in the business or you have somebody else in the business helping you, but 80% of this, of your business, or 80% of the man-hours that you or the other people working for you, 80% of those hours must be spent in the front end of the business, which is sales and marketing. And you can put retention in there as well, but again, I would still break that up in a way to ensure that it is focusing on growth, especially when I have acquisition. Our big focus this year of our clients at a double the business, we want to produce more people who double the business this year than any other year in history. And so talking back about hustle and the opposite of hustle is flow. In the last 6 months, I have moved from Sydney to Sunshine Coast. I have moved out of traditional office that I've been in for 10 years. Consistently managing teams of you know ten, fifteen people at any one time, and ensuring that projects and deadlines got met for the agency side of our business and also to the education side of our business. And I would generally typically work in like hours, like you know nine to nine or nine to seven or what do we do or eight and It was all just kind of like straight line, but now I've, you know, redeveloped the concept of blocks, working in blocks, using the hours for my best work, knowing that your best work is only marked by completion, only marked by numbers, only marked by percentages of increase in your business or a great retention. And understanding this more than the art of, you know, managing is it readjusts everything. It readjusts the team, it readjusts the best ways to work, it readjusts where you want to put the time as a business owner. And over the last 2 years, this is something that everybody's had to face head-on and figure out what is the better way. We know our clients have definitely adjusted and gone online and got team members in and all these things to ensure they can live their best lives. I also got a performance coach in, like I always recommend everybody should have a coach in. So shout out to my performance coach, Jeff Jowett, keeping me on the path. But the flip side now is I love getting deep work done. I classify doing a podcast as a deep piece of work, especially if I'm in flow. When you're not in flow, things that you want to do become really hard. I'm sure you know what I mean. So for me, the new healthy variation of hustle is completion, is completion. Last year, I chose a word of this year. My word this year was the term healthy. And the reason why I chose that word is because I know, probably just like yourself, we can get into hustle mode relatively easy. You know, the start of the year, you can say, yep, everything's gonna be great, everything's planned. But really, the biggest barrier of any business growth is generally the business owner. I'll say that again. The biggest barrier of any business is always the business owner, especially if it's a small business, when, you know, you're heavily responsible on the growth of the business or the servicing of the business. Okay. And so if you're not in flow, if you're not clear of the direction, if you're not clear of where you're going, the business turns into your mind. And if it's a cluttered mind full of fear, full of not sure which way to go, well, the business is going to very quickly look like that. And so kind of lesson number 1 right here is define the new way of your business. And I say define the new season in 2022. What is this season going to look like for you? What are the 10 non-negotiables you have in your life and your business, your life and your business? Who are you going to say no to? Who are you going to say yes to? What opportunities are you looking for? In having a balanced life, there is, if there's any such thing, sometimes there's going to be more flow and sometimes there's going to be more stress. But at the end of the day, when you've got, when you've got more flow and more of the deep work happening, stress becomes little and less, and then happiness and joy becomes a bit more. And so when it, when we talk about this and we talk about moving this into business growth, the next part, the final part I want to talk about here is generating leads, generating new clients, and not having the fear that somebody might leave or not having the fear that you've lost a whole bunch of clients in January or there's pauses and that kind of stuff. It's just ensuring that you're leading from the front end. I personally think one of the most important pieces of work that we're going to do this year is ensuring that your voice is the voice heard in your local community and ensuring that we have clarity and purpose of what you're doing. People are looking for conviction. People are looking for somebody who is convicted, who is clear, who is— who understands what it takes to get to the next point People don't want indecisiveness. They want decisions. And I believe decisions, strong decisions, fast decisions this year are going to be the key to stay yourself and your business into flow this year. Indecisiveness, looking too much into what other people are doing, how they're doing it, things like that. will be the death of a business because a lot of people around you are also discovering and figuring things out. A lot of people around you, it's the first time they are doing it, so they're looking at only one step ahead of them. They're not looking at 5 or 6. They don't have that level of 5 to 6 ahead of them. So a lot of the time right now, things are new. And so what I always say in this period here is that you've got to go back to being a kid to a degree and look Listen into your gut, listen into your internal dialogue, and use the gut a little bit more than the head. How does it feel and how does it make you feel when you do a Facebook Live or when you sign up a client or when you're working in the business or when you're working on the business? And what you want to do is you want to find those parts that you do and readjust them and make them work for you in your life, not against you. And you're only going to be remembered on the amount of people that you serve and how you make them feel. Listen, there's not that many choosing— there's not that many feelings to choose from. And so at the end of the day, it's like, well, how do you want you to feel? Number one, how do you want your family to feel? And how do you want your clients to feel? fill. And then look at your business, your clients, what you do, and just make sure they all fit into the spots that makes you stay in flow and makes you complete activities, makes you complete completion activities. I've been in the non-completion zone for many, many years, and I helped people around me Because I was, you know, focused on making sure that they got everything they need. But we neglect what we need to stay in business. We neglect what we need to complete us feeling amazing. So if you're listening to this, whatever, whenever you listen to this, it is time to rip in. It is time to listen to your gut. It is time to do the thing that you're scared of. It is time to make the move that you may have should have made, or it is time to look back and go, "Wow, I've done all these things. How good am I?" We don't recognize ourselves enough, and we don't give ourselves enough praise as business owners, as fitness business owners. But what we do, we do change lives. We save lives. We, we, we change people's opinion and values of themselves. And I just think that's amazing. I think it's the best industry in the world. But, but unfortunately, because of the hours and because of the way that our hearts are created and our minds are created, especially as service operators and people that are willing to give, give, give, there's a big part that you need to be careful of, and that is your heart. Is that we want to care, and as Jeff Jarrett says, care but care less. Care but care less. And you can take that how you want to take that, but that is about you as the business operator. It's really important that we work on the activities that will keep you in business, that will keep you growing, That will keep you loving the industry and to keep you balanced. So this is not a short-term hack, but it's a long-term game. So guys, that's it for me for this episode. I want to remind you to believe in yourself, trust in yourself, and just rip in and get the work done. The faster you rip in, the faster you get the work done. You're either going to have 2 things happen. It's going to work, or it didn't work and you're going to start again or readjust it. Very simple. And I think that's okay to do. You don't have to do it perfect the first time. You just got to get it going. So team, pumped to have you back season three. I'd love to know what you got out of this episode and share that with us. You can find me on my Instagram, which is Richard Turtungi. I'll spell that for you. It's T O U T O U N J I or head over to com_marketing. Let us know you thought of this episode. I'm really excited for you guys this year. I'm really excited to see the growth. I'm really excited for you to listen to your internal dialogue, believe in your ability, you know, work with good people around you, and most importantly, get off the sidelines of life and get in the field of play. Let's do this, team. Catch you later.