GHR 011: Why Speed Is Always King

Show Notes:

There is an old saying that goes

“You can have it fast, you can have good, or you can have it cheap. Pick two”

Good +fast = cost

Fast + cheap = low quality (no results)

Good + cheap = time

And some people who have been guru’s in the gym space for a long time, because they did is slowly, will tell you slower is better. When thats an absolutely unfounded truth.

Slower is not better. Slower is just slower.

A lot of gym owners are still slow to rectify this in their minds.

No matter what you want results and quality right? So the choice resides in how you want to get it.

Slow and cheap

Or

Fast and at a cost

In other industries, particular the fast growth Silicon Valley tech scene it al revolved around an MVP or a minimum viable product

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development.

Gathering insights from an MVP is often less expensive than developing a product with more features, which increases costs and risk if the product fails, for example, due to incorrect assumptions.

A minimum viable product has just enough core features to effectively deploy the product, and no more.

Then what companies would do is pump traffic and users to the product and iterated until a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed non-viable

Then results from a minimum viable product test aim to indicate if the product should be built to begin with. Testing evaluates if the initial problem or goal is solved in a manner that makes it reasonable to move forward.

Everyone who is successful in business at the highest levels values times far more than they value money. So idea is always to have speed so you can find out if something works rather than waste years waiting for the market to tell you it doesn’t.

There is an amazing book about this called The Lean Startup by a guy named Eric Reis, one of the key takeaways in this book is to build the smallest thing you can build that lets you quickly make it around what is called the build/measure/learn loop.

What you want to avoid is the trap a lot of business owners and gym owners fall into. Since we are practitioners first we want to build it perfectly and in some cases even overbuild and then we become really proud of that.

We become so proud of the shell we built that we make that the primary focus of our advertising effects. You’re showcasing the shell you built and not the substance within.

Very rarely in the REAL business world do products and services experience product-market fit right away. In fact, some products have to completely change markets or adopt a new business model. These are called pivots.

Moving fast and acquiring speed is the key to iterating and finding both your voice in a noisy local market and also finding out what your local market actually wants and responds best to.

The goal is to acquire speed and fail fast. And when I say fail, I mean notice the weak points and iterate fast. This keeps your business an exciting place to both work and play at.

It’s better than sitting there and waiting until you’re broke to find out your service didn’t work with how you initially set out to provide it.

So, what’s the answer to the question of how to increase your speed?

In regards to growth there are a lot of great answers, luckily we live in an amazing time.

Even just 15 years ago to reach 10,000’s of people you had to pay for something like a TV spot or a radio spot.

Now you can do it organically or pay very little to acquire the attention of 10,000’s within a drive for your gym. Plus when you spend that time and money you can also track every click and see where the bucket is leaking.

Can you imagine? Spending $10,000 on a single TV ad to be shown whenever the network wants to show it a limited number of times just for 30 seconds?

You couldn’t even A/B test two commercials unless you wanted to pay double.

Here is 2019 you work some INSANE magic and collect incredible amounts of data and iterate fast on like $100 a week of ad spend if its done right.

Now if you don’t want to pay for it that’s cool too, but known two things

Now, I know what some of you are thinking, “Well Will, I don’t want to change the product or service I offer…”

That’s cool, good thing is you probably don’t really have to. Thing is fitness of most varieties has been such a red, bloody ocean for so long that we know it works and so does the public. It’s often the message and positioning that is off. Likely, you’ll  need to reiterate the position of your messaging, how its packaged and positioning of it in your local market multiple times over before you find a fit.

In the end, it is assumed that he who can define the problem the best is the one deemed best at solving it for the onlooking prospect. And usually saying you’re a better version of the same thing down the road is the worst way to do that.

The better way to do that is to position yourself as a new or different and exciting opportunity and that you’re looking for unique people who are excited forge a new path in front of you.

This is how you create members. And that the overall point here guys, the gym business is no longer a customer collection business.

A lot of businesses got lucky and got spoiled in the early days of 2008, 2009 and 2010 on simply collecting the customers in the marketplace. Some have made the shift, but a lot haven’t, to a customer creation and ascension model.

So if some of what I said stuck a cord or if this sounds like you and you haven’t shifted to a customer creation and ascension model then time is running out. And that is exactly what we focus on here at Big Little Gyms so I’d like to help by inviting you to the big little gyms facebook group and to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, youtube, facebook or wherever else you maybe tuning in from.

Lastly, I want to make sure you guys have hear all the rage about the gymhacker code. The gym hacker code is a free guide I spent the first 5 months months of this year writing that lays out the 6 stages of gym ownership and what it takes to break through each one on the way to mastery clearly with the right mindset and actionable next steps

I hope that was super super helpful for you guys and that you take the advice and put it in to action right away so you can attain speed and have success.

Thanks for tuning in and stayed tuned to the next episode of the gym hacker radio podcast!