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
Your Clients Are Searching...But Can They Find You?
Have you ever felt like you're constantly creating content but not seeing the results? You're not alone. The disconnect between what businesses say and what audiences need to hear is the fundamental challenge most brand owners face.
With raw honesty, this episode unpacks the entrepreneurial rollercoaster—the rapid growth, hitting the "valley of death" (when it's time to hire and make less to achieve more), and the struggle to build a brand that genuinely connects. Through personal stories of delegating content creation only to watch it fall flat, we discover why authenticity can't be outsourced and why most marketing efforts fail to resonate.
Whether you're in the validation stage of business (under $300K) or looking to scale beyond seven figures, this episode offers clear guidance on building stronger inbound leads with dramatically less effort. We challenge the conventional wisdom around marketing strategies, urging you to abandon the "spread yourself thin" approach in favor of finding 1-2 channels that work for your unique audience. The secret? Developing a comprehensive brand system that ensures consistency across all touchpoints, from your internal team communication to your external messaging.
Most importantly, we redefine what it means to differentiate your business in a crowded marketplace. Forget about superficial logo updates or catchy taglines—true differentiation comes from identifying and living by your organization's authentic values and personality. When your messaging reflects what your ideal clients need to hear rather than what you think they want to hear, you transform from just another business that's talking to one that's truly connecting.
Ready to build a brand that actually resonates with your ideal audience? Listen now, and discover why content is still king—just not in the way you might think.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://creatitive.com/fit-to-grit-cast/
Most businesses are talking, very few are connecting, very few are speaking, very few are actually showcasing what they're contributing to the world. But great content isn't about what you say. It's about what your audience needs to hear. This is the Fit to Grit cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today let's get into why content is really king. Still is even what you heard with the AI jargon. We might get into that a little bit, but how do you really attract your ideal audience? You know, in this foundational series, our last episode, we talked a little bit about local search, finding yourself, helping people find you, and so I think this really leads up to this next plethora here in this next conversation, and really focusing a little bit more on content and how your ideal members, the people that you want to be a part of your organization, what you're trying to achieve, how they're going to find you and how are you speaking the right language. I have a journey to tell you, not going to get deep into it. May have heard some of my story before, but let's talk about my journey over the last three years, as a brand owner, grew quite fast, hit a valley of death, had no idea what the valley of death is, which means it was time for me to hire, to make less to achieve more. Didn't understand that Saved, saved, saved, saved. Went through a plethora of trying to learn, trying to grow, went back up. Same thing happened 2021, as you know why Went back down, had to bring it back up and then election hit. I'm in marketing a whole AI fad. Now I'm going down again and I'm trying to get back up. Different reasons why, but during that whole plethora of understanding who I am and my growth, I went on a journey to understand how I'm going to continue to grow this brand, how I'm going to continue to evolve as a human being. And I came to a plethora of sitting behind this desk way, you know, I had a team of delegators. It was just delegating all the work, that was just creating all the content that we needed to achieve to try to bring in our audience. None of it resonated. It was like spinning a wheel. And that goes back to my point. A lot of that content, even though it was a learning experience for me and a growing experience for what I'm trying to achieve in my growth as a leader, as a communicator, it didn't resonate with my audience. Having someone else write a script goes back to leading by example and to the main pain point. Most businesses are talking, very few are connecting, very few are speaking, very few are actually showcasing what they're contributing to the world confidently. It's okay if you have imposter syndrome and you're growing and learning, like I did and I continue to do, but great content isn't about what you say. It's about what your audience needs to hear.
Speaker 0:So, diving into this cast a little bit deeper, because this is our foundational series all about marketing and branding we are going to use some of this terminology that we're gonna talk about here because I want you to know it. I want you to understand it. You don't have to do it for a living, you just need to understand it enough so that when you hire the right person internally or externally, you understand what these are. And if you already know great, then you're my audience. But let's talk about stronger inbound leads with less effort. Let's go into higher engagement and trust with your ideal members, your ideal clients and positioning that differentiates you from your competition. Those are the three topics we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 0:So, competition, let's start off by stronger inbound leads with less effort. How do you really build stronger inbound leads with less effort. This is what I think is funny, and it's something that you all need to hear. It's time for you to start communicating who you truly are and live by who you truly are, communicating yourself in all aspects. Stop thinking about social media as a transactional platform. Think about it what it's meant to be a community, helping people. So how do you build stronger inbound leads through with less effort? Well, I talked about on a previous episode, a lot about the 80-20 theory. Right, 80% of your effort should go in 20% of your efforts, 80% of your time should go into 80%, 20 results blah, blah, blah. You get it. So many people rush they're just started. Well, let's do this.
Speaker 0:Let's kind of talk about two stages you're going to be at, because there is a plethora of a learning curve as you continue to evolve between certain stages. If you're making $300,000 or less, you're in validation stage. You should be learning your marketing. You should be trying to build an effective marketing strategy around an audience. Figuring out your audience that's key. You're going to need to start building some momentum. You're going to need to bring members in. You're going to need a test. You're going to need to learn what's working. You're going to be going through what I like to call the chaotic phase of business, where you have to learn how to handle employees, understand what's working.
Speaker 0:It's not all about just bringing more leads in. Is that part of it Is bringing more business in part of it? Yeah, but I'll be the first to tell you that 2020, I was on 20 calls a day with leads. None of them were qualified because I wasn't building my brand authentically. I didn't vet these people, build trust with them. But you can.
Speaker 0:80% of your efforts should be going into in the next stage should be shifted towards customer experience living by your values, creating those values, communicating with your team and with your clients, who you are, how you're trying to grow your vision, spreading your message through all different types of communication. And hint, how do you think franchises are built? They take all that vision, messaging, communication and they systematize it so they could spread that message more consistently amongst multiple locations. That is your job, even if you're a boutique studio, because if you're gonna open a second, third, fourth, fifth location, damn this you better not be under a million dollars. You better wait till you hit that million dollar mark and systematize all that stuff beforehand. That's what's going to build less effort into your inbound is building that consistency internally and externally. Building consistent messaging, building a brand language, a system that's able to help you spread your message without necessarily going through the hiccups of hiring 80 different people to do so. Understanding how that works. That's going to bring you in better inbound leads. That is your start and, funny enough, going to our second topic, once you start building a better system, a brand system, so to say, around all that, then you can start focusing on building higher engagement.
Speaker 0:You're going to find marketing that works. You're going to find a marketing strategy that's actually going to leverage. I always say do one to two. Find something that works. Stop spreading yourself thin through multiple different things. If ads work for you, great. Find a way to systematize the ads that you're creating and expand on those. But you're going to build better trust and more trust by continuing to spread your message that you live by constantly consistently. To spread your message that you live by constantly consistently. What's my message that I'm going to continue to spread to all of you guys as I continue to do these podcasts. I already said it To be able to expand and grow and build trust, you need a branding system so that you're not wasting money on things that aren't working.
Speaker 0:You're not spending marketing spend on crap that doesn't work, or yelling at your agency because you think it's their fault that they're not bringing you the qualified business that you want, because you didn't take the time to build a system and live by that system internally and externally. Do that Build. That Is it hard. Yeah, it's not easy. It's business to grow. Growing is the pain. Growing is a good pain if you're starting to bring in clients and customers. So focus on higher engagement through your messaging. That will bring in your ideal members. It's not just a tactic, it's a strategy and it's a continued strategy. That's worked for centuries for multiple types of organizations. Franchises are a good example of that.
Speaker 0:Now, how do you position yourself that differentiates yourself? Well, I'm going to throw a curveball here and I'm going to say positioning is about differentiating yourself. There's going to come a time happens to every brand owner, no matter if you're a local brick and mortar or you're a high end ecom brand or you're a, you know, a B2B company. Whatever you are, it's going to be the same thing. Branding is differentiating yourself. You're basically looking at who you are as a company. Actually, let me give you a story because this one might relate to some of you people. Walmart just rebranded. You know People that think about top level, look at the graphic design field, who create logos and still think it's just about logos, will look at it and say they didn't really change much to their brand.
Speaker 0:I can't believe they spent $100,000 on this brand. Yes, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars because that's how important it is to people. They'll say, oh, they maybe changed a little color, hue here, or they changed the visual and it's symmetric here with this here. Yes, visual communications is important. Your logo is part of it. But they wanted to showcase how they're differentiating themselves, how they've evolved as a company, not just externally but internally. Those messages and the stuff that they were developing was an internal process as much it was an external process Going through the values that they now represent, going through their mission and their vision for the growth of their company. That is differentiation. They're separating themselves from a certain segment of their market and trying to bring in and showcase themselves and how they're different, and that goes beyond just the visual. Is that important? Still, yes, because that is part of it. That's how they're showcasing their improvement, their differentiation, who they visual. Is that important? Still, yes, because that is part of it. That's how they're showcasing their improvement, their differentiation, who they are. So that's how they focus on that.
Speaker 0:So, to differentiate yourself from your competition from a tactical standpoint actually there is no tactical standpoint. I mean, your competitors are going to do what they're going to do and if they're not differentiating themselves and they're like we're going to pump iron here, we're going to work on yoga classes, like that's a service, a commodity, your service is your commodity, especially if you're in the B2C market. You're a business working on consumers, which most studios are. You want to focus on positioning yourself differently. And how do you start? Tactically? You look at yourself, you look at your team, you look at the values that you all represent. What is the ethos, what is the personality? That's it the personality of your studio. What makes you different is that it's very similar to personal branding. What makes you different as a person and how you represent that will eventually be your brand values, but different topic for later down in our series.
Speaker 0:This is the foundational series, like I said. So, positioning yourself differently, it's not just about picking some random colors and some random words and saying put these together and see if it works. No, it's about living by those, understanding what those values, the personality, and then taking that and creating consistent messaging around that which is going to dictate your offers, how you're creating your offers, how the experience of the internals of your gym look like or your studio look like, how do you represent all that stuff. That's what is going to position you differently than other studios. The brand system that we develop for people is more so just to showcase all of that, all that differentiation, in this nice consistent little formula for you, particularly for you, so that you can take that system and then you can then know what your marketing strategy is, or know the directions you need to take, know where your audience is, know how to reach them, know your employees and your hiring, know who you're going to hire, know the marketing people that you're going to bring on your team or the types of people you want to bring on in all four formats or partners you want to partner with. So, as mentioned, we talked about building stronger inbound leads with less effort.
Speaker 0:Again, that's consistency, just building consistency and everything that you put out into the world and go deeper on consistency too, but that's another cast. Higher engagement and trust with your ideal client living by that communication that you provide. That's going to eventually help you dictate that consistency that's going to bring in higher engagement. Spreading that consistency through all the messaging and visuals and communication that you're providing to your audience and the positioning differentiating yourself, leveraging all that stuff and that personality that you created, is going to be what differentiates you enough to create different offers that match your ideal clientele that you want to bring in. And that's why content is still king. You just have to look at it from a different perspective, a different mythology. Your messaging does matter. So what you need to do is you need to craft your messaging around what your clients actually want. Spread what they need to hear, not what you think they want to hear. Again, I'm Zach, host of the Fit to Grit cast. This is another one for the books. Hope you all have a good day.
