This week on BARBELL BUSINESS, we discuss:

• Are you an amateur business owner? Or are you operating as a true entrepreneur?
• Incognito haters, false security, and other things holding you back from going all in.
• Old school marketing and sales tactics are dead. Evolve with the times and you might actually like it.
• The ratio for gym owner self-education
• How to stop running from the stuff you’ve been ignoring

On this week’s show, we go into some of the most common subconscious fears, roadblocks and myths that keep you from running a successful fitness business. Here’s a sneak peak into one of my favorite roadblocks to break down:

Sales and marketing are EVIL!!!

I hear it all the time from gym owners. “We have the best gym in the area I just don’t know how to let people know about it. If they did, it would sell itself.” Unfortunately, unless your gym is so revolutionary that it has new members on a waiting list, you’re going to need to learn how to market yourself and sell your services. If that just sent chills down your spine, you’re in good company.

Most amateur business owners try to avoid this aspect of their business because it feels evil. That’s probably because you have an old school sales methodology in mind.

How not to sell a gym membership:

By definition, selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that’s good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to taking action to achieve that result. When you think of it that way, playing salesperson makes you the hero – not David Koechner.

The same goes for marketing. I once saw a graph on the internet ranking the most hated career professionals. First were salesmen (of course), then lobbyists, then marketers. We marketers were ranked more hated than lawyers and stockbrokers! Although this bums me out, I get it – we do have a reputation of being VERY irritating. The good news is times are a changin’.

If you’ve ever read Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing, you know that there’s been a huge shift in the way savvy businesses are letting the world know that they exist. Some call this style of marketing “inbound marketing” which is the methodology we built Barbell Logic around. It’s THE most honest, effective, and cuddly form of marketing today and once you learn the basics, you’ll be proud to call yourself a marketer too.

This is just one of the roadblocks we discuss in this show, so be sure to listen to the rest if you feel you’re still hustling in the mature league.

Enjoy the show,

P.S. Here’s a link to the book AJ discusses in this episode: Zero to One: Notes on Start-Ups, or How to Build the Future