Episode 001 // Digital Gains Podcast: The Secret to Building a Scalable Fitness Business

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Episode Summary

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In this debut episode of Digital Gains, I share my journey from aspiring artist to digital automation expert, helping fitness coaches, personal trainers, and gym owners build scalable businesses.

I introduce the concept of Value Engines, a powerful idea I first learned about from Ryan Deiss in his book Get Scalable. These engines are the key to creating a business that grows with you while reducing the time you spend on day-to-day operations. I’ll show you how to map out your Growth Engine (how you attract clients) and your Fulfillment Engine (how you deliver results and retain clients).

Whether you’re a beginner coach, an established professional, or a team leader ready to level up, this episode provides actionable insights to help you gain clarity, streamline your processes, and take your fitness business to new heights.

Don’t miss this foundational episode packed with strategies to help you build your Digital Gains.

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Episode Transcript

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00:07

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the Digital Gains podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. This podcast is all about helping fitness coaches, personal trainers, and gym owners like you grow your business, save time and scale using the power of digital marketing automation and design.

00:28

My name’s Kev Lawrence and I've spent years designing and building systems that help fitness professionals focus on what they do best coaching, Today I'm sharing a little bit, about my journey, diving into how I got started in the coaching space and I'm also going to let you in on the secret

00:49

to building a scalable fitness business. let's get into it. First of all, a little bit about me. growing up, I was always really interested in art and design. I actually wanted to paint. I loved painting and loved drawing, sketching. And, I applied to college, here in Scotland, art school to

01:16

go and do fine art and go paint and be creative. Right. However, I soon realised that I wasn't very good. I didn't get in. I tried a few times and ultimately ended up realising that you have to be very, very exceptional at painting to actually even make it and make money from it.

01:38

So I actually went down the commercial route and became, a graphic designer, I started out in Signwriting and did print design and logos and branding and things like that. And then I found website design, and I came across marketing and the companies that I was working for, at the time,

02:05

I came to realise that actually how you make money, whether it's online or in person or whatever, it's actually how you market yourself. What I found was that if you didn't have great design, if you didn't have the right systems, if you didn't have the right marketing in place, you really could.

02:24

It would really make or break a company, You have to be able to attract leads and be able to convert them into customers. And if you can't do that, you simply don't have a business, So that's when I realised that design is much more about the aesthetics. It's about the strategy,

02:45

the way you design your brand, the way you design landing pages, the way you design your systems. All of it matters and it all comes back to design. I'm not just talk. I'm not talking about just something that looks good. I'm talking about how you put a process together, how you map out

03:09

your systems. That has to be designed. Everything, is designed in this world, Everything you see, everything you do, everything you interact with is designed in some way. Someone has thought about it put a process or a system in place, and then created something out of that So about 15 years ago,

03:35

I met a guy called Joe Parish. Now, Joe was just starting his online coaching business at the time and came to me. Had heard that I did website design and wanted to get his first website up and running. we did a little bit of a trade. I was kind of training at the time. I was doing a lot of jujitsu,

03:54

doing competitions and things. week, I did a swap on services. I built his website for him, and he coached me for those kind of upcoming competitions and things and helped me essentially get in shape. Right. And honestly, since then we've been we've been working together.

04:10

And I've seen his business grow. I've seen his business evolve, and I've been part of that. From a design standpoint, from a systems standpoint, from a marketing standpoint. And it's been phenomenal to, to be a part of. It's been amazing to see the, the growth the that Joe's gone through.

04:31

So now what he does is he mentors other coaches and helps them grow their business and helps align their goals with their with their lifestyle and what they're looking to achieve. And over the years, Joe has recommended me to other coaches, and that's how I built up a network of fitness professionals

04:50

and got into this space. Now, obviously, I can't just rely on word of mouth. I had to create those relationships. I had to build those relationships first and foremost. And I also had to put in my own marketing strategies, and I had to create my own content and create lead magnets and all this stuff

05:12

that I love talking about and working on day to day. So this podcast is a way for me to give back and help even more coaches and my mission with the podcast is kinda simple, its to show you how automation, how marketing or building funnels, and those kind of well designed

05:34

systems can make your business more scalable, more enjoyable, more profitable. Because we live in a digital age and you know, especially if you're an online coach, your business is 90% digital. So you have to be familiar with tech. You have to be familiar with digital marketing.

05:57

You have to know what apps are good to use, what apps aren’t good to use, and you have to get familiar with those. And you have to build out the systems that work for you and your business. that kind of leads me on to what I believe the secret to building a scalable fitness business

06:17

in this digital age that we that we live in, right. first one I need to do is. Break it down into what that might look like for you. Because scalability. If I'm saying to you, this is the secret to scale your fitness business, that scalability might look different for everybody,

06:42

Everyone is on different paths, different sort of points in the journey, of growing a business. So therefore we need to take that into account. Now I'm going to generalise this and kind of break it down into maybe three, three camps. Three different types of fitness coaches,

07:06

So first of all, you've got the beginner who is fresh out of just getting their PT Qualification and they're just really focused on finding their first clients. It's all about them putting the reps in, gaining experience, whether that's on the gym floor or whether it's a mixture of,

07:28

online and the gym floor and really just figuring out what works for you. What do you enjoy? Who do you enjoy working with? That's the that all you should be focused on. The established coach I would say is is the next one. You you've probably got some experience.

07:49

You've been coaching for a few years. You have a steady client base. And what this particular coach is looking to do is they're either looking to grow or they're looking to work smarter, not harder. Save themselves some time And then the third type of coach is the leader. And this type of coach

08:17

is they've built a team around them. And they're ready to take their business to the next level. And they really they've they might have some systems in place and, and have been maybe when they were working for just themselves, they had systems in place. And then as they've grown their team,

08:36

they've expanded on those systems and they are able to bring in leads and they've got a good authority and they've got a good reputation. But as you build that team out and as you grow and scale those systems that used to work maybe aren't working as best as, as they can,

08:54

now that you've got a team around you. So what that coach the leader is really trying to do is streamline the operations within the business, making sure that the team knows what they're doing and they can focus on fulfillment while you focus on growth and finding ways to bring new clients in

09:20

and work on the business, improve the service. I would say that those three types of coaches, they have different needs when it comes to actually scaling your business. But regardless. The very first thing, and this is the secret, the very first thing that you have to do

09:42

is to map out your Value Engines. So what is a Value Engine, A value engine is a visual representation of how your business operates. There’s two main engines that I tend to focus on, there’s more but the two that I focus on is a growth engine. So how you actually get clients

10:07

and a fulfillment engine, how you deliver the results and retain your clients. If you get this right, this is how you scale by mapping out these growth engines. And then the fulfillment engine, you will be able to scale your fitness business. It starts simply with planning and mapping this out.

10:29

So how do you map out a growth engine for example? Well all you need to do, all you need. You don't need anything fancy, anything complicated. You just need some sticky notes and a pen. Maybe a Sharpie. And what you want to do is you want to look at your business and how you currently generate leads

10:52

and convert them into paying clients. And what you want to do is you want to write down on a sticky note the different tasks that you go through to achieve that. So for example, you might write on your first sticky note. Post on social media, right? That's your first sticky note,

11:16

a second sticky note. You put that up, someone DMs you third sticky note, you start a conversation, then you book a call. Then you have that sales call, and then you process the payment. So that's like the high level overview. This happens this happens this happens this happens. Right.

11:38

And you can see it right there in front of you on the sticky notes. And if there's anything else that you need to add in there then you absolutely can. If there's specific, tasks that you need to do within each of those, then write down add on And you can move the sticky notes around as well.

11:56

Which is which is that the best part about it? Another example of a growth engine might be that you have a lead magnet, and you've put that lead magnet out into the world, and you're building your email list. So someone downloads the lead magnet. They get access to that, that resource,

12:17

you add them to your email list, and then for the next three months, you send them value packed emails. Building more trust, building more authority. They then reach out to you and book a call. You have that sales call and then you process payment So what you'll notice there about the

12:39

the two examples of that growth engine is that there are some very similar steps. You know, booking a call having that sales call processing payment in some way. These are the things that will always happen There are some subtle differences. And that okay, the first one you posted on social media,

13:01

but the other one, you had a lead magnet and you were using you and your email list But what we're doing is we're starting to recognise what steps are being repeated. And what is actually working was bringing the leads in, okay. And how are we converting them into a customer?

13:21

What steps do you need to go through? What processes are you going through? Okay. For fulfillment engine it's a little bit different. So this usually starts with onboarding and will end with the client achieving the goals that they they set out to do So how do you how do you onboard them

13:42

into the business. And then how do you actually deliver on the promise that you've made them? An example of what this. might look like. You know, grab your sticky notes again. Start writing it down. The trigger for this onboarding is you've just processed the payment. So boom, that goes up.

13:58

That's the first sticky note.. Then you might send the client a link to your questionnaire or PARQ so that you can get more information once you've got that information. up goes the next sticky note you're going to be building out the program, Then client get started and then you get feedback.

14:21

You make some adjustments. You make sure that they're happy with everything. If they're if they've got questions and so on. You work with them, right? You guys know this. You know you're the experts here. But maybe you have regular check ins and then you update their programs and this goes on.

14:41

You might have other things that you do from a fulfillment standpoint. You might provide more education. You might do group calls, whatever it is, but you get them on a sticky note, put them up on the wall and have a look at it and put it in order. Until you get to the end point, which is

14:59

they've gone through their transformation, they've achieved their goals, and then you can map out the next process. What happens after that was the fulfillment...side of things after that. And the more you do this, no matter what stage you're at, No matter what type of coach you are at the stage

15:17

within your business, whether you're new to the industry, whether you're you're established, or whether you're a leader, start putting these engines together so that you've got a clear understanding of the processes that you go through to either bring clients in or to onboard clients, or to fulfill

15:44

and deliver your coaching program And once you've got everything there, you can start identifying bottlenecks. You can refine the processes, and you can find areas to then automate or to delegate Because the goal here is. That you get time back, which will allow you to scale the business

16:15

And have a business that can scale without requiring more of you. So if you want a business that will scale with you and evolve with you, you have to make sure that you're paying close attention to the processes, the tasks, the systems that you're putting in place and on a regular basis,

16:41

mapping them out again, refining them, looking at those growth engines, looking at the fulfillment engines and going, right, how can we improve this? How can we refine this? Now that we're at the next stage of our business, now that we're growing, now that I'm bringing on a team,

16:58

now that I want more time back, now that I want to work three days a week, whatever it is, you go back to those value engines and you map them out. Because if you don't have a clear game plan, if you don't have a blueprint to work from, you will not scale. Anyway, final thoughts? Keep refining.

17:23

Keep adapting to match where you're at and what your goals are. This was just an introduction to the concept, right? But in future episodes, what I want to do is I will dive deeper into the strategies and the tools and the tactics around all this, and how you can refine your engines

17:38

and how you can build a scalable, sustainable fitness business. If you found today's episode helpful. Make sure to subscribe one. And if you've got any questions, drop me a DM on Instagram at @kevlawrencedesign. I'd love to hear from you and always happy to help.

17:55

Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode.

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