Scott ran a gym in South Africa. Not a struggling one either. Lots of members, great facility, a wonderful reputation, his words. Then COVID hit, South Africa went into a strict lockdown, and he ended up closing the doors.
About three months later he’d done around $45K online, starting from zero. He called it an adapt or die moment. He adapted.
He talked it through with my team in this interview. Worth a watch if you’ve got a physical business and you keep putting off the online side.
A good gym with no online business
This is the part I want people to notice. Scott wasn’t failing. The bricks and mortar business was working. But every time they tried to get an online side going, it went nowhere. They’d get a couple of clients, couldn’t keep it consistent, and didn’t know how to find leads.
So they put all their eggs in the gym. Which makes sense when the gym is full. And then one day you’re told you can’t open, and every egg you have is sitting in a basket nobody’s allowed to walk into.
I think a lot of people with a physical location are in that exact spot right now and just haven’t been forced to deal with it yet. People go out of business because they don’t adapt. Scott didn’t get the luxury of thinking about it for a year. He had to move.
Finding people online was the whole problem
When my team asked what got the ball rolling, Scott went straight to leads. Finding people online, finding the ones who actually need help, knowing where to look, and knowing how to talk to them in language that gets their attention and still ends with a client.
He said they’d always struggled with exactly that. In a gym, people walk in the door. Online nobody walks in. You have to go get them.
And he said what worked was simple and practical, stuff you could put into action fast. That matters. When you’re scrambling because your main income just got shut off, you don’t need a 40 step course. You need something you can do this afternoon.
Sales felt scary until he looked at it differently
Scott said something I hear from a lot of trainers. Sales felt scary to him, kind of negative, and getting on the phone with people was uncomfortable. That’s normal. In a gym, the facility does a lot of the selling for you. People see the equipment, they feel the vibe, they sign up.
Online it’s just you on a call. What changed for him was how he looked at that call. He stopped trying to sell anybody anything and started trying to offer a solution to their pain and their problems. He said the minute he flipped that switch, it became a skill he’ll take into the rest of his life.
I mean, that’s what selling is when it’s done right. You figure out if you can help them, then you tell them what it costs. If you can’t help them, don’t take their money. If you can, you’d be doing them a disservice by not offering.
Online coaching is a different job
He also said being an online coach is a different thing from being an in person coach. Getting on social media and speaking to people is hard if you’ve spent your career on a gym floor.
It’s like a great high school quarterback going to college. Same sport, but the speed is different and what worked before doesn’t automatically carry over. You have to learn the new game. Scott basically learned it while his old business was closing around him.
$45K in three months, during all of that
Zero to about 45K in around three months. He said that’s phenomenal for them in South Africa, and that earning those dollars is setting them free, which was the goal he had from the very first call.
And he did that while closing a gym and dealing with lockdown. So when somebody tells me they’re too busy to build the online side, I’d point them at this guy. He had about as much going on as you can have and still did it.
Let’s say he’d waited for things to calm down first. He’d have had no gym and no online business. That’s the trade off.
The skeptic’s only regret
Scott said he’s a skeptic by nature. He does his research, does his homework, and he’d been burnt many times online before. So he didn’t come in starry eyed.
His only regret was not starting sooner. He said if he’d done it a year or two earlier, he doesn’t know where the business would be now. His advice to anyone on the fence was basically to learn from his mistake and start sooner.
He also said something I agree with. As a coach, you don’t judge a coach by what he’s achieved personally, you look at what he’s helped his clients achieve. That goes for anyone you’re thinking about learning from. Look at the clients.
So if you’ve got a gym, a studio, anything with a physical location, and the online side keeps fizzling out, Scott’s story is the warning and the fix in one. Learn where your people are online, learn how to talk to them, get comfortable on the phone. Don’t wait for a lockdown to make you do it.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
