Fitpros: Build Your Coaching Program First Then Sell It OR Sell It Then Create It?

In today's video, I'm going to be going through the question I get regularly, and I think it's a pretty important one, especially for our industry. Should you build your complete course first or your programme, not a course, your coaching programme, your fitness programme, should you build them all first, then sell them? Or should you sell your coaching first, then build the programmes? Right now it is a bit of a chicken and egg question. Which one comes first? What's the better way to do it? A lot of people have different opinions on this, and I've personally done both formats, so I want to speak from experience here. Now, there's a lot of people that'll give you their opinions, right? Opinions are amazing these days. Everyone has one, even if they're uneducated opinions. So I want to give you my experience, my experience of doing both formats and what I see is the positive and negative of doing the two formats.

And ultimately, depending on where you are in your online coaching fitness business, you might be literally starting from scratch and thinking, alright, I've got to build everything first and then I can think about selling it. Or should I start getting leads first and then build it once I sell? Alternatively, you might actually be a little bit more down the path. You might have a couple of clients and you are thinking that it's generally one of two spots. If you get this question one, you write the start or you're down the path, you've got a couple of clients and you're not exactly in love with your programme formatting or the quality, the design, the layout, the look, the feel, the features. And so you're like, should I pause everything and redevelop and evolve that and then get back into getting more clients? Or should I get more clients and try and just do it in the background, right?

So it's kind of relevant for two spots depending on where you're at. Now ultimately, like I said, I've done both. I've done both formats and realistically the answer is there's positives and negatives to doing both right? Now, I wouldn't say there's a hard and fast do this, right? Everybody's got different, I would say personalities, right? Everyone's got different situations, different places where they're at, but I would say this is more of a personality fit question. Now, some people who are really, well, what I'll do is I'll jump up in a helicopter and then I'll jump down and you can work it out for yourself. Now, first and foremost, the worst thing that you can do any business owner can do is try and go away and build this Starship Incredible programme with all of these features and all this sort of stuff, and kind of go into mad scientist mode and going to the lab, block away everyone spend six months filming all these things, spending all this

Money working on all this tech and features and all that sort of stuff. And then thinking that after the six months, as soon as I launch, everybody's going to come running in. It's the best programme in the world, and I'm going to, it's go nuts because everyone's going to love it so much. They're going to tell all their friends, so on and so forth. Now, that in theory sounds great, and once again, I have done both formats. So what I'm talking about is the worst thing you can do, and I hear it regularly. I speak to trainers, coaches and they're like, Chris, I have this amazing programme. I've built all this stuff. I spent all this money, spent all this time. I couldn't even have another job because I was just putting all energy and focus to this, and now I've launched and I got one or two clients last week, and now I've got no leads and no more clients.

What do I do? How do I get leads and clients for this amazing thing that I've built that's so freaking amazing? It costs me so much time and energy? And it's like, well, unfortunately, that type of person has made the biggest mistake. So if you are at the stage where you are thinking about going down that path or you've started that path back out of it straight away, it is the most dangerous and the worst way to try and build a business because ultimately you are, when you first start out a business, ideas are amazing, and a lot of business owners fall in love with their ideas, their own ideas. And business is not about us. Your business is not about you. My business is not about me. Our businesses are about our clients, what our clients want. And unfortunately, when you first start out, you are kind of because haven't spoken to clients. You haven't spoken to prospects.

You may have spoken to some people, but they haven't spoken with their wallets right? Now. You might speak to some people and go, oh, I've got this great idea and I thought it was awesome. What do you think? And then people go, oh yeah, that's great. Your friends will tell you it's great, so on and so forth. But they're not speaking with their wallets. Now, someone saying an idea is great, is very different to would you pay for it? And the ultimate clarification is someone actually financially paying for something and going, I see this event of more value than the money. I want to buy this thing because I want it more than what it costs. So that is the ultimate validation right now, just asking family, friends or alternatively falling in love with your own ideas is like the worst thing. It's going to set you up for failure right now.

I've seen too many people do that. They fall in love with their idea. They think business is about them, not about their clients. They go away, they spend all this money, spend all of this time, and then when they pop up, they think that everything's just going to go nuts. And unfortunately, they hit crickets. And it puts you in a very bad spot because you could be financially in debt and you're also in time debt, right? You've put a lot of time and money into something that potentially may never work, and you may have to rip it completely apart because you didn't know what you're doing with your study. You've never done it before, for example, or you've never had someone like a client validate it with their money. Now, that's where the concept of people, where people get from, of sell it, then build it.

Right? Now, both formats are kind of wrong, and both formats are kind of right. I'm not a huge fan of sell it, then build it, and I'm not a huge fan of build it, then sell it right? Now, I've done both, and they both have positive and negatives, but I would almost say the absolute worst thing you can do is build a complete thing, right? Spend months on it, spend heaps of money on it, and then pop up and try and see if you can get some clients once it's completely done. Now, some personality suit, going out to market, speaking to leads, speaking to people and saying, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. It'll probably cost this. Would you be in, right? And if someone says yes, you say, okay, you take a down payment or a deposit or whatever and say, okay, I'll come back in three or four weeks and I'll have it made.

And so that way you actually get real data, real information, you get real validation of people paying right now. Some personalities suit that, some other personalities find that extraordinarily stressful. Now, some people like the stress because it's like, then it motivates. They know that people have paid for it, people want it, and so they don't mind spending long days, long nights building it because they know that they've got the customers there. And some people thrive under that pressure and it motivates them. Want to put in the time rather than going every minute of energy putting into it, are people actually going to want this? And then you overthink it, then you sit back and then you end up not doing it. Other personalities find that too stressful and just can't thrive under that, and they prefer to build some stuff, and then they don't feel comfortable selling something until they've got the bones of it.

They've got some of it made. Now, whichever one suits your personality, I highly suggest go down that path. But the point being, if you go down the path of build something, then sell it, build part of it, and know that once you then go and sell it, you're going to get more feedback and then you're going to tweak it and you're going to evolve and you're going to improve it. So for example, if you have to build a 12 week programme, build two or three weeks of it, then go out, speak to leads, speak to prospects, sell it. They can get started right away. And then you've got two weeks of them getting started to the end of the two weeks of what you've already built. You've got that time to build out week three, week four, week five, and stay ahead of them right now. Once again,

It will create a little bit more pressure, but it's positive pressure because you're working every day. Is this worth it? Are people actually going to want this? Whatever you will know. And so you'll have more motivation, you have more energy because you've already got the clients, they're working through it, they're giving you feedback, they're telling you what they like, what they don't like, and so when you build out the remainder of it, it'll just get better and better and better as the more feedback you get as people going through it. So that's my strong recommendation. I feel that way you can sell it with more authenticity because you kind of know part of what you've got, but do not go down the other end of the spectrum and build all of it and then pop up and hope to start working on marketing and sales from then, right?

Marketing and sales is extremely important because ultimately, if you have an amazing business with an amazing product or service or programme and no one buys it, it's a terrible business. So marketing and sales is around the part of getting clients, putting it in their hands and changing lives because if you don't have that, you don't have clients. And then no one uses your product or serve. It doesn't matter how good it's, so if you're at that point in your stage, in your journey, whether that's starting or you're down the path, you've got a couple of clients and you are wanting to revol it, I highly recommend kind of like the middle ground do that. You'll be much more successful, a lot less stress, and a lot more motivated because you're on the right path. Hopefully that makes sense. It's Chris from Tribe Fit. If you've got any questions whatsoever, feel free to as always, reach out to me, [email protected], or you can do some on the socials. That's it for me. Bye for now.