by Matt Weik
Today’s business world is all about speed. The slower it takes for something to come to market, the quicker it becomes outdated and obsolete. If you want to completely disrupt the fitness industry, you’re going to need to go FAST and HARD. This isn’t a side hustle type of mentality. This is a go hard or go home business decision. Once your idea becomes public, there will be people out there looking to knock you off with either a better version of what you’re putting out (service or product) or at a cheaper price point. What you need to do act quickly, get all your ducks in a row, take a deep breath, and start running.
The fitness industry is changing by the day with new research, new techniques, new workouts, new equipment, etc. Your goal is to capitalize on an idea, build awareness, and force change. The information below is a quick guide to help you take your idea, move swiftly, and ultimately completely disrupt the fitness industry.
You Don’t Always Have to Monetize
Or at least not right away. While any business needs to monetize to stay in business, sometimes to start off you need to first get trial on your product or service. Consider providing such for free in order to get feedback on whether or not people like what you have to offer. Once you have validated your product or service, then release it as a paid model.
What you want to do is have your name or your brand be at the forefront of the consumer’s minds. This will help you completely disrupt the fitness industry. When they think of this new innovative way to solve their problem or save them time or money, you should be the only person they think about. Once you secure the market share, others will try to knock you off – so be prepared for a battle.
Have a Valid WHY That Solves a Problem and Execute
As mentioned briefly above, you want to validate why you actually created this product or service in the first place. Does it do or provide what it claims? Are there any drawbacks or negatives? If so, fix them immediately and relaunch another test before monetizing the business. Remember, speed is everything. If you take too long to fix or modify things, someone else could swoop in and steal your idea and your customers.
Execution is key with any business idea and strategy. Thoughts and ideas are great, but they are only thoughts and ideas at the end of the day and if you take those things to the bank, you can’t deposit them. So, come out with the products/service, fine-tune, launch, execute, and monetize.
You Need to Believe in It FIRST
Have you ever gone to buy something and the sales clerk didn’t really sell you on the idea of the purchase? It was as if he or she didn’t truly believe in the product and you picked up on that. You need to be sure that what you are doing or selling is something you are passionate about and absolutely believe in. If you are just trying to scam people and make a quick buck, you will ultimately fail, your name will be ruined, and it will be hard for you to launch another brand.
If you want to disrupt the fitness industry, be sure what you are doing is something you absolutely believe in with every cell in your body. People can pick up on sincerity and passion towards something. If you believe in it, your job selling your product or service will be that much easier when you don’t need to sell yourself first.
Put the Right Team in Place
While you very well could run your business yourself (I do for example), having a team around you to fill any gaps in skills and can quickly help take your business to the next level and help you disrupt the fitness industry. Again, business is about speed and if you are trying to get a product to market that CAN be imitated and knocked off, you need to move at lightning speed.
If marketing is not your thing but you can sell the heck out of things you believe in, hire someone to run the marketing end of your business. Or vice versa. The goal here is to not figure it out as you go. Doing this will slow you down. If you want to disrupt the industry you need to come at the industry like an avalanche. Just keep moving forward no matter what gets in your way and having a team surrounding you to help with that can be extremely helpful.
Prepare for the Haters
Everyone who brings value and builds something is going to eventually have haters. It’s the cost of doing something right. Which, you would think if you’re going to disrupt the fitness industry, that people would be thrilled with what you brought to market – and most will. However, if you’re coming out with the next piece of fitness equipment for home workouts and it’s better than product X that has been selling forever and slowly start chipping away at their sales, guess what? The company behind product X is going to start hating on you for stealing their business.
Haters could simply be chirping in your ear nonstop or they could even go as far as trying to sue you to stop you in your tracks before you gain more leverage and more market share. DON’T STOP. If you are truly passionate about what you are doing and solving a problem that people are facing, keep pushing forward. Doing the right thing is always the right thing. Just because someone wants to tear your building down doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep building it and not worry about the other buildings around you or what they are doing. That’s how business works. Stop focusing on everyone else and simply focus on what you’re doing and executing.
Go Hard and All-In
If you want to disrupt the fitness industry, you need to go all-in. I’m not talking about dipping your toe in. I mean get a running start and jump right into the deep end. Now, here’s a caveat, do it methodically. Strategize your business, get your product or service to where it needs to be, and when you are ready to launch and move… MOVE FAST.
You want to completely disrupt the way people look at whatever piece of the fitness industry you are disrupting. You want to be the person everyone looks at and says, “Why didn’t I think of that?” As well as, “I need that in my life.” If you can solve a problem someone is facing, that one person will tell all of their friends. Word of mouth will help your business grow. However, that doesn’t mean you should sit back and wait for business to come to you.
Go out into the market and show off your product or service. Go to trade shows, go to expos, go to businesses, go to seminars, go to local events, go… WHEREVER YOUR AUDIENCE IS. Stop standing still and start stirring up business. Use social media to your advantage by creating a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter page. Get in front of your audience and keep them engaged with your brand.
Get Out in Front of Your Audience
Picking up where we left off in #6, you need to get in front of your audience. You can’t disrupt the fitness industry if no one knows who you are, what your product does, or if it even exists. You can’t simply make a website, put your business on it, and think traffic is going to come out of the woodwork. This isn’t Field of Dreams, if you build it, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will come. You need to market, advertise, and promote your product or service.
Again, get the most out of what’s free – such as social media. For the time being, you can have a free profile on every platform. You can even have a business page and profile on social media platforms. This gives you the ability to talk about your product or service FOR FREE online and draw in customers.
Utilize hashtags to gain eyeballs. Redirect people over to your website and build traffic. Write amazing copy so that it educates and entices a purchase. Boost posts or utilize ads on these social media platforms to get your brand out there and make people aware of your business if you wanted to spend some money on marketing. Wherever your audience is, you need to get in front of them and social media is one of the best and most effective ways to do this.