Why KnowFitness Had No Business

I co-founded KnowFitness, a health and fitness business, with a college roommate our last semester at Marietta College. We shared a passion for health and fitness as well as helping people. What else do you need to start a successful business? We knew it would be hard work but we had no idea we would be missing the most crucial element of all...

We began by doing a demographic study to ensure there was enough of our target audience around the gym to support the business. The numbers escape me now but I know we needed to convert a small percent of our target audience into clients to get the business cash flowing. The only problem; how do we reach those people?

So we created a Facebook page, ran an ad in the local newspaper, put up a large sign with our logo, and handed out business cards to local businesses. Get our name out to as many people as possible and they will come, was the thought. Unfortunately we had zero responses from our ad in the newspaper, people turning us away from their businesses and hardly any traffic from our sign.

What the hell were we doing wrong? We were advertising, there was enough of our target audience in the area, our product was priced competitively, and we were working our asses off.

Only after studying direct response marketing, specifically Joe Polish and Dean Jackson's methodology, did I understand the adage; the difference between a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill is the message on the paper. When I read this it hit me like a ton of bricks. Our sign, newspaper ad, and business cards sucked. We weren’t compelling people to take action, we made the ad completely about us, our logo, our message. This was back-asswards.

Prospects don’t care about you or your logo. They care about what value your business can deliver to them. It sounds selfish but it’s true.

We put a sign in front of our building that said “KnowFitness” with our logo. What the hell does our logo mean to the passerby? Nothing. Instead, our sign should have had a message about what the customer wanted, something like, “Healthier you found here”, “Looking for an efficient, effective workout?”, “Want a beach body year round?”, “Want to look down and be able to see your d*ck again?”

Okay, maybe not the last one but you get the idea. The message is all about the prospects, not us, our logo, or our company name. Prospects who are looking for a better body, a challenging workout and a healthier life will contact us.

We did a lot of other things wrong but this was by far the most detrimental. A business can survive with mistakes. A business can’t survive without clients.

My goal in this post is to stress the emphasis of marketing for the someday entrepreneurs.

A tip; find someone with a similar business as the one you want to open and ask them what it costs to get a customer. This should simply be their marketing budget divided by the number of clients. You can chat with several businesses to see if they're all similar. If you find everyone is spending about $10 to get a client and you need 100 customers a month to support your business, then you need to spend $1,000/month on marketing.

You can also visit I Love Marketing, created by Dean Jackson and Joe Polish, to learn more about direct response marketing.

Lastly, to all those someday entrepreneurs, remember;

“The road of someday leads to the town of nowhere.” – Tony Robbins

So get started today!