[Transcript starts at 1:20]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. If you're listening to something on the day that it drops, that was like a little bit slurred. If you're listening to this on the day that it drops, it is Monday, November 20th, almost Thanksgiving.
Happy almost Thanksgiving. Today we are talking about online business advice for brick and mortar business owners. Two little announcements. One, my lip is still not great. It's healing. It's not fully healed, but I'm a little bit worried. Hopefully it doesn't scar, but, uh, it's getting there. Shout out to all of you that went over to YouTube and, uh, or came over to YouTube, if you're watching this now, after the last episode that I did about, uh, last Monday's episode and I talked about my lip and y'all went to look at it and you're like, it's not that bad. And I'm like, cause it's healing. It was very bad at one point, trust me. But fingers crossed that it gets better. I'm doing all the things, red light, got the, uh, patches on it and things like that, uh, all the things.
But, that's the one announcement. Second announcement, got an espresso machine, loving it, and that's what Thursday's episode is going to be all about. Thursday's episode is going to be, like, an homage, if you will, to episode number one. Uh, I'm excited about it, so hopefully you will tune into that episode as well.
It will be Thanksgiving. But it's gonna be a shorter episode and so hopefully if you're trying to escape your family, maybe you're driving somewhere, you're traveling, I don't know. Just give it a little listen. Okay, but today's episode we are talking about online business advice for brick and mortar business owners and the day that I recorded, like right now, the day that I'm recording this, I had a two hour conversation this morning with my guy Dr. Danny Matta. Y'all know I love him. Brought him on a bunch of times. And we are probably going to both put that episode out because I ended up asking him a bunch of questions as well. So it'll likely be kind of a split episodes and what, meaning we'll put it on both of our both of our podcasts, um, but between that conversation, a DM that I received this morning, and working with some awesome folks in the LextroMind,, we have kicked it off!
I was inspired to record this episode. So let's chat online business advice. for brick and mortar business owners, namely my physical therapists. Right off the bat, folks, online business is objectively harder than in person business. I will say it. Why? Because the lifeblood of your business, which is customers, clients, the client acquisition pipeline, it's much harder online.
I am seeing a push for brick and mortar business owners to go online while they're trying to grow their brick and mortar business and it just doesn't make any sense to me. So I was like, let me do an episode so I don't have to like repeat myself a million times and maybe I can like steer people in a better direction, right?
So right off the bat there, if you want to grow the online side of things, do it as an employee. That's very different if you're like, hey, I work for this company. And, you know, is it an intrepreneur model? I don't know. But either way, it's not your business. You're not trying to grow this brick and mortar and that's why being a staff PT, you know, staff clinician is actually easier because you don't have to worry about lead generation or customer, you know, client acquisition.
You just treat, right? But I'm seeing this in this space and I think that it's driven by a desire for time freedom and location independence, right? Denny and I talked about this today and I think the people are a bit, I don't want to say misguided, but, you know, misguided in this and that time freedom is not necessarily real unless you're like a trust fund baby.
What you're typically gonna get is time flexibility, but you will still have to work as an online business owner. If you truly want location independence, then why the fuck are you starting a brick and mortar business? Close that thing down period. Or you gotta grow this thing so big that you can, you know, you have a partner, you have someone that stays and that it is working and taking care of it and you can move yourself, remove yourself from the business, but you still, you gotta fucking work then for that.
Lastly there, if you want experiences, which I think that like we're seeing that people care more about like having experiences, cool! Go and be a travel PT. I love this for you. Don't go online, go and be a travel PT and travel around, have experiences. You make more money, you get to travel. Win win. Uh, my homies Skip and Jazz, those are, they are amazing resources.
Skip is the travel PT, Jazz is his wife, um, we have brought them on, I brought them on the podcast, we will link that, um, so go and check out that episode. But I think anyone that thinks that online business is easier or will be easier than in person business, they haven't actually run a successful in person business because it's just another type of business, right?
It's just, you know, business is hard. It takes time. It takes work. If you are a brick and mortar business owner and what you actually want is recurring revenue and you want what I call minimized direct delivery, meaning it's more hands off, then look to create a continuity program for your current clients that move them from in person to that remote programming, you know, to online performance based programming.
Not continued PT. I don't think that's the way. I think that it's really your best bet is to, they graduate from PT and then now they're working out, they're staying active and, you know, they can come in for a session if they need, but realistically what they're, what you're delivering to them is a performance based programming, right?
In order to do this, you're gonna have to future pace people and like, mention this and plant the seed at episode, episode, wow, plant the seed in session number one. But that's not my zone of genius. Right, I got two resources for you. That's gonna be my guy Chad Burnham. I'm gonna bring him on the podcast.
He's a real fucking good guy. It's my guy Chad Burnham, um, and I got a new client and he's, this is what he does, uh, drdavidskolnik. dpt. That is his Instagram. So we will look, we will link Chad, um, and David's Instagrams. If you're looking to, hey, how do I, I have this, I have this brick and mortar and this demographic is appropriate for moving them to a kind of performance based plan of care after they graduate from PT, how do I do that? Those are two people that I would, I would steer you towards. Right. But the big point here is that grow your in person business first. Online is not easier. Online is harder, in my opinion, and more work. And you know, when you chase all the rabbits, you go home hungry. You cannot ride. Two horses with one ass.
So grow your in person business first. Focus all on that. Crush it. And then we can say, okay, what direction you want to go, right? It's much easier to acquire leads in person, much easier to build trust. There's just so many more points of contact. So many more, yeah, we'll call it touch points that you have when you're in person.
They see you, right? You just, I don't want to say that you can expedite trust, but if we're comparing in person online, you can see how there's this, it's a lot slower and can be a lot slower online as it is to in person. All right. So if you are a brick and mortar business owner and you're thinking about going into the online space, I want you to number one, ask yourself why.
I have an episode about how to use Instagram for online business as a brick and mortar business owner. Spoiler, it's largely use it like it's like a website, but you want to check that out. We will link that. Thank you, Courtney. So you're asking yourself, why do I want to go into the online space? If it, if it's because you have a long wait list and you think that digital products are the solution, think again.
Most folks want, who want in person solutions, want in person solutions. Do not assume that they're just going to be okay with an online solution. All right. And to that end, I will just want to kind of like throw that in there. I don't really consider that necessarily moving into like the, you're going to create digital offers.
It's not necessarily that you're looking to have an online business, right? They're a little bit different, but either way, just because you have in person clients and you have a long wait list, do not assume that you can be like, all right, well, I'll just create an online program for them. I have actually yet to see that work well, right?
Most people, they want an in person solution. So what you probably have to do is hire. Okay.
So I think there are kind of three avatars that we're looking at here. Three different types of, of, of brick and mortar business owner. Three different paths here. Number one is the in person, the person that has an in person audience.
That's a lot of person there. Number one is the brick and mortar business owner that has an in person audience and they want to provide an online solution. The second one is the brick and mortar business owner that wants to attract an online, doesn't have one yet, and wants to provide online solutions for them.
Or for sometimes they want to provide in person solutions, which is also very tough and I don't recommend doing that. The third one is the brick and mortar business owner that has a success, wow, that has a successful in person uh, brick and mortar business, and also already has an online audience. They do exist and they don't know how to provide the online solution.
So we're going to break this down. Of note, I believe there are three phases of online business. I believe there are five phases of launching or five parts of launching. So the three phases of online business that you would focus on social media, email marketing, and then offer creation and launching the five phases of launching an online offer are going to be determining demand, corralling attention, constrained selling, creation and delivery, and then debriefing.
Okay, I don't want to go too deep into these. What I'll say is, if you want to learn more about these five phases of launching as a brick and mortar business owner, let me know. Text me, 310 737 2345. Let me know, I'll make an episode about it.
I just want to keep this episode kind of as the general, where are you at, who are you, which person are you, and what makes sense for the next steps. All right, and if you text me, DM me, and you're like, yeah, we want an episode of that, cool, we will do that. Because that's actually what Lex and I teach in The LextroMind is we help brick and mortar business owners provide, or we should say launch their very first online offer.
But there is a very specific type of brick and mortar business owner who this makes sense for. Okay, so going back to those three types of brick and mortar business owners, the first one is the in person, the one, the person that has an in person audience and they want to provide an online solution.
Number one, consider that performance based continuity program. For that, I'm going to recommend Chad, I'm going to recommend David. And take your eyes that you already have in person and then look to provide that solution, right? They're graduating them. It makes sense to do some of that remote programming.
If you have just a really long wait list and you think maybe I can create an online solution for these people, do your market research first. And ask them and make sure these in person people actually want this online solution. Do not assume, do not create before you have assessed demand. Alright, that is part of the five phases of offer creation.
Number one, determine demand. Do people actually want this? Cool, let me corral attention, maybe get them on a wait list. From there we do constrained selling, meaning we're selling this thing for like two weeks. We're not selling it just forever and ever, amen. And then we actually create the thing and we deliver the thing.
And then after that we can debrief. So we see there's multiple parts with this and perhaps your ears just peeked up and I don't know if that's the right word. Either way, your ears were just like, Hey, perked up. That's the word. Your ears perked up and you're like, wait, I'm only going to sell for like a certain amount of time.
We do have to put some parameters around this, some constraints around this. And this is where hiring someone so you understand the process can be helpful. But what I want you to understand with this is that if you have an in person audience, do not just build an online offer. Establish, determine, demand, and then we can go and say, should we launch?
Last part for this is do not outsource everything. People will be like, I'm in person and online seems scary and like the technical side, I'm just going to outsource everything. Don't fucking do that. You have to learn how to do these things. Yes, you can outsource it at some point, but you all know I stay saying this, learn how to do it yourself first, so this way you value it. And also if anything breaks, you have control over it. You also understand, you know, you understand what you need to be doing with things. You understand how to put your voice into this. Have an understanding of what is going on with the technical side of your business, okay?
So, second avatar here is the brick and mortar business owner that wants to attract an online audience, doesn't have one yet, wants to build one, and then provide online solutions. Ask yourself why. If this is you, ask yourself why. Again, if you want to be location independent, then what the fuck are you doing with this brick and mortar business?
You're going to have to, from there, either sell it, get rid of it, or work yourself out of it, grow this thing, hire people, hire people to run it. But do not just start a second business. Do not just start a second online, an online business, a second business. It doesn't make sense. If you're looking for experiences, right, then go and be travel PT.
Don't, don't stay with this thing. You want to treat less? Okay. Then one, let's look to, again, work yourself out of this. Get super successful. Hire people you can pull yourself out of the, out of the actual delivery portion of it. Maybe you offer that continuity where they go from, they go through PT, and then you have that kind of performance based continuity model.
Maybe you raise your prices. So you have the same number of people or less people, and you can make the same amount of money. Or you treat same number of people, higher price, make more money, your choice. Uh, and then again, like I said, looking to hire, looking to grow this team, looking to grow this thing, make it the in person model very successful, let's see that you can work yourself out of it.
Online business, I do believe is much harder than in person business as it relates to lead acquisition or lead generation customer client acquisition. So your best bet is going to be to build your in person first, double down on that, go all in on that. You have a captive audience right there. Sell to them, provide for them.
And then if you want, you can allow that online to grow in the background. Growing it's, you're growing it kind of concurrently, but you're not focusing on it. It's kind of just like a happy thing if it does grow, you know. Danny and I were talking about that, that both of us with our online businesses happened by happenstance.
It wasn't like we went into it, been like, do you want to have these things? It grew while these other things that we were doing in person. And it was like, all right, cool. We can lean into this. People started asking for this and it was like, all right, we can start to lean into this other side of things.
So like I was saying. Double down on the brick and mortar, allow the online to grow in the background. Remember those three phases of online business, social media, email marketing, then offer creation and launching. That first part, just being on social media and providing content, attracting your, your ideal client actually takes a long time.
So let it be going on in the background as you are really doubling down and focusing on this brick and mortar business.
The third person, third avatar, is the brick and mortar business owner that has a successful in person practice and they also have an online audience because they've been doing it.
They've been letting this thing growing in the background and they're like, Hey, I have this audience now. And they don't know how to provide an online solution. These are the people that we look for, for The Lextromind. If that's you, yeah, I'm going to say it, hire a coach. Listen to this podcast. Listen to Jill's FitbizU podcast.
Listen to Lex's, uh, Up In My Business podcast, right? But do not outsource everything. Do not outsource everything. That's a big thing to the LextroMind is that it is a done with you program, not done for you program. So we teach them how to launch, we help them implement the tech and make sure that it's done in what we will consider the right way, but we're not doing it for them, right?
Lex is not doing the things for them. It's like, Hey, here's how you learn how to do this. So this way you can rinse and repeat and do it on your own moving forward. This is a great option for folks who have built that in person business and it's successful and they want to eventually kind of pull themselves away, move back a little bit, right?
So the, they already have this in person, it's doing well, right? They're not like scrambling. They have consistent lead, g lead gen. People coming in. Usually it's word of mouth. So social media, changing that won't matter at all. And they have like, you know, I got a three year plan, a five year plan that I want to go all online or like, you know, I have, that's ultimately my goal, but I'm happy with where I'm at right now and I have this online audience that's asking me for things.
How do I launch? How do I sell to them? Amazing. Hire a coach. Listen to the podcast. Join the LextroMind. Or apply for the LextroMind next year. Listen to FitBizU. Listen to Up In My Business. I, I think it's, I think it's actually All Up In My Business, I'm sorry.
So I will say that it takes a very special person to grow both at the same time.
Most people, and most of these special people also need or have partners. The people I'm thinking about right now that have done it, and they've grown the online, they've grown the in person. For all of them, the in person came first. It's Nicole Cozean, Danny Matta, Kyle Paxton. I actually don't know. I'm like, did Kyle have IKN first or the brick and mortar business?
I'm not sure. But these are like, I consider these people to be very, they're a bit of anomalies. And even still with Danny, it was, he very much grew that in person first, and then the online came second. So we see Nicole Cozean grew the in person first, and then like, it's crushing now in the online space, but it also was growing that, you know, having two Instagram accounts, uh, online.
So at the same time. It really takes a special person. So this person that's this third avatar, this third person, this third avatar rather, is the person that has done this. Maybe a little bit of a unicorn or they've just given enough time where they have been in the in the in person space for a long time.
Successful there. They did the slow grind. I'm thinking about people in LextroMind, I'm thinking about one in particular right now, that's what she did. She's just been plugging away at it, both of them for a long time. If that's you, then you're going to go through the five phases of launching an offer, right? The five phases of that launching are determining demand, corralling attention, constrained selling, offer creation and delivery, and then debriefing. Like I said, this, those five steps, I could make a whole episode on it. I didn't want this episode to be super long. So if you are interested in learning more about that and you're like, yeah, I have the audience, my brick and mortar is doing great. I'm ready to provide some solutions for this audience that I know wants stuff.
Cool. I will absolutely, I have no problem making that. So maybe Lex and I will do like a kind of a combo episode because I know people kind of just get so like focused on like the tech side of it and they need like automations and sequences and landing pages. And I'm like, you actually don't need those things.
They're nice to have. What are the things you actually need? What's the launch actually look like? Um, we can probably break that down together. Maybe we'll do a workshop. I don't know. Either way, let me know if that's something that's interesting to you, you'd be interested in, uh, and then we can go from there.
But, suffice to say, my main piece of advice, if you are an online, if you're a brick and mortar business owner and you're looking to move into the online space, ask yourself why and really look into understand where you're at. Is it that you are looking to build an audience? Because I would say pump the brakes.
You're looking for location independence? What are you doing with this business? You're looking for time freedom. Remember, we're looking at time flexibility and perhaps your best bet is that continuity model and not actually going to the online space. You already have the online audience and you're looking to learn how to sell to them.
Cool. Then that's a matter of getting the appropriate resources. All right. If you got more questions, comments, concerns, would love to hear from you. DM me. Text me, 310 737 2345. I'll probably make an episode, Lex and I make crossover, maybe we'll do workshop, I don't know. Let me know what you folks want, this is where we talk about the determining demand, right?
Alright, looking at the time here, looking good, that's all I got for you today. No reviews to read, I didn't even check to see if you had any new ones, I will check for the next episode. But either way, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly grateful for every single one of you. Until next time, friends. Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
MOTM #266: State of the Union: Building Your Best Life with Skip and Jazz Johnson
MOTM #474: How to Use Instagram For In-Person Business
Connect with Chad: @chad_burnham
Connect with David: @dr.davidskolnik.dpt
Catch me on the socials: Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | TikTok | Facebook