Summary: In this article I explore the two things fitness professionals must master to succeed: becoming truly unique and delivering a client experience that’s impossible to ignore.
5 things you’ll learn in this article:
- Why most fitness professionals confuse “being good” with “being remarkable” – and how to break free from the red ocean.
- The difference between a USP that’s forgettable and one that positions you in a category of one.
- How Patagonia’s business actions back up their uniqueness – and how to create your own version.
- Why ‘the experience’ is more important than ‘the result’ in retaining clients and building loyalty.
- How to design both micro and macro client journeys that people genuinely talk about and remember.
In 2007, an interviewer asked the comedian, Steve Martin, ‘how do you be successful?’.
The seven word answer he gave is perhaps the most complete and succinct business advice every given.
‘Be so good they can’t ignore you’.
To me, that’s just genius advice. ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you’.
But what does that mean for Exercise Physiologists – or for any other pursuit for that matter?
What do you need to be good at?
Well, there are just two things. Just two things you need to be good at, to be unignorable.
You need to be unignorably good at being different. And you need to be unignorably good at delivering a remarkable experience.
That’s it.
And that’s what I want to talk about, just those two things. How to be unignorably different, and how to deliver an unignorable experience.
Let’s start with different. First I’ll tell you when you need to be different, then I’ll give you the two very practical action steps you need to start doing immediately to become unignorably different.
Picture yourself as a pirate standing next to Captain Jack Sparrow on the deck of the Black Pearl, cutlass drawn, fighting for your life.
The ocean is crowded with the ships of your enemies, and there’s blood in the water – theirs, and yours.
In business, this battle for the life of your business is called ‘red ocean thinking’.
The red ocean is one where everyone is competing to be the best. You’re all doing pretty much the same thing, with everyone trying to be better than everyone else. There’s so much fighting going on that there’s blood in the water – the red ocean.
In 2005, Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne published ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’.
The blue ocean is an ocean that only you are in. You’re not spending your time trying to be better – instead, you’re trying to be different. If you’re different to everyone else, there is no competition.
You’re in a category of one.
To succeed in a crowded red ocean, you need to be ten times better than everyone else. To succeed in a blue ocean, you just need to be different. And it’s easier to be different than it is to be ten times better.
Look at ESSA, our governing body. Our whole profession has a branding problem. People see Exercise Physiologists as the poor man’s physio and the rich man’s personal trainer. If I was to overhaul the branding strategy for ESSA I’d say we need to stop competing and start differentiating. We need to stop telling people what we do, and start telling people what we don’t do. It’s called goal dilution. If we admit to being bad at some things, it implies we must be really good at others. We don’t do bodybuilding, we don’t run fitness classes, we don’t diagnose your injuries, we don’t do manual therapy. We DO use exercise to manage chronic and complex health conditions.
And this brings me to my first action step to be unignorably different. We need to define your USP – your unique selling proposition.
Complete this sentence:
‘The thing we do that is different to everyone else is…’
If you’re struggling for ideas, here are some areas you can be different in. Your target market, price point or revenue model. The problem you solve, the tools you use to solve that problem. Your location, the experience you provide, your area of specialisation, your use of technology, or your support of a cause.
This thing, this ‘unique selling proposition’ needs to be at the very heart and soul of your business – underpinning every single thing you do.
Now this exercise is very simple, but stunningly difficult. I’ve spent weeks, and sometimes months mentoring business owners through identifying, then building out their USP.
What I’m asking you to do is to fill in the blank, the thing that you do that is different to everyone else, with something that no one else in this room, that no one else in the entire country, does.
And I’m sorry to tell you, if your USP is in any way related to ‘exercise as medicine’, ‘personalised prescription’, ‘individualised care’, ’empathy’, ‘going the extra mile’, ‘building relationships’, ‘using exercise to improve quality of life’, ‘evidence based prescription’, ‘meeting people where they are’, ‘a health first approach’, ‘long term habit formation’, ‘amazing communication’ or anything related to those… you are not unique. I’ve heard countless health business owners all claiming this point of difference. These things aren’t special, they’re a baseline expectation. Soon I’m going to be talking to you about remarkable. What do you think the opposite of remarkable is? Boring? Forgettable? No, the opposite of remarkable is very good. Everyone in the red ocean is trying to be very good. These things are a cost of entry.
You. Need. To. Be. DIFFERENT.
Let me give you an example of what it means to be different.
Let’s look at four competing clothing brands all known for outdoor apparel, H&M, Uniqlo, The North Face and Patagonia.
But one of these things is not like the others. While H&M, Uniqlo and The North Face have faced criticism for their negative environmental impact, Patagonia is actually less of a clothing company, and more an environmental advocate.
Their USP might be something like: ‘The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… we build outdoor gear that supports environmental activism, not just adventure’.
They’re not actually competing with the three other brands, they’re in a category of one – a blue ocean all of their own. And in a moment, I’ll show you how to prove their uniqueness, and how you can too.
If you can get through this intensive short term process of exploration to find your own unique selling proposition, the rest of your life in business will be easier. But a word of warning. Done right, this will be uncomfortable and confronting.
Now, of course, it IS possible to be successful in business without having a well defined USP. But it will be difficult. You’ll always be pushing a rock up hill, always fighting in that red ocean. Remember, you either need to be different, or you need to be ten times better. Trying to be ten times better means that in the long run, business will be ten times more difficult. Business is already hard without making it harder. Find a business you can push down hill.
Ok, so that’s the first step – identifying your USP.
But to be unignorably different, simply defining your USP is not enough. You need to live the USP.
And that brings me to your second piece of homework.
I want you to make a list of the 20 recurring actions you will take in your business that prove your USP is true.
This is where you put your money where your mouth is, backing up your words with action.
The regular actions you take should be the evidence to prove to me that you are truly unique.
Here’s how the process is probably going to go.
The first eight items on your list are probably going to be pretty vanilla. They will be the first things that spring to mind, meaning other people have probably already thoughts of them.
Items nine to 12 may be a little more novel, but still not unique.
Coming up with Items 13 to 16, will start to get a little bit tricky, as you need to think outside the box.
It’s the final four actions you can take to prove your USP where the real magic happens. All the easy stuff is gone, and this is where you truly become unignorably different.
I need to be able to read that list of 20 repeatable actions and think ‘Wow, yes, this business truly is unique, and they back that up through the daily actions they take’.
Let’s go back to the outdoor clothing brand, Patagonia. You’ll remember their USP, ‘The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… we build outdoor gear that supports environmental activism, not just adventure’.
If they were to list 20 points that support their USP, their final four actions might include:
- 1% for the Planet: Where they donate one percent of total sales directly to environmental causes.
- Their ‘Worn Wear’ Program: Where they buy, repair and resell gear to promote reuse over buying new.
- The ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ Campaign: Encouraging reduced consumption through openly discouraging unnecessary clothing purchases.
- Earth Tax: Patagonia’s self imposed tax to fund grassroots environmental and sustainability initiatives.
These actual initiatives from Patagonia convince me that they are unique in building outdoor gear that supports environmental activism, not just adventure.
You’ll remember I kicked this off by sharing Steve Martin’s advice to ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you’.
I’ve told you how to be unignorably good at being different.
The second piece of the puzzle is to be unignorably good at delivering a remarkable experience – an experience driven by your USP.
When I speak to a room full of new grads, I ask them what they sell.
They tell me they sell Exercise Physiology consultations.
Two years later, I ask them the same question.
They tell me they sell a result, an outcome. Stronger muscles, denser bones, lower blood sugar.
And this is all true, but given enough time, people realise that what we truly sell, is an experience.
It’s not Exercise Physiology that keeps people coming back, it’s not even results, it’s the experience they get while they’re receiving the results.
You see, we’re not in the health industry, we’re in the hospitality industry.
Let’s get practical with this.
Here’s your action step to be unignorably good at delivering a remarkable experience.
I want you to design two experiences for your clients.
The first is what I call the ‘micro experience’. This is every single thing that happens from the moment they step out of their car, to the moment they step back in an hour later.
You need to design every single step of this visit. What is the first thing that happens? What do they do next? Then what?
The second experience you’re designing, I call the ‘macro experience’. This is every interaction your client has with you and your business. From their initial awareness of your brand, the first time they reach out for help, their transition to a paying client, right through to long term retention and referral, every point of contact combines to create their experience. Every point on their client journey is part of the product you’re providing.
Here’s the kicker. Both these journeys (the micro and the macro) can be as fantastical as you like. And there’s a very simple question to ask to decide whether an experience is unique enough.
Is it REMARKABLE?
Let’s look at that word.
Remarkable.
Remark – able.
Able to be remarked about.
Remember, you need to be different, not better – so what unique experiences can you introduce?
Brian Chesky, the Co-Founder of AirBNB talks about the thought experiment he ran when designing the AirBNB customer experience. He said five stars basically just means nothing bad happened. It’s a pretty low bar. So he challenged himself to design a six star experience, then seven, then eight, then nine and finally a ten star experience. It gets completely unrealistic, but it’s a useful exercise.
I challenge you to design an experience so remarkable that your clients email the ‘Google Reviews’ department at Google, requesting extra stars to review your remarkable business.
Start with the mundane, every day stuff. Taking blood pressure. Writing reports. Administering a PAR-Q. How can you make these ordinary experiences, extraordinary? Apple asked how they could make something as simple as opening a box, a remarkable experience. Their research showed peak dopamine and anticipation occurred from a five and seven second unboxing experience. The designer of the box, Jony Ive says ‘Packaging can be theatre, it can create a story.’
So once you’ve made the mundane, remarkable, there are the opportunities for unique stand-alone moments – peaks of experience.
Here are some remarkable experiences offered by some of the businesses owners I’ve mentored.
There’s the gym that takes their members skydiving to celebrate their 10 year training anniversary. The Exercise Physiologist who dresses up as a different Avenger every week for his Marvel-mad NDIS client. The gym called ‘Life’s Peachy Fit’ who hand deliver a tray of fresh peaches to their members’ house to celebrate 25 classes. The Exercise Physiologist who attends all medical and Allied Health appointments with his elderly clients. The bootcamp owner who converted an antique icecream churner to an arm erg so his group classes could churn icecream as part of their workout to celebrate a member’s birthday.
All remarkable.
So what’s next?
Here are the three things you can go away and implement right away.
- Complete this sentence: ‘The thing we do that is different to everyone else is…’
- Make a list of the 20 things you’ll do to make that statement true.
Doing these two things will make you unignorably good at being different.
- Design and implement the micro and macro journeys for your clients where you make the mundane remarkable, then sprinkle in some unique peaks of experience.
Doing that will make you unignorably good at delivering a remarkable experience.
And that’s it. You don’t need to worry about anything else in business, because you’ll be so unique, because you’ll provide such a remarkable experience, because you’ll be so good, they can’t ignore you.
Your action steps:
- Complete the sentence: “The thing we do that is different to everyone else is…” and make it truly unique.
- Brainstorm 20 repeatable actions your business will take to prove your uniqueness – especially focus on the final 4.
- Map out your clients’ micro experience – every moment from car park to exit – and make each one deliberate.
- Design your macro experience – every touchpoint from discovery to long-term retention – and ask: is it remarkable?
- Turn ordinary processes (like taking blood pressure or onboarding) into memorable moments that reflect your USP.
