TLDR; When your goal involves something external to you and what you control, you just set yourself up to lose.
As a gym owner, it’s easy to get caught up in the temptation of worrying about the guy across town (or the road in some of your cases). We urge you to keep your eyes on your direction, and let the others worry about each other.
1. You inadvertently change your course of direction.
Trying to interpret what your competitor is doing is a fools game. Maybe they just launched the new “Bikinis, Beer and Barbells” program because it’s a massively under served market - and by doing so, they’re going to grow their business by leaps and bounds.
But maybe they’re doing it because they’re going thru marital problems and it’s an act of desperation or an attack on the ex? Who’s to know? But if you copy that idea just because they’re doing it, you’re likely going to find out it wasn’t a great idea to begin with.
It’s easy to get sucked into the game of trying to Keep Up with the (Gym) Jones’ - but don’t. Even if it’s a failing program, you won’t ever know from the outside looking in. All social media posts and outward marketing will always suggest otherwise.
Recognize that all ideas aren’t good (in fact the majority of them aren’t). Spend your time and energy working on developing your own ideas and ways to serve your community - hone those ideas instead of heading down the path of others.
2. You waste time/energy worrying about things you cannot control.
Maybe your local competitor is talking smack about you to prospective clients. This seems to happen a bunch. The carnal answer to this is to join them in the mud pits and start slinging the mud.
While this is always greatly entertaining for outsiders, it does you absolutely no good. While you’re spending time being upset and talking there’s another gym owner around you who’s sneaking up on both of you.
Stay the course with your own gym. Serve your clients well and stay above anything else.
3. You take your focus off of the important things.
There’s two main things you need to worry about - and solving all ends to make those means:
- Finding new members of your community that need your expert help
- Keeping those clients on progress, happy, and finding value in your service.
That’s it. Anything beyond that, is only doing you and your business a disservice. Focus your energy 100% on those things and the things you need to do to meet those goals.
And nothing else.
4. You will get forced into errors of ego or misjudgment.
How many times have we seen this happen at a local bar or club?
Dude A steps on dude B’s foot.
Dude B gives Dude A a dirty look.
Dude A flips off dude B for the dirty look.
Dude B calls Dude A a name.
Dude A calls Dude B’s mom a name.
Fists fly.
After the foot stepping incident above, it’s all errors of ego. The enlightened person would have just said “no worries” or “oh man, I’m sorry” and it would all be over. But in this case, we end up with 2 people thrown out of the club (and everyone they came with - they’re nights are ruined).
The escalating errors of ego are really the biggest concern of worrying about your competitor, because this is where the big mistakes happen.
By not even paying attention to what your competitor says or does to begin with, and brushing it off like an enlightened business if it does come your way - you will steer far clear of the mistakes your competitor is about to experience with someone else.
We’re Focused On Our Clients
Here at PushPress, we’ve always made it a point to do everything we can to NOT look at our competition. Just like any other business it’s easy to get sidetracked, worrying about what our competitors are doing, but we make it a clear and conscience effort not to.
- In the early days we didn’t try to see how they solved problems in an effort to make our own development process easier.
- We do not pay attention to their product roadmaps, their current milestones or their progress.
- We don’t monkey around with their business or their clients. (but we do take the time to pay attention to our assets and secure our processes because it’s apparent some do)
We’re focused on solving the problems of our industry the best way possible. In some cases we feel that solution wasn’t previously done - and copying our competitors would only put another shiny suit over the same flawed solutions. By keeping our focus on our product, we have worked hard to think outside of the box for answers to problems in a different way.
Doing so has quickly put us and our gyms on the path to success.
