How to start a fitness business podcast with Treat Your Business host: Katie Bell

What does it take to run a fitness business podcast? Host Katie Bell of the new hit podcast for fitness business owners, Treat Your Business, is here to share all the ins and outs of launching and growing your fitness business podcast. Katie has been a long time TeamUp customer, Pilates studio owner, physiotherapist, and business coach. Now throwing her hat into the podcasting arena, she has learned a few tips and lessons she’s excited to share with you.

In our interview Katie breaks down why she started her podcast, why podcasts are such great resources for fitness business owners, what her listeners can expect and who they can hear from, how to find the right guests, and her strategies for creating a podcast listeners just can’t get enough of.

You can watch the interview or keep reading below to get her tips and strategies.

Her top tips for aspiring fitness podcasters?

1. Know your why

2. Research WHO can help you do this

3. Buy the necessary equipment

4. Plan who the ideal listener is

5. Think what outcomes you want your listeners to get from it.

Why did you start your podcast, Treat Your Business for fitness business owners?

I saw this opportunity. There isn’t much of it in our space for business owners in the health and wellness industry of the short bitesize snippets. There's not a lot from people running their own clinic and studio who are on the ground doing their due, working through the economic challenges that we are all facing as studio business owners and clinic owners.

I saw this real opportunity and it absolutely is part of a multi-layered visibility strategy within our business. You have to be visible everywhere to stand out. It’s part of a marketing strategy. It’s a way of accessing more people. People love those 20 minute periods of time where they’re taking the kids to school, or walking the dog, cooking tea that they can just tune into and listen to.

Hopefully, they leave feeling like they're not on their own, that they've got great ideas, there's easy things they can implement, that they don't feel as lost, they don't feel as lonely in their business because other people are out there doing it as well.

I hope they can leave with real action and easy, simple steps they can take to make a huge difference to their business and their life.

Why are podcasts an excellent resource for fitness business owners?

Looking at the moving trends in 2022 and 2023, podcasts have been around for absolutely ages. We all know that. But I see a trend of micro-learning. Rather than having to sit through a webinar for an hour and a half or two hours, or commit to long episodes of various things, people want something quick, they want instant gratification. In the bitesize amounts of time that they have, they want to feel motivated. They want to feel inspired. They want ideas. In our industry a lot of us are solopreneurs, so we set this business up on our own. We might be a studio owner and we might have instructors that come in and teach for us, but ultimately we are the person that's running the business that has to create all the ideas, think from our own brain.

One of the things that I say a lot is that you know what you know and you know all the things that you don’t know. But then there’s all this other stuff out there that you don’t know that you don’t know yet.

As a business owner you get in the mindset of “ok, I know my client’s names. I know how to teach a class. I know how to set up a studio.” You also probably know that you don't know your forecasting well enough and you don't know your accounting well enough. You don't know how to leverage your tax or your debt leverage. You don’t know enough about marketing.

There are all these other things, but when we’re in front of our clients and when we’re coaching them on our programs, those thoughts never enter the headspace.

It’s not because they’re not educated or because they’re not skilled. Fitness business owners are really intelligent people. It’s just because they are so absorbed in what they have to do all day.

A podcast is a great way of dropping these hit snippets of things that they want to know but don’t know that they want to know or didn’t even know they could do. Through a podcast you can provide these really quick actionable, easy things you can do in your business.

For a lot of us, when it comes to our business we think we need to know all the how and plot it out or that we need to have a massive understanding, but we don’t. We just need to know one thing and then we can take action it, put it into our business, and make huge changes.

What can listeners expect from your podcast?

The first four episodes are done in a specific way for a specific reason. There is method in my madness. We have the first four foundations that we teach, that we coach, that we think all business owners need to have to ensure that their marketing will be a success, that their businesses will be sustainable and predictable and not a monster that they're having to tame.

We teach the four foundations which is:

The why

Why are you running this business in the first place? A lot of us are disconnected with that, particularly with what's gone on the last three or four years and what we are facing now as business owners, we've become very disconnected to the why.

The who

Who it is we really want to work with, what problems we solve for people because a lot of our industry is trying to be everything to everybody, and they're often nothing to nobody when that happens.

The how

We talk about how we can solve problems for our patients, for our clients, for our customers, in a creative way that creates predictable, sustainable income that almost all expenses match.

You have all of these recurring expenses in your business, but most of us are running pay as you go models, one-off income streams. They're doing one retreat or one course launch or a pay as you go physio session. They can't keep up the pace and the pressure of keeping up those recurring expenses is so high. So how can we realign your business that must fit with your values, but can deliver better outcomes for our clients and our customers and creates more predictable, sustainable income stream.

The you

The fourth foundation is all about you, all about the business owner. One of the things we often see is everybody's focus on strategy. They want to know strategy, they want to know how to market their business. But actually we are always the biggest challenge. We are the thing that gets in the way in terms of business growth. How do we overcome imposter syndrome and fear of failure, fear of success? A lot of us are lacking in confidence and self-belief when it comes to being a business owner. So how do we overcome those barriers so that we can implement a great strategy?

The why, the who, the how, and the you in the first four episodes

We talk about the four foundations in the first four episodes. I give very simple actionable things that people can do and take away. It might just be to think about something, it might not be to go and do something.

People can expect to hear from industry experts

As we go on through the future episodes we have guest speakers. We have people coming in who are running great clinics, great studios that are there to inspire and help and give ideas to people. Give ways of doing things differently that are working for them in the industry.

We have marketing experts. We've got you guys coming on to talk about how you can use software in your business and how TeamUp can just completely transform how you run your studio, which it has done for us, which is amazing.

We talk about marketing, we talk about the nitty gritty of how you get more clients. We talk about knowing your numbers and whether you've been in ostrich and burying your head in the sand. We talk about really aligning your business to your personal and business values because that's so important. Most people we speak to are exhausted. They're burnt out. Their business isn’t serving them in any way. It's just actually draining them and starving them. There’s loads of different elements to this podcast, and hopefully everybody will get something from it.

Do you need guests to have a great podcast?

Think about what your podcast is designed to deliver and what problems you want your podcast to solve for people. When you know what problems you want your podcast to solve, you can then think about who in your network and within our industry would provide value to your clients, followers, and listeners.

I asked TeamUp to come on as guests because their team aligns with my values as a business. Being positive and uplifting is really important for me for followers, and TeamUp has been really supportive of my podcast. TeamUp can directly impact my clients, my customers, and I’m forever recommending them to come and move over to TeamUp because it can automate, it can systemize, it can bring processes in, and it can reduce overhead. There are a million benefits to it.

Think about who can provide value for your followers and for your listeners. Think about who aligns with your values, who fits with what you want the podcast to sound like and feel like. People come and listen and leave feeling a certain way.

There'll be a lot of people as your podcast grows and your following grows that want guests to speak, and it's up to you. You're in the driver's seat of deciding who is actually gonna take your podcast to the next level. Is that guest there just to benefit themselves? It has to be a win-win for both people. It has to be a win for the host, and it has to be a win for the guest speaker.

What is your advice for owners considering starting a podcast?

Understand why you’re doing it

A podcast is useful on so many levels, but if you are doing it because you think that's what you should do or because everybody else is doing it, then you're gonna fall short at the first hurdle. Really make sure the why is there, what is the reason for it is, whether that’s to add to your marketing strategy, your existing marketing strategy. Is it to make you more visible? Is it because you've got so many things that you want to be able to communicate to your clients that would be able to add to their journey and their learning and how you can support them. So really think about why. Why you’re doing it.

Find an expert to help you

If you are not into tech and all of the crazy things that you have to get a podcast, go and find an expert that can help you and do it with you.

Full transparency, there would be no way on earth I would've gotten to where I'd got to in the speed that I had if I'd not gone and found an expert to help me. I worked with an amazing company who basically gave me, almost like a checklist of what I had to and equipment I had to buy.

They told me everything I had to do and they did a lot of it for me, which is amazing. There's various ways that you can work with people that will help you set up and actually launch these really important things. When it comes to launching a podcast, there’s a lot that goes on in the background, your cover design, your music, the audio that you put behind it.

Think about having a sponsor

You might want to think about having a sponsor and who that sponsor is going to be and what that sponsorship package looks like. You might want to think about what platforms you're going to be on. And again, these are the sorts of things that people can help you do. You can absolutely figure it all out for yourself, but I would guess it would take an awful long time, even with some of the best technology out there.

If you’re not the expert, go and find a who that is that can help you put it together quickly and then you can get that return on your investment, whether that's your time, your energy, money, all three of them. You don't do a podcast for any other reason than increasing.

You want a return on your investment. It could be that you are driving people into a Facebook group. You could be driving direct sales from it. It could be that you're building an audience. There has to be metrics that you are looking at, and it's nothing to do with whether you get in the top 10.

Vanity metrics are important, but what is important is what you're trying to achieve from your podcast. I would say really think about your strategy and the second thing is go and find a who to help you set up even the basic things that you need in terms of a recording studio, your equipment, the platforms that you need to link all together.

Be consistent

When you launch your podcast, it's all about consistency. We don't want to be a one month wonder, we don't wanna be somebody that just publishes a podcast and then after a month they stop. You want to build that consistency up and get those downloads on a consistent basis. There's no point in having a thousand view followers or downloads if 99 of them are not your ideal clients.

We've got to speak to the right person and that comes down to your strategy. That would be where I would start.

Where to listen to the Treat Your Business Podcast

About the Treat Your Business Podcast: The Treat Your Business Podcast is hosted by Katie Bell from Thrive Health & Wellness Business Coaching.

The Podcast for health and wellness business owners that want and need to give their business the treatment plan it deserves and needs! So you can create more time back in your lives, to give you the income you deserve and work hard for, and to create more freedom and flexibility in your lives to enjoy the things you love to do!

She is determined to share with you bitesize episodes full of tried and tested tips from her own real experience of growing a successful Physiotherapy & Wellness clinic and from working with many businesses to do the same.

Listen to the Treat Your Business Podcast on: ThriveBusinessCoaching.com/podcast or head to @thrivebizcoaching, Spotify, Google, Apple, and more.

She would love you to listen and leave her a review, this really helps other people hear about it too! Everyone who leaves a review will be entered into the January draw to win a £250 voucher of YOUR choice.