Ten questions, ten reels

If you tell me you don't know what to post, I don't believe you. I think you know exactly what to post and the problem is that you're asking the question in a way that has no answer.

"What should I post this week" has no answer. It's too big. You could post anything, which is why you post nothing.

Here's the version that does have an answer, and it's the sentence I built a whole teaching block toward on my Tuesday call and then somehow only said once.

Not: what do people want to know before they join a gym.

But: what did THAT SPECIFIC PERSON want to know before she came in?

Pick a real member. One you could point at. The one who most looks like the people you want more of.

Now write down ten questions she had before she joined. Not questions in general. Hers.

Is it going to be all young fit people. Do I have to be in shape before I start. What if I can't do what everybody else is doing. Is somebody going to make me get on a scale. How much does it actually cost, really. Can I come at 5am. Will anybody notice if I stop coming. What if I hate it after two weeks, am I stuck.

There's your list. That's ten reels, and every one is aimed at somebody who has not joined yet, which was the entire problem with everything you posted last month.

You didn't have to think of a single content idea. You had to think of one person and remember what she was scared of.

The reason this works is that you're not inventing anything. You're reporting. You've had that conversation four hundred times across the desk from real people, and the questions barely change. We just never write them down, so every Monday we sit there trying to be creative instead of trying to be accurate.

And it fixes the thing most gym content gets wrong, which is that it's aimed at people who already bought. Nobody outside your building cares about your programming. They care whether they're going to feel stupid.

I gave the room homework off that call and I gave it no edges. No deliverable, no date, nowhere to put it. Which means most of them did nothing with it, and that's my fault, not theirs.

So this one has edges. Ten questions. One real person. Write them by Friday.

Nick

Nick Habich owns Shark Bite Fitness in Cape Coral, Florida, and coaches gym owners in Pathfinder Collective. These notes go out to his email list on Tuesdays and Thursdays.