Whales and Minnows: Client-Centric Business Strategy

About the Episode:
Jonathan Goodman is the creator of the Personal Trainer Development Center ($35M+ rev) and host of the popular Obvious Choice podcast, a top podcast for coaches, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.

Jonathan’s been featured in most major business and fitness publications including Men's Health, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Robb Report, Inc., and many more. Over 200,000 coaches and small business owners in more than 120 countries have purchased business development materials from him.

In this episode of "Uploading...," Jonathan shares insights from his journey of building a multimillion-dollar fitness business through strategic content creation. He discusses key concepts like understanding audience needs, developing scalable systems, and focusing on meaningful metrics for long-term success.

Today, we'll cover:
- Jonathan's transformative journey from personal trainer to successful online entrepreneur
- The key principles for creating impactful, business-focused content that resonates with your audience
- How to develop a range of offerings that serve your audience at different stages of their journey
- Adopting a balanced, seasonal approach to work and life for long-term success and fulfillment
- Powerful, timeless lessons from Jonathan's new book, The Obvious Choice, on mastering the game of business and life

What You'll Learn
1. Content Creation and Business Success
2. Understanding Human Behavior vs Chasing Trends
3. Goodhart’s Law and Social Media Metrics
4. Jonathan’s Life and Business Philosophy
5. Business Structure and Offerings
6. Client Management and Online Income Growth
7. Viral Content vs Content that Converts

Timestamps
00:00 From working as a personal trainer to a $7M per year business
04:20 Jonathan’s new book, The Obvious Choice; the parade problem
07:01 First steps to start growing an audience online
13:34 Personal Trainer Development Center’s first online course
14:57 How to create a scalable system and avoid the trap of false economies
19:57 Thinking of content as a long-term savings account
24:11 Goodhart’s law: when the metric becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good metric
28:00 Building businesses in seasons; balancing personal life and work
33:12 The four arms of Jonathan’s business
36:53 Broader community vs high ticket offers; choosing customers wisely

Likes vs Business Impact: “It's easy to be rich with likes and poor with dollars because what feeds the ego is what's bad for the wallet… I have lots of posts that have 10, 20, 30, 40, 100,000 likes. I also have posts that have less than a thousand likes. And I can tell you that the posts with less than a thousand likes drive more business than the posts with 30 or 40,000. Now, does that mean that neither is valuable? I believe that we need three types of content. I believe that we need viral, value, and depth-based content.” — Jonathan Goodman, 00:25:59 → 00:27:08

Content as a Savings Account: “Most of the time, everything that's working for you will be bubbling underneath the surface, invisible to the eye. You don't know when that inflection point is going to hit… You have to think of content as a savings account and you have to think of content as a way to primarily nurture and convert people and leads that are generated elsewhere.” — Jonathan Goodman, 00:21:10 → 00:21:56

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Blaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Castmagic
Ramon Berrios - Co-Founder of Castmagic
Jonathan Goodman - Founder of Personal Trainer Development Center