You Don‘t Need to Learn SALES - You Need to Make Better Offers

gym, people, selling, offer, owners, coach, pricing, afford, fitness, service, charge, hour, conversations, sales, calls, real, cheapest, premium, money, buying

Tyler 00:02
Welcome, everybody, we're back. With gym owners podcast, John, we're gonna bring some we're gonna have conversations a little bit about pricing, comparative pricing, fixing yourself within your own market, although that type of stuff, fun stuff, but it really has a lot less to do with what's, what's out there, and a lot more about what you think about your own gym. John and I have run into this a lot. And you've heard if you hear some of our gym owner interviews we've had guests on very often when they get to set their prices, how do they do it? I looked around the people around me kind of charged this much. So I charge about the same. That's kind of what most people do when they set pricing for their gyms. Does that sound about right, John?

John Fairbanks 00:44
Like almost 100% of the time.

Tyler 00:49
There's, I think there's value in assessing where your pricing fits in the market. That's not stupid. It's not super like, well, I can't be 10 times, like I get that. But that, truthfully, is the extent of most of the research that a lot of people do. The fact is when I started a gym, that's what I did, too, is I looked around and I saw what the other people with the affiliate name stamped on their door said, and I said, we're going to be 50% more expensive than them, no matter what if they raise their prices always go up. That way, I always kept that perceived quality gap. And then it was just my job to make sure that I delivered that difference. And that's how I set myself apart right away, just saying I'm not competing with them, I don't want to compete with them. If you want the cheapest place, they can go to that. But that was how I broke the race to the bottom. However, when I did when we did decide on that pricing, the thing that never factored into it at all was like how much money I actually need to operate. Right? Like that I didn't have anything to do. It was just like, Well, I'd say I only did it based on the comparison basis, and had nothing to do with the actual inner workings of my business and where I wanted it to go or what I wanted it to be.

John Fairbanks 01:54
Yeah, because definitely like, Can you can you eat? Like can I guess I am Can you eat like eating almost as irrelevant at that point, like, can you actually even fulfill at can you actually pay anybody to do

Tyler 02:06
see much better than charging just what they were charging. So it's like, well, it more or less makes that conversation easier. But this is a thing that we deal with in a lot of places. And this is about positioning yourself from the fact that it's really like perceived quality, right you kind of your perceived ranking as far as quality or the premium nature of your product within your own market. And pricing is one way to do it. There's a lot of other things from how your social media stuff looks, how your facility looks at what the customer experience is, even from just the phone call or the email like that all can feel like it's worth twice as much as the next place. And that's usually a good start. But what we get into is doing the other thing is being a race to the bottom, because your average person who comes in off the street maybe isn't looking for functional fitness, and they're not looking for CrossFit versus a bodybuilder. They don't know, you don't I mean, the vast majority of the population that's out there, your potential clients out there in the world are not already doing fitness. Well, that's your untapped people. And they don't know the difference between your $200 membership, and the global gym next door where they can get in for 25 bucks a month, they don't know that that place is fitness and this place is fitness. And you don't want to play the same game that they're asking you to play by saying, Well, this one's only 25 bucks, and there's no point in even going there. But this setting a price down setting a price floor anywhere near for any reasons pertaining to what anyone else in your market is doing is nearly pointless. Do you agree?

John Fairbanks 03:42
100. And that's exactly it, like 100%? Because it's because you don't, you're just setting it because you see other people doing that. And no other part of your life? Would you be like, Alright, your neighbor needs help painting his fence? At no point would it be like, well, I'll paint half of this fence for free. And then that's a good idea because then he'll want me to continue the fence and then I'll and then he'll pay me. It's like there's no point in our lives. Does that equate and for some reason within fitness? We started getting into this model where it's like, well, you know, so and so they're gonna let me do this for free or I can start for $1 or I can do this or I can do that and it's like, are you even bothering to look at all of what you're looking at as far as like what the model is that you're looking at and whether or not that even remotely equates to what you're doing

Tyler 04:37
well and getting out of that thing. You have to look at what your competitors are selling, what they 're saying they are selling and what are your costs? What do your potential customers believe that those people are selling so if they go to a place it's a 24 access 24 hour access gym maybe no coaching no nothing right? And that's the place they're gonna use to compare you right to try to hold your pricing like Well geez, why should I pay this much of above? Like that's, if that ever comes to be the case, like you understand they're not selling what you're selling. Not even close, right? What they're selling is access to get into the place, access to the toilet, maybe a towel here and there, and then access to equipment. And that's it, you're essentially renting the right to use that equipment for a month for that price. And this is just a, it's a very different thing. So we need to make sure that all of your messaging, everything you build in your packages is the opposite of that. And that's where it gets tricky. When we get into even though it's group fitness and coaching, it still feels like a catch all, it still feels like just a workout thing. And what we're really selling is the experience, we're selling expertise, we're selling a journey, the real thing you're selling is results. That's what they're there for, they don't come to you to have fun, having fun is a nice byproduct, but they came to you because they want results and they want to feel better. So we need to really package our stuff around that. And if you deliver premium, top notch platinum level results, you can charge Real Deal prices. But you have to build your system to accommodate that. And unless you're able to do, what were some of the numbers we were looking at on a lot of these global gym models, John.

John Fairbanks 06:08
Um, yeah, it was something crazy. It was like, if you looked, it was on average Planet Fitness, right as the example like, on average, you can look at one of those gyms. And for them to operate, they have to have 10 times the number of like clients on their books, in order for them to even be profitable.

Tyler 06:26
So the only way it works for them is if one out of every 10 people that they convinced to sign up ever shows up.

John Fairbanks 06:31
Oh, it's like part of the model, it's the idea is like, the only reason why they can continue to charge for as little as that they do is that they are banking on the fact that you're not going to show up. So they need 90%. You know what I mean? They need something like 90 or 85% of their clientele not to use their facilities ever. And it just subsidizes, like the few folks that actually do show up. And the price is so small that it's not supposed to hurt. It's supposed to be not noticeable. Yeah.

Tyler 07:07
You know, but could you imagine now, I mean, it's we kind of, it's already rough enough. If you're only selling monthly gym memberships for fitness for group fitness, things like that, if that's your only program, it's already rough going through all the steps it takes to get a person to your front door, right to a person in your inbox person wanting your help a person who found you, once you has the need and is ready to start. There's a lot of big steps, right for that person to take to get there. For that person to show up at that point, and you'd only be able to close $200 gym membership is already like, a month. That's like that's a lot of damn work for that couple 100 bucks if that's the only thing you're offering, which we try to teach otherwise. But could you imagine just doing sales for $20.30 bucks monthly membership? I mean, it would make me crazy. I just couldn't.

John Fairbanks 07:57
There's no knowledge. There's no, there's no way. And that's why, like you go into those places. It's not like they're stacked with sales. People know, it's like the price needed to sell the thing. It's like it's super inexpensive, like it's by it.

Tyler 08:11
Yeah. And we've talked in the past that what we need is people to give the opportunity to invest in themselves. And that level of commitment. What we're off what you're offering in your gym versus the Globo gym, one size fits all fitness model, is an opportunity to commit further to themselves, right for the client, it's an opportunity to invest in themselves. People want that opportunity, they need the opportunity. And that's what they're there to do. And if someone's coming there, and the first thing that they're saying when they're finally taking this moment to invest themselves, and the first thing they say is, Well, I really wish this was $40 instead of $400. It's like well, okay, well, that already says a lot about where they're at with this, right? It already is that that is the big thing and not this thing. And everybody's financial situations are different. But that does mean that that is the primary factor in their decision making, which is probably going to keep them getting the same results that they've always got. And you don't have to take a hard line in this when you're communicating it to people. But that's what you need to know for your own psychology as you're selling this stuff as you're selling your packages and you're putting it together that not all these people are going to be your people. And some of them just aren't ready yet. Some of them need to learn this lesson and go spend a couple years in a $30 gym and not show up and not have anyone accountable for them and not have any sense of community and not have anybody in their corner. Not having anybody touching base with them, not having any group gatherings, not getting into a whole wealth whole new community full of people with similar like minded goals and like that's the pieces it takes to create an entire ecosystem for success in fitness and being around people will make healthy decisions and talk. You're not going to get that so they just kind of need to know what's down that other path for us. You can convince them into your place. But to be honest, if a guy's looking for a 20 No gym membership, he's never going to be yours until he's not your guy anymore. Yeah,

John Fairbanks 10:05
and it's your pricing should do a lot of the groundwork for years to where it's either it's either repelling or attracting the right people. And then how you can then package once you know someone's walked through the door, they know this is not a equipment rental. They know that this is not just like an open gym only thing. They realize, like, Coach accountability, like you've made it abundantly clear. It's now what your job is, is really the same way you've broken it down for us before of your examples from the heating and air conditioning, where this is, these are our packages, this is what we provide. And now it's really just meeting the customer and their own level of comfortability. Because everything you do, is packaged from a high quality, elite level care type service, that there's never, there should never be any confusion. You're not comparing apples and apples anymore. They should

Tyler 11:05
know. Yeah. And there's an interest in this isn't. It's, by the way, it's not like these people are beneath you or anything. It's just they're not ready. It's not their thing. It's not in their budget, and that's okay. If you sell cars, you have a used car lot and people come through and they don't have anything cheaper than $5,000. And their budgets are $ 3,000. They're just not going to buy, they're not going to say Well, fuck you. And your fucking expense. Like, you know what I mean? Like this is what I have. I'm sorry, I don't have anything that fits. And that's okay. And that's the way it is. And we always think as gym owners, and coaches are very, very rare. What's the word skilled in sales, those that are it's natural to on the comes as an extension of their social skills and their ability to connect. But very often, we're just afraid of being told no, we don't like being told no, we don't like being told that we're wrong. As a gym owner, as a coach, we're kind of in the business of being right where other people are wrong. Like, I want to know, I want to help you navigate through all the bullshit and all the bad nutrition advice. And I will say, hey, that way you're doing this, you know what I mean? As a coach, you want to make sure that you're right and being told no to something when you offer it is strange. You know what I mean? It's if you're not used to it, it's very, very strange. Do you ever go to the grocery store? I always ask you if you have the rewards card, if you would like to sign up for the rewards card today. And I hate it when I get asked that question all the time. I hate Yeah. But it actually is an absolute non thing. The part of me that hates it is the part of me that hates getting told no, because I know that kid that was getting told no 700 Times today show as a matter of policy, if the people checking out ask 1000 times a day, they're gonna get 200 of them rewards cards sold. And that's the nature of it. Now, we don't have to play that game in the gym business. But it's a very good skill to learn to get told no. And be able to handle it and understand just that it is what it is. And if you've never had a job where you're offering things and other layers for people to say yes to and no to a no seems like rejection, know what I mean? It seems like he got your heart broken. If you're like, sure. Okay, so we're gonna get started, like, this is me, this is my facility, here's all the things that I'm proud of. And here's what we offer. And the guy's like tests are not worth it to me. But we have to get over that. And that has to become another way we're not in the business getting told no all the time. You know what I mean? In sales, you really aren't trying to get blown out the door and let a bunch of people walk away with nothing. But you do have to get over your fear of being told no. And the fear of rejection, because they don't when you're presenting these things. This is what it is, here we go take it really well.

John Fairbanks 13:37
Because that really it's all about the core, the crux of what we're talking about is just its mindset shift across a lot of different pieces of this. But on this specifically. It's not everyone's going to say yes or no. And so this is where you have to stop getting over it. And this is like, our personal beliefs on like, whether failing is good or failing is bad. Or however you want to, you know, the acronym for, you know, for fail, and all these different things that exist of trying to change these mindsets. But definitely, if you switch your mindset of being like, my goal is to be told no 10 times today. I gotta get known 10 times, because because statistically speaking, if you have the right people, if you're talking to the right individuals, you are being put in the right position, you're just in order to get to 20 nose or 10 nose, you're going to talk to 13 people because three people are going to say yes. And getting more comfortable with the idea of no and then understanding what that actually means to where it's in. It's not an attack. It's not a personal attack. And I think that that was the biggest thing that was hard for me to do. Any of the things as I was learning new skills and I was wanting to be able to work with customers or work with clients. The reason why I was doing it, the reason why I've spent any time at all trying to figure it out or build up the skill was that I wanted to provide them value. I valued it. And I knew that I could help them. I wanted to be able to help them. But then when it came to the price, it was kind of like, okay, yeah, this all sounds awesome. How much does it cost? It's like, it's like $300. And that's like, all it's, I didn't, it was like, I wasn't even I knew I could do it. It wasn't even a confidence thing of like, I didn't know how to do what I just sold that I could do. But it was like, Man, I'm super scared. Because like I don't,

Tyler 15:44
I think this is why actors have agents. You know what I mean? If you could always, if you could just farm that service out in the beginning, it makes for a much slower learning curve. But like, oh, oh, people do pay this for this. Cool. And it just gets you out, it gets you out of that way, we wouldn't do it a lot. We will have projects where you maybe know a little bit more about the market than I do. And we'll go into something. It's like, John, I don't know what I should be charging for this. And very often it has very little to do or what my inputs are, it's what's it worth? How long does it take? What do I need? Boom, boom, boom. And those are the real factors in it, aren't they? How little Can I ask this person so that they say yes, so that way, when I get this work, it's worth as little as possible. That's a wrong game to play in consulting is a wrong game to play in your gym. And it's a really bad way to game rep and a bad way to play sales.

John Fairbanks 16:36
Yeah, because it's because the way you need to pack into these things is, again, like you said, it's not what the market around you is charging. It's a piece, but it's such a small percentage of getting a feel for it, you really need to be able to back into this thing at the bare minimum of how you'd be able to back into it. But then it just gets down to the time, the value of time. Again, we've talked about kind of building some of the offers before and the idea of, we learned early on some of the early versions of the offers that we would work with clients on oftentimes just made a gym owner make their time, just super valuable, right? ultra expensive. And what's interesting is, even though we did that, the gym owner's time went from typically $150 to $450 an hour, right, or whatever it is, like something obscene because you don't want people to choose it. And just like you said, it's one of those things where you're going to have folks that are just going to choose the more expensive offer because that's $450. What that 450 means to them, is totally different from what 450 means to me, or means to the gym owner when we were setting that up originally. And then what we realized, as crazy as this sounds, is that when it came down to it, at the end of the day, 450 wasn't enough,

Tyler 18:06
No, just too many people had it. So it was about the actual value of the time to the gym owner in the end, actually no more so than anything else. And this is in everything we don't sell time. And you've got to this is a mindset thing. We've had to break this out of multiple industries. And in the tech field, it's I don't sell parts, I sell a service, I don't sell labor, I sell a service, I don't sell my time, cell service, I don't sell mileage or gas, I sell a service and the service is meet here doing exactly what I'm here to do. And that's the same exact way in your gym, this service is you're gonna get coach guided results, you're gonna get the whole process the whole thing, you're getting an end goal with a very premium process built into it. And this is, that's the piece that people are buying. That's what they're paying for, they're buying abs and good feelings and confidence in the mirrors and mornings knowing that they beat the day before and all that shit. All that shit is what they're buying. They're not buying all your fucking time and stuff. And the problem is the reason they think they do that is because that's what you think, as Jim or you think that they're buying an hour of your time. So that's exactly what they think. Because that's what you sold them. And you got we got that's if I could just rip that out everybody's damn head right now. It would be the best thing I ever did for you. I promise you don't sell time.

John Fairbanks 19:28
Now, because as soon as you do that, it's no longer about it cannot be about results. It no longer can be about the offers that you're putting together because it's now like the most tangible thing that can then just be quantified and then taken away. And again, you're not just an hour's worth of work. And everything that you do is not just an hour's worth of work. If you cannot get past the idea that you want to be able to give people the option opportunity, and it comes down to how you feel about sales. And the most common thing is that sales is a four letter word. It's negatively thought about, and you have to start switching your mindset that selling is serving.

Tyler 20:18
Yeah, it really is offering. Now we're gonna, we're gonna, by the way, we're gonna muck that language up a million times over, because we'll talk sales this, but it really is, for those that are afraid of sales, it's not sales, you built a good offer, now, you're presenting an offer, you're not selling them on anything, there's not some, okay, so you want to go with it? Like it's not, it just isn't that you just tell them exactly what it is. And then you let them ask any questions pertaining to the option that they're most less most interested in. And from there, you navigate from there, and you don't got to do all the talking. It's just this is not, this isn't the slimy thing that people are afraid of it. It's just I don't know, I don't understand it. But I want to go back to the, to the selling time thing too, is I had a conversation with somebody about this. I think there's about camerawork, or something here this last week, and he was like, but it's kind of expensive. This guy is just charging like $65 an hour. It was a pretty good living $65. I was like, well, if we're gonna hire videographer for $65 an hour, hire tenable. Great, you know what I mean, for sure. But the thing I tried to explain to somebody is like, well, there was a time when $20 An hour was a good job. If you had $20 an hour, you worked 40 hours a week. That's what 800 bucks a week, right? That's roughly $40,000 a year. That's okay. Right? I don't know. Yeah, there's times in my life, that would have been great. And there's times where that would have been a huge hit. You know, so I don't you know, I don't really know. So yeah, I don't know where things move, as far as like, is that enough money to live on now. But I don't know. But I know that you're not going to go, the same person that's going to pay you if you're working for somebody's going to pay you $20 An hour, it's probably never going to bump you up to 60. How are you going to quadruple your income, if you're already at, you're exchanging time for money, they're never going to triple their output to per hour, never, they're just never going to do it, you can't do three times the work that you've already set up to fail. By playing that game, originally, getting into that traditional arrangements of time for money or parts for money, or whatever that is, is already a broken system, and it's going to keep you at the very least it's gonna keep you in that lower tier, and you can make things work and you can live up to that ceiling. But then there's no going beyond that ceiling once you're stuck in that transactional purely time for money relationship.

John Fairbanks 22:37
And we all know, right? Why the idea of like the locksmith that takes 10 hours to fix your lock, like, Okay, you got to pay him 200 bucks. Like he was here for 10 hours. So it was just kind of on him. All right, why don't you wanna bucks sucks to do that. But the dude that comes and does it in 30 minutes, still for $200? You're like, Oh, what the flying fuck was that? That's ridiculous.

Tyler 23:02
Call that guy on a Sunday night. And it's 800 bucks. You know what I mean?

John Fairbanks 23:08
But the reality is, is that the wonder that took 10 hours? Is that the first lock he's ever done, and he may or may not have fucked your lock up pretty bad when he was trying to figure it out. The dude that was 200 bucks in 30 minutes has done it for 20 years. But for some reason, when it comes to the trade like that, we it's like, well, I mean, he's got tons of experience, like, I know that it's gonna get done. I know, it's gonna get done, right? When you have gym owners, it's like, we don't make that shift. Yeah, it's like, well, hold on. What about all the time that you're producing,

Tyler 23:41
Though, that mindset shift coincides. And I think that's why we kind of end up with gym owners in the same place. At the same time, John is like a lot of the people that we've come across over the years are there, they're at a point where they're not brand new. And if they are coming in, they're deliberately taking this to a place where they've been trying to treat their job or their career as craftsmen, right? They do think that the types of coaches that we attract the people we know within our circles are trying to make sure that they really treat this like a craft, that they're honing their skills, they really, really do take an arts and craftsman's approach to coaching. And they really are passionate about being good at it, not just doing it hour to hour or whatever. But I think in doing that, then that same mindset shift comes and then they begin to value their time very differently and communicate that outwardly very differently. But early on, there's a lot of coaches that are just like I'm just a coach, you know what it is like, how many coaches out there your parents say when you're going to get a real job? You know what I mean? We've talked to coaches like that, who said, I wonder wondering if they still gotta get another job or like when are they going to go back to law school and this and that, like, you've dealt with that pressure from family as you shift into the fitness industry like, is this the real thing you can make a living doing this coming over? They're living doing this. And so we kind of have to deal with that resistance psychologically the whole time until we grow out of it. But then you got to own it in yourself, you have to own this. I'm a craftsman, I am good, I do have years of experience, I am a 20 year locksmith, right. And I'm gonna get your own real quick as possible here and you're gonna love, it's gonna be a happy experience, my shoes are going to be cleaned, I'm going to be nice. I'm going to pet your dog, I'm going to clean up after myself, like, those are all the things that a person should confidently be able to carry into that interaction as a coach, as a gym owner as yourself. So if you can't walk up and talk to somebody and have them understand that you're, you really take this seriously, then yeah, you're gonna have a hard time. You know, it's gonna be tough, you're gonna get told no. But once you realize that what you do has value. I do think that that mindset shift makes it so easy, because then you're not selling people are just picking up exactly what you're putting down and going, I liked this guy was real straightforward. Here's what he does. I like it. It showed through when he spoke to me, it was very, very, very obvious that he's professional, he's compassionate, that he really, really, really cares. And they have some really sweet offers. I can't afford them all. I really would love this top thing. But you know what I'm gonna get right there somewhere in the middle. It's exactly what I can afford. I really believe after seeing how they put things together, that they can take me there. And that is such a better takeaway from a sales interaction than somebody coming in. Okay, I guess I'll just do your group fitness. That's what we do. Why just jump shop classes? What if I don't like the people there? Well, I don't. What if I'm, like, a little bit self conscious? I don't Oh, then I just kind of just go on, you know, it's just it's a very different process when it's not presented professionally, you know?

John Fairbanks 26:41
Yeah. And in giving people the opportunity to be able to spend the money for peace of mind. Yeah. Because the fact is, I was just, we're just in the market to be able to fix, right, the deck that we have, yeah. And I got a bunch of folks. They're like, well, we're $65 an hour, and then I got somebody else that goes, well, it's gonna be $600 for me to fix it. And then I got a guy that goes, well, it's two grand, and I'm like,

Tyler 27:05
Why? Yeah. Why?

John Fairbanks 27:07
Why is it it's not that I'm spending too, that you weren't busting his balls? Not at all

Tyler 27:13
I am, you're more worried about I would have been more worried about the, the other 260 $5 You're gonna use for two, I'm alright. At least you know that that guy's probably gonna make money on it. So he'll be around in two years to write. But that is a very interesting thing that being concerned about why someone is charging so much isn't it often that you think that guy's a crook? It's just like, I want to know what kind of bullshit is going on back here.

John Fairbanks 27:37
Oh, do you know why they wanted to charge us? The lowest tier ghosted us multiple times when we were text messaging going back and forth. It seemed question about whether or not it was even maybe a business and only because there were so many reviews, I was like, well, like, I think that they really do exist, because but it's weird, because he's not the dude that said to grant called me five minutes after I sent the first message, not a bot. And he apologized, saying that it took him so long to reach out because the app was buggy. And he couldn't message me on the app. So I was like, okay, just before I knew it was two grand, right? That was before I knew it was two grand. And the fact is, is that all those things, everything that happened that he showed up, when he said he was going to show up, that he sent up the follow up email, that he hit me up five minutes, within my initial outreach, all those pieces made it to when I got hit with the two grand quote was not like, get the fuck out of here. I'm like, I'm more interested now into why you're so expensive, because you guys have been killing it on every aspect of the game. Until you gave me the quote, which feels kind of high. So explain to me why that's not high. Then we'll go from there. Yeah.

Tyler 28:57
Yeah, and now in order to boil this down to is then he added layer tears like we would do here layers, stacked offerings, all of a sudden maybe he has a $600 option which is like we work you in sometime between now and next spring. When I have time. No but for real right now. Absolutely. I'm gonna have time, you're gonna prepare the material and have it delivered here for yourself. You're gonna have to whatever whatever whatever. You're responsible for a b and c c here and I need this this this this and this you gotta tear down you know, I mean there's there are ways that that can be done and there are ways if your budget would have a lot you know, wouldn't have allowed you to do that version. You would have much rather spent six with this guy on a lower level product than six on the other guy, Mr. Without a doubt, but that's but that is the important thing. And that's why when we get into establishing who you are as a gym and who you want to be and how you want to be perceived and the service you want to deliver. All of these things have to fit this you can't be a $2,000 pricing guy and also be no textbook guy. Getting your systems to be in place. You got to know that when someone halls like, I'm not going to sell a lot of 2000 or $3,000 Gym packages. If I'm blowing people off, it's not going to work. But if I'm quick, and I catch them right when their emotional pain is high, when they've reached out when they've already been vulnerable and called and said, Hey, I'm trying to make some changes, you know, I really need to make this work. And they've already put themselves out there like this, you kind of pulse. Right? You got to be quick. And so these things are, they're not unrelated, he can charge that he has to charge that much, because he's able to offer that level of service for that's it. But that's it, but he offers that level of service, it allows him to charge that much. It's a feedback loop.

John Fairbanks 30:37
Because it's not about staining the deck, that's not what the service is, the service is five minutes or less reach out. Like it's all the other pieces, all the other intangible pieces that allow you to be able to allow this particular example to provide the level of service in which I feel confident that the job is going to get done. I trust the process, all the other things, those intangible pieces, and that's what either you are doing or not doing in your gym. When you're like, Well, you know, we could give you a discount here, here, here, whatever it is, it's like, you're, you're having the wrong conversation. Yeah. It's these need to be able to have folks feel confident in every single step of the process, that then when the price hits them, it's not like, oh, well, it's like, I don't know, ma'am. And they've really been taking care of this. And I'm feeling really good about this. And man, I really want to get this done.

Tyler 31:34
So they'll say now that makes sense. I can't afford that. Right? What can I afford? And they'll go right down there. And that's, before we get to that place, because you guys heard about the plate method and things like that as you stack your offers. That's the important thing. drive value, value, value value, and then they'll just look down and go, What can I afford? It all sounds good. What can I afford? What fits my needs, my buying habits in my budget? Boom, because?

John Fairbanks 31:57
Because it's no longer yes or no? Yes or yes, yes. Or Yes.

Tyler 32:01
Yeah. Yeah. And that's another interesting question, John. And maybe this is a philosophical thing you would do? How do you weed out the $20 and $30 interest? Do you want to be getting on a bunch of sales things with people who are looking for that? And how do you make sure that you're not getting a pile of those people that are coming in that are not looking for that yet are not ready? Or? Or are you looking for the cheapest gym membership? How do you have any advice for people saying, well, I get people in all the time and complain about this? How do we prevent that?

John Fairbanks 32:32
When we started doing when we started playing in the ad space a little bit so space that we personally like hanging out in. But when we started working with clients that were already kind of doing this doing the ad space, when they started off the leads that they were getting were hilariously bad. They were so bad. And so we were we weren't

Tyler 32:59
Doing well. And also like some of those initial runs were for things that were almost advertised as nearly free.

John Fairbanks 33:07
That's like, exactly what I was driving. So what we looked at because we were involved, right, we weren't involved in we weren't doing those parts we were doing at No, we were just we were on the back end kind of helping streamline systems and processes. And as we would check in be like, Why do you how's it going? Because we've built all this stuff on the back end to help the process run smoothly. And then it was like, it's bad. Like it's really bad. Like it's a fill in the blank, right? It's like, they don't, they don't speak any English. And we don't provide non English services and and like they don't they don't return the calls and their phones are disconnected or, or it was all these things that were tied to just not directly

Tyler 33:46
Minutes, mid calls. Just work.

John Fairbanks 33:52
And so when we went in so you and I went in and we looked at the ads, we looked at the wording we looked at the landing pages, right that attracted people in and we're like, oh, oh my oh my god, you guys like oh my god, have you guys seen what this looks like? What does it look like? It looks like a free service. This looks like you are renting your brother's closet behind his pet store. And you're running a gym out of there. Now, if any of you are running gyms that have pet store closets like God bless you. But it was no surprise. And so let's say that once we realized it was no surprise. And so we're like, well, we need to remove the word free from this. Like we need to remove this and so you and I have spent that man, maybe a year ago. And then what we started doing really started in craft of the idea of what's the language? What's the imaging? What's the portrayal of if you want something high? level, elite, luxury, like those types of phrases.

Tyler 35:05
And this thing and by the way, this isn't just about your gym, by the way, because your gym can be raw and rugged and whatever but you didn't want some of your higher ticket premium offerings to appear and sound that way. You know what I mean? And so we started going through these, what we did was we went through ad campaigns, both video and in web based, and we started looking at for brands that we thought did that well, and the words that they used and the style that they use for pictures and how slick things looked and things they did do, maybe things we specifically never saw them mentioned. Some of them, you know what I mean? Some of them, a lot of those things you find also give almost no description into what into features, you notice that right? You know, you're not going to know the Jaguar commercial that starts reading your features of the car. It's just like that, because I sleep. That's it, you know, that's it,

John Fairbanks 35:59
You will have, you'll have more sex, if you buy this car, like it's in. That's one of the craziest things is that when you really start looking at why people bought, like, money is always emotional, always.

Tyler 36:14
And for these ads, it's important to not just by the way, I'm not saying just for ads, because we don't recommend you to start firing off ads. But when you're communicating about this, whether it's on social media, or whether it is in your presentation materials, when you're presenting your offers to clients seems like that is those things are as important as your whole correspondence feel premium like this, from beginning to end, just because that way, it doesn't need to just serve as an attractor, it also needs to serve as a filter. And it needs to filter out the business and the leads that are not worth your time at the moment. And that's not on you to decide. Let them decide, oh, this thing is not good for me. Because you don't need to spend your whole day your whole spiel to have them tell you that if they knew beforehand.

John Fairbanks 37:03
No. And again, you don't know you don't know YOU DON'T BE ABLE TO YOU don't know if the dude that drives up in the right 2002 Camry, right? You don't know if that dude is the wealthiest guy in the area. He just doesn't appreciate buying a new car, but he'll drop mad money on everything else. Like, you don't know what people should choose to spend their money on. So stop trying to make decisions for people. And like you said, maybe stop selling, I think it is a reasonable thing to say stop selling people start stop selling let's start offering and just start raising the bar for what you offer in your gym and these are things that you don't have to you don't have to do anything hard to start. I mean, being consistent is difficult. But is the trash taken out of the gym? Is the gym clean? Does it smell good? What are the bathrooms? Look,

Tyler 38:00
This is how you clean up your first impressions. What's your first impression of your debt guy, perfect phone call, clean correspondence. Easy, professional, kind, kind, like made you feel like he cared that matters, right? People won't remember what you did or what you said, they'll remember how you made them feel. So someone walks into your facility or they get an email from you or a call or a text. Every one of those things, your first impression, needs to smell like a frickin fancy new car the whole way through. You know what I mean? That whole experience needs to feel like leather seats, it needs to smell like a nice fresh dinner, cooking or whatever it is, this whole thing needs to be appealing from the beginning. And when someone walks in and goes, it was nice, the gym didn't smell like feet, the floors were clean, it looked cool. You know what I mean? Like people around there were smiling. The person I talked to was friendly and happy to be there, not pushy, and didn't pop up. But here's what we have to offer. And that's I mean, that's all you have to do then if someone or someone walks in and goes in is think of a $20 Gym thing and they walk in and they see all of the things that I just described to you minus maybe the smell of a freshly cooked dinner. And, and then and then they see your offer. And they just know they just know that this is not aligned with what they came in here expecting. And then they're done. That's okay. That's just it that makes it such an easy No, you've still you're not getting told no because you embarrassed yourself. No, you're not getting told no. Because you were pushy and said it was the wrong thing. Someone told you no, because it didn't fit, which meant you can be proud like I this is what I offer. And it's not work for you. Great. But man, what a great way they leave and they're telling everybody how that place was way too nice and way too fancy for me. And that's how you attract people who like nice and fancy things too. So it just really, really works really well if you can just be once you get that way. Just be that way and be it loudly and make sure you really do it deliberately because you have to do it. Every single contact in the beginning has to represent that because maybe your guy with a $600 deck I could have done a great job and just had a bad couple days with a cell phone service. But total, what is it, but what does it look like to you fly by night operation total scab, no idea the quality of work or how it's going to be, or if he's going to leave some hash finish shit. Now, the possibilities, the negative possibilities are just spooling up in your mind. And we want to defuse that as much as possible with things like, oh, they need comfort, they need to know what's going to be taken care of, they need to know when I come in here, I provide the work and the energy and the commitment. And these guys are going to help me get results, the results I've been wanting for a long fucking time.

John Fairbanks 40:36
And the reason why we touch on the foundational stuff is so important is what you just said, you need to do this all the time. So you need to really make sure that what you want your gym to be, is who you are, like, it's who you want to be. Because if you don't want to be that, if you're pretending to be something else, you will crack, you will burn, you'll crash, you can only fake it for so long. The term like fake it till you make it will only get you so far. Because the problem is that you're going to get too far into it. And all of a sudden, you'd be like, I hate all of this, I can't make this anymore, I hate it all. So you do need to make sure you do that from work and being like, This is who I want to be, this is who I want to attract. And then I'm going to double down on this particular thing. All the way, I'm going to crank it to 11. And as long as you make sure that your pricing comes along with that, you can afford to laminate the sheets that you're going to put in front of you can afford to buy the nice folder, you're going to buy them

Tyler 41:46
Real nice PDF, and you can present it on a nice jumbo iPad, that just feels good in somebody's hand to hold. You know what I mean? Like, like, that's a different thing. Let's let that detail alone be a different thing. And you can find a million ways to do that. But types of things like that, if if as long as it aligns with what you're trying to do, those little difference makers are huge difference makers in the long run,

John Fairbanks 42:10
Or continue to charge as small amount as possible and barely, barely, yeah, by plan, people's text messages and calls

Tyler 42:19
Will be here forever, because they can afford to run half those locations at a loss and come and go and like it's just kind of all working out for them. It's a much bigger piece than what you and most of the gym owners out there are working with. You can't afford to lose your ass. For 2346 10 months in a row, you can't afford to take two years before you can make a profit. You can't. You just can't You can't afford to churn clients like they do, you can't afford to have only 10% of your people show up because you're gonna use for you to exist, you got to be so expensive, you have to be expensive enough to where they're not going to just let that skate and not come in and not get results like your model is not their model. So stop trying to imitate that pricing. Yeah. So to send everybody out, I really think the takeaways here really are going to be stopped selling, stop being afraid of selling and start offering. Yeah. And other than that, yeah, quit racing to the bottom for pricing. Because you're not, you don't want to be on the bottom. You don't want to be the cheapest and you don't want to be the most easily approachable, easily disrespected, easily walked out double, easily, blah, blah, blah, all the flaws and all of those cheap gems, you don't want to play that game, let them play a different game than you.

John Fairbanks 43:29
It should hurt when they buy us what that means is that it'll hurt when they need to go. Yeah, if there was something that was there that kept them there. So if it doesn't make someone stop and think twice, then you're making it very easy for them to walk out in five more on the average, six months, they're gonna leave, or they don't. And your averages are a year or more. Yeah, and now you're playing a completely different game. But these are the conversations that we're having in the Facebook group. Yeah, this is, this is why we've started doing this.

Tyler 44:06
Yeah, and as we get more gyms under the umbrella, and they start running some of these things through we're gonna we're gonna start seeing a lot of stamps out. Guys, I did A and it delivered B and C. And I really am looking forward to starting to see some of these conversations pop up in the group. Because we're having a lot of fun behind the scenes and it's been a ton of fun. So I really can't wait to start bringing these things to the forefront for you guys. So the Facebook group is the gym owners movements on the Facebook robots in their descriptions. Everything's in the description here. If you're listening. If you're watching, you know, you can also find the show on iTunes, Spotify and everywhere else. If you're listening, join the Facebook group. We don't have YouTube, we're trying to keep these conversations more or less gym owners for gym owners for gym owners in the private group so that way you guys can share your wins. We can have gym owners having real conversations, and they don't have to worry about their clients and all that stuff seeing it so Hey, this is a gym owners community. You can follow me on Instagram at Tyler effing stone follow the podcast at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. And John at Jay banks FL moves your head to the side. Can we see Lucy the gator behind you? Oh yeah, we got the gator, a new Gator, a new Gator and a bat.

John Fairbanks 45:19
In the back, you're slowly adding more and more additions to the visual podcast, even more of a reason to get into the Facebook group so you can fully appreciate us in video.

Tyler 45:28
Yeah, if we get to 200,000 people in that Facebook group, John and I will both shave our beards. I think that's fair. That's fair to say we'll do it. Okay. That's it. Thanks for listening, everybody. And we'll see