Your Gym Should Always be Busy

gym, people, arrangement, coach, work, ideas, space, money, hour, business, opportunity, owner, pay, rent, fucking, coaching, group, fitness, problem, sell

Tyler 00:15

Welcome back to the gym owners podcast. Guys. I'm your host, Tyler. My other co host over there is John. Hi, John. Hi, Tyler. Alright guys, well, we have kind of a fun one today. This is one of the most interesting conundrums. Like, as a guy that loves problem solving, like I do, it's like it's purely in my blood. This is one that I don't have a good answer for. But there's a million right answers for this problem. Okay. Especially in the functional fitness space, if you're a functional fitness gym, what is most likely your biggest expense? The space you're renting, right? Right, usually, I mean, of course, there's up to a certain scale, then of course, it's payroll and all that sort of stuff. But like, for a lot of you guys out there, you're a big nut you got to cover the bulk of that not is rent, rent, rent, electricity, heat around these parts. Everything tied to the property right now. But what are we paying for? When we're paying for rent, you're paying for access to this facility, right? You're paying for this now your space. By the way, I'm most of you, as far as I know, have ever seen anybody that has an arrangement? That's not, that doesn't give you 24 hour access to your gym, to your property that you rent, right? Your lease, no matter what you probably can do business at, during most business hours for sure. Bar. I mean, I can't imagine a fitness gym having noise issues even? No, no,



John Fairbanks 01:41

I mean, you'd have to be



Tyler 01:42

because five 5am is as much of a problem as anybody's 8pm or 9pm.



John Fairbanks 01:46

facility like at the base, or like in an apartment building.



Tyler 01:51

And as we've been around the world, the thing that I noticed the most people's gyms are fucking empty a lot of the day. And specifically gyms that most of what you have is just group classes, you've got five to six hours a day, five days a week, tops, that your business is even being used, that your biggest investment is even having the opportunity to give you any return on



John Fairbanks 02:20

people aren't going to come, though, like there's a reason why there's popular times during the day. So there's not as like, it's, you're not gonna have an 11 You know, whatever, the 10am class or whatever it's gonna be.



Tyler 02:30

Yeah. And so this is one where I don't want to tell people that this is not that this is a problem, you make it like you're fucking up by not having your gym filled. This is like the game we're playing, right? Like if you can sell people coming in at five and six in the morning, and maybe you have an 830 or nine o'clock time slot after school drop off, then yeah, your 10am spots are going to be like a weird spot. There's not as many people that have jobs that allow them to work out from 10 to 11: 30. And I can't afford to go to your gym. But the truth is, those people do exist. They do in your market, there's some and I think that there's we can. I think you can take a multifaceted approach to making sure that you're not just wasting a bunch of opportunities by having just empty time at your gym. Because I mean, 75% of the hours that you're paying for your gym has zero opportunity to make you money. What's the truth? Right?



John Fairbanks 03:25

Well, the difference is the different ways of what you're going to try and make money in your gym, I guess, right? Because like one of the reasons why, why don't you have a group class for the same coach that could coach a group of 15 or 20 people you like it's at some point, it's going to cost more to put that person on the floor to coach the two people or one person that might show up, because you're still kind of keeping that model. So you're talking about alternative ways of making money and then using that space in a totally different way.



Tyler 03:58

So I want to start first on the wall, your gym, has people in it. While your gym has people in it, your gym should be busy. And I'll tell you this, the gyms that we've been in that are the most successful gyms are busy, they feel busy when they walk in. You ever go to a restaurant and see a restaurant owner who's like super fired up about his place, and it's going really well, when it's empty. No, like a good restaurant tour goes in there and knows when the place is full and the people are happy and the drinks are flowing. And meals are coming out and being like oh shit, like, look, that's the vibe. If you're into the restaurant business, that's the vibe that you love. You're like, oh shit, people love it. They want to shake your hand on the way out like the guy that used to manage the kitchen . I love that part when it was busy and we got slammed when I could get just enough to zoom out. And like you're like this is what you're here for because so many in the restaurant industry so many hours again, are very unprofitable, and you better make up for it. When you get slammed two nights a week, three nights a week. You can make a week's worth of revenue within just a couple hours, very honored. And so gym owners need to understand that when you're looking around at your gym floor, having a group class this is going on, and then nothing else is going on. It's okay, that's probably okay. But you're missing out on an opportunity for all of those people to also see someone getting one on one coaching, or somebody doing a semi private coaching arrangement where like, Oh, that's a custom private group. Oh, I didn't know we did that you have these constant reminders that your gym is doing things, instead of, you're constantly having to say, hey, we do these things in a solicitation based way. So I think the first thing you need to do is when your gym is open, when you're there, when new people are there, it's okay to have things going on kind of at similar times, I think it's actually a great advantage to selling those products. I think if you don't have your will, if you have clients who are in one on ones, and want to maybe graduate on to something else, that's the perfect opportunity for them to be seeing specialty programs going on at the same time. Or they should be seeing your group fitness go, Oh, that looks like fun. Oh, Steve, from down the street goes there, like I kind of like, I could probably get in on that. Well, now you've done it, you've corralled them in and you can kind of hand them off into a group fitness thing, or they can do both they can do. But that's how people can really learn and get on board with all of the things that you offer. Without you just constantly having to wave it in front of their face.



John Fairbanks 06:25

It probably even a better reason of like, if you're the gym owner, to not be the one that stuck coaching every single class, it's as if you want to be able to bring somebody in, that's new, you probably don't want to be like, oh, I want to have somebody that could be new, or it's going to join the gym, or it's going to participate with us in some way to come when the gym is empty. Because there's like, you lose out on all of that energy like that raw energy that's in there, somebody walks in, it's just a big empty space. And this. And now I'm kind of nervous, because just the two of us are inside this building. And



Tyler 06:59

Here's the other benefit of having your one on ones and semi private classes going on during your group classes. That means there's two people doing the thing, meaning if you're going to have an inexperienced coach there, yes, what if you're the ACE, you can have them going on with something that's making money, this just within reach of you. So you can pop open a bottle and be like, Hey, I'm seeing this, you can give them coaching feedback, you can give them space, you can give them feedback, but you can always make your clients will then still feel heard or adjacent to you, as the owner, or at least did like this is an experience. It's not happening in the vacuum. It's not happening behind some closed door. And by the way, if people want the private thing, this is where I would go with it if people wanted, like, you know what, I want my one-on-one, but I want anyone in the gym, perfect. That just costs you more money. That's another truth if they want something short notice if they want it on the weekends, or if they want it, you know, when nobody else is allowed to watch them sweat, that probably needs to cost more. So if you require that I suggest you either get a couple of people you're comfortable sweating with and come in on a semi private group, or, yeah, that's fine. I do have these fully private time slots, but they're $125 an hour because I gotta shut the Jinda. And by the way, it will pay for it and lead them for sure. For sure. Yeah. But like thinking and I say this, I say these things because this type of brainstorming problem solving is like it's the way I enjoy solving problems. I don't think any one of these is an idea that you should like to marry your business to or divorce your business from. But I do think that this is like the funnest way to start thinking about your business, I think, because we can do all the great stuff with the coaching, we can do great stuff with the offer building. But what do we do about all this time and missed opportunity? I have a million bad ideas that I could bake into if I knew in the beginning like my dream. Here's my dream functional fitness. I know what it is. My dream functional fitness gym is a gym where you have the rigs all the way around the outside. And the equipment can be packed away very tightly into most likely like a big sliding door. Right. So you have your wide open space and you have a full with a global gym type vibe around the perimeter. And then it closes off because your last class is going to be done by 7:30pm floors get cleaned, you have the whole place you have a nice sound system like a really nice sound system built up and then you just have a DJ and your place is legitimately like liquor licensed nightclub bar that I don't even run, by the way that I wouldn't own, I would just rent the place out at night. And they would be finishing up about 230 in the morning, and then cleaning up by about 430. And so three nights a week the place would be just bang in the cleaning crew would be done just in time for me to come in and go through it and launch my morning class again. But you could probably make a fair amount of money off an arrangement like that if it was done right. And if there's not people climbing through and you're ganking your equipment. Again, not all of these are great ideas, but some of them can be really really, really fun. Everybody's done the yoga class thing, right? Everybody's done the gymnastic stuff too. And I don't think those are bad ideas. I think sometimes they're just not great arrangements, or they're not led by people that have a lot of fire under him, and initiative. But I don't think that any of them I don't know of anybody who has taken on an arrangement like a two night a week yoga class or something where they've lost their ass on it, it's just been less interesting or less compelling or less appreciated than they thought. And it



John Fairbanks 10:29

just can't, it doesn't sustain, eventually, it just fizzles out. And it's great for it's great when it's great. And then it kind of just goes away.



Tyler 10:37

But I've seen places that do I think even Stuart Brower, he has one where it's like a microbrew, like a brewery on the property and then like a small bar front. That's kind of shared. That's kind of a cool spot too but you don't want to bring in another business. You don't have to do it. You don't have to set up a fast food joint in your place, either. So it violates your principles. But I don't know what? So I asked you guys out there like, what are your best ideas for covering that time? Or do you just take it? Fine. I spent $6,000 a month and use this place for six hours a day tops like that's Yeah, fuck man, I'd be trying harder to make that gap make more sense to me.



John Fairbanks 11:22

Yeah, there's another thing we hear often is definitely going to be like other personal trainers that are not trainers at your gym? Do you kind of rent out your space? So that's another thing, where is there value in? You may initially be like, well, we'll I'll, I'll put them great. They'll fill the dead air, they'll fill the dead space. But you have somebody that is personal training. And now you're talking to them? It's like, well, do they want a completely private experience for their clients? Or are they cool with fact, there's going to be a group class, it's going to be getting random, but they still have space and the ability to do what they want to do, you know, off to the side or whatever, based off of the square footage or location of your gym, there's a lot of value and being able to have people that may not already be a part of your community that are working in a one on one fashion, just like you said, but now our leads from someone else like oh, man, like they're kind of band, like they're having a good time hanging out in this space. There might be more here so that it just allows you to be able to always have to fill dead air.



Tyler 12:22

No, and those arrangements are always interesting, too. There's a lot I've seen people do flat rate arrangements per month, right, and they just pay X amount per month, and they come in and they just have a respect agreement with the gym owner, I highly recommend that you do every single thing in writing in regards to these things. But you know, you can have an agreement, you're like, yeah, hey, man, I won't crowd your shit. If you got some stuff going on, we'll work around each other. Usually, those types of good guy agreements can work pretty well up to a certain scale. If you want to do a per session, per hour type thing, or per client hour type arrangement, there's plenty of ways that that can be done as well. But everybody has to be on board with that, including the personal trainer and you as Jim, there's got to be weird things if you're pricing and how are you comfortable? Can you just sell somebody over to that person? One on one, because that's kind of nice, too. Are you guys comparable in coaching style, are you not, there's a lot more to that relationship than I think that for me, that's a relationship I would tread lightly on, if I was going to bring someone in just like yeah, just bring your own people, I would want a better connection with the trainer solely so that I because I would then see immediately, like perfect, you're just going to be my first employee who's an employee, I don't have to pay full time because you're actually selling and taking some initiative, and you just the money I make off you I'm not making it and then setting aside the money that goes to you, it's going the other way around, you make the money and you just give me my not that I don't got to worry about it. That's kind of frickin sweet, too, as a gym owner, this costs very little extra time other than the arrangement, and you do just get money handed to you. That's kind of nice. If time is an issue for you, and you can't stretch yourself out any thinner well, bring in a coach. And by the way, if you like that coach, you can start working their one-on -one stuff into your own packages, which then makes it really nice. Like if I can't sell my own time anymore as a gym owner, and I don't have any other employees that I can bring in and plug in. I at least have the ability now I can say ah trainer you're kind of my guy. It's been nice having you around here in the gym. I've got some people that I think we'd like some one on ones for these specific reasons. And let's see if we can get on the same page and then I can just hand people his way. I think that's the arrangement that I would like to have in the long run. But you can have a lot of preliminary feelings with each other and things like that. Because if this is, does this border on actually hiring a person, you know? So quality control. You know, you're going to have to go through a fairly reasonable in depth interview process because you kind of are putting your stamp on them, giving them the key to your Building and yeah, so I think that's one way to definitely do it.



John Fairbanks 15:05

One of the things that I really did too, is we've talked about this a couple of times, Tyler, where we've worked with some folks that, especially the gym owners that we've worked with, they've voiced the idea where they want their coaches, or they have some coaches that are way more entrepreneur, entrepreneurial minded. Where the coach wants to the gym owner wants to be able to like, support and motivate those coaches like, hey, like, yeah, build your build whatever your businesses or your club or your idea is, but allow them to kind of run with it to where almost, they're already a coach that they trust, that already somebody that's integrated into the community to where now almost allows the permission of kind of their own people to start to grow almost as a mini business owner to where now it's a totally different arrangement than kind of like, Oh, I just show up clock in coach my class, and they blocked out to her now. And of course, there's different financial arrangements. So now there is motivation where that coach does, just like you said, they're the ones that are actually making the big money, and they're just really kind of just renting the space that could feel those other hours. And now it's kind of, I don't know, it always feels like it's, if you have a group of coaches, they're always waiting for you to kind of give them the next thing, give them the next opportunity, where you can flip that mindset a little bit. And now someone's like, Well, hey, how hungry, however hungry they are, then it can go chase it. And they go and do lots of cool things. Because now it's something they're super passionate about. Yeah.



Tyler 16:37

So there's other things that fall in line with the empty space so we've talked about bringing in, say complete outside offerings, right? Yoga stuff, any, I mean, you have, frankly, people have nice spaces, you just have nice spaces. And so it's not unreasonable for seminars, events, things like this to come. And none of these are going to be like a pillar of your income. But these are good ways. If you start to think of these things, you can grab a handful of these opportunities a year, and it can amount to 10 to $30,000 in your pocket in a year, if you just hang on to a few of these things. And, and for some of us as a gym owner, that's I mean, that's the difference between like getting by and like, all right, that extra an extra few grand a month, like goes a really long way as if you could just plug in a few of these things as you go. But I think what other ones I had John, there was some fun stuff out there. But none of it was anything I took terribly seriously.



John Fairbanks 17:36

cockfighting cut you could do, you could do a number of things that are really what we're now when you grow,



Tyler 17:45

and your gym. Outside the box here,



John Fairbanks 17:49

depends on where your gym is located, and what you're willing to do for your electricity bill. And really, if you're looking to cover that midnight to 3am, period, the world is your oyster. I mean, there's quite a few things that you could probably creatively come up with. No, I will tell you like really common things too, like when I was. So when I worked in education, and when I was a principal of a private school. And so we had, we were one of the few schools in our immediate area that had a gym. So we had a great big, nice gym that we were in Florida, it had air conditioning, so that was really important. So we constantly were coming up with ways of creatively using that space. On the weekends when school was closed, renting, it's we oftentimes just like you said, it's if there were local, like networking groups, so it was like Key Club or rotary, and other like networking groups, like if they wanted to throw an event or throw a gala or throw something where they know they're gonna go somewhere else, especially, like you said, if you take the time to have any type of lighting, any type of sound system, you now kind of really open yourself up to really be able to be a space for events themselves. So I know it was something that we did a lot, just because now space, especially if you're anywhere that's cold, a heated indoor space, man oh, shit, there's a lot of things. There's lots of people who would love to just not be stuck somewhere and not doing someone's basement or garage.



Tyler 19:21

Yeah. So like, things that have evolved over the last few years that I think could take off took off pretty well. It's like the co working space, you know, that's what I do for all of my work. And I never thought that I would. I was like, I'll just work from home or I'll get out of Boston, having a co-working space. All of a sudden, I go and I pay for a desk that sits next to a bunch of other desks and has almost no privacy. But I really enjoy it. You know what I mean? It works. It's a perfect arrangement for me. Now that's not ideal for your gym. But there's a lot of these new types of arrangements. I think that you should be on the lookout for other businesses, other people, other entrepreneurs like this is going to be a networking type situation . You need to be open to ideas, and you need to have conversations with other people who are open to having these ideas. And something will fall in your lap at the right time, when you go, this is worth doing otherwise, you're going to come up, you are going to come up with bunches of ideas that aren't worth doing much like 60% of what I presented you on this show. But the truth is, in the end, you need to find something because this is you're just leaking money out this door out this time. And that is one resource that you're paying for that you are not getting nearly the right amount of benefit for, you know, if you were a grocery store, the worst solution would be to be open only from two to 6pm. Right, that would suck, we need to we need to open up our opportunities to where we can make money because we got to keep the place warm, we got to keep the cold food, we got to you know, there's, there's a lot of stuff that goes into just having a place under your responsibility for 24 hours. And if you only have 25% of that time, able to be generating revenue or just fulfilling on the product that you've sold, it's up. It's a big, big swing in a mess. So one of the other things to consider is and I personally have not flushed this out with the gym, I know some that have but 24 Hour Fitness a 24 hour model. Sure. 24 hour access is a huge one, I see lots of opportunities in it, I see lots of potential headaches. I see most of it probably for most gym owners being worth it if they priced it right. And I have not looked at anyone's specific numbers when I transitioned somebody into this to where I couldn't. anything I'm saying now would be purely speculating. But I would say you could put in charge at least another 50%. On top of what your membership is for 24 hour access, if not just doubling your bet your base membership price, for someone that wants 24 hour access. It's just as so outside the box product, it's going to be a thing for people that are really wanting to be invested, that maybe aren't that interested in coaching. So someone's going for that thing is going to not be most likely your most valuable coaching client. I think if you do go 24 hour access with your gym and you are a functional fitness gym, I think that that service should be expensive.



John Fairbanks 22:18

Is it but that is that in combination with somebody's ideas that we see. And I know I did when I had a gym and I see tons of folks do which is like just well, it's open gym is that the concept of is this challenging the idea of 24 hour access, because it would be more interesting to me honestly have that idea where it's like, well, there's open gym hours, which are never convenient hours that I want to train in any way, which is probably why it's open gym. But it would be way more interesting for me where it's like there's open gym hours, but it is 24 hour access. Like now, like if I have a fob. That's a much more interesting proposal. Because there's the fact that the gym that I go to now, it's not 24 hour access, but it's just essentially just an open gym, right? I can go and use the facility however I want. But they don't have any like goddamn equipment that I want. Like, there's way more equipment that I want that a functional fitness gym would have. But I'm I don't I'm just not there mentally that I want to do like it's,



Tyler 23:22

but I don't want to do somebody else's program for somebody.



John Fairbanks 23:25

What I want to do right now, and it's not going to be the dude just down the street that has the



Tyler 23:30

local functional fitness. And I think, you know if this is like all things is purely hypothetical for me at this point. So how would I do it? offhand? I would say yes, you can do it at any time you can be in a being at any time that there's not a group class scheduled. Right? So that does block off those times. You know, there may be, I think, again, what scale are we talking about here? Like, how many are you? How many people are you going to upsell to this right away? Is it 50? You think out of your membership, you'd upsell 50 people into this arrangement? If you did good. But if let's say it's only 10 or 20, right to start? Or maybe you limit it. What you need to work out specifically is that arrangement or like Can we do this with a good guy arrangement? Meaning like yeah, you know, we got classes of five and six, but like, so we got to give them the benefit of doubt. So if you're gonna deadlift, you got to be out of the way. You know, you gotta be reasonable. Some of you guys will never have the space to do it. You couldn't do that stuff at the same time because you just don't don't have the space. And that's important to note with our running one on ones and stuff. Yeah, if we're all out of a single garage, it's tough. You can do a small group and maybe a one on one. I feel you there. And with group fitness, or with 24 Hour Fitness and group fitness, I think but I think if you've got the space, I really think people can work around each other truthfully, and if they're not you have too many people in your class. You know what I mean? If one or two people can't be in their squad and sure and not doing your class like that's, again, they should be paying more money than they are for your group. I think your group membership is your base. I think that's an upsell out of that into it, you know, so I don't think that anyone should be paying for just going for our access doesn't also get the option to get locked in with your community because I think that's how you do it, you know, sell them on community, like let community keep them. And so I think that's how I would do it offhand, I might be wrong on a couple of those things. But these are the things you should be thinking about guys, because that's a fucking fun, exciting new proposal for your gym. You want to fire up your gym and your members, you want to offer new opportunities, you want to sell some programming. That's just some fucking workouts that specialize that scalable. You have to have it under this model or else I don't know, you're gonna have to do it all under them going to somebody else's place to do it or just doing it during your open gym windows. It's very tricky.



John Fairbanks 25:59

Okay. Yeah, outdoors to you. You can get one of those vocational schools to get a blacksmith or a welding shop that wants to open up outside. And they can work on whatever fucking equipment you're breaking. Goddamn gyms, people welding out front. You got, like, I guess I always go to schools to be like, you could open up and get it.



Tyler 26:28

Now you have school. This is what you get. What you do is you take the university model, which is you just be like, Oh, we don't pay anybody for doing anything. It is like university is just indentured servitude. So you're gonna be an intern, which just means you work for me. And we don't pay you. Right? Well, yeah, but



John Fairbanks 26:44

you can clock hours Tyler. And it's, you can't put a price on experience.



Tyler 26:49

So I encourage you guys this week to take a look at your business. Just take a look at the vacant time that you have, and the busy time that you have. Can we do more with the time when there are people here? Can I? Can I fit more people in doing something different instead of just more of the same thing? Because could you coach a group class that normally has 15? People? Could you build that to 20 or 25? Yes, but that might suck. Whereas you could have that group of 15 people and then get maybe a semi private group of four, five people, a custom private group of three or four people and then maybe another one on one that goes on concurrently. You know, and you can have less experienced coaches, you can be there to handhold, you can still give the clients that are familiar with you the familiarity of seeing you but now you can start to branch out, I think that's worth looking into, I think finding other ways to make use of the empty time and your jam, the vacant time and your jam, the downtime and your gym, find ways to make that stuff, make a little bit of money, make a little bit of your money back. You don't have to go all in on 24 Hour Fitness or all the other things we were speculating on. But you should start to solve some of the problems like alright, this gym has only given me the opportunity to make money, X amount of hours a day, I'd like to change that. Start by leaning in that direction.



John Fairbanks 28:03

Yeah. And just a healthy brainstorming session. It's one of the things we talk about inside of Jim hacking University. And we go into this, especially because we force everybody to go through brainstorming sessions and each facet of the businesses are building out their foundation, but it's really, there's no wrong answer. So if it is growing weed, if it is creating a professional horseshoe club, that people are going to throw horseshoes out front or whatever it's going to be its



Tyler 28:31

tables pack up. It takes up less space than rowers, you'd be surprised.



John Fairbanks 28:35

Throwing that like whatever, whatever the things are. There's no wrong answer. So and I think it's this, it's, it's shifting that mindset of like, How can this be done? How can we do this? Like I want to make more money or I want to improve the community or I want to do this or I want to do that. And it's but you don't allow yourself to even play I hate I am I hate the what if game? If you ask my wife, what's the number one thing that your husband hates? It's the what if game? Well, what if we did this? What if we did that? What if everybody fucking killed themselves? Like it's What are you talking about? Like what? And but this is more than that. This is allowing yourself to kind of creatively explore just like you said, because 90% of the ideas that you're going to brainstorm, are not going to be the one that you choose. But holy shit, something will shake out where it's like, maybe we could do a DJ. Like maybe we could do something where it's like, you're not going to know and it's failed fast. Yeah, like if it's an idea fucking go after it. See how it could work first, and then see, okay, could we actually test this out? Yeah, you know, don't fucking don't bet the farm or every fucking idea that you've got. But at the end of the day, you do want to allow yourself a little bit of leeway to creatively just like you said, to kind of problem solve and because there's too many folks out We hear from all the time that it's this, I want it to be this. And then it's, I want my life to be this way. And it's okay. And it's kind of the next questions are like, kind of what are you doing about it? And it's, or worse, like all these excuses for why it's like, well, it'll be impossible. Like, I can't do it because of this that any other, it's like, well, then you are guaranteed not to be able to get whatever it is that you wish you had, if you're not willing to even play the game, even for a moment with yourself and being like, how could we make this possible. And now things can open up. So it's a healthy activity that you should at least do, man, every once in a while, once, once a month to allow your brain just to flow for a few minutes and be like, What can we do?



Tyler 30:46

Well, and don't go as far as I do. We talked about this and some of our others are like, you can become an insufferable version of yourself by doing too much of this be like, You know what I would do? Here's how I would make this better. And that can be exhausting. And not fruitful. But I do think for those of you out here, I think take take take a look, I think there's more opportunities in there than you think. And besides, like, you can, you might need a break from trying to figure out how to sell more, or how to do more, or you don't I mean, there's always a lot of that, like right now, okay, you're trying to solve money problems, what are you gonna do, you're gonna spend less, you forgot how you get more people in. Those are kind of your to do your things right now, right, and you're rebuilding your offers and doing all that stuff. But that's all very much kind of in this one space. And so just detach from all that for a little bit and think about some interesting ways you can maybe pull in an extra 500 here, 1000 here using, frankly, your most valuable asset at the moment, your most valuable asset that you're paying for right now. So I think that you're putting the money in there might as well put a little bit of time into figuring out what you can get out of it. And I think thinking outside of the box, I think thinking fitness wise is going to be important because I think there might be a very novel fitness solution for you out there in this. I think thinking completely outside of the fitness space is worth doing as well. Because I do think that some of that stuff can be the real game changers and look at what real estate goes. What if your hours just simply don't overlap with a specific type of thing where somebody could make the I don't know what these arrangements are. But I think you should start looking because that type of money is the easiest money you're gonna find.



John Fairbanks 32:19

NASCAR, we sell every square inch on all the walls, we sell everything and then we put sponsorships everywhere. It's all over the



Tyler 32:27

place. I am also interested in that. Definitely, definitely, I've had but I had people contact us when we opened our gym. Originally Realtors wanted to get in one way or another like can I put a signup inside your gym? Like I'll pay you for it. So people No,



John Fairbanks 32:44

we did it with the gym for the school, we sold banner space all over the



Tyler 32:47

gym. What I would have told him was if this is for networking, I said I would prefer you actually train here. Because if you're just so that was the thing for me, right so me and my business ethic I very much was very protective of the other people that I brought in to allow me to solicit my members because people know that and by the way, there's still opportunities to be headed. That's because people do know your client base has very specific demographics, they have very specific interests, most likely they have higher income than most functional fitness gyms. But the most expensive gym you're gonna go to and most house so for the most part, there's a certain demographic there for realtors car dealers, like lots of these people they would like to be connected to I had a person come in wanting to fucking fundraising was like from some job at the school was like oh, I just want to come here so I can network with some of your people for our alumni fundraiser stuff and I said well, I'm not going to coach you if that's why you're here. You know what I mean? Like I got to do all of that stuff very upfront. Like I do this because I give a fuck and you are here because you don't you're hunting yeah like yeah, you want you wait outside the fucking clipboard



John Fairbanks 33:59

with the thing that bucket the bucket asking



Tyler 34:03

the same person was like well I don't really want to have to pay for it. So I'm hoping that my job will pay for it since it's networking stuff and I was like I don't want you in my gym because your whole attitude on this whole thing sucks. You know so defend your defend your culture, defend your ethic and what you're trying to do with this you don't want to just be slimy but plenty of opportunities as well Jeff,



John Fairbanks 34:24

I was gonna say just we talked about this before but like certainly things that like leaning in, like leaning into your culture a little bit that might help like free up of like your creativity because I just love the pale house horse powerlifting dude on Instagram so much so it's just like tattoo parlor so what you need a tattoo parlor in the back? Like I'm thinking of things like are you needed for a Whiskey Bar and then use a tattoo parlor? Yeah, and then everyone else Satan before they leave.



Tyler 34:52

I would think I would go to a slash metal nightclub. absolutely tons. of opportunity out there guys but start thinking in terms of this stuff this isn't going to change the game for you but it might give you a fucking like, be a fun little problem that you solve this week and put a little money in your pocket. So go to community hacker gym.com Share your little how you make use of your empty space. We'll see if we can get a little bit of a conversation going regarding that in that group community dot hacker gym.com Follow me on Instagram at Tyler F and stone John.



John Fairbanks 35:24

You follow me at J banks f L



Tyler 35:28

Alrighty guys, follow the show at the gym owners podcasts on Instagram. Leave us a review and we will see you next week.



John Fairbanks 35:36

Adios