The Gym Owners Blog/Podcast/Systemizing Success with Hunter Wooten

Systemizing Success with Hunter Wooten

Friday, January 20, 2023

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
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EPISODE KEYWORDS

people, gym, hunter, coaching, work, business, money, owners, post, leads, instagram, months, offer, tyler, strategy, person, paid ads, john

OUTLINE

  • ​Welcome back to the gym owners podcast - 0:00
  • ​What was the sales process like in the beginning? - 1:59
  • ​How to use storytelling to get people to buy - 5:45
  • ​The offer sheet gave me a strategy that I could trust - 11:12
  • ​Treat this like a craft - 16:15
  • ​How to use social media to get your name out there - 23:35
  • ​One person at a time, one type of content, one topic - 28:00
  • ​How to use social media to connect with your clients - 33:41
  • ​Hunter’s advice for other gym owners who want to get started in coaching - 37:01
  • ​It’s a feedback loop - 41:02
  • ​How to deal with people who hate your guts - 45:25

TRANSCRIPT

Tyler 00:00

Welcome back to the gym owners podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Tyler stone over the ways John Fairbanks tells them Hi, John. Hi, John. We got a special guest here, our first our first two times. This is our two time guests, not two time and guests but two time guests, Hunter Wooten from hunters garage gym in Alaska. How's it going? Hunter



Hunter 00:22

is going well. It's nice to see you guys again. Yeah, buddy.



Tyler 00:25

So guys, we've been if you've been in our Facebook group, make sure you if you're not get into the Facebook group, we haven't a link in all the descriptions but the gym owners rep gym owners revolution Facebook group in there, we have been spotlighting a lot of hunters successes that he's had lately since coming through and having us help him out with his kind of his offer stack and some of the sales systems and then kind of he's just been turning his shit loose. And it's been really really, really awesome seeing Hunter closing some big ticket sales, making sales, closing sales frequently, often in generating tons of leads without spending a bunch of money on ads, which is kind of a little secret that we want to make sure that we kind of like help you guys figure out because you can't make money if you don't have like it takes money to make money kind of but sometimes they can just take effort and move some of these things in place to now theoretically Hunter has enough money there's disposal you can start running as if he wants to start doing a lot of things you can do a lot of things when your money when your business has money. So, guys, we started with Hunter. Well, we started with Hunter many, many, many years ago, but we started doing his offer stuff for his business a week ago, seven eight weeks ago, give or take, right? Hunter before that I want to get into what it was like in your sales process. Someone would come in beforehand, before you had kind of the offer sheet that we had kind of gone through and made up with your services and organized them as we do. Someone came in to join your gym. What was that? Like? What was the conversation like, traditionally beforehand without a system?



Hunter 01:59

Yeah, so honestly, there was not much of a system, I would hit people up or they'd reach out to me, I'd either try to get them to the gym, or what would most frequently happen was I would be communicating with them through Instagram, we'd message back and forth a bunch that asked what I have at the gym, and I would basically just make shit up, you know, like, I got personal training, I got small groups or ones. And they would let me know what they wanted. And then I'd get back to them. And it'd be this very long conversation. And then sometimes it would end with them wanting to come visit the gym. And often they would just be like, Okay, I don't know, they just be confused and then not sign up basically



Tyler 02:40

confused as an interesting thing that we see a lot though with, it's not that like, it's the people stuck do you do so many different things, you know, you do everything from nutrition coaching to some specialty classes to lots of other stuff that a lot of gym owners out there do the same where like you have so many different services that you offer. And if you just put them on a list, it's almost disorienting, right? If you just have them all in one place. It's hard to really be you know, as a consumer who comes in you go like, Well, where do I fit in into this? Because it's like, it's like going to a bunch of just a bunch of shoes and you don't know which ones are your size. And it's just a pile of shoes everywhere and it ends up being a very unguided sales process. It's really tough to plug a person into a product when there's just a long list of products sitting out there.



John Fairbanks 03:29

And I know in my experience, it was always like I got excited because somebody was finally interested. Yeah, so it's just diarrhea was just like verbal diarrhea all over. So it would take me like I don't know 37 lines to explain something that should have just been like five words because I'm so excited to just describe all the things and then they weren't interested in anymore.



Tyler 03:55

What about your in person stuff Hunter so when people were coming in beforehand you could get a few people to show up maybe that hadn't committed yet but at least come in to check the place out and meet in person to close a lot of those frequently. It was it did you you know well how long did a lot of those conversations take



Hunter 04:15

Yeah, you know, I think that the conversations definitely did last probably more than they needed to and I you know I wasn't terrible at closing sales if I met somebody in person but what was hard was you know, the the highest amount of money that they're gonna give me as maybe like $500 a month and that was super infrequent. You know, if somebody was doing that it was first some special thing they needed this specific problem fixed and I was you know, the last person they had look to to try to fix a problem but usually, if I did convince people through a very long conversation to join, what ended up happening was they joined for like, around $170 a month and you know, we do have a pretty sweet gym so must be Well, I ended up staying, but the actual leads and closing sales was not happening as frequently as I needed to, to to really grow the business the way I wanted.



Tyler 05:10

Yeah. So one of the things that we talked about getting your offers in order is when it makes that process easier, right. And that was the thing, when we start getting that deliverable, you can show people, you know, on an iPad, exactly what you offer where it fits with them. And I think you had two separate tiers, right, you had kind of a personal training track with all your additional services on there, as well as for your group classes. And that seemed to really make you walk me through your first love, the first time someone spent more money than you imagined that they were going to spend walking me through what that was like.



Hunter 05:45

Yeah, you know, it's funny, because I had been talking to this dude, who in town is like a master salesman, and he's like a master salesman, because he's a really good guy. You know, he's not sleazy. But he is very serious about storytelling and making sales. And I had been talking to him for forever. I mean, I think I've been trying to convince him to join the gym for like, four years, sometimes just as long as it takes. But I was talking to him for forever. And before he was like, man, honestly, you're just not selling me on this. Like, I've had personal trainers that don't, you know, really see the value in it. So I eventually was like, Look, man, let's just meet let's go have a coffee. So he decides to go have a coffee with me. And I had texted him and I said, Hey, man, do you? Do you need some training or whatever. And he said, I think you're overqualified for what I need. And so I spent like, a few days, like thinking about that. And I'm like, How the fuck am I going to reframe this, so that he knows that I am exactly what he needs? So he comes in, we sit down, and I go, Hey, man, you texted me? And you said, What do you are that I'm overqualified for what you need? So I just wanted to ask, like, what is it that you need? And then he looked at me, he paused for saying is like, good question. So then he's like, telling me, okay, this is what I need, I need to, I need to train at this time, I need, you know, these benefits from it. And I need to make sure that I'm getting the value from him. So I said, Okay, what is the value that you need to get from it? Then he was like, Oh, damn, good question again, then tells me the exact value that he needs. From it, I'm like, alright, well, we can train at that time, I can give you exactly what you need, I can provide that exact value that you need. So you should sign up for this, you know, highest ticket package on the group membership. And he just looked at me and he was just like, Alright, you got me. And I think that was for 1650, which was great, because the most we had sold any membership for and this was just one person before had gotten a membership for personal training for like $520 a month. And yeah, this was, you know, three times over that. And that was not a common thing. I mean, this guy was like, who spent 500 was, you know, an anomaly. And now that's happening more consistently.



Tyler 07:55

Yeah, we're getting messages from Hunter almost every week. Now. It's like, Hey, man, I got another big one. And also the, here's the important thing I want you guys to know, because we do lean on the successes of the big ticket stuff, we have John and I we like because that's such a it's such a game changer for people who like you say like, someone came and dropped 1600 bucks in a conversation was ready to get started. And by the way, on the thing, that's pretty easy for you to fulfill some group classes with some additional nutrition coaching, maybe some accountability and stuff like, like, boom, you have a product that you don't have to I mean, you don't gotta bend over backwards to try to make this thing, something that works for him. It's very easy for you now, because you do such a good job as a coach, you know, I know how to get this guy the results. And now that he's this level of committed, and we're all set. Yeah, we always want to shine the light on the big ticket stuff, because you've had many that are now well over $1,000 in the last six, eight weeks. But it's also important to know that people are still buying your regular group membership too. And if you're not like taking that away, or raising the prices, again, what's important to know is that some people are coming in and just want to buy the group and buy the basic stuff and absolutely. But by simply having more options, up the ladder to do more for them now. It seems like it's made it pretty easy to sell. And you've had a really, really eye opening I think for a lot of people to start hearing the numbers you can get if you just let people choose.



Hunter 09:22

Yeah, you definitely don't want to have people underspending at your gym. That's just stupid. You know, if somebody wants to pay me six $700 a month for training, then that's awesome. You know, when I first had the offer sheet made I was like kind of showing my friends and big mistake man like all my friends were like, nobody's ever gonna pay you this much. Whatever. And I'm like, That's because you're a bunch of like, poor like 20 year old dudes, but I don't want to fucking train you guys need the fucking help and like can afford it. You know, I would much rather train. You know, they're like, Oh, you're just gonna get like 50 year old ladies and they're like good. I fucking love to If your ladies like, their initial, they got the money like,



Tyler 10:04

and you know, but you know what the guys that don't have any money, they can still get into your base level stuff too. And that's the nice thing is I always want to make sure that people know that none of this about raising your prices and none of this is about taking things away. You can't, we haven't talked about this before, you can't just raise your prices, if you need to make more money. If you just raise your prices, man, that's just moving one variable that is very costly. As far as like, you know, what's the word like social equity and trust with your clients? Like, are we just getting the same product? And now we're charging more? Nobody likes that. Everybody hates it. Yeah. So



John Fairbanks 10:37

There is a big mindset shift, though.



Tyler 10:39

Yes, for you. So let's talk about that. Because the thing that your friends mentioned to you, which is many nobody's going to pay that that gets in your head a little bit too, though, whether they said it or not, you do have to go to these conversations and go do sales meetings and go, you have to trust at some point if someone is interested in this, but it doesn't take long takes a couple couple sales that are way easier than you think. And obviously, like, I ship rocks, people want to pay if people want to pay because your ship rocks? What does that like shifting that in your head? Because again, as a gym owner, you are not your client?



Hunter 11:12

Yeah, you know, I think that I had a big mental shift, maybe. So you guys had given me the offer sheet and I was looking through it. I'm like, Oh, this looks cool. And, oh, by time, he had given me the offer sheet and it looked cool. So I was like, alright, you know, I'm gonna plug and play and you guys had given me some ideas of things that I could post to social media. I think after about a week, I reached out to Tyler and I was like, Hey, man, like, I don't know, if I'm doing this wrong, or like, there's something else I need to be doing. And Tyler sent me, you know, just like paragraphs, shit. And he's like, alright, so you need to make sure that, you know, you're not expecting that this is gonna work in like two days. Just fucking keep grinding at it. And I think the biggest. I mean, he gave me a bunch more and better advice than that. But that was the premise was, you know, just keep going keep trying shit. And I think that having the offer sheet gave me a strategy that I could trust. And I think that when you don't have a strategy that you can trust, what ends up happening is you instead of just putting in more effort, you just try to switch the strategy a little bit. So it's constantly trying to switch the strategy back and forth, you know, trying to offer this six week class or try to offer this at a different price, whatever. And instead of constantly switching my strategy, I just stuck with the strategy that was in place and made minor tweaks over time and just fucking went all out. Every week, I think you said like, every single week, do your posts on social media, then look back at your posts, see what you would have said differently, who you want to talk to you more. And, you know, I just started fucking reading a lot. I was already waking up early in the morning and doing some work. But this actually, you know, just gave me a direction to focus on instead of seeing, you know, spread out into many areas.



Tyler 13:02

You know, and that's a great one. Because, you know, Hunter, the reason that I did this with Hunter is this is the stuff that we do in the gear Academy is we go through and we talk about our organic lead generation strategies. Well, I can talk about it till the cows come home, I need to work for somebody before I can sell it. And that's exactly why we reached out to Hunter. Hunter, let's go let's do this. Because I knew when you followed up, you weren't just going to let this thing die on the table and go Well, fuck, I guess I don't know, nobody's coming. Because again, you have done the work, you trusted the system. But you're like, I'm not getting any leads. And this is really important that we want to make sure that our people are successful, which is why in the gear Academy, we give you the thing we teach you how to sell and gear Academy, we hold your feet to the fire. And one of the basic strategies that we use, in addition to many other things, is that we set aside time to look into what we're doing and make sure it's working. If you're if you're in sport, you're doing film study, if you're in sport, right? And if you're coaching very often you're looking into movement stuff so you can get better at coaching movements and injury prevention and all this other stuff. But with our businesses, so many times people don't do it, like we operate my business. And if it's not, you're not attracting leads, but so many people are not looking into well. What am I doing? What can I be learning about what skills do I need to level up that are going to help and that's the thing you did really well you took the feedback while I was that I give people there's just that look back, see what worked. What didn't work. You realize after you post Nothing's ever perfect. Anytime I write a copy for an email, it sits and I'll message John okay, you can send these emails out and then I'll message them five minutes later, but okay, hold on, don't change this. I changed this and then 20 minutes later so it doesn't sit right in my head. And then I'll go back and I'll go and change it. So now when we do email stuff before it's just something that I constantly update him just like John the most updated version is highlighted in green on this document. That's it. And that way, I'm always tuning it up because you'll sit in your head you'll you'll realize I swung and I miss you know, you start really studying what you're doing and who you're trying to attract and the words you're using matter. It's so interesting, people don't understand you can say one word the wrong way. And it's off putting. Copywriting is not complicated. It's just something that you have to gradually always tune up, because you're gonna get better for you. And that's why we've had so many people who have asked us like, well, who's doing a great job on social media. And I'll say, we don't want to tell you what our people Hunter is doing. So great, right now check it out, check out his stuff. But then I have to give them the same warning I gave you in the beginning, too, which is, why don't just do the thing. You know, we say someone's doing good. Don't just do that thing. Now you have to do your thing with those constraints. And that was the big one. Every week Hunter sits down and he looks back and says this call to action makes sense? Or is this too complicated? Or am I trying to speak to too many people about too many things? And you'd like you took the initiative and you've been dying or not copywriting stuff like literally fundamentals of copywriting. The man if you're gonna get good at something, if you're managing your own social media, as a business, so many bootstrap gym owners are talking Jesus? Why doesn't my question make you crazy? Knowing that you are doing this for so long and never bothered to look into it? Like?



Hunter 16:15

Yeah, I think that is the biggest mindset shift when we talk about how you are like, you know, treat this like a craft, like you would coaching because that's the only way you're gonna get better at it. And I'd always just fucking been like, Yo, come join the gym. The gym is awesome. It's the best gym ever, you know, like, but everybody fucking says that everybody's gyms, the best gym ever. Everybody soft drink is the most delicious, everybody's fucking, you know, anything is the best product. So that's not going to differentiate me, that's not going to get anybody excited about it. And so just reading I mean, one of the things that I did recently was I read this book, it's a, it's a short book that I think every business owner should read. It's called the 22. Immutable Laws of marketing. Yeah. It's a pretty great book. And I just went through every single law, all 22 of them. And I fit my marketing into the different laws. So you know, if it's this law of marketing, how do I fit my gym into that? If it's this law of marketing, how do I fit my gym into that and just make a huge document, send it to the other coaches, I'm like, Guys, this is how we're running shit. It's gonna be different than how we've been doing it. And it's the first time that I've had people that are consistent. I mean, it's not like a million people a week, but a few people every week will reach out to me, which was not happening before. So that's pretty cool.



Tyler 17:26

Yeah. And now this is where I want to go. I want to make sure that the first off hunter gets all the credit for all the work in that situation, because it's the work and it's the learning, it's leveling up your skills. This is no different than you getting credit for being an awesome fucking coach like this is this isn't a thing you put in the time you did the work. Now, we always, I always, very often in my I'm in sales calls with coaches and gym owners and things like that. And one of the first things I kind of always have to cut them short a little bit is because they're always trying to address things like, how do I get more people? How do I get more people? And I want to go run through a hypothetical scenario Hunter. After the plans pass? No, no, you're fine. Yeah, it's your fault, dude. No, but the hypothetical scenarios you imagined if you got really good at copywriting stuff like you did, you figured out the marketing strategy that fits for you and you don't spend a bunch of money, it just works. You're getting organic leads and people are interested in coming to your gym. Now imagine you got all these new eyes and all these new people come in in the last seven, eight weeks. And they all bought a $170 product. Yeah, sure. Money. How much money would you have left on the table? Have you not gotten your offers in order first?



Hunter 18:41

Yeah, literally, at least at least $3,000. Last month in the first month. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a lot for me. I mean, that's, that's no fucking small feat that I went from, you know, $0 in new sales, zero. Yeah. Which, that's very good. I'll take that as a pretty fucking solid win.



Tyler 19:00

Yeah. And that's that this is like the kind of the proof in the pudding for why it's, by the way, John and I can make so much more money. If we just told people we'd get more members. I can't, we totally could. Because it's the math that people want to do. It's the math that works in people's heads. Like, I have 20 more people, it solves all my problems. We're just not getting enough new people. It's a thing that people go to a man if John and I just tooted that horn out there. If you look at gym consulting, marketing that's out there for gym owners, it is all time there was some shit we saw the other day Hunter if I almost would like to pay for you to do it just to see 30 new members in 30 days or your money back. Or you can choose 60 new members in 60 days or your money back or even better 90 new members in the next 90 days or your money back. And my thought is you must need 90 new members in 90 days because whatever your product is you're fulfilling or whatever it is, is going to cost you at least 90 members for 90 days, it just must. But it is really, really interesting to see. That stuff catches my eye. It really really catches my attention and makes me it's what the word is? It's appealing to a gym or you want you just that's about math 30 new members with fucking soft gym man. Yeah, man, what if those 30 new members are coming in on an introductory thing that's 10 bucks or some Groupon or they don't want to be here, or it's some high ticket bait and switch bullshit where you're in these, like really slimy Scituate, we've seen a lot of those types of consulting companies out there with like a putting out some weird sales situations because there's just not on the up and up. It's just not about what the people that they want. And so for us, we always keep putting our foot down on this issue, like no one or just trust us, I need you to trust us and Hunter, you're one who really did it in the beginning, you and I, we're gonna do this, we're going to figure out, I'm going to get my offers in place so that when people do show up, you trusted the people, we're going to show up in the end. And then when they do now, you can really, really have a foundation to work with. It all starts with coaching, right? It starts with coaching, being good at coaching, then it starts in how you assemble your coaching in a way that's appealing to people and can really get them results and let them spend with their buying habits. And then from there, well, now we just turn up the volume. And that that has really been a real testimony to how you have handled yourself throughout this process. Because you were hungry. You got hungry, you're like, you know what, I want this to work and I'm willing to invest money into it. I'm willing to invest time and in man is that that is the thing, and I just am. So it makes me very happy to see this process of how it's kind of evolved for you. Because first off, it proves us right, which is my favorite thing. Right in that and not in not in that like our stuff works. But the sequence is important. Like you said, the money left on the table. And that would be brutal. If Most people thought the truth is if you got all these new members, you'd be like, yes, if you got that on its own, you'd be so stoked, right? If you had the last month adjusting leads, you'd be fired up. You wouldn't even know what you're missing out on. Because they're all buying low ticket stuff. And man, now that you've got it all together, you know exactly what you had prevented yourself from celebrating a win that maybe wasn't quite the win, we would have hoped it would have been.



John Fairbanks 22:23

Well, and the fact is everything that we do, whether it's Tyler and I Hunter, what you do, what all the students listening, if you don't have people that like follow through that do the things like if our clients didn't do what we told them to do, then it's like, oh, fuck, all right, I guess like, nobody gives a shit or this doesn't work. And it's like, and it's the coolest thing. I think for me, Hunter that I've seen from all the work that you've done. It's not like all of a sudden you have started to get people results. It's not like all of a sudden, you guys. People love you. But this is the first time that I am seeing it. That when I see your social media, I mean, what has it been like for you being able to sit down with members, with your coaches, and start getting the feedback because you want to put it out for other people to see. But what has it been like for you to start hearing some of these things about how awesome you are?



Hunter 23:35

You know, that's always good. You always like to hear how awesome you are. Nobody has to stop. You guys can keep going with the phrase, everybody. But it's good, right? Because what my brother a few maybe like six months ago or so he just was like, Hey, man, he works in real estate. He was like, Hey, man, I'm just letting you know, like one of the reasons that we're the biggest real estate brokerage in town. It's because of Google. Everybody reviews us on Google and you know, people look at real estate agencies and we have really good reviews. So you should start, you know, a Google business page. I was like, okay, so I started it and I just talked to everybody I was like, Hey, can you guys review me and you know, I think we got like 35 star reviews and like a day and I was like okay, well shit, that's awesome. And then reading through those I was like, This is great. But truth be told, you know, most people are finding me through social media. I have been trying to post more on Google. But most people are finding me through Instagram, specifically I post on Facebook as well. So I was talking to Tyler about this yesterday, but bringing the testimonials to Instagram has been a really really good yeah, like this one right here. Bringing the testimonials to Instagram has been really good and one of the things that Tyler was also telling me that I could do is when I'm posting these testimonials not doing it in a vacuum you know like if I had just posted this one I love hunters garage gym and and whatever it would be kind of cool but actually, you know in the caption telling the story of when this person came in. This is what they needed. I helped them get here. And that's why they're saying the things that they do. And yesterday was great because this girl Jada, and she's super awesome. She started training with me about five weeks ago. She made like a super long story after I posted this, she was like, yeah, like, I started training at Hunter's garage gym, and it's fucking awesome. And everybody should go and already today, like, I'm checking my inbox on Instagram, and people are like, Yo, so I heard you train Jaden. Like, yeah, I saw her story. Like, it's awesome. Like girls in town are like following me and shit that, you know, I can. I like, literally, I am so meticulous about Instagram, like I go through and I look at all the people that have looked at my stories. And then I make a list. And then I try to make ads that target the people that are new that are watching my stories. And then the other thing is, like, if anybody follows me in town, I'll just follow on back. And then I might react to their story, like, Oh, this is great, you know, whatever, trying to start a conversation going. And usually, and this was another thing that I meant to say earlier, one of the biggest switches is talking to people online versus being like, Hey, man, let's go get a coffee. Because if I can get somebody to go get a coffee with me, I can usually sell them in the gym like in person. I'm, I mean, if they're gonna meet with me for coffee, they probably want to fucking train like they didn't meet, you know, because they just want to have a coffee. They don't want to hang out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they didn't meet with me because they wanted to hang out like they wanted to get in shape. So here's offers



Tyler 26:31

important things that we've talked about. And this is a prime example. This because I've known you for a lot of years is when a person turns a passion into a profession. Right? The passion still isn't enough, it is that you eventually have to really lean hard into being a professional at the thing you're passionate about. And now this is what happens when people go to talk to Hunter, what do they want from Hunter, I want to hire Hunter, he's a professional now. Meaning you go in and you don't have we've talked about this before, if I went out to the car dealership, and the car salesman just wanted to talk to me about the day and whether it was nice out and shit or trying to make them like him. That's great. I like liking people too. But that's not why I go to the fucking car dealership. You know what I mean? And so be it. So being a person by whatever your because you offer Chris now you're like, go here, let's talk to you. So what do you want to do? Perfect. Here's how we can get you there. That's what works great. But now because you're always you're you're treating this like a true profession. What you've done is turned your social media from like, I'm just gonna try to make some stuff. Because it's right. It's the thing you got to do. I'm gonna make some stuff about what I do. Now you're, you're executing a strategy. And it's a strategy that you have concocted and you're tuning up all these little pieces, making a list of who's looking at your stuff and thinking man, what is their need, because I can make content you have people you have what you have, the best thing you've got is you got some testimonies, you got people in your gym. So this is a person who's maybe, you know, a former athletes, professional guy busy. Alright, let me make a post about what it's like to be super busy. And you had a great one the other day, which was like, hey, it doesn't take long, sometimes it only takes 45 minutes, we can get you in and out in 45 minutes. We know you're busy. Now boom, yeah, every one of them is a person who fits them. That's one of those great strategies we do in the gear Academy, which is trying to help you identify who specifically is looking for your stuff, and exactly the type of content because you just want to speak to one person at a time. One type of person about one type of thing we do so much on are used to it, I used to do it a lot, I still kind of do it, where I try to cover every base at once. And it almost makes the social media stuff on appeal. It's like, we're awesome, the building's nice, we have air conditioning, we will make you taller, or skinnier or fatter, or whatever you need. Like it's so much. Whereas like now, this is perfect. Make time, there's little 45 minutes a week to be exact, because you got remote coaching options that are like, it's just, it's great. And that strategy, though Hunter is the thing, John, and I look into a lot because we'll get people who will be doing things, but they're just kind of doing it like they kind of may be worth that kind of don't and having a plan and a strategy is very different than just doing something



John Fairbanks 29:11

I have to call something out. You said it Hunter. And it's I think, and I and I couldn't have put it this way. If you hadn't said it. The biggest difference I've noticed in your social media now, compared to your social media, say four months ago, five months ago is you're now making content for other people. Where before you made content for what it looked like for me for you, all the topics that we've nerded out with you about in you know, life's past, and all these other topics that are really interesting to us. As coaches and as fitness education nerds, so a lot of the content we put out there is like, Oh, I find this interesting. And you have completely turned that on its ear, where now it's, I see the people that are interacting, that are seeing my stories, and I'm thinking of that one person, or I'm thinking of them, and now I'm going to create content. And holy shit. The results? I mean, this is your work. And the results are speaking for themselves.



Hunter 30:33

Yeah, you know, I think it was, it was probably nine out of 10 posts before were just some nerdy shit. And then one would be like, you know, talking to people. And I realized, you know, as I'm going through this, I'm like, sometimes I am gonna just have to post for me because I just have some shit I want to, but it can't be every photo posted, because then people are like, this guy is very weird. I don't know what I don't know what he's doing, talking about his fucking breathing and whatever. So I've tried to make it one in every 10 posts. I'll do nine posts for everybody, one post for me and just be like, you know, if I get six likes, that's okay. Because I just need to throw it out there. Because I get one person, you know, to start a phone conversation. But nine out of 10 are like, Who do I want to talk to? And how can I convince that person basically, that I can help them. You know, Tyler was also talking about how, you know, don't try to convince people that going to the gym is a good option. Because if you have to convince them that going to the gym is a good option. They're so far away from joining. But for the people that are on the edge, that are thinking about joining, and either it hasn't worked out in the past or whatever, like talk to those people. And, you know, that's why I started, I kind of like, I didn't really think about other gyms in the past in town, but I've started thinking about them. After reading a little bit about marketing, I'm like, Okay, well, most people have a really shitty gym experience. So why is this experience that people are having so bad? And that's when I started coming up with the ads like, we're the smallest gym in town, those ads. And the reason I did that was because, well, first of all, one of the things in the marketing book was the law of ladder, which is basically if you don't relate to where you are on the ladder and people's minds, then you're basically fucking yourself. So if I said, Oh, we're the best gym in town, if I say best gym, sorry, if I say best gym, people are already thinking about a few other gyms, they're thinking about the biggest gym, whatever. So I wanted to reframe, it'd be like, Okay, well, what if we're, you know, what, if we're the gym that doesn't have locker rooms, and we don't have a sauna, we don't have showers. What we do have is we can actually get you fucking results when you go instead of going for six months and not noticing any benefits. So just flipping things on their head, and like when people say things like, Oh, hey, I don't have time. Instead, I used to be like, Well, okay, you don't have time. But now I'm like, man, if you don't have time, it seems like you're probably going to be really stressed. If you want to de stress, you're gonna need at least 45 minutes a week of your time. So come into one of my classes every Friday, and then they're like, oh, shit, you know, that's a good idea. Or if people don't have money, I'm like, Well, okay, if you don't have money, you're going to end up getting the most benefits from this because you're gonna be the most bought into this shit. So everything that used to be a shocking excuse for people to not come in everything that I used to think was a negative about the gym. I'm just reframing it like nobody knows who we are. So I can go Hey, guys, you've probably never heard of us. That's because we do fitness different. And then they're like, Oh, well, shit, that makes sense. And that's what's getting. That's what's fucking clicking. And getting more people to sign up is not so trying to be the fucking biggest gym. I'm just I'll be the smallest gym. And this is getting me like, so many people like, reposted this shit. And we're like, this is fucking awesome. Like these guys. And I'm like, All right, yeah.



Tyler 33:41

There's another thing that did, you've done a really good job of too aside from like, executing a strategy, because coming up with a strategy and executing it. Now you're married to the strategy, you have a plan, you do a thing, you tune it up, it's always again, we've always talked about experimentation and correction. And that's what fitness is. That's what all of this is, it's what life you know, people's nutrition journey is like throughout life, like they try this food, they try this diet, it fails. You now can connect with all your clients' experiences and you can now handle your business the same way. I got a look back. Yeah, that says do this differently. But the thing you do a really good job of is now letting people know what you do. And you ask them to come do the thing. Because there's a thing that so many personal trainers and gym owners with their social media don't do. They're free to fucking ask people, they're afraid to put themselves out there. So what we'll talk we'll do is we'll talk about, hey, I'm smart or hey, I know this or hey, here's just me exercising versus now you're doing it one you're communicating, connecting to their people and their needs to your people, their needs all this stuff. But you're also offering your services not in every post, there's a thing you and I talked about too, right? Like, like, again, like not Don't be dogmatic about any of this shit. None of it. None of its gospel. So let's just make sure we do some of this stuff. And then do some informative stuff. Maybe do some community service stuff, maybe just Do something funny, right? You can do all testimonials, right? We don't want to do testimonials seven days a week or run out. But we can do some and then we do some of this messaging and and so many personal trainers and gym owners out there that I see they don't ask they don't post, by the way social media isn't some of the you should just do for no fucking reason either don't do it in absence of a plan. But yeah, you're not asking, you're making an ask so that when people go to your social media, they know what you do. They know what you can do for them, they know how to get a hold of you, they'd like to know those things. And they know because you're doing it frequently, you're doing it organically. And you're doing it by putting our services for them first, like, Hey, here's you, here's us, what do you want? Like you're just bridging those little gaps one post at a time here there for each person. And that definitely is it that we see it a lot with people's business strategies, too. We've had people pop up where they're like, you know, not wanting to redo a bunch of different stuff. And so some people, you know, I'm gonna lean on to doing these small specialty classes, I'm gonna run pop up classes or whatever. And then cool, except when you realize it's not a strategy, because now there haven't been any of those for a long time. So Well, that was the thing that was working. And now you're not doing it. Not a plan. And a lot of these things we hear that stuff a lot of people are gonna do, especially programs. Okay, how are you going to repeatedly sell it? How are we going? Or do we just do it once? And then we're done? Well, now what right? So it's not a plan. It's not a development program. It's not a system of progressing your business, it's just a should I sure hope I can make an extra $1,000 And then flocked for six months. So I have another good idea. Right? And so what you've done is you've just altered your system, and we don't like No, no, we get better every fucking week at this. And guess what? Just like you tell all your clients, if you got better, every fucking week, a little bit better for a year, man. Sky's the limit. And people got to treat their business the way we ask their clients to treat their fitness. And I think it's yeah, that is a piece of the game changer.



36:59

Yeah, man, for sure.



John Fairbanks 37:01

So Hunter, it's gonna be obvious everything you've been doing, you know, other gym owners and personal trainers and people that could potentially want to come and coach with you. If somebody comes to you and says, Hey, how do I start doing this? What should I do? What should I do first? How do I get started? What's the advice that you're giving to them? Now being on this side of the fence, knowing what you know, now, compared to what you knew six months ago?



Hunter 37:33

Are you saying if other gym owners hit me up?



John Fairbanks 37:37

Yeah, what ends up happening? I mean, we did this? Yeah, from a coaching perspective, it was, I want to get better at coaching. And if a dude online really looks like he has his shit together, I started listening to his podcast, I might show up at a seminar in Miami. And then I might all of a sudden start buying his sandbags. Like it's this progressive thing for you now on this side, when you have because if you continue to show how successful you can be, and you keep doing the thing that you're doing, you're going to have folks that are going to reach out, that are personal trainers or want to figure it out, you're gonna have coaches that might want to come to a decent gym, that will treat them well pay them well. And help them be successful on their own track. What's the first bit of advice that you're giving to folks that want to start this or do what you've been doing?



Tyler 38:31

You really want to make it a career that works for them as well as their clients?



Hunter 38:36

Yeah, you know, I would say, obviously, like, the first thing is, you got to know at least a bit, you know, I think we talked about this, you were saying like, a fifth grader is an expert who is a second grader. So if you're fat as fuck, and you're, you know, eat like shit, and you're not in shape. Do that first. But once you get there, then the key becomes, what is the bottleneck in my business? That is the thing that you got to figure out is sorry, my it's raining a little bit. Hold on. Alright, so just figuring out what is the bottleneck in my business? And for me, after going through this, I was like, okay, the bottleneck is my coaching is not good enough. And then I was like, I don't know, everybody that's here is getting in shape. That's probably another bottleneck. And I was like, Okay, well, it's because I'm not coming up with new, fun products. Then I came up with new fun products that worked for a minute and then stopped worrying. I'm like, alright, well, that's not it. Then I'm like, Well, the biggest thing is I need to be making more money at the gym, like I need to grow the gym. Why am I not making more money? Well, two things. Number one, I didn't have the offer sheet. You know, I didn't have anything above $250 Really? And then the other thing was, I'm not getting, I'm not making sales. So if I want to make sales, how do I fix that? I gotta go get leads. Okay, so then everything was I'm going to spend the next six weeks, six months, six years how Are the fucking long it takes, I'm gonna get really good at getting leads. Because if I can get leads, I can get people to sit down, then I can work the sales process and the cool thing about that is you get a lead, then you get better at getting people to meet you, if you get better getting people to meet you, you get better at the sales process because you're practicing the sales process. If you sell them, then you're coaching them and you get better at coaching. So that's a win, win, win. Everybody wants to get better at coaching, but you're not gonna get fucking better at coaching unless you're coaching a lot. So if you sell more people, like people, I thought that this was like in the opposite interest of my peeps, you know, it was like selling people on shit. And then I was like, Well, if I want to fucking get better, I need people to join so that I can coach more so that I can get better, and then get a testimonial, and then sell another fucking membership, you know, and that is the cycle and momentum that I'm building right now is okay, how do I focus everything on leads, because that's my biggest bottleneck for somebody, it might be something else, they need to find what what their bottleneck is. But for me, I know that it was generating leads, because if I could get leads, get a meeting, get a sale, get results, get a testimonial. And just go through that cycle again, and again,



Tyler 41:05

The things you just described are exactly the thing I always point out, it's a feedback loop of success. And that is the thing where any system where like, if we intervene in a system the wrong way, it fucking spirals out of control, or there's a lot of missed opportunity. At best, it's a missed opportunity. You intervene in a system the right way and the right time at the right place. And you get exactly what you've got. Now I make more money. I have the time and resources to serve these people better. I know because now you'd serve these people better, get better testimonials for you in that process, you have yourself freed up to learn to connect to these people exactly what they want. And now your messaging changes. And now you have this other mission and now it feeds all the way back. So you get more leads, were paying you more money, who then you know, instead of this thing where we're kind of introducing a one new variable to a low profit system, and it just is very, very difficult, we just start putting a bunch of new inputs into something that just keeps churning out the wrong outputs for you. You know, even if we text your membership, back, man, that's just gonna be more stress, until we have all this other stuff in place. And now, you know, by the way, I want to touch on this too, before we get going here is the thing that you have in place. Now, by the way, I think all roads still, in my opinion, lead to at some point, if you need to get more members, now you have all these things in place. Some point running ads is a thing that a person should look into doing very real business, at some point running at paid ads is fucking guys, there's not a business out there that doesn't pay for some sort of advertising. So gym owners, I advocate very much figuring this stuff out first. I think it's important. But ads are real ads are something we should figure out. But what you've done is all the things you need to do before running ads, which is you understand who you are, as a coach, you fucking have your business figured out a little bit, you're out, you're able to sell you're good at selling, you have a sales system that will least keep working for you and continue to improve, we can always build and expand upon. You are giving people great results. You're getting testimonials, your messaging and copywriting and direction of who you're speaking to now and your organic stuff, which is how you practice. You want to know how you practice this type of stuff. If you're running paid ads, losing a fuckload of money. I'm thinking yeah, tons of money into paid ads. So you get this stuff, right, you get free benefits while you figure it out. And now if you were to spend two grand next month on paid ads, you're not gonna eat $2,000 worth of shit. Because your stuff is in order there's no point in running blindly into a situation and just start throwing money at it's the worst strategy you could possibly do. But now like you'll have the extra money and if the time comes you come across a you have an offer or good entry level thing and you want to start running some ads local ads are really can be really really helpful and really beneficial to a business but man, it's great when you have your stuff all your other ducks in a row because if not embarrassing or off putting or simply pointlessly costly, and you've got everything now in place to where I just haven't really really because like we've said, I've said this every time on our restaurant, the sky's the fucking limit, dude. This is like we're moving. We're moving all it takes is a trajectory with a trajectory we have all you have to do now is just stay in the game. Because now we just keep moving uphill. So John has anything we want to finish up with?



John Fairbanks 44:22

Yeah, I have to know. So the 20 Something shit eaters. That gave you a hard time saying nobody was ever going to buy the expensive shit. What's the update? You realize you realize this, this really gives you a window into my soul. So when I went to go play football, everybody told me I was a total idiot. I was leaving California and was gonna go to Florida. Didn't know anybody in Florida, who's gonna hate it. Come back to California months later and be a total loser. Right? So we won the national championship. It was that year that I got to Florida, and I got the ring sized on my middle finger. Because I knew I could come back home and be like, right here. That's Fuck you guys. Yeah. And so I'm not saying you have to be petty like me, but I am curious Have you gone back to the shit eaters and



Hunter 45:25

it's it's funny man like I have been I have dealt with a lot of that in my life you know when I was 18 I moved to North Carolina to go do weightlifting that is like even fucking less popular than football man people with real life so you know I think I think for me they just fucking if they don't think that I can you know charge this or make this or I'll bro I've had luck I've had I could tell you guys some stories off here that are just fuck the shit that people have said to me that you know, we're like supposedly my friends. And I'm just thinking, if you're hating on me, you have to be such a fucking loser because I'm 25 I own my own business. I'm married, I have a kid. I'm happy. I'm helping people benefit their lives. I'm like a good member of society. I mean, I'm also you know, like, Fuck society and you know, the system, but at the same time, like, I'm just at your local coffee shop doing some fucking work. I'm getting up early. I'm grinding. Like, if you are hating on me, you hate your fucking life. Like there's just, you're sad about where you're at. So most of them I just, I mean, I had some conversation I said, Hey, man, like, if you want to be in my life, you gotta disrespect me in my business. You just, there can't be any disrespect. You don't have to fucking apologize, whatever. But there's got to be some level of respect. Some of the fuckers. I mean, there have been some people that have been like, Dude, you know what, honestly, I was just jealous. And I'm sorry. And I've been like, I forgive you did everybody fucks up and there's some people that are like, I hate your fucking guts, dude, I hope



Tyler 47:05

well, I'll tell you what, for the two of us who do not hate your fucking guts and do not hope your gym fails. We are very, very, very happy for you and very proud of what you've done this last couple of months. Guys, thank you for following hunters garage gym on Facebook and Instagram. I'm gonna stop one more thing before we go by the way. Hunter, you've done a great job on Instagram. I always want to tell people even though I don't necessarily use Facebook for things like that. It is very important if you're at a gym if you're trying to get local people to at least like to repost your Instagram stuff on Facebook. Yeah, Facebook is where a lot of the normies are. By the way, Facebook is the best, you're not going to nobody's going to share on Instagram. A thing that all their aunts and uncles and neighbors and stuff are going to see you know, Instagram just not as interweaved into the regular normal person community. So Facebook is the thing you can't neglect and you've done a good job making sure you keep that up. The other side that has done well is putting everything that he's done. Also on his personal page and your coaches have done it well to make things publicly visible so that like the things you are doing well they don't just live the reason you people don't normally post on Facebook for their business because nobody follows your business on Facebook. And by the way, people may not ever but have your business on Facebook you posted on your business you're reshare it on your own stuff that it just gets the reach out further than it's gonna be if it just lived in a boiler. I want to make sure you touch on that it's free. It's one more button to push so and



Hunter 48:33

yeah, just link your state you don't have to fucking do anything so don't don't be lazy. Like it, do it. Yeah,



Tyler 48:39

Guys, hunters have great examples of what happens if you try but you don't just try in a vacuum you really try and you come up with a plan and you tune up that plan it's the way everything should be done. So thanks a lot Hunter fellow hunters garage gym on Instagram guys, you can follow us at the gym owners podcasts on Instagram, join the gym owners revolution Facebook group the links in all of our descriptions hundreds there we start other successes of coaches and gym owners we work with we want this to be a resource for gym owners more than it is just us trying to sell your art shit. And so that's really important for us I dropped some of the basic tips and things like that that I come across on the internet that like things good for helping organic lead generation that types of stuff we teach in the gear Academy which you can get into now if you're interested but that is or we can do the kind of basic Let's tune up you're fully threaded off or you can shoot us a message we get you on the path to success that Hunter has been on. On a total fucking Warpath of success by the way. I love it. So get into all that stuff. All my lights shut off. I am all done. You follow me at Tyler F install and you can follow John



John Fairbanks 49:42

at J banks. FL awesome.



Tyler 49:45

Guys, that'll do it. I don't think anything else we gotta get out there. Do we? Thanks for listening. We love you. Thanks. I'll see you next week. Yep,




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