30 Signs That Your Business is in TROUBLE

coaching, people, gym, money, clients, reviews, supplements, business, spend, members, membership, tyler, john, google, talking, work, owners, great

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler stone over there is John. Hi, John.



John Fairbanks 00:06

What's up Tyler?



Tyler 00:08

Guys, this week, we're gonna get into some stuff here. So we've been doing a bunch of like, what's the word thought exercises going through listing custom underlying issues that we see in gyms, usually, if this stuff is going on, there's probably something going wrong with your business or something that you should address. And in doing this, we found one, it was kind of funny. And two, I think it is going to be helpful and eye opening. So today, we're going to run through a bunch of these things. Don't take them all personally, if you think it's you, it means there's many people, if it's all of these, you probably have some work to do. But this should give you some ideas of some of the things that maybe are going on in your business that aren't things that you should keep this way forever. At the very least, you should get at the end of this episode, you should know, here's a few things that I should maybe address, right. And you pick the lowest hanging fruit from any of this sequence does always matter. But at some point progress progresses. So out of any of these things that we run through today, feel free to take an idea and run with it. I hope you find this episode helpful. John and I are gonna get into it right away. Before we start, make sure you get over to the Facebook group, you can the links gonna be in the description getting in, we got a bunch of gym owners in there, we have gym owners coming in sharing resources, this is the gym owners revolution, this is a resource for gym owners. So join the Facebook group, figure out what it's all about. And we like to drop a lot of cute little tidbits and tips in there that maybe we don't normally do for the general public. And it's not quite on the level that we do for our paid programs with the gear Academy, which you can find out more about the academy in the Facebook group. So let's get started. John, all of these roll through this kind of a couple of underlying conditions that go right in most gyms. And the reason we went through this thought exercise is because we end up beating up the same point over and over and over again, which is gym owners, you don't have enough money, you're not making enough money, you're not putting enough in your pocket. Business isn't growing? Well, the issue is you're not making enough money. That's why you need your business to grow. And to you don't have enough time? Well, John, I get really tired of beating up those two points over and over again, you don't have enough time. So we go through this just like we talked for you to go through it to try to find a better way to connect with our audience and figure out what exactly is going on with them on the ground. And in doing this, we ended up with quite a comprehensive list. Which is kind of funny.



John Fairbanks 02:20

Well, it's a long list. And it all came out just like you said, Tyler, where it's always talking about you don't have enough money. A lot of times, that's too on the nose. And it's too hard to be like, Well, then why? Because there's so many reasons. And I think I started where you and I really started this exercise. Somebody gave a really great example where it was like, your marriage is worse off than you think it is. And this is why somebody was giving us a general example. I was like, if you and your spouse, don't go to bed at the same time. And you do it together. Your marriage is worse off than you think. Yeah. And like, well, so now you're no longer saying because if you initially say hey, you don't make enough money, if you're like, well, then fuck you. Life's not all about money. We're like your marriage is failing. Like what? You don't even know me.



03:12

Like, it's also about money. It's like, what are you talking about? And then



John Fairbanks 03:17

you're like we have but if you don't, you don't even realize your marriage is failing. Because you don't go to bed with your spouse at the same time. Now you're no longer challenging. Whether or not your marriage is failing. Now you're thinking, Oh, do I go to bed? At the same time as my spouse?



Tyler 03:39

Is that an issue? If we don't, so this is what we're gonna get into? John, I don't know, if you're bumping the mic or something. I'm hearing you cutting in and out a few times in there. It sounds like connection clipping more than anything or clipping one way or another. But we'll roll with it. I think we're gonna be okay. It may just be something on streamers. And but I just want to make sure before we dive into this, that things are working. Good to go. Testing sounds great. Let's do it and be less. All right, guys. If you haven't created anything permanent for your business this week, you're fucking up. And that's an important one. One of the things we talk about all the time is every week, we really need you to be building something if you're not setting aside something to push your business further. Even if it's just one little step, even if it's one little thing if it's building. One more email for your master email sequences. It's identifying one more opportunity and writing an action plan to do this thing, just coming up with a plan to do something this week is something towards building something permanent. That's something we need to be doing every week. If you're not doing it. All you're doing is living as the gym owner. You're spinning the living life on the gym owners treadmill, which is the curse, stagnation, it's death



John Fairbanks 04:45

is the easiest way to be able to find what you should be doing is that everything you do certainly early on, should have more than one use. And if you don't have more than one use, you are spending a lot of time on just doing a thing. That's almost a throwaway thing. If you if the only thing your clients can buy is a membership, then you're fucking up. The idea is, you have to allow people to go beyond. Because talking is like the recurring carousel where you never can get out of the rat race. If all anyone can come in is drop 50 bucks with you 100 bucks. Let's say it's you even have a $250 a month membership. One, if you can pull that number off, that means your cost of living where you are, is being adjusted. If you live in Pope po bunk fucking nowhere, and everyone can afford a $50 membership. It's the same thing. So never get caught up with like, oh, well, my memberships are really expensive. Yeah, cuz you live in fucking San Francisco. Yeah, don't



Tyler 05:50

box people into the lowest level of service that you feel like you should be offering them people will buy more people buy nice cars, some people buy shitty cars? Do you want to sell shitty cars? Or do you want to sell nice cars? Do you want to sell lots of cars, you're going to need to sell shitty cars and nice cars. So let's just play the whole game here. If you're worried about getting your website updated. Things are a lot worse than you think. Okay? Because you need to completely reframe the way that you're thinking about these things. And the way that you need to be thinking about this is how are people actually finding me? How are people actually finding my business? Maybe on social media, maybe that's the thing you always got to do. But mostly they're Googling. It's about maps, it's about regions, it's about what's close by and they're gonna see Google they're gonna see reviews, the website doesn't even really matter which and we see this with restaurants a lot that we work with now on Google on your Google business manager. Now there's a lot of stuff you can do on this thing, but the main thing I restaurants are worried about is a website? Do you ever go to fucking restaurants website, no stupid, there's no need to you need to know where it is you need to star ratings. And you need to maybe see the menu. That's about it. And you can do all of that on Google's my business on Google present business profile Google pro if they changed the Google Business Profile Manager. Yeah, but now you just need to be managing your business page on Google. That's it. That's frankly, the only thing that matters. If your website's out to hit you can fucking get rid of it. For all that matters. Always engaging in it. Nobody's nobody's probably reading your blog. Nobody's nobody really is. So is it worth your time? Probably not. But his Google Business Profile Manager? Yes. So if you want somebody to come in and snake you for a bunch of web design work to try to drive traffic and they start dropping words like SEO, and we need these plugins, and this needs to be interactive. And what if we get too much traffic it bugs and you're never gonna get too much traffic to your fucking gym website, to where any of this is a worry. So don't let website people sell your website shit. Because you're a business not a fucking website. Are you a tech company? We could talk but you're not a goddamn website. So don't worry about this. Your website means fuck all. It doesn't mean you could not have one and your business might be better because you would put all your resources and money into ADS and Google Business Profile Manager.



John Fairbanks 07:54

Consider the source. Yeah. Just consider wherever that's coming from. Yeah. You notice social media, people always have a social media answer for why you can't.



Tyler 08:06

And you make no one snake oil salesmen are trying to sell you fucking snake oil. So just take it all with a grain of salt here. But yeah, that's exactly it. Don't worry about your website. It's not worth your effort. It really isn't. It's not worth it to make a cheap, easy catch-all solution. Don't overthink it. because ain't nobody checking out your goddamn website anymore. It's 2022. Next one



John Fairbanks 08:25

is 2022. You mentioned this phrase, if you aren't getting Google reviews, you as far as the regular world is concerned. If you're not getting Google reviews, you don't have a business. Yeah. Think about it, Facebook did away with the reviews. Now all you can do back in the day used to be able to give stars and oh man, well, that's where a lot of people are looking or whatever, whatever. Facebook got rid of it. Now you can just recommend or do not recommend the gold standard is Google reviews. You have to have a plan. If you don't, you're just hoping to



Tyler 09:02

your website. If I go to Google and you have one or two reviews, and your competitor has 10, he wins in my eyes, not just Google's eyes. If he has 50 You don't fucking exist. You just don't either open it this week or it just doesn't matter. So I really mean this. Google reviews are extremely important. It's more important than the sign out in front of your building. If you don't have an open sign in front of your building. If your sign says closed it'll do about the same thing for you internet wise as not having any reviews on your Google page. So you need to find a way to do it and that needs to be a system



John Fairbanks 09:36

and think about it. It's all how we shop on Amazon. Could you imagine if you go to buy something off Amazon and there's only one or two reviews



Tyler 09:45

Do you know? Do you know how this is fraud by the way, but you know how a lot of products get over that hump. I got it. This happened to me last year. I got sent like a potato peeler out of nowhere. and it had my address, and it had my name on it. I did not buy it from my Amazon account. But what it did is somebody out there out of any of these many data leaks, they just got somebody's name and somebody's address, they had to end, they created an Amazon account, and they actually had to send you this product. Because if they don't send you the product, then you don't get to leave a verified review. But what these companies do is they'll send out 5000 products for free. This product caught you know, it's a $2 item, it probably cost them four cents to make. So the truth is, this may cost them $1,000. To do this, Tam wants not to I mean scamming Google's reviews, it's not ripping me off, but they send it to me, so it knows it's been delivered, Amazon verifies this as a verified purchase, then, what happens is the people who make this thing and who sent all this stuff out, they go in and leave a great five star review about how great this fucking potato peeler is. And now instead of iffy if you try to go buy this potato peeler, again, amidst a sea of potato peelers, the company that just launched it has zero reviews, five reviews is fucked compared to one that has 1000 You will never buy this, if all things are equal, the one that has no reviews, so just understand that that works at everything toy, like, I'm not telling you to get fake reviews. But I'm telling you, the fake reviews are a hell of a lot better than no reviews. That's the reality of it. Because whatever. Next one, if you are not responding, if you aren't responding to Google reviews left by clients or members, you're making a huge mistake. So again, we talked and just became more active on your Google business profile. But people will leave good reviews and you should be friendly. You should be very professional. This should be the host, the concierge. This is the the American front desk greeter greet when people come in other European ones, those people don't give a fuck. thing I noticed. They would like the worst overseas, the thing I noticed is that they put the least personable person at the front desk, because they don't like doing anything with the job. Go away. Yeah, but in the States, the first person you see when you're in a business is the Secretary. The person who has the phone is the nicest bubbliness. Most professional customers are always the right type of person. And that is really what you want to be in your Google business profile. As you're answering questions. As you're responding to reviews, good and bad. Someone comes in, you may get some bad reviews. It's if you're playing the game long enough, someone's gonna say, Man, this guy's suck. I didn't like him, they may have just misunderstood. John, do you have a good formula or a good way to respond to something like this? Because you've managed to style this stuff a lot?



John Fairbanks 12:22

Yeah, we manage it for a lot of different industries. And a lot of times, the easiest way that to make this possible is once you start responding to a couple different fivestars, we just honestly just created a document that just has an easy spot where we can copy and paste, and then just make a little tweaks or edits just depending on what the person leaves you. The most important principle of this is that you're looking Yeah, you know, you have a lot of folks be like, Oh, no, I get reviews. It's like, Yeah, but you need to be going in and engaging, because Google is placing an emphasis on that. And being more on their platform. Google rewards you, Tyler, several months ago, you talked about this idea in social media, as Instagram rolled out the reel, and the story. And whenever you have something that's new, the algorithm, and the company itself is going to reward users for using that new service or that new system within their platform. Google is doing the exact same thing. Google Now is rolling out, you know, the Profile Manager can be managed inside of maps, instead of Google Maps or instead of Google search. They also now allow people to message your business directly. And ask questions, which you can respond to, is now all part of this system to where if you start to participate and engage and do the things that Google wants you to do, you are seeing right now reports where people are scoring higher, they are appearing higher, even maybe with less Google reviews, you are still appearing higher than your competition in a search, because you're starting to play their game.



Tyler 14:06

What if you what if someone leaves a review, maybe you had a bad client had a bad experience and they come in so let's take six sick with gym owners because I'll go into how to root this out. Let's say someone comes in as like, these people weren't nice. It wasn't friendly, that maybe was a misunderstanding. Maybe this person is an asshole, but nobody's gonna write a review and say, I'm an asshole. And these people caught it right away. So they come in and they say they did this, they ignored me , whatever the misunderstanding was, because you guys tried to do a good job. And they leave you one starting to suck as they say, stay away from this place. How do you handle that?



John Fairbanks 14:35

There's two trains of thought. One, you try to kill everybody with kindness. You just apologize. And you take it. We hope you come back. We would love to be able to rectify it, you know, whatever it is. Be very polite. The other one, own it and protect your people. The reason why I can tell you two different ways is if somebody is wrong, and they decide to go to Google and try to smear your shit online for people to see, it's really important to see how you want to establish yourself as a gym as a business, not for that person. Fuck that person, everyone who sees it, everyone else that watches it, because what's going to happen if you have nothing but five star reviews are high 14. And I mean, you're kicking ass. And you get one star that comes in. Most people that are born after 1990-1985 are going to know what's up. Oh, okay, they got three one star reviews, and they have 55 five star reviews, these people are just pissed, something happened is no big deal. But if you can actually see the business owner say, hey, no, listen, this was the situation, you betrayed our trust, like you call on the car. Like we literally did this. So we were managing a company. And somebody left a really shitty review. And said, like, the employees look like they don't want to be there. They refuse to talk to us. Like the game just really called out these really specific pieces. We followed up with the owner to confirm what's the story behind this. And the owner was like, No, fuck that lady like, this is what happened. This was the scenario. So we just gave it right back. Holy shit. A month later, it went fucking viral on Reddit. So we weren't mentally prepared for it to go viral. And then God of all places would really go and post it on Twitter account. Yeah. But the whole thing is what everybody wants to see. Because I'll tell you again, this depends on the culture of where your gym is, and who you are. But people are really sick and tired a bunch of fucking Karen's trying to just steamroll people in a public forum. Because overwhelmingly, the feedback was, you know what good for you for standing up for your people. It's nice to see a business that stands up for people or stands up for what they believe in, and don't just allow themselves to get pushed around. Yeah, and if it's so there is nuance



Tyler 17:04

egregious, and it's not hyper rational. The other direction I always recommend is, you know, hey, please shoot us an email with this and this. So we can try to find a way to make sure that we can make this right with you. We'd love to hear more direct feedback and figure out what we can do to work with you to make things right like that piece. Just that being the message works. By the way, they'll never fucking respond to that most likely ever. But you now have been the hey, if somebody made a mistake, we'd like to find out more about you than let me just ask them for more information, because they don't get to respond back and forth, back and forth in this format, they get to say, one, you get to respond when, as far as I understand it. So if you need to reach out to the editor to you, if you want them to contact you, make that thing like hey, reach out to us, we want to make sure you know we tried to stand behind ourselves, our product mistakes happen. Bless us, that's a way for you to kind of own the mistake, but not necessarily. And that's another really good one, maintain professionalism throughout the whole thing that is the main one. If you're right, you have to be professional, right? Like you would say in front of all your good clients, all the people who love you, and all the people that hate you, you got to be a little bit. This is a political game when you're on there, because it is a public forum, it lasts forever. And it is the tip of the spear as far as representing you. So just tread lightly. But you need to play the game, you need to be answering those things, it's more important than anything you're doing on social media hands down.



John Fairbanks 18:17

Absolutely. If you think about it, those conversations too, if you're a gym owner that cannot be everywhere at once. Sometimes it is very valuable to be able to see a review come through where there might be an issue. And you can reach out to people that are on your team and be like, Hey, what's going on here, what happened here with this situation, because I will tell you that that happens half the time as well.



Tyler 18:37

Quality control this, by the way, is another piece of data for you to see that you don't have to send out surveys to everybody to figure out if you have employees that are making mistakes. If every person who leaves your building is leaving, who reviews guess what's going to tune up your quality control the performance on the floor, it's going to get better very quickly or employees are gonna get canned. And that's important. So the more reviews you're getting, the better not to ignore data and this is the thing that people are doing by not getting Google reviews by not responding is they're hiding with their head in the sand trying to ignore that data. Next one John.



John Fairbanks 19:08

If you don't send possible members so new people that are coming in to meet with you, if you do not send them reminders for the meetings that you have scheduled with them, you are fucking up. You have to be busy. People have shit that's going on. The idea that you do not follow up with someone to send a reminder to have the opportunity just like you said Tyler is professional feels professional. In pure fucking it up



Tyler 19:39

enthusiasm energy momentum to start a new thing fucking dies out very quickly. It really does. So when someone is if you can just keep those constant touch points over and over and over again a reminder Hey, and be friendly and welcoming each step of the way. There you will get way more people to show up. Way more people to book appointments you'll close way more people that were prepared to close by the time to show up Next one. If you haven't hooked up, you're texting service to reach out to your clients, you're making a huge mistake. This is the best way your email stuff, your email marketing stuff you send out your email list gets ignored a lot, it gets looked at, it gets glossed over a lot, it gets just seen and goes though this is just their advertising or whatever they just ignore, even if they like you. When they know it's not you though, they will ignore it. And I do not like using text services to be misleading or to be badgering. I like it to feel very conversational, and very quick, the best one that we tell people all the time is just shoot a thing. After you send out an email, just shoot a thing to everybody on that email list saying, hey, shoot a text saying, Hey, did you get Did you? Did you get a chance to take a look at the email I sent this morning? That's it and they'll say yeah, they'll say no, they may say nothing, whatever it is, one, they're gonna go open it, most of them. And to the ones that are interested will respond and give you an opportunity to nurture that stuff without having to worry about hitting home runs on your ad copy forever. You can stress out so much over writing an email copy, we do it a lot. We write a lot of email copies for people. So it ends up being something where we try really hard to make sure it's as effective as possible. But if you're DIY and you're doing it yourself, this is a way to just deliver the information, deliver a reminder via the email, say, Hey, here's what we're doing. I'm not trying to overcharge, you know, bang, bang, boom, we got this, if you want this, let me know blah, blah, blah, text me if you need to. And then you can send that little reminder out and it gives you a chance. Anyone who has casual interest, you can pull them further along and anyone who doesn't, it's not gonna fucking respond. I would say it's the number one thing that we've seen as far as getting better open rates and better closure rate, closing, closing sales via our email marketing, right, John?



John Fairbanks 21:41

Easily. And remember, perfect is the enemy of done. If you haven't emailed your clients, or your members this week, you are fucking on. Tyler, it blows my mind when we talk to folks. And we say, What has been the email strategy? How often do you communicate with your people? We hear a lot that we don't, we don't really email people. Or I don't like getting emails, so I don't send them



Tyler 22:15

the amount of money you're leaving on the table will hurt your goddamn feelings. If you're having money trouble at home, and you're not using your email list to sell more of your products or to do things like get referrals on stuff, it's whatever I don't know what to tell you. You're just you're you're fighting with both hands tied behind your back, fix it. We don't go further on that John, right. Fix it. Come on. Yeah, that's that you're not doing the thing. I'm sorry, you're just not doing you might not close your goddamn doors. Because you're one step short of it. You're not asking people to do business with you. That's fucking crazy.



John Fairbanks 22:46

I hate it. It's their minimum, what



Tyler 22:48

the hell it is the bare minimum, right? You're taking



John Fairbanks 22:51

the step of like, you're not even asking for opportunities to be able to have a sale. All of the pieces of just being human. This is what we got going on in the gym. This is stuff we have coming up with any of those basics if you're not emailing, oh, well, this is a thing we're here because our gym is small. We don't have enough members to really need to be able to email everybody. Never forget this. You may feel like you talk about a thing all the time, to the point where you're like, I don't want to bring it up again. Because that's all I'm talking about. You are not the center of your client's god damn universe. When you're speaking to them, the first couple of times, I guarantee you they are actually not hearing what you're saying. And they are thinking about the next thing they need to do when class is over.



Tyler 23:40

Y'all have been coaching long enough to see the look when you're talking to people about the class that they're doing right now and they gloss over or they're in a conversation with their friends. They're not there exclusively to learn fitness. They're not there exclusively to buy things. We learn this a lot in the fitness education space. John, I Julian we felt like we just said the same shit 100 times and we would get the same questions about the same shit 100 times and it was just what it was. If you don't feel like you've repeated yourself or asked the same question 100 times this week, like you're not asking enough. Next one we got here. If you're waiting or hoping that your members and clients are going to tell friends about your gym, you're fucking up. This is a big one. So referrals matter, referrals are your bread and butter. Referrals are the easiest. There's always a piece that most businesses will grow that don't have an understanding of what it costs to acquire a new client to acquire new members. Now businesses that use standard marketing practices like I spend money on ads, I run a campaign that has a plan and I know how many leads I get in and I know how many clothes I know how many people get in the door versus that dollar amount. Now I know how much money it costs me to get a new client so you know the value of a referral that you didn't have to pay anything to get them in the door. If you don't know that value, it's okay. You don't spend money on ads. You're not tracking this if that's fine, but I can tell you just take my word for it. It's really fucking valuable. is really valuable. So you need to be able to capitalize on referrals from people who already are like minded people within your gym. Now, you need to ask them, like I said, like we said before in the last one, are you asking? How often are you asking? Your coaches in my opinion, your coaches should be asking this in every class should get asked that at least once a week for sure, no matter what it should be on the board on your whiteboard all the time. It should be emailed out casually as maybe an also ran to I would say every fifth email you send fourth or fifth email no matter what, even outside of an actual referral plan. That's the basics. Hey, if you have anybody interested, remember, we always welcome new and have a running theme. That's the basics that should be what's the word that should permeate every bit of contact that you have with your clients, it should be there always and not a thing that just sits underneath it, you need to be talking about it. Point to it, mention it, not every day, but the Pentagon damn close. Okay, and and though on the other side of that, then you need to actually have a plan to maybe do some focus plays to where you can incentivize to do it. Maybe twice a year, you make that the focus for a month. And that's important as well, that usually you need to have your constant just like we talked about Master email lists, right, you need to have your master email sequence that maximizes all makes the best of all opportunities over the course of time. But then sometimes you need to hit right, you need to do a push, you need to have a launch, right? That needs to be the thing. And that's what we need to do with referral plays as well got to do



John Fairbanks 26:31

and, and just like you said, to have it permeate the culture, a culture of what your gym is, allows this to not feel like you just have a can out or you take your hat out, and you're hoping for people to give you free money. A local gym that we have here where I'm at, that my boys go to, they do a great job of it's called the sweat squad. And it's a sticker. It's a simple sticker. And it's if you invite a friend to come and they join and they come and they come and work out with you. You get a sweat squad sticker. And the coach makes a big deal for the kids to get a sticker. I guarantee it's the same thing they do for their adults. So either you are talking to people about hey, we haven't had anybody join the sweat squad out of this group yet. Just remember, we want to give you this sticker and then when someone comes, they make a really big fucking deal. Hey, Mike brought somebody this week he gets a sweat squad sticker Mike gets a sticker. He feels fucking awesome. slaps it on his computer when he gets home. It's so easy.



Tyler 27:31

Also, I think with my baseline level of sweating, I think I qualify. Minimum. Exactly. Next one job.



John Fairbanks 27:40

If you are looking for a great coach, fully trained, ready to hit the ground running, that's just gonna walk into your gym and save your business. You are fucking on. Yeah, these people don't exist. Yeah.



Tyler 27:56

Let me run a comparable bio. This is the thing we ran into in the technical space: two heating and air conditioning service technicians, electricians, plumbers, guys that are good guys that show up to work regularly and know what they're doing are valuable. They're valuable. If you're a good coach, if you're a good coach and you're personal when people like you. A gym is keeping you, they're keeping you at all costs. If you're, by the way, if you're miserable. It's probably your fault, too. Right? No matter what, like, you know what I'm saying. But these people don't exist. They're not real. This is an imaginary person, somebody who's just, yeah, just looking for a job. But like, you know, last week, I was coaching the 150 clients at this gym that all fucking love me. And I'm great and nobody gets hurt. And I just am able to be resourceful and pleasant and positive and deliver big. No, that person should be making a lot of goddamn money already. And you are going to have to coerce that person away. That's not your strategy in any business, is to try to sneak those people unless you have a fuckload of money to throw at them. Which means just poaching employees, which by the way, you got deep pockets, go for it, find a great one. But good luck. Good luck.



John Fairbanks 29:01

There's a reason to



Tyler 29:02

This brings them up. You need to bring people up from within your space, someone who's interested in coaching and you need to always be developing coaches meaning your it's going to kind of be always a part of your process. And that'll get us into this next one. If onboarding new coaches takes more than a week, you're fucking up. Now, does that mean stuffing them in front of all of your people and that doesn't mean going from you coaching all the classes to this guy you found on the street a week ago coaching all your classes, but you're gonna find someone who knows a thing or two about fitness, you're going to put them in a nice box where they can't make mistakes. That's how it works is the reason you ever wanted you ever watch this is more applicable in youth sports now than professional sports. But you ever watch like youth maybe junior high age basketball, what happens to the big tall, slow kid, they don't let him bring the fucking ball up the court. Stay down on the block. You can shoot from three feet away, you're tall, that's going to be your best bet there. That's your best place for success. And by the way, as you get more coordinated, maybe you're able to extend that shot a little bit. Well let you do some shit on the other end of the three point line, but just fucking stay under the rim, please rebound, do the do the grunt work, this is what you need to do with your coaches, you need to set these parameters that allow them to be successful, someone comes in and they're new, guess what, maybe they're not going to be you're gonna have to be there, if you're programming fucking snatches, just how it's gonna have to be, right, you're gonna need some guidance for these things. So those are the places you're gonna have to make sure you give them support, but they need to be coaching right away, they should be coaching, that's all it's gonna be, they're gonna be coaching and you may need to help them, but you need to get them in and turn them loose and allow them to be successful. Maybe that means supplementing your programming, maybe it means that their class does different programming and some other stuff for a while, whatever it is, but give them a chance to succeed. And don't just keep them in your back pocket until they become brilliant. Because the only way Hunter mentioned this, it was great. The only way to become a good coach is to coach. So you can fucking talk their goddamn ear off. But like we said, with a strong fit, it's like learning to swim on a table. There might be a few lessons to extract, hand goes here, hand goes here, but you need to get in the goddamn water to learn how to swim.



John Fairbanks 31:04

I'm also a big fan of having your people that you want to be great and that you want to have come in and be a part of your community. They know how to do all the things they understand. I don't know, for me, whether they understand or appreciate that they don't have to take out the trash anymore. They don't have to clean the mats anymore. But everybody that's new, you have to do the bitch work. Yeah. And I guess for me it comes in like the idea of like you're the rookie. So a rookie has to learn how to do the things and the idea that you bring someone in that thinks that they're immediately going to become the leading star personality.



Tyler 31:42

Listening coaches are fucking Divas, I'm gonna tell you this one, anything else, you start bringing in coaches, rein them in, rein them in, do not let them run amok unless you have everything else covered. Because if you need tasks, by the way you do it as a business, you need some tasks that aren't just coaching done. And I'm all about like I said, give people in their wheelhouse. But these guys, if they don't have any fucking value, other than they can kind of get through a couple classes and not fuck up. Great, well, you don't need to hire a cleaning lady until then because you got one, you can spend, they can spend an hour a day cleaning the floors and can do some coaching. While they get better at coaching. They can deliver you value in other ways. It can be helpful, maybe they can just help do some simple admin stuff like hey, every Monday, I want you to run this for me just log in here, you're gonna show them a few of these basic things, they can give value outside of the coaching floor until they are a career ace coach. Right? So that's, that's a big one.



John Fairbanks 32:35

That topic of coaching. Yep. If you as the gym owner, if you have to be the one that's coaching the classes, you're fucking up. There's a huge difference for me that it's if you want to coach, if you want to get in, mix it and be on the floor once a week or whatever. So you can keep your stay sharp and keep that relationship building with your people. Totally different scenario. But if you come to me or you come to us, and you say, No, I have to be coaching, because I don't have anything else or I don't have anyone else.



Tyler 33:13

You're struggling. Yeah, you're already underwater. So that becomes an issue you need to fix, then you need to put money in first and detach yourself from that need to be the first thing you need to get yourself out of. Because you're stuck in one of these is like saying, I have to spend three hours a day cleaning the floors and taking out the garbage. You know, I don't know what else to do. Who else is going to clean the toilets? Well, fuck me. That seems like something you could get them for pretty cheap. So this now becomes when we do a lot of these kinds of time calibration audits with gym owners rustling things with us, like we got to find out what you're doing that you don't need to be doing. How can we hire that out? What's that cost? You don't have the money. Perfect. Let's cover that money real quick. And then let's make sure we immediately take that money put into getting you out of that situation with the time that's it, quit quit making extra money, you're still stuck coaching, you get an extra couple $1,000 by some god, some sort of Christmas miracle here and then you just spend it on equipment. It's crazy. Next one, if you got five new members tomorrow, it still would mean you couldn't afford to go on a vacation. Your whole system's already fucked. If I closed five new clients tomorrow that would be, I mean, based on even the averages. That's a full family vacation in a foreign country. And it's not because I'm some high roller. This is kind of the standard for all the gyms that work with us with our offices. Closing five new people, let's say half of them go with some sort of personal training and three quarters go with some sort of upgraded service that's very easily anywhere from four to $8,000.03 to 8000. almost guaranteed. So this goes back to the issue that we talked about before which is like all people can do is buy memberships. Now imagine if you close five new people tomorrow at $120 a month. Great. You just got $600 That's fucking sucks dude and keep getting five new members should be a big deal for you. And yes, extrapolate that over the course of the year and that $6,000, but the amount that I'm talking about, you'd get, and then you're gonna get more of that the next month, and at least some of them will renew every three months, this becomes this will Forex that amount at the very least over the course of the year and your clients will be happier, this thing needs to change getting five new members should change the fucking game for you. It should not mean that now you can make your car payment. If that is the case, you are making your fundamental you established your pricing your offers, all of it is already broken. So why don't try to lean further into the thing that's broken, you need to fix those things are super, super



John Fairbanks 35:40

important. Because Tyler You have direct experience of what it looks like to double your membership in what 30 days,



Tyler 35:47

What are you going to do if you get more people to coach and not enough money to hire anyone? And if I would have if we would have done that, that imagine that closing 40 new people in a month, you know, this is when you're opening. By the way, this isn't something I'm saying that you guys are going to do. I don't even maybe getting one of these 30 members in 30 days fucking scams you're gonna see out there on Facebook. But if you get 40 new members in a month, it should break your system operationally. But it should flood you with cash. In this case, it was only a few 100 A few $1,000 up from that, I'm sure I went to buy equipment, all new equipment, and I still couldn't pay myself. I was not planning on paying myself but now I had to coach full time too. And couldn't pay myself now I had to pull myself in and didn't have money for me and quit the day job. So lost that money had this is yeah, this assists your system is broken. You have to fix it. That's the name of the game. It has to be the case. Because basically how do I word this guy signing up new members doesn't actually change your financial situation very much. It's an indicator of a huge problem. signing up new members should be a damn thing. I am stoked that it's a big one. It's not that I get to coach this person. And hopefully he stays for a year or so that this is worth my time. No, not at all. Next one, John.



John Fairbanks 37:04

It goes into the same conversation, but we have to keep hitting it. Which is if you think more members is your solution to Pat running a successful gym. You're already fucked.



Tyler 37:22

Yeah, so your mindset is completely upside down. It's completely broken again. All you need to do is really get to the root of it. We talked about why and if people come to work out with you to coach them. Why are you trying to do this right? I want to know why you don't need to nose into their business fully. But they need to know why they're trying to get fit. It's so they like themselves. Is it so their wife doesn't leave don't leave them so they can feel better? So they can get out of pain because they just want to look better, right? That's fine. But you should know what that is right? You absolutely should know what it is. Because here, we need to fundamentally connect with why you think you need more members. Is it because you just gotta be coaching more people? You want your classes to be more full. You want less time No. Soon back, you want more money, you're not making enough money, you're not solvent, you're not profitable enough. Whatever it is, but that's the root cause that's the root motivator here is you need money. So chase money, not members members, their fixed costs chase money, not members,



John Fairbanks 38:19

and its opportunities. In case it has not been obvious enough in the last 35 minutes. Money in your business does not have to equal members. If that's the only track that's the only way that you can make money is a recurring monthly membership. No wonder you have no time. And no wonder you're struggling with money.



Tyler 38:46

Next one if you think or however we got here, if you think supplements are a four letter word and ruining the fitness industry, so you don't sell them in your gym. You're fucking out. One step further with this one. If your clients are buying supplements from GNC in the mall from somebody who doesn't work out, and doesn't take them and isn't fit, you're fucking up. How many of your clients are buying supplements? What percent do the math ask them? By the way you can ask them to shoot him an email.



John Fairbanks 39:16

Who uses supplements? Hey,



Tyler 39:18

Who are you? What do you guys take? What do you like? Is there anything you'd be interested in? Ask them a question. You're gonna find if you're not if you're not selling supplements, I guarantee you at least at least 20% of your members are taking supplements of some kind. Or spending anywhere. I would say an average between 60 and $200 a month , right? It's in that range. Somebody some people will nickel and dime, 30 bucks here. 30 bucks there. I would say the average is probably 80 bucks, give or take on average. Some people spend a third of that, at least should go in your pocket. So do that math. If you have 30 people spending 80 bucks what's the math on that John?



John Fairbanks 39:58

243 two Money.



Tyler 40:01

A few 1000 130 200 said, listen, we're athletes here. So money, it's like two and a half $1,000. Right? Well, that's free, that's fucking easy money straight your bottom line, you don't get to coach people, there's no hours going into this. And that's the most bare bone that's united. That's just them buying the stuff they're buying without you even motivating them or encouraging them. They're just going somewhere else. So now your profits are usually a third of that. Right? So a third of that is going to be a 1000 bucks, straight to the bottom line. That is the equivalent by the way, if you have $100 members hold $100 membership, that's 10 new members a month that you can make every fucking month but you don't have to coach that's that amount. You got to do that fucking math in your head. It's insane to me when I hear gym owners like Yeah, but yes, I get it. They're ruining the fitness industry. And they've been so misleading. Yes. And you're one of the good ones. Right? You're the one who people come to to Hey, help me filter out all this bullshit. Let me know what you mean, because you have to do that with your coaching. You say you know what, you don't just need to run forever until your knees hurt in order to lose weight. Do you do it with your nutrition? You know, you don't just have to fucking starve yourself in order to look better. Well, what's up because you're helping them sort through all the bullshit in the world? That's your job as a coach. Right? What was the thing that coach you say coach, like literally the term is like from stagecoach, which is to take you from where you are to where you're going. Because you know the path. That is what coaching is, it's not fucking, it's not a word made up by the fucking blue, it has a function here. So as a coach, people coming to coaches with this expectation helped me make my way through all this stuff. And they're going these people are going off the path in supplements and they're just getting drugged through by some fucking overweight dipshit at GNC who doesn't know fuck all. That's that, by the way, that's not the GNC guys' fault. That's not your fault. That's not the supplement company's fault. That is your fault that your client is getting ripped off. It's your fault, because they trust you and you are not extending an offer that makes any sense to them. And we've got some you need to fix. You need to fix it right now. I'm sorry. This is a thing. I can't you almost can't even. I can't, I can't live with it. Because your clients are buying them somewhere else. You can't sugarcoat it. Okay? Yeah, there's no way around it. You're making a huge mistake is a great coach trend and yours.



John Fairbanks 42:18

Right. There's a great coach that talks a lot about supplements. And his name's Edie tourney, and he talks about supplement sales all the time. And one of the things that he's equated to and I think it's important to think about it in this way, a common objection that you as the gym owner will create for why you don't sell supplements or why your members won't buy them is that I'm already expensive. People already are giving me a hard time on the cost of my membership or whatever. They won't spend more money on supplements. And you are missing understanding the core principle of what a supplement is in this scenario. Every two you have two different wallets. Right? There's the wallet for the membership. And then there's a wallet for supplements, equipment, new shoes, new swag, whatever the items are. The one of the greatest examples you give Tyler is when you joined your MMA gym. I spent



Tyler 43:23

more money on equipment through other places than I do on my membership hands up I spent nearly the same amount of money on online coaching and demo tutorials and stuff like this than I have in my membership the truth have now now he started carrying some of these some of these products now the brand that I buy my gloves shorts all the cool shit about super nice durable fucking kickboxing shorts the short shorts tight let's fucking rule right. I was buying those on the other thing he gave me for the same price. So it cost me no extra money. No extra money. He doesn't charge me any less or any more and I just do it for him. Because then he makes it sound like they got a good deal. You can find this for supplements you find philosophy in your gym, but he makes for every 100 bucks I spent he makes like $35 Fuck yeah, I'm happy to do I'm buying the shit anyways, but I might as well run it through. That's what happens with supplements and it didn't think twice to me that my cost of doing jiu jitsu and kickboxing and MMA training is, why don't tell my wife probably like $400 a month right? But it's like 100 bucks for the membership. What are we talking about here? It's just like when you get a car, like you know, like, you know, you're like, I want to get the payment below this. You don't have a fucking clue what insurance on this thing is not a clue. You don't have a clue really what it's going to cost to drive it either. And you're wanting repairs away from that. You might as well spend an extra $200 a month if you have to do repairs in a year in addition to all this so it's like none of that is really we break up the psychology of the different walls in our heads on our own already. My car cost me X amount a month. No, that's your car payment. driving that car costs you a lot more. And there's a lot more that goes into that cost, but it's okay, because you're like the experience of driving that car. That's the way it's gonna be with your gym. What do I have next here? This one's huge right? Yeah, if



John Fairbanks 45:14

you see Instagram stories, so you personally, gym owner, business owner, if you are on Instagram, and you see people's Instagram stories within the first 10 minutes of them being posted all day long, you're fucking up.



Tyler 45:34

If you're gonna spend any time on social media, it might as well be working for you as a consumer.



John Fairbanks 45:40

We love you. But get the fuck off your phone and get to work. It has to be something where you need to be able to clearly say, I have these five things that I'm going to get done today. I have to get something done. Because I can tell you right now, if you are not working, you will find yourself staring at a wall, taking 30 minutes to take a shit and get sucked into an Instagram void of nothingness.



Tyler 46:13

Yes, absolutely like and John touched on this, you keep forgetting those five things are going to do today if I can. That's it like a word to quit worrying about the things that are distracting and get to that thing. Next we're gonna get to, if you haven't posted on your personal social media about your gym services in the last week, you're fucking up. Not just pictures of people exercising, by the way. That's so great, it's filler. I've always said one of the functions of your social media should be to allow people to have a look into the gym, so they can get in when they walk in. They know what it looks like, what the exercises look like, what the people look like, that's okay. That is not the primary function of your social media. If it is, it's a waste of time. This is you got windows for that you got to sign up for this. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't attract anything. It doesn't mean that people don't look to become exercisers. So showing people exercising is not a very great primary strategy. Because I don't want to become an exerciser. I want results. Show Results. I want people I want to feel welcome, show what welcoming is. I want to know more about your services. What can I do? What do you offer that addresses my specific needs and gets me to my goals? Right? That is extremely important. But so many times what I see for people is mostly nothing. The amount of gyms that I see out there posting nothing on their social media is fucking crazy. months off. And yes, we can be busy with the story. I get it, you can. That's okay, you can kind of see things but the story is not very, it's that you better be doing a call to action on your story practically every day, meaning come in, text us here, go to this link. It better be like that you can do some fluffy ship. But if you're gonna tell me that you're posting on your story more often than what I'm seeing on your posts, you absolutely better be telling me that you're getting some results from what you're doing on your story. Because at some point, the posts on the still actual grid matter when someone finds you at first, just like your reviews matter. If I go to your page and you don't post anything in six weeks, see gyms don't pull if I posted anything, John in nine months, 10 months, right? It's fun. It's fucking crazy. I don't know, is that trying? That's not trying to put the side for turning the open sign on. Because that is having the open sign off. It really is. If I look and there's no posts in six months, I don't even think that place is open anymore. Adult, you know, COVID was hard on businesses. I just assumed the guy just logged out on his phone and left it. That's what I think happens. And that's what it looks like. You got to understand. What does this look like if you're not getting more members? You're not getting leads, right? You desperately want leads and members Well, you're not fucking doing anything to try. Super important if you're not posting on your that I say business's social media



John Fairbanks 48:44

Now this one was personal. But you're exactly right. There's a business piece here.



Tyler 48:48

I'm sorry, I put these back to back. I'm gonna cover both of these. So I did say personal or business. Lead with personal either or personal and business. These go hand in hand. If you're not doing your business. That's what I mean by the open side, right? That's what I mean is like if your people go to find your business, there's nothing there. Jesus Christ, dude, you got to do you got to do better, right? You just have to. And if you're not posting on your personal social media about your business services, it's even worse, because nobody is going to find your business unless they're looking for your business, especially on Instagram. Instagram is very useless as far as stumbling across or getting reshares that matter. However, having things on Facebook that are globally visible matter, but way better if you're a person and then a business meaning posted on your business, share it on your personal Hunter does a great job with that you can check out Hunter his garage gym, you can see the progression over the last look back three months ago, four months ago, see what he was posting what the engagement was what the language was the terminal use the tone all of it. It still is Hunter. It's just not about the clients until now. It's about the clients and it's about the gym connecting to the clients and connecting the clients to the gym and finding out who the clients are and identifying them and running them through the whole thing. That is the ticket. Next one, John



John Fairbanks 50:02

If you haven't decided, if your gym is a hobby, or a profession, you're fucking up. Do you actually need the money? Or is this just something that's keeping you busy? This is a real question you need to be able to answer as a gym owner. Because is this fake business? Or is this what you use to feed your family? So huge difference



Tyler 50:31

that the motivation is motivation that gets you motivated clients, you have a motivated clients. You have clients that should be motivated, that are motivated. When they come in for weight loss. They just don't give a shit. They don't do the work. How frustrating it has been. So you need to be the motivated one, you need to be the one if you have a problem in your business. Are you doing one to fix it? Are you doing anything to fix it? Or you don't really care? Because I just told him? Well, shit, man, that's fine, too, I guess but like that's like the obese person coming into your gym, coming into classes half assing it and eating like shit all week. We're like, Man, I don't fuck. Why, why is any of us doing this, it makes it harder to do, I just the whole thing just becomes this malaise. And it needs to be better than that. That's the thing, gym ownership. Being a career person that you're changing lives, you really are, you're changing the world, it should feel better than that. And it starts with kind of where you're framed as, like I feel it's just the thing you're kind of doing so you can have access to a gym. Well, that is what sucks, man. Now, the next one. Next to kind of, if you can't close a new client without showing them all your equipment, you're fucking up. If you can't close a new client in less than 20 minutes, you're fucking up. Okay, by the time they get to you, your communications and expectations should be so thorough, they should mostly know who you are what you're about kind of, they should know that you're professional, they should know that they're going to be talking about something they should know there's a timeline on this situation, they should know when they get in, they're gonna talk about what they're trying to accomplish, and what some of the services that you offer that can help them get them there. They know that before they walk into the thing, you know what they're going to talk about what they're trying to accomplish, and they're going to wait till you explain to them the services. Like I said before, you're not going into the car dealership to meet and like the car dealer, or going to the car dealership to take a look at the cars, you know which ones fit my needs, which ones fit my budget, which ones I like, that's kind of some hot shit. It's a little out of my reach. Could I be nudged into that? Maybe? Maybe, that's the way that's the way it goes, right? But going in there, the guy being fucking interesting or funny, or showing me how cool the building is doesn't mean anything to me. Show me the thing that I'm here to get? How are we gonna get me in this thing? Does it work? That's what it's all about.



John Fairbanks 52:35

Because once they're there, now build the relationship. But we need to go back to the exact comment that you talked about Tyler, which is trust, they're going to need to take a leap of faith either way. So it needs to be tied to something that's measurable for you. If you have some fluffy bullshit for why someone's coming to you and why they stay, it's going to be so hard to quantify that for the person coming to you saying I have a need. And you say great, I can help you achieve or fulfill that need. And then when you fucking crushed that, and someone says Dammit, this is it. I've struggled for years and now I was successful because of gym X or gym y, then I'm staying and along that journey. They are now staying because they love your community. And they love your gym and they love the people that are there because you're good people that genuinely care about the people you serve. We're getting on backwards.



Tyler 53:37

Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to impress these people. You don't have to have great material, you don't have to be hilarious or useful. That's they want the new come in, they need you to, they need to feel like you're gonna be your services and you are gonna be useful to them. Gotta be useful to them. That's it. Next one here, does that mean this one's you?



John Fairbanks 53:55

If you aren't offering nutrition services, or accountability for your people, you are fucking up. Again, this comes right back down to you having to have alternative revenue sources and ways for you to help your people be successful. That goes beyond a monthly member forever membership. That endless relationship cannot be the only way that you support your people. Again



Tyler 54:25

talk to your clients about what's what they want to accomplish, make them identify what's been in the way of them getting there before I talked about athletes all this time we taught this couple episodes ago Right? All athletes whether it's fighters football players, anything identify you need to do with them, but let's make them self identify what are the five things that you need to bring up in order for you to get this done in order you to be the athlete you want to be or in order for this year to work for you the way you need it to work for you. What are the five things we got to improve about you? Right? It's super important and if you ask a lot of your clients, what's in the way of them getting their weight loss or whatever it is they've been trying to get done. They are going to most likely say, Yeah, I just I fucking never figured out the food stuff and nobody holds me. It's all this, I never have fun in the gym, what they're listing there is things that you need to provide solutions for. That's it. That's like, that's the most basic thing for sure. And accountability is a big one. And so all of this, all of those things that is your work, they are then identifying the shortcomings that they need a solution for coming to a coach, it's your job not to present a service or if you don't have those services. It's gonna, if they say, and nobody's held me accountable, and I can never figure out the food stuff is like, great, well, we have a membership that doesn't include any of that.



John Fairbanks 55:36

I have no solution.



Tyler 55:37

Even if they join, you're losing and they're losing. You're leaving money on the table, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month, maybe 1000s up front. Because they literally told you this is what I want. If I come in and I say you know what, I need a car . I need a four door SUV. I have a big family. You know I need Tahoe we're larger. And they go and they show you a little compact consisting of a focus. I don't want this car. I told you what I wanted, right?



John Fairbanks 56:04

And how different is it Tyler when they say hey, you know what, we got suburban, right over here that's inside of your price range. And you know, we also have a package that we can add oil changes for life, because I know how busy you are with your family and your kids and everything. Make it really easy for you to be able to just come drop it off. No extra fee is already taken care of. Like oh,



Tyler 56:26

zero downtime roadside assistance. There's nothing worse than breaking down with your family. Man. It's really tough. You know, as a father, you're out there stuck on the side of the fucking road Tow Truck blows, you have five kids screaming at you. Let's just get you towed away. You know, in our last anywhere in the country, we can get this coverage. I know you guys travel a lot. I think those things people may take them. They may leave them but they're a thing that you'll be like, oh, you know what that does sound like that would be nice. Whether they buy it or not? That would be nice.



John Fairbanks 56:50

Because you showed that you were an active goddamn listener. Yeah, this is one thing we spend too much time just waiting for our turn to say the next thing that we don't actually listen to the words that are coming out of people's mouths. If you can take one thing away from this is the ability to have a goddamn conversation. You talk, I listen to what you say. And then I talk about what you just said opposed to? It used to drive me fucking insane in school, where a kid would raise their hand, I would watch a teacher ask the question the kid gives the answer. And then the teacher moves on to the next question. without acknowledging that that kid just spoke, it fucking drove me insane. And we do this all the time.



Tyler 57:42

If your clients are not getting results, you're fucking up. You, not them. They are too. But it's your fault, because they're there to get the results, meaning it's something you maybe didn't charge them for. It's something you should have charged them for. It doesn't matter, but it's on you. It's absolutely on you. And I know this because I've had clients that are a pain in the ass . Self sabotage is a very common human trait that happens a lot, especially with health. But if I try harder, I know what's going on with them. Some point you throw your hands up, as opposed to like, I don't want to deal with this stuff. But if your clients aren't getting results, your systems are broken. You're not, you know, holding them accountable. You didn't offer them accountability. Maybe they cheaped out the cement, some people suck, but then maybe don't let them in. But the fact is, if your clients look across all of your client list right now, if you actually you had a system where you were asking them what their goals, were offering services to hold them to get them to those goals, hold them accountable to those services in the execution in the process, checking in on a fixed timeline when those goals are supposed to be met. Of course, correcting if they're not met, and then repeating that cycle over and over again. You're gonna have a lot less clients not getting results. If you look at your client list right now. The ones that say you know, we're there to lose weight. None of them are losing weight. They've been there a year, two years. Three years. was fucking fault isn't your their coach? Dude, you're the coach. Like I'm sorry. Like, if you're a basketball coach and your basketball teams suck. Can you just stand there go these kids fucking suck. Dude. None of these kids are any good. They can't fucking play. Would you would be the worst goddamn coach in the fucking league for sure. Like, I don't know, I got a bunch of schmucks. These kids are all fucking knees and ankles and toes. Do they suck? They can't do anything. It's their fault. You kids kid couldn't make a shot to save their fucking life. I see gym owners say that type of shit a lot in gym owner context. It's like, oh, yeah, they just can't get it, they're not doing the food thing. They just said, Okay, well, whose fucking job is it to guide them here? Did you offer them a service for it? No. Did you do anything about it? No. Do you just stay back and complain? Great. Do you connect with them enough to where they actually would trust you know, do you actually care about the amount of gym owners I know who don't care. There's a lot they don't really care about. That's a metric that I see quite often. First of all, I see this as the type of person that will go to this thing and they'll say, Well, I mean, if they really want results, they just do it by personal training, okay? What the fuck kind of statement is that? You're telling me your base product is not able to get them results, and they're just in there thinking it fucking does. The fuck is wrong with these people? And there's a lot of that out there. It really really really is. It's on you. It just is if you're, you know what I mean, we fire coaches when the teams aren't doing well. That's the first thing that happens. You fire coaches get correct or get fired. I don't know what to tell you get to get results or get fucked or find a different fucking career. I don't know what to tell you if you're the coach who doesn't give results. Get the fuck out of here. Go.



John Fairbanks 1:00:44

You don't have enough money? What if it's a lot of times because this is what you have to look at. And it comes back to it is probably everything we're talking about that this person probably needs Tyler, that isn't getting the results that they need. They probably need somebody to go and show them how to fucking shop. Yeah, show them how to do lots of different things. And when you look at it be like, Why can't Well nutrition is just included in their membership, Tyler.



Tyler 1:01:08

Yeah, that's cute. Kinda it kind of is. We? We just pointed them towards us and we just talked about healthy stuff. Sometimes we just talk about what paleo is once a month, just kind of before class. We're like, Yeah, so I tried this new peanut butter stuff. It's cool. And that's like the end of the fucking nutrition service. Most people offer. It's



John Fairbanks 1:01:25

that if you use my promo code, you can get 10% off on that peanut butter. Yeah, yeah. No, this is where you do need to step back. And you need to say if I want to really help people step backwards and say if someone paid me $200 a month, could I get them better results? If yes, then offer that.



Tyler 1:01:46

Yeah. This is the next one. I want you to cover it here, John. Yeah.



John Fairbanks 1:01:49

If you're constantly messaging clients about nutrition and recovery, and answering questions, you're fucking up.



Tyler 1:01:59

Why? We just said they need more accountability, they need nutrition, they need recovery. Why is that? John? Are we supposed to constantly be touching base with them?



John Fairbanks 1:02:08

Yes, buy and sell that service because it goes back to the supplements and the equipment, you have to give people the opportunity to invest in themselves, that a lot of time is all the push that you need. Yep, just having the opportunity to spend a little bit of money on myself. So that I want a new belt to lift, because I want to lift big weights. And I want to do that this next 12 weeks, and I got my belt. So now I'm in



Tyler 1:02:41

I want to put more of my financial and mental resources and time resources into this thing that I'm trying to make a change. Because by the way, this is the piece and I want to touch on this this way. The reason you need to sell this service is first off, you're going to do a shitty job doing it for free, kind of for people who aren't paying you. Because if you're a coach, and you're not selling accountability in nutrition services at a premium, what happens is all your clients who get your fucking message or get your text, your cell phone number texting, hey, what about this food? What about this, I tried this, I don't like this, or you're kind of doing all this, you're doing this half as a version of that, that kind of checks that box to the client. It's just not effective. It's just you become the equivalent of like the guy that will come and fix your breaks in your back alley for you for $30. Your brother in law. Yeah, like that guy. What happens if shit goes wrong, that guy's not accountable to it at all. He just walks away, you saved the bargain. And now you gotta go spend the fortune getting shit fixed again. And this is the same thing they need to do in their lives before they join your gym, these people who aren't getting results, right? They spent up until this point, the reason they need weight loss or they need whatever this is, is because they put no effort, money, time or resources into being healthy. You have to teach them how the first step was when they joined your gym, right? Now they want to buy new clothes, they want to buy fancy workout gear shoes, belts, like John described, we need to allow them to put more resources towards things that will actually help them shoes and great, I'm okay with all the psychological checks that just like I do with my fucking shorts and dozen pairs of boxing gloves and new shit, new clothes, all the shit, it all makes sense to me. But the things that matter the most are things that actually helped me get better at it too. Meaning if I spent half that money towards services that would actually improve me as a fighter or as an athlete. Well look at how much better I'd be right? So you need to make sure that you're not just taking their money and letting them just take the other resources they're trying to put towards this thing towards shit that doesn't really help them. And you need to quit doing a bad job at it kind of for free, which sucks a bunch of time. It's part of why you don't have any time and you need to do a great job getting paid for it. And this is the first thing we have done with my wife Megan, when she was going through we realized so many people were wanting weight loss. And he went through her selling nutrition. They weren't really that, it was really more of just a kind of shootout email plan and there's so much constant correspondence going on about it. It's like alright, we got to figure out how to make sure that they know the expectation is this is an email you get in a plan that you don't do every week. It's not a thing where I'm holding your feet to the fire every day that needs to cost more, it just needs to cost more as the price points didn't match. So we added an accountability tier to the offer stack. Everybody bought accountability, everybody moved up that one step, it was guaranteed an extra 300 bucks over 12 weeks or something like this isn't easy. 100 bucks for just sending but now you have you're getting paid to do it. It's scalable. You can have other people do it. If the system grows, it just works, you're not going to do a good job doing anything for free. If you're good at something, don't do it for free. And if you're doing it for free, I promise you're not doing a good job of it. No matter what guarantee John said, if I paid you $100 to do something, could you do a good job? Yes. If I paid you $1,000 to do it, because you do a better job? Yes. It's almost anything, could you give me the $1,000 version of whatever that is probably. And it would be objectively better.



John Fairbanks 1:05:47

And it's really important on that note, because you and I have heard objections from people before from gym owners and coaches and say, oh, okay, so all you're saying is just make your ship more expensive. And it's no fucking pause for a second. And think about this. Our assumption is, you're a good person, our assumption is that you're good people that are genuinely interested in helping others, that needs to be the baseline. Since we've established that you're not scum of the earth, that means the $100 service compared to $1,000 service, you can only put so much time and money into someone that spends $100. With you, the equivalent would be okay, 10%, you want to put 10% of what you make into making a product great for $100, you just now can spend $10 To make that product great. For $1,000, you can now spend $100.10 times you now can spend to make that great. Of course, it's going to be awesome, because now you are investing more to be able to allow that product to be that much better to serve your people that much better. For you fucking just walk away with more money.



Tyler 1:07:08

That's not it. It's not just getting more for doing the same thing. Because this allows you to do good, we're expecting you to be good at this. If you're not just gonna listen to some of that podcast, you're not any good at this move on. If you're if you're not if you're if you don't care if then you're just missing the boat here. Last one, guys, listen, this is our longest episode yet John. And I knew we were gonna run on with some of these. But I think this is really good. If you're a gym isn't making enough money, and you think the solution is to learn more about coaching your fucking we beat this up so many times. But that's it, guys, we've talked about this where you put your resources at mental time, money, whatever that is, where you place those resources matter. That is a vote, you're voting with your dollar, you're voting with your hours, you're voting everything. If people are coming in from the street, they don't know a good coach, if they don't know a good coach, if it slapped them on the ass, frankly, you know, bad coaches, they wouldn't win either way they would not know. That's why they're coming to a coach. So you could be a puck fucking passable coach, and you should still be selling lots of people, you should be attracting lots of people, you should, because it's about results. If you're trying to make it about your coaching, first off, if you're trying to make your attraction, your marketing your copy, whatever it is try to get people interested in your business. If that's about your coaching, and your wisdom, you're fucking up, nobody cares. They don't care because like I said they wouldn't know a good coach from a bad one from a distance anyway, so they won't know until you're coaching them. So you should not be a bad coach. But again, you're not sitting here saying I need more. You're begging us for more members, you're begging us to help you find more money. That's what everybody's doing. We will come to us because I want more money, I want more members, we need more of this, we need more than none of it. None of you say anything about why? Well I need more. I need to be able to teach people how to snatch in two less days than it takes me currently. What the fuck K? Do you think about that metric? Whatever metric you're going to assign to the key? Can we measure it right? What key performance indicators in your coaching can we move forward? That will affect your bottom line at all? None there's fucking none unless you're just hurting people left and right by the way, which is actually more programming than just coaching. I promise because you can dumb down your programming and Ain't nobody getting hurt. Just it's the truth so you have the money problem you have an attractiveness problem you have a min low members low revenue you're not profitable you're not eating you can't go on vacation lot about it. This all seems like you need to level up your fucking business acumen doesn't it? If I'm just looking at this zoom out just this is what I think you need this would be this would be the place that I would spin. This is the fucking dial I would move forward. This is the thing that I would be piling fuel into. I would put resources and time into going shit. I have a money problem now. People aren't interested in coming here. There's too many holes in theirs. I don't know how to sell feel fucking just adrift. Fuck it. I'm gonna hide in the thing that I'm already good at. And I'm going to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month and I'm going to try and do some other shit too like to worry about Kosha, worry about this, the fancy names for this muscle and to talk more science dorky shit that nobody cares about. Your clients don't care about all the dorky shit you can say to them to impress them. Some of them probably if you're doing it right some of them are medical professionals as well. About 10-20% of our clients, 20% probably, were medical professionals. Fair price, correct. I'm gonna sit in here and fucking Yeah, the CrossFit gym, am I going to sit in here and like, just wow them with my knowledge of muscles and fucking how the guys, I don't know if you guys know this. But the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell ketones, who fucking cares? Nobody gives a shit. What can you do for them? How can you still tighten up all the other stuff, quit putting resources into shit that doesn't serve you well, getting better coaching is a lifetime thing. You need to always be doing it and like Hunter said, You got to get better coaching new coaches. So you should always be working on improving but you need to actually be getting the reps too. And if you're a business owner, like we said, if you're doing all your coaching, you're the problem.



John Fairbanks 1:11:10

There's so many pieces that are tied to everything we've just talked about this last hour. Tyler was just on the coaching thing. How much money? You know, I mean, if you're gonna go and get really good coaching from a really good coach, how much money were you spending three that session or that week or twice a year?



Tyler 1:11:33

Between the recurring monthly things? This is just one organization I was gonna go to seminars with and the coach. First year was about 15 $20,000. And if you have multiple coaches as well, not by the way, then there were other online coaching things that I was doing for other companies. I was probably spend and don't know that I think it was fuck me. You don't have the money I was making. By the end of that year, I made $30,000. Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to point out. I spent $25,000 to get better at coaching. But my business could only pay me 30,000 hours. I feel like I had a business problem when I had a coaching problem.



John Fairbanks 1:12:09

Right? My tax accountant goes, you spent over 50% on coaching of your earnings. It's like, yeah, it's what I did, because that's what I just but the reality is, but here's the thing, so this is what I wanted to point out to get really good coaching to help you be great, it costs a lot of money and you can spend a lot of fucking time trying to perfect your craft by sitting on YouTube and and gobbling up every free download every free thing you can but now you're wasting time which you don't have. So you need either if you don't have time to spend you need to spend money and if you are only making that money on a monthly recurring membership, which is not enough money at all, you don't actually have enough money to get the good coaching Yeah, and around and around we go



Tyler 1:13:05

and that Lucho by the way let's clarify this TOS does not mean do not get better at coaching. This does not mean not spending time or money improving as a coach or improving your coaches coaching acumen. What it means is like we've always talked about sequence matters exactly as met priorities matter. So you what you need to do again we're gonna move this for you're able to coach you do a decent job and get people results. Yes, you need 10 years and you need all sorts of education. But you know what you can coach your experience enough to lead the people at the level they're at, go forth and coach now because this is the relationship you need to get better at making money at that relationship identify that, at that moment, the time is not to get better at coaching because that will not give you the money or resources to actually coach more or coach better or spend more money on coaching to really get better for the long haul you'll just spend all your money improving your coaching while you starve to death and your business never gives back anything to you burn out and quit. So you need to prioritize subtle Jocko things, prioritize, execute, prioritize, execute cover and move. It's the same thing like we're gonna cover you know, we gotta we gotta make enough money to cover so let's focus on building your business acumen becoming profitable, fix all this bullshit. And then now you have enough money coming in to where now we can afford to make another move which I we're covered. Now let's spend now we can spend some extra money we got. We prioritize coaching now that we have the resources to put time into coaching. All of our coaches are getting better. Shit, they get better. Now all of a sudden, now we have more money and more time we can put back into growing the business as well. But if the business model is broken, the whole thing stinks. So we gotta fix that. By John,



John Fairbanks 1:14:40

if any of the items in this list today stung, felt like we were picking on you. It was like a personal attack. One it wasn't. There's a reason why this list was long. And this is our longest episode because this is so common. Do not make the mistake. If we're talking about a Google review issue If we were talking about social media, if we were talking about coaching, that isn't the problem. These are symptoms, every one of these things where we said, you're actually more fucked than you realize, is because these are symptoms of a larger issue where you don't have enough time, because you're not making enough money.



Tyler 1:15:21

That's it. That's the jam. And if you take any of this personally as an adult, there's not. It's not you. It's everybody. It's very, very, very, very common. If your thing is to look at this, you say that we said this and you think that we're wrong, I'm gonna very much tell you that we are not. If you think that we're wrong on any one of these things, we're not. That's you taking it personally, and you're projecting it back. I promise you, you need to just if you are on this list, if any of these things come up bite man just be like, Oh, shit, just identify it now be objective, look back, go. Let's get right. What can I do? Again? What are the five things you're going to do this week? To make your business better? What are the five tasks? What are they? Can you name one? What are you building permanently for your business this week? Can you name one that a system sends an email? Is it a plant? Is it a thought? Or is it an idea? What is it? If you've just operated your business for another week? You're already fucked. So thanks a lot for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week. Join in follow me on Instagram at Tyler Fs don't follow John at J banks FL for the Jim Morris podcasts on Instagram. Find us on Spotify, Apple, fucking all the stuff, all the things with all the things, join the Facebook group. That's the main spot in the Facebook group. That's where we share most of the information. That's where we try to chat. So we're trying to drum up some real conversations. That link is in our description. Join the gym owners revolution. Link in description. Bye, everybody. We'll see you next week.