Focus on the RIGHT Things

work, opportunities, people, business, coaching, gym, problem, money, owners, post, traditional marketing, clients, coach, month, social media

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler over there as John. This week, we're going to talk about a mental approach to how you solve problems within your business, how you strategize things, and how getting this wrong can absolutely send you running the wrong direction for a very, very, very long time. Before we get into that, make sure you join the Facebook group, the gym owners revolution on Facebook, the link is in our description. We don't, what's the word we're not, we're not jamming you up trying to busy up your world in there. But we do want to make sure that you have a resource of people that kind of understand the concepts that we're talking about here. We have coaches and gym owners in there that are applying some of these concepts out in the real world. And it is a great resource for gym owners, especially whether you're just starting, or whether you've been around for a while trying to rethink the way you do things. Get in there, pay attention. A lot of good stuff is coming soon, I am going to drive myself crazy with this collar that's toward whatever not a lot of you are watching. Hopefully most of you are listening. So let's get right to it, guys. So there is a concept that's been kind of like, not fleshed out in the real world and a lot of business stuff. And I think mindset coaching and all this stuff is the concept of abundance versus scarcity. And there's a lot of smart people out there that have gone deeper into that than I intend on going today. But when it comes to your business, the way I want to expand upon that subject, is abundance versus scarcity is that you give attention to what you truly give your energy to whether it's time, money, thought, whatever, whatever that is, is probably going to continue to exist. And it's unfortunate. We've talked about this many times when it comes to trying to change a larger system or a complex system that if you intervene at the wrong point in the system, you end up almost making the exact problem you're trying to fix worse. You know, this is the example I always give . If you're wrong, you go around and you accuse your girlfriend of cheating on you every day all the time. And it's all you can think about even though she's not. There it goes on longer, further and further. And you just don't let it go. If that thing will end up probably happening, you'll run her off. And eventually she'll run into something else. That is a reality. Right? So when it comes to your business, what can happen very often is people can just start looking at the limitations that they have with their current situation. And that's the biggest piece I want you guys to



Tyler 02:31

kind of work on is like, we can look at like shit, money's tight, or we can look at like God, I'm not getting new people coming in. Or, you know, we see that a lot, because we're in the problem solving business for gym owners. So all these problems we hear very often and there are real problems, right? But we cannot sit back and just simply identify an issue and then just like not like that situation, and leave it there. Because to go back to frame this in a real world application. If you have a bunch of credit card debt, and this is the thing, you know, I've been through this whole bunch of debt before, John, I think you probably have at some point, everybody went to college and got the college credit cards, you know, yep. But you get to a point where you're like shit, I can't, you know, like, we can't spend money we can't go out to eat. We can't do all these things. It's like why? Well, because you're spending $1,000 a month, spinning your wheels, just paying interest essentially on your credit card to not make any progress on the dock or on the actual principle of the thing. Well, that's the wrong mindset altogether, by the way, because yes, you should not go overspending, and you certainly shouldn't be adding to this credit card debt, right? But the issue is at that rate that you're going to continue to pay, you're going to continue to pay for all eternity. And you're never going to make any progress on that principle. So why do you want to be even more miserable? But do you want to take away the one or two times a month that you go out? You're gonna subtract that from your life so that you can like, well, I made up an extra $150 on the fucking credit card debt this month. Like that doesn't help you. You're super. Your problem is an earnings problem. That's what and that's what most gym owners have. They have an earning problem. You don't have a gee whiz, I'm just money's tight stuff. It's like no, no, no, no, no, there's no saint, you're not going to save your way out of this. You're not going to unsuspend your way out of this either. The best people that make the most progress that we've seen are people that choose to spend and choose to invest in their business and produce. Okay, well, we want more production. Okay, we can't retract things back and we see it very often John, when a coach or gym owner will get stuck like shit a coach Quit fucking they gotta get pulled back in on the coaching floor. Right? Well, that's terrible. But if money's tight, what if you're, you know, when he's real tight, you want to get rid of a coach and go back to coaching. That's a huge step backwards just to free up a few 100 bucks a month or a couple 1000 bucks a month. That is a step in reverse. And you cannot start thinking that way. So when you start looking at these problems, yes, they're real and yes, they must be solved. But you can't live in the limitations of this, you need to actually be willing to change the entire environment around that situation, which is like, alright, we're paying too much for this. We don't have enough of this. None of this. Alright, let's do need to change the whole situation, as opposed to just dwelling into things like, how am I going to save money this month? Saving money is not pinching pennies will get you fucking nowhere. It really will get you nowhere.



John Fairbanks 05:23

Pinching pennies is an employee mindset. Yes, fact is, if you've, you've made the leap to be a business owner. So don't be a coward. Be a goddamn business owner. Because in our experience, every gym owner that we've worked with, has fully embraced this concept where they are the business owner, they have the ability, the best folks that we've worked with, their attitude has been I want to be able to do this thing. So I need to be able to go make an extra $1,000 this week. Yep. That's now what they are, that is what they're fixated on. Not. Oh, man, I wonder what I can cut back? Yeah, I wonder if we can just not eat out this weekend. Or maybe we'll turn up the air. And maybe we'll just shut off the heat this month. And we'll be able to make that money back. That's never the attitude that they have.



Tyler 06:15

Yeah, that's exactly it. That's a really good point. I think that that is an approach to what we do when we talk about developing a business to where it's like, there's a lot of things that you need to do next, it costs money, whether it's transitioning to a big CRM system or account management stuff, or whether you want to start spending money on ads, and all those things. You cannot look at Fuck, I gotta spend, you know, these gyms that we've had that vet gyms that we spend 566 $7,000 a month on gym or on running ads, right? A lot, some of them? Sure. And in order to do that, you cannot look at what your current situation is. And say, Alright, how do I fucking extract five G's a month? You cannot do that. So with the first thing that we have our people do now this is a much larger scale stuff. Let's scale back to what a new guy had. He needed some website work and some backend management system that cost him like four or 500 bucks a month, right? Well, it's a fairly decent expense for a business to just decide you need to take on forever, right? That's a decision to be made. But it's a requirement. So what we said right away is like, Listen, don't think about how much this costs in the context of your current situation, what you have to do right now is go out and sell an extra $500 a month worth of recurring business. Do that week, man. So 100 bucks a week, man. So get out there and what this guy does goes out immediately. And close actually probably like three or $4,000 over the course of two or three weeks in new sales. That's exactly what he did. And then so what we said right away is like, perfect, don't make any plans for that money. And this is the thing that gym owners do a lot of really stupid shit, you get an extra couple grand in your pocket, and you go buy a fucking reverse hyper, or buy new equipment stuff, and you got, you got to make this stuff work for you. Yeah, and we want to create a feedback loop of success, meaning some of the new money that you have some of your new scratch needs to go towards keeping the gravy train moving forward here. It can't just go towards like, fucking slapping some shit on the lawn, like, cool. Now, now what? Right? We want to continue to develop. But once he had this, he didn't make any plans for this money. Now you've bought this system for the entire year, and you're good. It's complex, just go buy it go all in on the year. And now that is no longer a new expense. And you can continue to reap the benefits of this new system in the meantime without any financial pressure. So I encourage you, if you're looking at whether it's investing in business coaching, or whether whatever it is out there, I mean, any new system, any new strategy you want to do that costs money, man shit, that work costs money. All right. And so if you're going to do that, just you need to think of how can I earn this money? How can I get to the point where I have the money to do this? And that's just as simple as get out there and fucking sell. Get out there and sell just let's shake through, shake some leads up, put some extra effort and put in a little extra effort. And now you've got a new permanent system that now operates for your business. And that but that mindset, we you know, we have a great guy on the East Coast, we work with quite a bit. And that was the one thing right away, man, some big expenses, you know, 1015, grand 20 grand up front for some big projects that we're moving forward on. And what did he do? Is there alright, let's, let's go. He was like, give me a couple weeks, right? And he'd go out and he would just scratch and claw and make the news and he would just cover it. He would just hustle and now it's covered. It's not a thought. He doesn't worry then about I gotta get this, how is this gonna work? If I kept this money, things we'd have a cut are like no, no, no, no. He's scratched, he claws, he had that chunk. He put it in and now his business moves at a very hyperspeed and that's the game you got to start playing is like you got to start dealing in the world of opportunities, and not living in the world of limitations. And that's the biggest takeaway from all of this stuff is that solving a problem is an opportunity. But your mindset needs to, at some point, stop identifying problems constantly. And that's the thing that I do very often you bring you bring me, the first thing I'm gonna do is poke holes and all the stuff I don't like about your business and how it's going and what we need to do, and I will identify the problems. But every problem that I see immediately, we go from problem identification, to identify the immediate opportunities to solve that and build far beyond it. And that's the game you guys got to start playing opportunities, not problems,



John Fairbanks 10:29

wins, the problems that need to be solved that allow you to do, which is why we're here was why this whole thing is exists is because we want to be able to let gym owners be able to make more money, and be able to kind of live the life that they want to live and no longer be strapped for cash or no longer feel like they're poor, now that they're a gym owner. And that's like the best coaching that we've ever invested in for the business for our own business. It cost me 1000 bucks a month. And I did not have $1,000 a month. No. And I remember, I sat with the coach, and she's like, this is what it is, right? It's 12 grand, or 10 grand up front, or 1000 bucks a month for the year, and you gotta be in for the year. I was like, Okay, I don't have $1,000 a month for the next year to give you. I said, but everything at this point, if I had, if I did what you told me to do, I made money because of it. I was successful. Because for you, and I tell you, we are hyper doers. If you give us a strategy, we're just going to go do it. And we're going to grind it out. We're not going to ask questions, just fucking get it done. And I'm like, why can we keep that same attitude? So I'm like, well, we got a month of funds that we could afford. And I'm like, alright, we'll do it. So I do it. And the very first month, like we made $4,000. And then the next month, it was another couple $1,000. And next thing I knew I had the whole year covered in just the first couple of months. And there's because it was like, the back was against the wall. Yeah, I knew we had to be able to act.



Tyler 12:17

And it's also the benefit of that, you know, being able to get it has less to do, don't get me wrong, it has a lot to do with the product in the coaching, giving you the ability to produce. But 100% of the money that you got to cover that didn't necessarily come from that service in that coaching either. What it was was you're like, No, no, no, I am seeking to cover this meaning I'm going to use whatever it is I'm going to use the things I learned from this first month. I'm gonna hustle with some opportunities that I have right now. But once you take, you gotta take your eye off of your fucking suffering. Right? You got you got to get out of that fucking mr. Krabs swirl vortex of like, everything sucks, what's going on? The wheels are falling off. And you just have to look around? What do I have to do? Listen, if you're drowning, you could look around for something to grab on to don't bother looking at the fucking water and complaining about how much it sucks. Okay, at some point, what are you going to hang on to? What are you going to pull yourself up with? And then what? And that's the game and I see it in business a lot. Do you see it? I see it manifest, I see it even worse with people just in fitness. That's the thing you guys can always relate to is gym owners. You guys, I'm guessing a lot of you have been coaching and you're talking to new clients and new people as they come in. And you see this stuff all the time. People will come in like before they're even ready to start. Like this thing. Like I want to lose weight. I'm having a conversation with somebody. There's a lot of people with some sad sack poor me attitudes out there that are coming in expecting this thing to fail because of all their other limitations. Oh, I have this thing and I have this and you know, genetically, my, my this person all my family has always been heavy. So it's just our genetics and our metabolisms. No, you're all your family's fat because your parents taught you how to eat and cook, man, use your habits that you've had for a lifetime and it's whatever but like, trust me, that's not your genetics exclusively. It sucks, but you hear and I hear people walk into some sales meetings, for new fitness coaching, nutrition, coaching, whatever that is keyed up to fail immediately. And I tell them immediately, like all they give you is excuses. And it's not as in a tone of hope or opportunity. And I was like, what are you just looking for a reason to fail, because I'm not interested in being the guy that you tried so that you could say that it didn't work and go back to doing it because apparently you want this, apparently you want to continue this path. So you should be able to identify that habit when it comes to coaching clients. As a coach, I pay extra attention. There's a lot of detail that I spend on making sure my clients are doing things that are, you know, pain free, safe, we're live bidding risk, and we're maximizing the return on exercise selection and all this shit, right? So I spend a lot of time learning that stuff.



Tyler 15:07

And I'm being honest with you, the more effort, the more energy I spend, like explaining to them like, hey, if I give them too many opportunities to be like, if that hurts I feel alright, how's the shoulder, it feels good. But if I kind of allow that stuff to be too much of the conversation, every time somebody finishes an exercise, they want to give me fucking feedback. And none of it's relevant. Yeah, it was good. It felt a little bit better. But when I Yeah, and it's like, oh, no, I don't want it. I don't want to make this about your excuses. I just want to work around them. And off we go. And so there is some of that in finding balance in coaching, which is like, yeah, I don't want you to hurt your shit. And I want good feedback. But there are a lot of fish when people are new. There's a lot of don't be a fucking pussy. Dude. Come the fuck on here. Like, no, you're tired. Let's go. Come on. I don't care. Do you need more of that? Do you need more of that in your life? And you need a little more of that in your business very likely. Because again, you coach Oh, How'd that feel? Was it good when somebody got done squatting, your back didn't hurt? Well, you know what's gonna happen the one time they get a little bit of thing, and a little bit of a pump or a little bit of discomfort, which let's be honest, you gonna train long enough, some shits gonna fucking ache, man. And I don't want to be the person that motherfuckers are complaining about all the time too, I'll deal with some real requests and some real stuff. But I am really not interested in somebody's petty bullshit. Because toughen the fuck up here, we're here to make change, we're here to do the thing. And I am the same way with your business. I really am. I'll hear it all. I'll hear it all. But now let's go. We've talked about this before with, you know, consulting clients and things like that. I've said this to our coaching group many times in the Gear Academy. It was like, good, we've got a problem. You've identified the problem, here are your five paths forward, you can choose one to whatever you want to do, here's how we get this one behind us. And you can tell there's some of that attitude where it's like, when your wife comes home and complains and just wants to be heard, and wants your feelings to be felt. It's like, I'm not your fucking husband. So get the fucking work because I don't want to hear this in for me at home, frankly, and, and in coaching business clients is that, like, I'm not really interested in hearing about this problem more than once. That's it. So if you're talking about the same fucking problem 10 times in a row, and you haven't taken a step, fuck off. You know. So like, that's, that's where I go with this. And so it's really important in your business, when there is a problem, we take the next most viable solution, and we get it done. And by the way, that solution may not work, and then you go on to the next one. But standing there, staring into your vortex of sadness is gonna get you fucking nowhere. This the only way you can be wrong, is the only way you can be allowed to just allow it to continue.



John Fairbanks 17:49

Yeah, exactly. And that's where you've touched on it before words, if you have a client that you're coaching, as like a personal training client, that is just awful to deal with. Fucking FYROM. Yeah, the reason why you want to fire him is because you, you talked about a particular client you've had for a while, that just was not following rule number one, which is Don't be a pussy. Yeah, like, just come here and do the thing. Yeah. And just was just posting it up every opportunity had with you to the point where you're like, you know, what, just I don't you give me all the money in the world doesn't fucking matter.



Tyler 18:24

Yeah. By the way, guys, when it comes to personal training systems, I'm very much like, if someone gets to the end of the deal, let's make sure they get every renewal opportunity and blah, blah, blah, we harvest like that, for a system that works. That's what I want to do. There are some personal training clients, that when I get to the end of the prepaid agreement, they don't get asked anything. That relationship ends, right. And that's okay. People aren't for everybody. Listen, I don't have the time to be coaching people all day, every day about this stuff. So when it comes to personal training, my time is valuable. I don't want to spend time with somebody who frankly doesn't want to be there, or whatever the situation is. So I think it's really important for you guys to start to, again, identify opportunities, quit worrying so much about the limitations of your business, you better have a list of opportunities that are much longer than your list of limitations. So your homework for this week, let's be real. Make a list, a brief list of the things that are currently limiting your business. This is a thing that I have people do all the time in fitness and everything identifies what are the five things, whether it's your skill set, whether it's your business's skill set, performance, whatever, right? What things do you need to improve in your business, it may be retention, it may be lead generation, it may be just operating efficiently. It may be getting your time freed up, maybe you're too busy, right? There's a laundry list of things that a gym owner can run into. But you need to identify five of those things, five problems in your business that need to be solved, right. And now once you've written those down, move the fuck on. And then we go to problem solving mode. Let's identify opportunities. What opportunity Do you have right now at your disposal? And how do they relate to the others they may not be? You don't have to always identify an opportunity, that is a direct solution to one of those problems. But you may find that just some relationships, you have networking connections, you have a conversation to be had about somebody in your community that has the ability to get you many referrals, or more business or present another opportunity or group fitness or corporate fitness or whatever that is, right. Maybe it's simply a marketing opportunity. Like you, maybe you have an idea of a low cost marketing strategy. Maybe it's simply time to do it. Let's you know, but we could do an open gym and it cost us almost no money. Maybe we want to get some flyers printed out, maybe I just need to go around and talk to people more. Maybe I need to be more in the community, what but what, but get done with your limitations list. And I need a list that is three times as long. So you got five there. And then I want 15 opportunities that you have. That's it? What opportunities do you have to improve? Whether it's in getting leads, maybe it's maybe simple opportunities, you suck at? Whatever, maybe you're not good at making social media content. Good, right, we talked to a coach the other day. It was like they were just struggling to get their social media stuff all in, they just haven't had a lot of time, a lot of reps. It's like perfect, where you have that as an opportunity. But it's not a limitation, that is an opportunity for you to go from the 10% skill level you're at right now you can get to 80% Very quickly, getting beyond that, that that next getting close to like, excellent edit, that will take a lifetime, but you can get from shit to passable and have shit look pretty good. Using apps like Canva, and a lot of great templates, please make them your own guys. But like, you know, using your own color themes or getting familiar with an app like Canva can make you great enough, right, from an outside perspective and making good, reasonable social. And that may not be all your social media content. But it'll help some of them that may help you make flyers you may get other ideas out of but that is a skill set that you can improve that you'll now have forever. And in the execution of that you'll actually be hopefully converting more leads, right, you'll at the very least be getting some more social media content put out there that has a purpose. And so that's a big deal. I want to make your limitations list and then move on. I want 15 Five limitations and 15 opportunities and if your business doesn't have 15 opportunities that may just be following up with all of your former members with a simple email bucket that's an opportunity money tight email, everybody who's quit your gym, all of them and say, hey, it's been a while you know what maybe you found so we talked about the strategy hope maybe you found some but if you haven't, just semesters, we do some things a little bit differently. We got some new services, like we'd love to chat. no cost, no cost, no nothing. You got to say some words and send types of words and send it. As you develop. As you start to work on those opportunities. You're also going to realize, like, oh, maybe I kind of suck at writing copy. Perfect. What's another opportunity there? Spend a fucking hour research and copywriting then when you're doing all these other things, and you're baking posts on social media and you do the shit. At the end of each week, go back and review because now you have a little bit of context for your copywriting. So that then each week your copywriting will improve. So these are there's there's a million difference



John Fairbanks 23:13

quickly, right? And they're coming so quickly because this is what we do. Yes, we've worked with enough personal trainers, enough gyms, enough coaches, we've worked with enough people to know that this is everything that's going to be on your list we've seen and we've tackled before. So this is why it comes so fluid. And this is the number one mistake is that perfection piece. So once you get your list it now the next thing for you to do is you need to make sure that you get what you want to get at you know you want to get what's the phrase you want to get. You want to complete everything you want to get 100% of the things done, get them to 80% Yep. Because the reality is if all you ever do is wait to get everything to 100% before you move on, you'll never actually get anything done. Yeah. So just get 80% of the way there and then check the motherfucker off and then keep moving. As you talked about all the time because it comes from Jocko which is cover and move. Right now everybody you immediately run into an issue you just fucking stand in the open and get through a barrage of sadness bullets, and they just don't yell.



Tyler 24:19

So one of the things I talk about too with this is a good example in context of think she'd probably down here listen, I have a lovely wife, Megan has now transitioned from started personal training 11 months 11 and a half months ago now 10 basically 10 months ago right at the middle of middle November, right so called 11 months with just one client and then two and then three all this while having a full time job right? Got to this summer scale back to full time job to just part time working, you know, 1015 hours a week that was all and then coaching. So but we got to this point where we've always always talked about this. The jumping off point moving foot two full time is opening the business or taking that big step. Transition never quite meets up financially because at some point, even the little bit of money that you're making from the other thing, you don't want to sacrifice even when you raise your income on the other thing, you're not willing to like, well, I can sure use that extra little Valium. Now I have more, right. But one of the things we got we started looking at like, but she was too busy. It was too busy with the daytime job even part time it was too much for him part time work, it also jammed up all of the morning time, which is where like a large percentage of our clients don't have for clients during the morning. So now, but at that time, it was like, we were like you're missing out on this opportunity. How do we do it? What do we do? Now? What do we do? Do we just quit the day job and just have to cover that big gap and income for a while and not know when we could sell or how we could sell? What's the solution? What would you guys do? Just be too busy? Could we just have been too busy for too long and burned out. But that's not a very good plan forward either. We don't have like a shitload of money, we can just not have lost a ton of income either. So what's the solution? Well, we haven't asked. Right. Because at that moment, she was too busy. So we weren't really actively posting about coaching availability. We just weren't because there was no time on the schedule. But we realized like, oh, focusing on the problem, and instead of letting an opportunity bridge that gap is what was fucking us up. So we just posted consistently for like, three, it was like three posts in eight days, 10 days, that was just the testimonials like hey, we got some coaching stuff. And sure shit. Next thing you know, it's like leads come in, like almost immediately and every time we would say let's make a new post today, let's do it. Let's see what happens. And if you've got procrastinated upon, as soon as we would make that post the next day, there would be fucking leads that follow up, right? Just somebody would message somebody coming out of the woodwork. It's not always directly because of the post, but somebody saw it. And it stirred them up enough and rattled them loose, and they reached out. So that is, uh, but it is a prime example of like, if we can't, I don't I'm not available in the morning, what am I going to do? Well, let's just sell enough so that you can quit the day job and let's figure out if we can sell that now. And sure as shit. So that way right away, freed up. Now the schedule is completely free. Now she works mornings and evenings, we've got half the day off in between, and it's, it's now there's room to grow. There's breathing room. And that is how you need to be solving these problems. So solve problems with opportunities and quit bashing your head into it.



John Fairbanks 27:36

But Tyler I have posted before and I didn't get any leads. And I posted multiple times and got zero leads. What do you say to the gym owner that says that it's a



Tyler 27:47

consistency game. Do you guys know this? Right? So it's no different by the way and if you've had clients that come in and go guys, I come in and say I think your program sucks. What do you mean? It's like? Well, I mean, I bench 300 pounds last week, and I My goal is a 400 pound bench press and I worked out last week. I did your program. And now I don't know a foreign of how to bench press . Why is that? And social media works very similarly. You need reps, you need exposure, people need to see it very often and it takes time. So we can't just start doing something and expect it to convert your first post won't convert your second post won't convert, your 50th might not convert. But as long as you're not as it but if you're not playing that game 100% of your posts won't convert. If you play the game long enough people will identify you as the person who does this thing. If you post and continue to tell people I am this person, I do this thing I sell this, here's how you can get a hold of me. You do that often enough for a long enough amount of time people are going to identify you as the person that coaches the person that people go to for fitness. If you're not making that ask often. How the fuck are they going to know that even that's even what you do or when they do get to the point where they're about to consider doing it. They're about to consider hiring a trainer, not even you just a trainer? How do we know that they choose you? If you haven't been in front of their mind at all? It's tough, right? It's a tough game. John, I want you to tell the story about your door to door salesman.



John Fairbanks 29:20

Oh, yeah. So for the last year, we have had mice in our house. Right got two cats. They kill the mice, but you still see mouse shit every time you open a goddamn drawer. So it's definitely been over a year since we even had time to renovate a goddamn kitchen. And our one friend was like, you know, I found that the mouse problem got you know, it was less of a problem after we got the kitchen redone. Because now all the kitchen shit got fixed. So we moved out and the kitchen mouse problem wasn't a problem anymore. I'm like, well good and I won't have to call anybody like we're just gonna redo the kitchen and then I won't have a mouse problem anymore. Come to find out, if you still have a garage that is not built out and still has exposed ceilings, you're still going to have a mouse problem even if you redo your kitchen. So sure enough, I still have a fucking mouse problem. Until one day, a kid rings our doorbell in the middle of the goddamn day, I come out, and he sells pest control. He doesn't know it. But I'm ready to just give him money now, because now I don't have to call anybody. And he's right there. Tyler said he was bad. I had to have in his first or second house that he liked he was buying? Well, he would have done better if you had the sheet in front of him and was just reading the script. He was terrible. But I was buying, no matter what you had



Tyler 30:50

the need. And whether you had the need for so long, and you hadn't taken action on this, right? So the truth is you've been too busy. It's not completely in front of your face all the time. This is not like how a lot of new people find their way to hiring a personal trainer coach or joining a gym. They know it's been hanging over them for a long fucking time they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They just kind of need to be reminded. And then it's like, oh, yeah, you know what, I am pretty close to making this fucking taking this action. A lot of people are close to taking that action. And they're not going to take it with you if you never knock on that fucking door. And that kid got the easiest sale ever. Even you made him fumble through it a little bit. But like, well, but why did he get why he got that sale, not because he was good. You don't even know if they're good at pest control, you have no idea. If there's good pest control as they are delivering a sales pitch, they suck at pest control. But you know what, they made it really easy for you to make that decision. like, Fuck, he's here. He's the guy. They said, they're the guy that got it looks like it's on the up and up. You don't want to go look anywhere else. It's right there. Boom. And I really think that guys, gym owners, coaches, personal trainers, you need to take that mindset where like, I need to be the one. I just need to be the one when people think that they want to make this change. I want them to think about me. Well, how the fuck are they going to do it? How are you going to make them think about you? You don't have to make these long engagements. You don't gotta become an influencer, you know, we fought I fucking hate that shit. Can you don't gotta be a guru, nobody gives a shit. Because they're not that far along. Right? So all you need to do is when they think fitness and they think they want when they think they're about to they know this has been in their mind, when they say when I'm going to make this step, I'm going to reach out to this guy, because he's the one who I see posting about it all the time. That's it. That makes it easy for him to know that you do this. And there's that thing we see a lot. Guys, if you as a business owner have not posted many times recently asking, telling people like what you do, hey, here's what I do. We'd love to have your business. What the fuck? Like, I don't I don't understand that part at all like that. There's a lot as there's a ton of gym owners out there. In our coaching network. There's some not none of our paid guys. But like in our, you know, circle of coaches that we've worked with over the course of the last five, six years, right, John, there's a lot of coaches and personal trainers who I follow and friends with on social media who don't, who if you look, you don't know what they do. I wouldn't know that they're really about it. And I'm telling you, the ones who are about it every day, I am this, I'm in the gym, here's my clients, I love this, I love doing this, those people who you have to be about it, and you have to constantly be about it. And you need to publicly be about it. I promise it works. I really do.



John Fairbanks 33:41

And this is just one strategy. I don't want it to get hung up on. We've talked a lot about social media. This is one of many different strategies on just the marketing side, just being top of mind of how you can go about doing these things to be front of mind. And a lot of the stuff that you and I like the most Tyler that we dive in the deepest on gear Academy with our owners is the traditional marketing strategies, non digital, because, well, there's a reason why there's the traditional marketing strategies. They've been around since before the 1900s began, right. They continue to be successful. And I think that there's a lot of gym owners that are out there that are not taking advantage of shit that just



Tyler 34:27

works. Yeah. Let's talk about this really quickly before we gotta go. Right? I want to talk about this. So Instagram has rolled out what do you call it? Subscriptions. So now Instagram is trying to compete with Patreon, which YouTube did a few years ago as well, where YouTube was trying to push for subscription areas, paid areas but what you're seeing guys is the what's bleeding together of all of these social media platforms? So are all these social media platforms bleeding? They'll do one thing, it's everything that everybody else does, and it devalues the platform as a whole. Now, it still is the biggest game in the business, right? You still have to play the social media game. But I'm telling you, as this stuff continues, if everything gets fragmented, and the actual value of each individual platform for you, is lower and lower and lower, it does not mean you can stop playing that game. But it does mean that these other methods of marketing, these traditional methods of marketing are super valuable. And refreshing, John, nobody likes door to door salesman, but a door to door salesman shows up with his hat in his hand, who's selling the thing that you need? Fuck, you're sold and you're no sucker to get so you hate being sold. You're not super into some Schpeel you don't like that shit. I know this. But, these traditional things work door hangers work, direct mailers work, putting signs up outside, having open houses works, having challenges work, having Park workouts work, being accessible, being welcoming, and having people outside being present in your community works, going to trade shows works. Showing up at fundraisers and charitable events. This shit works. It fucking works constantly. It does. So you don't if you don't want to play the social media game, you don't get to not play the social media game. Unless you get real fucking good at the other thing, but I don't know that you have the time to do them. But you know what I mean, to just ignore what I think you need to do them all because the perception is if you're not on social media, you're not active on social media, you don't have to be great at it. If there's no stuff going on, it just looks like your business doesn't exist. But get out there in the world do some of this traditional marketing is fucking great. And it's coming back around because I ignore Facebook ads all the time. I get to a point now where I'm fucking hater all like I report sponsored ads, just because I don't like what they're selling. I'll be like, report bullying, like I will buy them because I know it tortures their algorithm too but fuck them. If it's some shit that is so out of my realm and I don't care or I hate the brand or don't like their product, or don't like it? I will like, yeah, I will be like, I do not want to see this ad but like I will do it because I don't want to shit. And that's so I will actively subvert somebody's ad campaign on one and I will also very actively ignore hundreds a day because they just go in and out. And people's people's fuck off mechanism when it comes to ads on social media is very tuned in right now. Okay, so you still got to play the game. ads aren't everything you just got you can be active organically. That's still a strategy that I recommend everybody get good at because that's a really effective use of your time and money. But get out there and do those other things, man because these other platforms, five years from now it's going to look at how ticked a fight everything got Facebook's doing reals Instagrams doing reals. And now everybody's doing Patreon stuff. YouTube's doing reals. YouTube allows the posts with pictures, Google business posts, pictures, videos, everything is a fucking social media platform. Not everything I am I have a guitar app that I use for reading tablature and things like guitar music, right? That's all I want to use the app for. And I go in there but it's also a social media platform where people have profiles and posts themselves playing this song or that it's, it's obnoxious to me, it makes it now the whole app is muddy, and confusing and awful. But like that, I promise that's where everything is going to go . Everything will bleed into one conglomeration of shit that you won't like. Because everything will be like Facebook during election season, basically, it was like, Oh, this isn't for fun, or opportunities. This is a misery machine. Right? So get out there and do some stuff. I don't know if there's plenty of opportunity. The traditional marketing thing is what John and I talked about in past episodes, too. But look at that. That's a great way to get so many opportunities. It's easy and you made it like some of it might just be fun and interesting to you. It might be like you don't have an open house. Let's hustle that out. Let's get some signs. Let's go out into the community. Let's ask, let's network with some other businesses. Let's just try. Let's fucking get out there and fucking truck.



John Fairbanks 39:13

If you want to genuinely create a movement and make your community a better place. Traditional marketing is where you put your time. If you want to live in a goddamn cave, not see anybody hide, then just go balls to the walls thinking that your 125 followers on Instagram or Facebook are somehow going to pay the bills. But you're in the service industry. So go that's where just as do what people do that want to be able to make money interact with humans and be human. And this is where it's, you're never not a business owner. You're a business owner every single place that you go. So it's the idea of networking and being out there. There's a lot of these strategies that you really can kill two birds with one stone, you're gonna be doing a lot of different things where you can be actively helping your company. But that's only if your mindset is in the producing, creating mindset, because you won't see opportunities. If all you're doing is looking down and your whole life as well as me, you won't see the ample opportunities that are all sitting right in front of your face. Because all you're doing is worrying about not wanting to go out. We can't, I can't afford it. I can't go out. We can't do this, that or the other. So change the mindset. Now see some cool things happening.



Tyler 40:35

So, limitations exist, keep your eyes on opportunities, because the more you focus on limitations, you're going to miss out on opportunities and you're not going to move on from those limitations. You're just going to find more limitations. And that's it. So quit being the person who says how things aren't you know, this guy's you present a good idea to someone and someone gives you 20 reasons why it won't work. Fuck that person. That person sucks. Cut that person out of your life. Okay. But the problem is for a lot of people, you are that person in your own life. And that sucks. Don't be that guy. Be the guy who goes to the gym owners revolution Facebook group. That guy fucking rule that guy. That gal, those people are awesome. So get in there. Links in our description. Follow the gym owners podcast on Facebook, and on Instagram, Facebook, on Instagram at the gym owners podcast. Follow me at Tyler effing stone is Tyler eff ironstone and follow John at



John Fairbanks 41:29

Jay banks. F L.



Tyler 41:32

John, are you excited about the new When's the Florida documentary from your college football team? The team you played on came out. Will that come out soon?



John Fairbanks 41:40

I do not know when it will come out. But it should be good. It looks like they've interviewed quite a few players, everyone but you shocking luck. My job was to be quiet.



Tyler 41:55

You would think that would have wanted to interview some like regular people because it's like, you have like Tim Tebow. And then you have just like murderous psychopaths. And then you should just have a regular voice in there who's just like, yeah, it was wild, man.



John Fairbanks 42:09

They're looking, they're looking to be top 10 Where's that coming from? That's horrible. No, they're looking at the top 10 You can't be next to Jeffrey Dahmer. You can't me Yes. rockumentary. And then also be like, Hey, here's some normal fucking people that played football in college. Like no, no. We have a guy that killed a few people. This guy killed his wife. We had so many.



Tyler 42:31

Tim Tebow is also Tim's is the extreme



John Fairbanks 42:36

on the other end of the spectrum. Well, this guy is Jesus reincarnate. And he played football and he's gorgeous. And he also married Miss Universe. So there's that guy. And then we have a whole bunch of convicted felons. I saw a statistic the other day that said a half. Half.



Tyler 42:53

I think it was more than half



John Fairbanks 42:55

of the one of the teams one of the years that I played with have been have been in



Tyler 43:01

prison prison prison. I think I think the numbers I think it was like, like two thirds had been arrested. Like, yeah, it's wild. It's wild. So let's go, let's get an inside scoop. Here. John, though real quick. Before we gotta go. We'll give it this VIP shit, because nobody's listening to me. How did Tebow know that? Yes. Have you ever talked like this? Did Tebow



Tyler 43:26

know that these guys were bad news. And how did he manage it? Was he very separate? Also, in this conversation? Did he like to have at least an insulated group of teammates that were like a good bunch that kept him buffered from all that stuff? Like, did he have a circle of good dudes? Or was he just a good dude, amidst some crazy shit that had to keep some distance?



John Fairbanks 43:49

Tim was just a good dude. Like he was, you know what I mean, in the middle of Sodom, Gomorrah? Yeah. Like he was a solid dude. And was always legitimately that good all the time. There were some guys that were the kind of dudes that he spent more time with, but he didn't go out. Yeah, you know, I mean, Tim went to school. And then he went to the stadium to watch a film, like, didn't have girlfriends, didn't do anything, the dude and there was, there's guys that are that way. You know what I mean? There's reasons why they're Heisman type players or whatever. It's the dudes that are the real freaks that we played with that were guys that were like McDonald's. Every time they ate, it was McDonald's, or whatever the team had given them already at 3am And then they would come out and still just run like for 140. And like, it was like, damn, like, imagine if they just gave just an ounce of effort at all, what could have been possible? What? Again, it's a little bit that 80% argument though, like well, you would have ran a 411 instead of a 412. Like, what are we talking about? Like?



Tyler 44:53

You said, I got to stop eating McDonald's and partying nonstop and getting all of the trappings of being young. and attractive and famous and it's like, No. How about we're good enough? And I'm going to enjoy this.



John Fairbanks 45:07

But to answer your question, they didn't even insulate Tim. They would put them further into dangerous water. So like Aaron Hernandez when he came onto the team, they may Tim his roommate



Tyler 45:21

what so tell because they did they think that he would rein them in.



John Fairbanks 45:25

And it helped right? Aaron didn't kill anybody that Aaron did kill anybody I'm telling you, but everybody did it right. It was like he would come in and do Bible study with Meyer. Bible study. Like you did all sorts of stuff. He wasn't allowed to go home. This is really horrible. He wouldn't be able to go home, like wasn't able to do a number of things like that. And wild because they knew as soon as he was going home, there would be an issue and it wasn't until his I think it was here's what's awesome. So I just told that story out of order. So there was someone that ended up dead right when he got to Florida. So the boys are in Midtown at the policies and those dudes they were all really close like her Nan that's why they got in trouble. Yeah, the bouncy boys were like three Hernandez hats and all sorts of shit like right when he got arrested and they got their agents got



Tyler 46:27

that didn't age well.



John Fairbanks 46:30

It wasn't it wasn't good. But he was right when they got there. Some dude got into an altercation with one of the policies and snatched a chain off his chest in town. That dude ended up dead in an alleyway before the end of the night. And a bunch of our players all got pulled in. So lawyers, cops, everybody was involved with a bunch of guys that all like, and nothing came of it. Like whether charges were dropped, or they couldn't find what happened or who did what. Yeah, I think Tebow became his roommate after that incident. And so I think that was definitely part of that piece. But that's why Yeah, no, we get it like, I have lots of stories.



Tyler 47:15

We're gonna have to have our Florida Gators at the end of each thing. That's funny. We see I headed the opposite. So I got put up on a new trip with the one other kid that was me with the one other guy who was definitely most likely to cause trouble. And then we were placed immediately in an adjoining room with coaching staff on either side. That's what it was. So there was no leaving. There was no nothing so you either put Tim Tebow with him or you put them all in the same place in some cases just jail. Alright guys, so



John Fairbanks 47:53

they couldn't get out and then be one spot. They all have to stay together.



Tyler 47:56

Well keep your eye out for the Florida Gators documentary. And maybe you'll see John and some B roll footage.



John Fairbanks 48:02

Definitely my simians. Yeah.



Tyler 48:04

Alright guys, thanks a lot for listening. We'll see you next week. All right. Bye.