DEVELOPING Your Business is NOT the Same Thing as OPERATING Your Business

gym, business, people, reviews, work, week, supplements, goals, revenue, tasks, owners, tyler, money, coaches, data, google, easy, members

Tyler 00:01

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler. Over there is John. Hi, John. Hey, guys, today we're going to talk about how you can get out of the constant loop that you feel like you're in where you're just stuck operating your business and get to the point where you're able to develop your business. And we're going to make long term progress every day, every week, your business should be better than it was the week and the day before. So how to get off the operations treadmill and get back to actually developing and making progress is exactly what we're gonna get into today. Guys, before we get started, make sure you join the Facebook group, the gym owners revolution. This is a group we built as a resource for gym owners where we share the full podcast episodes, we're open discussion, we're building this into a community of gym owners who actually give a shit about what they're trying to do gym owners who care about getting client results and who actually believes that they should be rewarded financially for doing so. So if you want to be a fitness martyr, and you want to be working so hard and help all these people and be broke the rest of your life, stay the fuck out of this group. Okay, if you want to have your cake and eat it too, and allow your clients to still have great success while you not become one of those predatory, shitty, but rich fitness professionals, this is the group for you. Okay, you can have it all. Join that group from there we go, it opens the door to all of our other programs, we'd like to just get in there and be with a group of other people. That is your starting point, your access point. In the meantime, follow the business or follow the podcast at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow me at Tyler effing stone is Tyler eff ironstone. And John, how can they find you?



John Fairbanks 01:32

You can find me on Instagram at J banks f L



Tyler 01:36

or a gym owner coaches beautiful people out in podcast land, let's get started. So there's a thing that we see very often: it's John. The most common thing that I see with gym owners is that they're busy running their business. That's, by the way, the reality of it. But there's the most important thing that I see. The biggest flaw that I see in a lot of fitness businesses, especially bootstrapped people that are turning a passion into a profession, is that opening your gym was the finish line. Becoming a person who is a gym owner was the finish line for a lot of these people. It was this faraway thing that they did all this work and saved money and invested it and boom, you finally were able to get it going and got some members and you cut the day job and now you're a gym owner. Fuck poor, you work a lot. And it sucks. It's hard. It's just hard. Everybody's been at this not all dogshit and doom and gloom. You love it and do Yeah, but the money's tight, and you're busy and operating is hard and developing is even harder. And if you're doing things yourself from the bottom up, you don't come from money, you're not spending someone else's money. It's a tough game to play, trying to develop a business while you're in it. Okay, I can't see the forest through the trees. So we want to tell you there is a way there's ways you can do this, there's a few tips and tricks that you need to know what you can do to get out of the operations loop and get into development of your business and your business should be developing should be growing constantly. And one of the things that works the most for this is just setting when you need to have the time to find the time, whatever it is, we talked about this before time management, delegation, whatever, but it doesn't take much. I'm gonna give you some examples of how little it really takes to make progress every day. But one of these things that you can do is just hyper focus on one thing, okay, the first step though, in all of this is to identify things you need to do to progress whether that's to make progress, whether that's your skills, suck at writing copy, maybe need some social media, strategies, or ideas or maybe your sales process sucks or maybe



John Fairbanks 03:38

whatever up the floor, need to get off the floor, not coached. Yeah, maybe



Tyler 03:41

yeah, maybe you need to not be coaching constantly. Maybe it's cleaning, whatever it is, right? But there is identifying those things. And we have tons of episodes back, keep listening back through if you're just if you're just finding us but tons of episodes on how to identify those weak points. This is exactly the thing you would do when you're coaching a fitness client. Okay, someone comes in and wants to lose weight. I got this ache and pain and I ate like a share too. My habits are bad and like is it okay if I drink 11 beers every day? That's not you know, like those are those are there's a list of barriers to that person's progress to them reaching their goals and I you finding out what that is, is the number one thing you need to do if I want to lose 20 pounds, I need to know what's going on even know what's between you and losing 20 pounds and then we need to address those issues. And yet gym owners often forget that with their business. That's how we do things. There's no lunch dinner, I'm just going to do it. I'll just keep doing it better or harder, or fucking you know, learn more about fucking coaching speak nonsense. That's like guys, that's great. But that's not why people aren't coming to you.



John Fairbanks 04:45

I'd be willing to say that gym owners hide in the coaching world of what we call it and we call it out like that, because of the fact that it's easy. It's where you're comfortable. It's what you're used to.



Tyler 04:58

And you can sit in that play to say you're better than other people who don't try that hard at it. You're broke, dude, I don't want to tell you, and I'm always paying you,



John Fairbanks 05:06

and you're not, you're still busy. So you're doing things. So it really tricks your mind into thinking, every single person that we work with. And all of our experiences point to when your brain feels like it's busy. You feel like you're doing the right thing. But very quickly, when we start identifying with every person that we work with everything that we've done, you can quickly identify. Are you even looking at this stuff over here? Where you kind of like, you've shielding your face? And like, only be like, no, no, like, I'm busy doing this stuff over here. It's like, Dude, you're busy being busy. Yeah. And it's about time, if you're serious, to do something about it.



Tyler 05:46

One of the most common things that we see as far as like people, whether it's procrastination, or even some things like, like depression, or not getting things started, like being just stuck at the starting line, or stuck in a rut type situation, one of the best ways to get out of that is to simply have like a to do list every day and just be checking action items off, even if it's simple, right, but just have a task, whatever it is even easy to accomplish stuff. Know that it is somewhere, write it down and check it off. Now the important thing is, right now what a lot of gym owners have is they're stuck in operations is all that is that checklist, whether it's real or not. That checklist, all the tasks you're doing are unimportant. And not that they may be urgent, but whatever they are, they're not important to the grant in the grand scheme of things. You're stuck executing, meaning you still get this dopamine reward if I get tested. I coached today. I fucking mopped today. I didn't do anything but that and that's what I did. But I did a lot of it. And I did it hour after hour after hour. Boy, am I tired. But you didn't accomplish anything. Okay, it was like, was it Van Wilder, it's worried. It's like worrying, you're just sitting in a rocking chair and not getting anywhere, gives you something to do and great, you did a thing. But essentially at that point, you have a job. So what we want you to do is identify some of that low hanging fruit in your business, whatever are barriers to your progress, the first easiest things to do. And those things need to start making some appearances in your checklists in your day to day list of tasks. Some actual development tasks need to be done there. And I know you got shit, you got to just do the stuff you've got to do but you need to have some actual what makes my business better this week than it was last week. What puts me further ahead, what gives me a better chance to succeed this week than last week. That list needs to start populating some of your daily stuff. And it's not that hard. And by the way, a little bit of focused effort goes such a long way in a business like this because you're in charge. You're the person with the connections you make, asking you to put pressure on staff, are you putting pressure out on social media, you know, all of that stuff? It goes really, really really far. If you put that focused effort into it instead of just being adrift in operations all day.



John Fairbanks 07:55

You have to do exactly what what you call that earlier Tyler's we say you need to do it, at least in my opinion, you need to do it every quarter the same way that if you have somebody that you're working with or a client that you're working with you reassess where they are, reassess what their goals are, reassess what they want to achieve. And then kind of do a hard reset, right mentors that I've worked with, talk about, remove yourself from your business and look out look like you're from the outside, like you're not in it, how would you completely restructure what you want to do every quarter to just be able to say, am I moving in the right direction? I think what you said, Tyler, which is what you're doing you can get so caught up in the doing that you are accomplishing a lot but you're moving in the wrong direction. If you don't have a clear idea of what I often do, I'll call it a Northstar of what I actually want to do. How many of you out there have stepped back and said, Is this really what I want to be doing? What is my actual goal? What's my intent? What do I want to do in the next year or in the next month instead of just doing? I? Whenever I did anything new whenever I started a new job, the biggest mistakes that I made is it was always that first six months shits just flying at you all over the fucking place to the point where you are just reacting to every day that comes to you. Yeah, what angry email has come in? What have I forgotten to do? What it what is it the fires, you're fucking putting out fires left and right. It isn't until you step back where you have a good manager that says, I need you to be proactive. We can keep these fires from being created if you do X, Y and Z. And that is what we're talking about, is now playing the game proactively instead of just reacting to every single thing that happens to you. And I think given time,



Tyler 09:47

because a recurring theme that I'm bringing up a lot is where you put your energy is what is going to continue to grow. And you continue to put energy and operations while you're ignoring the actual development of the business. Therefore, you're just not putting enough energy into it, it's not going to flourish without you giving some focused effort to it. It's an analogy. I talked about fitness and a lot of spinning plates. This is Chris Moore's thing from way back when it works in fitness very well as you're not going to get a better mile run. And I mean, let's just in your first three months, I'm not going to drastically improve my mile run time, while adding 25 pounds to my bench press, while also becoming extreme, much more mobile at the exact same time. Oh, and while losing 50 pounds body weight, and increasing my squat. So I'm gonna fucking happen in five years, I could maybe have all of those things, but I'm going to get them by focusing on one of those things, pushing it forward, until that amount of progress starts to the plate start to wobble on those other things, right, I benchpress I benchpress I get bigger, I get bigger. And as I know, my miles sucks. Let's scale that back. Right. So bench press, we maintain. And then we put a lot of effort into the mile run, we need to do this with your business. This is what you're going to do with that checklist, that list of things you need done, what's the one you can just get done right away? Or what's the most urgent, most impactful if revenues are the thing you need? What if it's just a revenue play? Whatever, it is just something simple? What if nobody can find your business? Because when I look up your business, you've got no fucking Google reviews, or two or three. Here's a good example. We haven't talked about this on the show thoroughly, thoroughly, right? There's a process that happens if you say lead for a gym we want leads, right? I want to get more leads, I want to get more members, I don't know what to do, right? Well, there's a whole ecosystem that needs to be aligned before you're going to be optimized for getting organic traffic, meaning someone who's on the verge of joining a gym is going to look up gyms in their area. Maybe they know somebody who recommended you to but seems really unsatisfying. But if they know somebody, maybe they'll get a direct referral. But for the most part, the average person is going to look around to some gyms, they may only look around at one, but they're looking for gyms in their area. So your Google business profile needs to be active, at least it needs to look like your business is open, it'd be nice if there were some pictures to give people some information. Your website is not as important as you think as long as this is there. And there's a phone number or some sort of contact thing there. That also needs to have lots of reviews on it. Google reviews have talked about this a bunch. It's social validation, it's validation that you exist, it's validation that lots of people like doing business with you. It doesn't I don't even look at it to a certain extent. unless somebody's rating sucks. Like hotels and restaurants. I'll look into the rating, whether it's three stars like that matters. But the difference between 4.1 and 4.8 on like a regular business means nothing to me, it really doesn't. The sheer number of reviews leads me to believe that there were people doing business with them. And people doing business with them. Lots of them make it easy for me to bet. It's just easier to follow that flow, right? So if I go to your Google business account, or you're on Google Maps, and you get a comparable amount of reviews to the rest of your people, your validations have stamped, if you have way more big wins. That's a big, big, big wind that there are things in this flow where people are trying to seek and find your business where they will, there's things that will increase momentum as they move closer to you and things that will just pump the brakes, right? So go into that and you have to Google reviews and all your competition has 5060 or 100 you are not at the top of that list. That is boom, I hit the brakes. Okay, but let's say you have the same amount of money, maybe I'll check out your social media right and I don't think social media is the be all and end all but you should probably have an account that has some of your offers, you should just be busy. What if I check your social media and you haven't posted anything in three months? Now I have questions: are you even open that pumps the brakes on my momentum leading me from cold to warm and then to walking into your door that hits the brakes. But if I go in, you don't have to have all this great content and custom made videos and all this like expensive, high quality shit. But if you've just kind of had that you just post on there sometimes if you've posted there this week, or a couple times this week, looks alright. And it's not all crazy, fit ripped people depend on the person of course, but if it fits what those persons want, what they're seeing is going on in the gym, whether it's from people or from equipment or just what your attitude is. What if you're one of those Conte negative elitist fitness people we do this better than everybody else because everyone's fucking stupid. And we're the smart ones and we put all our effort into fitness education, and we're smart, they're dumb. Doing this is wrong. Like if by the way you can be that you should by the way, you should be that you should not be that on social media. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm alright with you thinking you should take care if you're a good coach. You should think you're better than a lot of the other stuff out there. A lot of stuff out there sucks. Okay, but you cannot be singing that song all the time. Trust me, I used to do it too with my gym, I did it with just a few blows that blew up in your face. Well, that happens. Right? You work really hard, you want to lean into it. But that's not the game. But you go through and everything seems very welcoming on social media, well, they're you're set, right, you have not created a nice flow. And now just if your content allows for calls to action, make it really easy for them to convert into you, you've created a very, the water all flows towards your gym, there's not a lot of barriers and dams and everything in there. Now let's just go for an example. We have a lot of anecdotes about the Google reviews piece, because I think Google business profile is the future of business, making marketing easy for you and making it easy to be found. And reviews right now are the metric that's most rewarded, I think so in people's perception and by the algorithm. So we have if you have not, if you don't have the most Google reviews in your area, and you have access to people that are in your gym, and a lot of them haven't left your reviews, this is such easy, low hanging fruit, it won't convert directly, it just won't. But we could go into larger strategies where your Google reviews you can piece them up and make social media content, which now you'd have social media content customers, in their words, telling people that you're awesome. Instead of you telling people that you're awesome, which is much better, right? Your people want to speak and want to hear from their peers about you. So leveraging those reviews, as posting testimonial posts on social media is a great strategy. So we'll just get you started on what you can do for Google reviews. And we've talked about this in the past, but hyper focus on it. When was the last? How much effort have you put into it? You just people just aren't leaving your reviews? Because why? Well, because it's not a thing people inherently do. Pete , when you have a good experience at a restaurant, you leave a review. No. And if you do what the fuck is wrong with you, I never, no matter how good of an experience is at a restaurant or bar, I have never gone and left a review. And unless I was asked, now if I'm mad, I By the way, I don't. I don't leave negative reviews, I don't think either, to be honest with you, like I'm the type of guy I don't even send food back if they send it to me wrong. Because I've worked in the service, I just eat it, I don't want to jam up their day, or get spit in my food, you know. And plus, the fact is, at this point, they're gonna fix up my weight in another 20 minutes, I'll eat whatever you put in front of me, I'm just gonna like it less. But I'm not going to trash you for it, right? But the psychology of reviews is organically people are not going if they have an average or good experience. Unless it's over the moon, you're more likely to find somebody who will just post about you on Facebook and rant about how great you are. Right? This is great. I had a great experience to share with their people. They are probably going to your business page and leave you a review unprovoked.



John Fairbanks 17:46

Well, they're probably just having those discussions personally. Yeah. I go home and I'm like, Man, these fucking people were asked us rule all it takes is the next party. I'm like, has anyone been to like Kraft and burrow down the street? Like they're awesome. They're like, okay, cool. Yeah.



Tyler 18:01

So you need to ask. And just like all those things in that flow, human nature makes it easy for them to leave the review. So we got other strategies, but made it really easy. Send them a letter, send them whatever user email stuff, talk to people, be there right there while they do it. Yeah, I'll show you here, right here, check it out your phone, whatever you could do. But the example of creating focus on this thing creates great outcomes. So yes, you should systemize it, it should be part of your email stuff and should be part of your strategy all together. But if you just decided all of you out here, guys, there's no reason you can't do this. By the way, all of you, if you're not winning your Google review numbers game, and whatever, it's a piece that will give you great success in the long run. It's a long play. It's not a short term hustle. But you can do this this week, you can start today, and you keep your fucking foot on the gas, do it for seven days, and then find ways to plug it in. So it works more regularly, and then constantly revisit this focus on here and you'll crush forever, but just decide this week, I am going to float to the top of Google review numbers, I'm going to do it I'm going to ask people who already like you already do business to do you a favor, it gets you in the habit of making an ask and this is an easy ask, they don't need to spend any money takes less than a minute till it's less than a minute, I'd really appreciate it helps new people find us it's great. Here's a link to



John Fairbanks 19:20

because that one little effort, that one change of focus literally takes you from now all you do is make sure your business is operating day to day to where you've now taken the first step to where now you are actually developing your business to be something different than yesterday.



Tyler 19:36

And that's not it's not going to be it's not going to crush you overnight. But that perception now floated out into reality for a year while you do all other things and continue to develop more. Now this task that you did just this week will cross so there's that let's talk to an example here. There's a guy who helps out from time to time and I do some work out of his spot as well. And they've been gripped. They've been in the business for 20 years. for 20 years they had just over 30 reviews on Google, and it wasn't a real priority, but this was good. This is a gym, and a lot of members are very popular. And so we talked to him about this, just hey, let's just put some stuff up in the gym posters, QR codes, let's just focus on it. And he went for it. And decided, once we got the posters up, he decided yesterday, Said, the next gym, the gym and the only gym in town that has more reviews than he had. I think it was like 45. And he was in his 30's. So he's like, by the end of the day to day, I'm going to have more than them. That is an act of initiative more than just putting posters up and saying, and by the way, putting signs posters up to say, hey, please leave us a review. That is your long term strategy that should work holding it in your email list that will help build the system in general. But taking the initiative, no, no, I want this thing. And I'm going to get it done today. Now all of a sudden, there's a task being that, you know, people use your extra friends within the gym, who you know, shoot them an email, shoot them a message, hey, this is me, I'd really like you to leave us a review. Here's the link and do it. So 20 years of business had 30 reviews. And today they're like over 50. So it's like, almost doubling it in a day. Okay, so what the fuck are you doing out there, if you're not doing, you're just not doing anything, you're just gonna let that you're just gonna lose that fight. There's a lot of gyms out there that are just that's about a simple battle, you can win by just showing up showing up with your fucking sword. Okay, just show up. You don't have to do awesome, but just show up and try and you're gonna float to the top. So all you out there, there's no reason you can't just do that. Just do that. Hit that apart for a week, just blow that smoke at everybody all week. And just when in the end, you can give us some time to chill after that. But you gotta make that ask you to give it that focus.



John Fairbanks 21:43

And this isn't the only group that we've done it with? No, right, we did this with another gem. And let's say let's go all the way back to where we worked with them six months ago on this exact same strategy. Yeah, right. They started at 40 reviews, took action and all the things that we wanted them to do. And now six months later, they have more than doubled the number of reviews that



Tyler 22:06

They have almost nine pieces of data. Yeah. And so you get to be in at that point, you know that business specifically, if you search for gyms in that town, they weren't cracking the top 15 in numbers of reviews if it had just lagged behind, and now they're in the top one or two. Okay. And that's really important because, again, one of the main reasons people choose a gym, okay? It's location. So it doesn't matter. Where's it at, they're gonna search for a gym near them. Okay, and gyms near them, the one with the most rating that fits their routine, their commutes all their shit if you're too far out of the way, but you're the type of training they want someone to just do the type of training they want in a gym, that's not ideal for it, it's closer to them. Trust me. Okay. So you just need to understand that this game, this game matters the most the most. We had another one Jim had only in the beginning, they only had four, the four reviews and then we went back through and it was like there was very little social media, very little social media action and just no organic leads coming in. You'd have to spend your way to the moon to try to get leads, and especially leads have to overcome the fact that there's no reviews, that hinders your ad spend a lot of people take one other step to look into, you know, reviews, no social media content at all, like, you're screwed, okay, they went from four to over 30 in like a month. Boom, now a search for a gym in there or even just a search for that specific gym. A fight doesn't you know, that battle doesn't end immediately when someone sees that, Oh, nobody does business with them. Now you look valid, you look like you exist among the world. And another one up north that they push real hard for everybody who's ever come in, they get talked to about it, he reaches out to it. People that come in and do one off stuff do so they have more reviews than they do members right now, almost to almost double. And now when you search for that area, it's a large town, a large city too. I mean, reasonably speaking, some of the highest review numbers in their area, they just right to the top. And that's the long game, you want to win the long game, you don't gotta hit that you don't gotta put that level of focus every day. Like I said, systemize, the seven day a week stuff finds a way so that the system can grow year round banners up email sequence, QR codes, whatever it is, but you gotta put some focus on this thing. You gotta put some effort into that thing. So whatever your other thing is, even if it's supplements, so you sell supplements, but you know, they just sit on the fucking shelf behind you. And you're broke. Let's say you're not broke. I always phrase that in a way that's condescending. You'd like to be earning more money and you don't know where to put your time and resources, hyper focus on supplement sales. Make that your thing for a month. Make sure you remind your step staff that you will get complacent. You always have to apply pressure. Okay, if you stop, you'll stop applying pressure pressures, a word, the seams. What's the word people who aren't gonna like this term? Seems like you're pushing sales, but it's not just energy towards selling supplements, okay? Do that in your conversations, do it in some emails, just send out to social media, make sure your staff knows to be reminding people, hey, the signup sheet for subs is on the on the debt desk there, you have any questions about let's go or maybe spend two days we're in the gym, we give away free samples, you know, hey, come try this stuff, give us you know, bring a shaker bottle, we'll give you bro scoops for the pre workout if you know whatever you want to do, but just lets you put some effort to the thing. And sure as shit, it might work for you. But there's a lot of people that I don't know, if people aren't really buying supplements. Yeah, because they just sit there not gonna do anything. Supplements aren't singing from behind you on the shelf. They're just not you got to sing for him then. So pipe up.



John Fairbanks 25:44

And not and not being pushy is exactly, but it is applying pressure and maybe not even on other people putting pressure on yourself. Yeah, so you, if you were happy with where you were, you wouldn't be listening to us right now. You would be fucking busy doing a bunch of shit to be able to make money to where you don't need to look left to right. But if you're looking left, right, and you're like, Man, I need to be able to get some help, I gotta get some motivation or some ideas of what I want to be able to do next. And that is where you start. Once you get one of those. Be like the bucking dog that won't let go, like get a hold of it and then run with it. And then put the pressure on yourself to do things. And my favorite part about everything we've just described Tyler's is that we aren't a Google reviews business. This isn't what we do this is but a tiny stepping stone that leads to the next thing and then leads to the next thing to the next thing. My favorite part about the the folks up north that have double the reviews than they do members just this past week, doing everything that we've been telling him to do, and he's taken action and put a lot of pressure on this action is now getting referrals and leads from people he doesn't know that or folks that either have interacted with them in their process, or just heard about them on Google. Yep. And now they're getting leads to all sorts of things they never had before. And that's not by accident. Everything is connected. So as long as you are doing like you said, Tyler, you took us on that journey of like, when I'm thinking about Jim, I kind of check this out. And then I go here, and then I come here and then I come here and then maybe that if everything is smooth, then I go through the door. Well, all those things are there now. Yeah, everything's looking the right way. It's making it very easy for someone to come and give you money.



Tyler 27:35

Yeah, so that's one example of that hyperfocus on how you can do it between the say, testimonial reviews and supplements. And you can always level up each one of those things, even the Gear Academy, we have a big push out, you know, really step by step execution for Google reviews, and then how we leverage those for social media content. And then there's a leveled up version that goes through where it's a little higher level, you work directly with the client to establish testimonials that we get into the video stuff and how we make those content. So that InnoGear Academy for instant taking us up to the next level. So we do it if we really give you those tasks, here it is do this now, then do this now. So that you kind of know, we help you identify what that thing is your next thing is, and then we say do this this week, and then do this next week. And then each week we assess and we keep moving forward. But going zooming out from just those things, because your business is more. There's more to your business than Google reviews. There's more to your business than just getting sales and just generating revenue. There's things like client satisfaction, there's things like training staff, there's all these other metrics and soft metrics. And what's the word? On measurables? Ie measurables? What's the word not whatever, there's other shit you can measure that just needs to be done in your jam or things that need to be progressed. Yeah. And so one of the things we talked about is setting goals and kind of reverse engineering them, right. And setting goals is super important. And making sure where you put your goals are they need to be aligned, not just with reality, but with the data and the actions you're going to use to develop from zero to 100 100 being the final state you look at having accomplished this goal. And so somebody asked a really good question and the Gear Academy and do you have the name of the person just so I can give them a big thumbs up thanks. Or not in the gear Academy. So this is in the gym owners revolution Facebook group. So we're gonna give them a we're gonna answer the question on the podcast. We'll probably also answer it in the group and text them. But we wanted to share this question with you because it was a very good question. John, you got in front of you.



John Fairbanks 29:34

Yeah, let me pull it up now. Cool.



Tyler 29:39

I should have briefed you. Anyways. Just dead air.



John Fairbanks 29:43

Stretch Tyler.



Tyler 29:45

We're gonna be just fine. I'll just use my radio voice. Hey, everybody this week. Slow Jams from the Jazz Messengers.



John Fairbanks 29:56

You haven't left the Google review. Alright, so this is it. If you haven't reviewed us on Google yet, so Gordon Pierce, Gordon Pierce asked the question, how do you balance realistic versus unrealistic large vision, or goals is what I call our targets, but large vision goals in the beginning, when you're in that those first three months of opening, opening, opening something brand new, how do we start setting those goals when maybe data is a little bit lighter?



Tyler 30:28

Well, there's two things to this, right, I kind of mocked a little bit in the beginning, but there's a reality of the situation: getting your gym open is a finish line of sorts, right? It really is right? You are getting, you have gotten to that point, you have crossed that and now you need to completely go from pure development, installation, development, installing systems brand new to operations, right. So in my opinion, what your financial targets should be in these first months. First off, they should they should be very much rooted in operations and execution in the beginning, because if you fucking suck at executing, you are screwed. Okay, meaning those that is frankly, going to be the game you're playing, I'm getting I don't know, it is tough to optimize, like, Okay, I want to how do I know I'm gonna have x amount of members are, how am I going to know these, you're not going to, it's going to come out of thin air, but you're going to have to constantly adapt each week. I will say this the one way I can tell whether goals are too lofty, not even lofty, just maybe just too far away, is can I reverse engineer them back to now to safety, it's a 90 day quarterly goal, right? Can I revert that back to this moment? With data points. Maybe it's even accelerating data points where it's maybe it's 10 News, five new sales this week. 10 new ones the next week, and then we averaged 13 to 15 A week from there on or something like that, or whatever. These are made up numbers. But though having data to follow from week one to week two, that's how you know because and by the way, this needs to be apples to apples data. And hopefully your outcomes need to be also tethered to something that matters. So that we don't end up with sometimes this stuff can turn into a Faustian bargain where you're like, my goal is in this first 90 days, I want us to make $200,000 Okay, perfect. The gym has turned $1,000 in revenue, but you because of everything we did in order to do that you take home $6 This quarter, well, that's probably not quite gonna work for you, is it? You know what I mean? That's so there is something to be said where we need to make sure that everything is in the right context. Also, if it's only if your goal is only Well, I want to make whatever I want to I want to make $50,000 in the next quarter, like you want to make it right. Okay, that's great. But now I need more data, because that number doesn't mean anything to me. Now I need to get into, okay, how much revenue does the business need to have? How much of that needs to be needed to clear the bottom line? Right? How much that actually needs to be set in the business and we need a bigger picture before we stay in that tight. And then from there, we can know all right, when this requires this amount of revenue for you to get right. So let's break it down one month at a time X amount of revenue. What does that mean? What is your average ticket sale price right now? How many new sales is that required? How many people do you have on EFT right now? Recurring memberships constantly? So what is your kind of baseline of that that carries over a month a month? So how many new sales? Do we need that? How much can we buffer that with supplement sales? And what does that need to look like each month? And then from there, what does that need to look like each week? And then what tasks do I need to take to do this, because by the way, all these things are going to be a slower build up, meaning early on, the numbers will be low, you're gonna have to front load, the effort, the marketing, the strategizing, the time is going to be hefty on the front end. And then you're going to hopefully be able to carry some of these sales through. But that data is the data that matters, that's what you have to be doing is, what am I going to do? Let's just break it. So then from where that is, you sit in one pocket, and you flesh it out, I supplements perfectly. We're not identifying an opportunity in this if you want to increase your revenue by whatever amount to cover this thing. I will go, I will take supplements. I'm not selling supplements Perfect. Let's do a supplement play. Let's launch a brand. We can do this. It's just low hanging fruit. It's money you're leaving on the table. If we're trying to grow, we can't be leaving money on the table when I get revenue goals that I want to hit this quarter. So let's patch that hole. Right? That's easy, scalable money. Let's figure out how we're going to sell cell phones. Well, that takes a little bit of work, you may have to hyperfocus, make a decision, stick with it. Adjust as you go, but you got to go and you've got to move quickly. You can't go, you can't spend six months thinking about selling supplements or we're thinking about selling a nutrition product because it's thinking about trying to do something and not doing it. Like literally not doing it and thinking about something and not doing it is the same fucking thing is just not doing it. You just it's the outcome is all the same. So the fact is, whatever needs to happen, the thing needs to be going. You can't sell supplements if you don't start selling supplements. So whoever you pick, whatever your strategy G is you can adjust all that shit as you go. But you gotta start selling them now as soon as possible. So figure it out, come up with a plan, you need to be emails, you need to put pressure on your staff so that they know that this is what we're doing there needs to be focused, that focus needs to be passed along. And then now week one, how many did we sell shit? Guys, we're sold for $45. With supplements this week, we got to get better. What do you guys think we should do to get better?



John Fairbanks 35:24

And the data is not good or bad. It's just data , is it exactly what you said? Which is 45 bucks. Sweet. Were you tracking everything you did to get the $45? Because what you said is our font, we want more money. It's great. So if we want to make $90. It should be it should. And sometimes it'll be even the exponential exponential. But how many asks, did you have? How many things did you do to generate that? 45? Okay, well, then, let's double that. Whatever



Tyler 35:56

we'll find, when we make 90, or you're gonna find that half your coaches, we're not reminding people at the end of class that you have, that you have it out there that the signup sheet or they didn't have the clipboard in their hand. They're not accountable to that because they'll get into whatever level of comfort that they can get away with. Frankly, guys, employees are like this. Coaches, I understand you as a gym owner, you probably work coach, you're probably a really good one. Right? But coaches are fucking divas, too. I am was every coach I know is a bit of a diva. There's a lot of hubris that goes into this thing. And they're just not that interested in doing other stuff. Okay, they're not interested in it, but it's no different than any other line of work. If you're a cook, sometimes you got to clean up your fucking station when you leave no matter how good of a cook er, right? There are just tasks within the each job that are the ditch digging equivalent of that job, in every job that you know, there's some lists of shit where it's the stuff I hate to write coaches. It's not that fucking hard, you're gonna have to have your coaches make some asks if it's the supplement play. Alright, perfect. Are you asking? Oh, no, I didn't ask or Did you at least point them out to them? Or did you remind everybody that we have them? Did you tell them that next week, we're doing free scoops if people want to try the protein, I haven't bring a shaker bottle? Did you remind everybody. And so this process that I'm describing isn't just you yelling off into the wind, this needs to be planned as well. That's a staff meeting, right essentially, where you go over all of these things. And all of these things you need to focus on needs to be laid out for your staff. And that way, they're accountable to that data every week. And every week, we start to align our goals with the outcomes, and what we need done next week, and what we're going to do to fill those gaps. And eventually, maybe we skipped short, by the way, maybe I wanted to get $20,000 of this new revenue, I want it to be from supplements in the next quarter. And maybe I just got 10 instead of 20. My goal wasn't realistic. I hope you didn't borrow that money depending on those targets, right? But the fact is, you got 10. And you still have the thing that now you can grow and develop on so you did make that still progress. Now you have a revenue producing system in your gym and a new pillar of revenue and your gym that you did not have before. So you're more equipped now than you were before. What even though you fell short of that goal? It's okay. We don't want to get complacent and fall short of goals. But early on in the game your goals are going to be you're just winging it, you're totally winging it on your goals. So set something manageable, do not engineer what I have this week. And then what do I think I can do a little better next week. And a little better next week you have to start from the end and work your way back. Or else you can get lost in the weeds and you just stretch it out too far. But just that's my thing, if the data can't be pulled all the way back from 90 days to now or 90 days away to now. It's maybe just too lofty, right? A million. I want to make a million dollars this quarter. That's an unreasonable goal. If you're only making $100,000 Right now. Right?



John Fairbanks 38:49

With it? Yeah, that's easy, where Dan is, if you don't have the data, historical data to be able to build off of you can stay within reality of okay, what are the different revenue streams that you have? But what are you? What are the rules that you have at your disposal? Yeah, and then that should dictate okay, what is realistic? Is it realistic that I'm going to get 100 new members every single month? Well, then it probably is unrealistic, whatever that number is times my membership. That's unrealistic that that's what your EFT revenue is going to be. So it's like okay, if I need to make more money that's not dependent upon your membership. Well, God damn that's exactly what we do. And we can help you not do that. Because the odds are you run out of you just you're not going to be able to generate that many members. That's why we're always trying to have all of you reframe your thinking which is your revenue should not be dependent on the number of members that you



Tyler 39:48

have your plan. The biggest reason with this is by the way, we worked with gyms as they tried to grow and scale all the time and staff. quadruple your members tomorrow with that. fucker you're going to do, even if you have lofty goals, what are you going to do? You know, you can jar you're gonna get people you try hiring people in this world, see how it goes, it's not the best, it's not the easiest and otherwise, you're gonna end up paying a lot more than they're worth upfront and constantly to keep them especially full time. You can get some part time outfit, it's okay to but you're not gonna get the biggest go getter. So hiring is very difficult. So you cannot put all your eggs in your EFT membership basket. Because you're always going to be behind on hiring, you're always going to behind on staff, your staff is always gonna have a ton of developing to be done. They're always someone's going to get married, move away. staff turnover for the same reasons that members do. Sometimes it's because they suck sometimes it's because it's not for them. Sometimes it's just life takes them somewhere else. She'll always be behind the eight ball and staffing she cannot just run headfirst and members, members member's members member's members sales that no. Okay, so it's got to be other services they need to upsell. So are you selling nutrition product? Do you have one that's scalable, because you can't have one that's going to put the pinch on your Labor's but now that's another tool you have at your disposal. Right. And so this is what we've touched on now is very much reverse engineering, you know, revenue goals and things like this. But it can be as simple as, as you now analyze this, like I need, I have an idea for new product launch, or maybe a program that I like to run a specialty program or a club within the gym. All right, instead of just chasing numbers. Now this let's do this exercise from John. Well, we got time. So if you're gonna say you want to launch a club, say a weightlifting club or a specialty program in your gym, what is it? Oh, I don't know yet, really? Or maybe I don't have a name or I don't have a brand. Okay, perfect. Let's come up with the name. This week. Let's name it. And let's write an overview outline of what that program really is. And then next week, right, that's just Yeah, once this week, this that's on your checklist for this week, one hour, one day, you sit down that one thing, then next week, you're gonna figure you're gonna write down exactly what it is and what the benefits are for the clients from a copy standpoint, so you know how to maybe explain it to terms that matter to them. And then you have pricing and figure out when it'll be on the schedule, give or take, but you remember, you don't over plan the thing, right? But then you'll kind of know roughly what it is. And then this is assuming you've maybe tested it. Otherwise, you need to go through the process of testing and maybe with some one on ones is the program effective. But let's just say it's a club. So we'll stay in the world of, say, a weightlifting club or powerlifting club within your gym, instead of a program program. If you're going to go through that, go that road. Now. Next, when's a good one? When are we going to start it? Perfect? How are we going to announce it? I'll probably email probably social media, we're gonna need some follow up emails, right. Okay, so now the next week, so just map out these tests in a month in four weeks, you could theoretically have it announced and be ready and be accepting enrollment in this thing for two weeks. So you're six weeks out six weeks out from having this program, hopefully filled and operational within your business. But those are the tests. It's not just like, I hope I have this thing. Okay, now we have to break this down backwards. And it's not that hard. And by the way, I strongly advise against it because as a person who is hyper fixated on trying to do all of these things in one sitting, because I'll do it, I'll really do it. But again, you then burn out, you'll do all this stuff, and then you spend two, three weeks away from it. Or you'll revisit it again, and you'll rework all this shit. Just make it reasonable each week, set a time as long as it fits your overall timeline. You're okay.



John Fairbanks 43:14

Now you can build your plan, build the roadmap for yourself, on the very first day of what you want? What do you think is achievable? If you've set yourself a three month goal, like you said, Tyler, don't try and get it all done in a week, but a three month goal and then go from one month, a month, and then you can break it out of all the things you could do. You just keep going trial and error back and forth, back and forth. Yeah. Or you can avoid all of the mistakes and all the mistakes that I know that I made doing these types of things early on. I know that Tyler You and I have talked about where you've made them. But we've seen a bunch of other folks make mistakes when it comes to rolling any of these types of things out. You can bypass all those mistakes. And we literally just have the blueprint for you of exactly how you format those things. And how you do those things. And we go with you step by step week to week, month to month, to where now you remove the gamble. Because you don't have time. As a gym owner, you will quickly realize



Tyler 44:11

It's time to build a lot of shit and put a lot of effort into building stuff that then doesn't work. It doesn't produce any. By the way you can't be something that produces one and done . The biggest thing I find is you're gonna launch something that better be a thing that's now a pillar in your business going on forever. You start launching shit well that's, that's doing events. That's a different thing. That's a lot of plates. Yeah, you're Yep.



John Fairbanks 44:31

Now you got a lot that you're fucking managing. And you've got to figure out for some of those things to be like fucking on auto and go spawn on their own without you having to always be there to nurture it and care for it.



Tyler 44:43

So for those of you out there, we'll give you a lot of shit today so a lot of his shit you can go do right now. So take it with you if you want anyone to help kind of in executing these things. You want to know what to execute how to execute it how to make it the most efficient and not play this fucking constant expensive long, slow and just It'll game of trial and error. Okay, trial and error and error and error and error and time consuming error after time consuming error and disappointment, that's your disappointment and little win and disappointment, okay, that is very often comes having a business, let's remove a lot of those valleys and let's stay more on the peaks in the wins here. And you can do this by getting in with a network of coaches that are gym owners and coaches that have already had this experience. Okay, learn from their failures, learn from their successes, get ideas, run your ideas by them. Get in the Facebook group, okay, get in the gym owners revolution Facebook group. And from there, if you want to get into gear Academy, we do have the gear Academy, it's a year long commitment. You get in for one year, and we work with you every day, every week. We just We it's not it's not just a bunch of calls. It's not all this stuff. It's a task you need not to be on any calls. But we're just going to work with you and your business on things that matter to you and your business and your family every week so that every week your business is better and producing more and producing more for you than it was the week before it and the month before it and the year before because if your business is not better this quarter than it was last quarter, there's a problem. If your business is not doing better this year than it was doing last year, there's a problem. Okay, so then it doesn't need to be this way. Okay, progress should be the norm. Okay, progress is normal. Extreme progress is what we shoot for, truthfully. So if you're not making progress, you're kind of stuck in the operations. Get out of operating a business and begin developing your business. Okay, so we got today to follow the podcast at gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow me at Tyler F and so must have the EFF ironstone and John over and Jay banks, f L. All right, guys. Thanks a lot for listening. And we'll see you next week.