How to Launch a New Program, Product or Class

people, gym, build, coach, program, sell, email, business, money, owners, big, staff meetings, muscle building program, product, run, person, week

Tyler 00:01

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. This week, we're gonna talk about the things that you need to know. Or what you need to do in order to know that you're ready to be launching a specialty program, you're gonna launch a new program, a new class, a new product at all within your gym. There's some things that you need to have squared away, before you decide what to do when to do it. And then we're also gonna go into kind of a step by step guide a little bit on how you actually can execute, sell and fulfill your new products, new classes, new programs, whatever, before we start, make sure you go to the gym owners revolution, that Facebook Group link is in our description. Get in there when it's a big challenge, come up with some nice free things for you to hop in, where we'll kind of help guide you to build your new offer stack, get your business selling bigger ticket items super profitable. So we're going to execute all that stuff within the Facebook group for free here in the next month or two. So get into the gym owners revolution Group link is in the description. Follow the show on Instagram at the gym owners podcast. Follow me at Tyler Elphinstone on Instagram and John, how can they find you?



John Fairbanks 01:01

You can find me on Instagram at Jay banks, f L. O.



Tyler 01:05

So John, what's the number one trap that people fall into? When they decide to launch a new program or new product within their gym?



John Fairbanks 01:17

They do it they do it without any fucking plan at all? Yes,



Tyler 01:21

yes. And we were just talking about this before is we've done it in our but we've done it almost every business we've been associated with every business we've worked with, it's a mistake that we've made a lot, which is building a product before you've sold it. Essentially, right? If you're if you if you're going out there, and you want to make something you want to you know, I want to have a new class a new program, if it's in our business, maybe it's a new, it's a new course or an entire thing, completely building this, this, we're not making houses here. By the way, let me give you this analogy. Do you know how new houses are sold? Nowadays, if you go into a new development, very rarely are they building a house, letting it sit there and then hoping that people come and then want to buy it. That's not how this goes anymore, what they're going to do is they're going to build one model home. And what they're gonna do is let a bunch of other people go through and check that out. But yeah, it's gonna be pretty much like this kind of thing, and they'll sell 25 houses that don't exist yet. And then they start building them. And hopefully around the time the financing is done and closings done, the house is pretty much there. But they're selling houses that don't exist. And you do need to know that your business kind of needs to do this. Because I've done this thing, where we've built entire online courses, I've done it for training programs to full training course programs, I've done it for educational products, where I have built the entire thing from beginning to end. And maybe it was one step misguided from the demand or whatever. But it built the whole thing to all this work, branded, and we're ready, I got this product, it sits there. And then you go and you try to sell it and under perform. And what you've done is you've maybe recouped a little bit, but the opportunity to earn money was the reason you started down this road. And that's the only reason you put in all that work and it wasn't there. So it's super, super important to assess the first thing you need to do is assess the demand. And don't you don't need to make a product and then hope that people sell it or hope that people buy it, you need to find out what people want, then you need to make that thing. And by the way, find out what they want, tell them you can do that for them, take money from them, and then start making that thing. But you need to get as close to that transaction already happening as you can possibly be before you start launching a new product in your gym.



John Fairbanks 03:37

And if you do it the right way, you will be able to bankroll. To make that thing successful. The whole idea is that oftentimes you lack the money to be able to make it truly as awesome as it needs to be. So you have to be able to get enough of the ideas being like I think this is something that my people want. I have an idea of what people want. You've done the legwork, I'm sure we're gonna go into this, like how you assess and decide what people actually want. But if you make that decision ahead of time, and you can't sell it, then your flock right you you've lost a bunch of money. The real gangster play is that you establish what people want. And then when someone buys it if you have built it correctly, especially price wise and how you go about selling it, one or two people are enough to bankroll the whole thing to kick ass and then the rest of the money is just gravy that you can then use however you want to use. Yeah,



Tyler 04:33

so the thing we saw a lot in the COVID era was gym owners trying to move sideways, you know, businesses were closed. There's a ton of people locked out of their gyms. There was a big demand for at-home training. And we got into it with a couple clients as well we they hired us to start building online courses for them so they could start to see if they could sell it and see if we can run a digital product and they spend all the money all the infrastructure, the website, the design, everything and all the fulfillment of this stuff as a as a maybe more thorough product than it needed to be. And then it doesn't sell enough. And then if it does not, and by the way, it does not matter how good the product is, if the product cannot get to market and I had I had an uncle, I don't know if it shows in this podcast, I have a great uncle who's like a lifetime inventor, and is like the most it's a very interesting story. He's a very feast or famine guy, he's had enormous houses on the lake. And that's one point. This is because of old timers like me he would be if he was still alive, he would be in his 90s at this point. But enormous houses have tons of kids like all the money in the world at some points. And then at times, I think there were times they're living in a boxcar on my grandparents farm, with like, eight kids. So this is like the ups and downs of being an inventor if you're all in, you're all out like it's, there's a lot there. But one of the things that he always said was, it does not matter what your product is, or how good it is, if by the time of all the steps that it takes to get it to market, it ends up being at a price, that is just not something people will pay, and it doesn't fucking matter, it's worth nothing. It really is worth nothing. That old adage, if you build a better mousetrap people will beat a path to your door is bullshit. In my opinion, that is as bullshit as if you build it, they will come. It's in the same vein, and that mindset will keep you poor forever. Okay, you have to really, really, really need to know what people want. And then you need to kind of get them already there if they're not already at your door, and nobody is beating a path to your door. So this is why most marketing in most places like most online businesses ends up being based on your audience, your email, list, all of that stuff, way more than it is your product, you come up with the best damn product in the world. If you can't market it, or sell it or get it to people or get people's eyes on it, it's useless no matter how good it is, or how cool it is. Or no matter what the value is, to be honest with you.



John Fairbanks 06:49

The biggest mistakes that we've made, that we made that I've made, the most dangerous place you can be is somewhere where you're confident on how to be able to build something. Yeah. If you know how to do it, and you feel really confident in doing it, you know, just enough to be dangerous, and it rarely is to others. And so what I found is that when you and I listened to gym owners early, and what they said and what they wanted us to do, we just did. And it's the biggest mistake we ever have made. Yeah. Because we did a ton of work. And the ideas were good. And we just were Yes, men. Yeah, we just did the work. It did it. It was awesome. It got done. It was, you know, had all the pieces. And then we watch these babies that we built. Because every new program that you build is like this tiny little slice of who you are right? It came from an idea you birthed, you watched it come to fruition. It's now living and breathing. And people just let the baby die outside in the rain on its own. And we watched that happen twice. And after the second time it happened. I remember that very clearly that conversation I had with you, which was we can't we have to start telling them no. Yeah, it just is no, there is a certain order and rhythm that these things have to be done in? Are we just melt Fuck it. No, we're not going to do it, you can go do it yourself. Like we will not do it that way.



Tyler 08:19

And as a person who has ideas and you have ideas that you think people want don't just the thing that you mentioned when he went through that John is very, very right is that you have this idea. And it's a part of you. But no, at that point, it's mostly just about you. And if you're trying to make something that people want to buy, it needs to actually be more about them than it needs to be about, you know, what you know, or how cool you think this thing would be or how much you wish people would like this thing. So now if you're gonna make a new program about how we're gonna do, we were into this one time where it had a bunch of pressure to make like a bench press program for digital stuff. And I was like, none of our people bench like they may wish that they could bench press well, but I've I know our audience, they don't bench press. They literally don't. And it's like so then I had to make this whole thing that I didn't want to make put out there lays an egg and it's like well, yeah, do like this is this is it this is how this works man like you know your audience a little bit just because you want this thing to be a thing that you're about like it's just does not work that way. So it's really important to know that the only person that matters in this equation, as far as whether this thing should be done, your product should be done is the person who's going to buy it. It has nothing to do with you or how cool you think it should be. Just know that so when you've established like, you know what I got, like 10 people that said they kind of would be interested in this thing. Knowing that constantly having that communication and constantly having that dialogue is the way like having your finger on the pulse of your audience is exactly going to be the only way that you're going to know what's what. That's because if you do that now you're gonna get a lot of really valuable information. But if you're the type of gym owner that heights and completely avoids conversations and Your jam, you just kind of want things to happen. Like, you need to have some channels, which is always John, we do this with our kind of for our testimonials play, it's like, What do you mean? What do you wish that we would do? What do you wish we would do more? What do you wish we would do less of what like that's a conversation that could should kind of be had, maybe in person and and also maybe in writing and officially back and forth via email via some constant touchpoints with your members, but defining what they actually want, not just what they want, but what they're willing to pay for, and how much they'd be willing to pay for it is the key to this whole thing. Okay, that's number one. So once you've got that in, you know that people really want to do thing a, they'd like, you know, I really would like to be able to do a, let's just go we have a good example for one, which is just like a muscle building program that we went through run through with a gym, that's now probably on a second or third year of running this thing a couple three times, it's very successful, it's a bigger ticket program. That program will not work in all gyms. Absolutely will not, it worked in that gym, because with the way it was communicated. It was exactly the thing that enough people wanted, you don't need half your members to want it. That's important to know, if we had 100 out of their 200 People saying I want this thing probably priced very differently too but we had a very consistent in between we knew that between 10 and 25, people will be willing to pay between 14 $102,000 For this specialty program. Perfect, then they didn't even have to build it. At this point, it was already sold, meaning you could take the money, you could start to just free up a spot on the schedule. And then you can fulfill on the fly. Because you're never going to be as great the first time you build it anyways. So the first time and literally when I'm talking about building it in this case, it's just like, What time is it going to be there? How are we going to email them to let them know building means more than just writing the programming. But it also does mean writing the programming, you can sell a muscle building program and not know what the program is going to be. Just know that every week, you're gonna give them stuff. And you're gonna lay out a progression for building muscle and hope that you're good at it. But if you do it long enough, you will be tuning it up as you go. And then eventually it will be tried and true, proven and tested. Perfect fucking muscle building program.



John Fairbanks 12:18

For our diehard coaches and our gym owners, you have to pause and think about this for a second what we just said, we absolutely have executed, we executed this the very first time and it made what 2020 $30,000 Right. So make that play. The programming was not written for the entire thing until the entire 12 week program was finished. Correct? Right, it definitely was not written if we had sold all the spots for the program and no programming was written. We just marketed it, sold it and no programming. So we become UPS obsessed with programming and the style of programming. And this is where really it was, it doesn't fucking matter, man, like at some point, it does to a degree as a coach or to sell. As a coach,



Tyler 13:15

It's a big thing for you to learn. If you're trying to make money in this, it doesn't matter how big your fucking brain is, how smart you are, how much you know, because if you try to put that out first, guys, I'm so smart, I did the ultimate programming with this flawless fucking periodized scaled up like, here's all the dorky shit that goes into this. And when you realize if you would just shut the fuck up about them. And you would say, we're going to get you some fucking beat, we're going to hang some beef on your frame here in the next 12 weeks or less go that that's what they want. They want to build muscle. They don't want your, your brilliant fucking stroke of genius to be written on paper like like, they don't appreciate that. And once you get that through your head, eventually you're going to be able to sell stuff that people want. And that's the key here.



John Fairbanks 14:00

The number one thing that coach that we work with, it's one of our coaches like for business that helps us specifically with marketing and video and the pie have all these different dynamic pieces when it's related to media. The number one thing that she pointed out, she goes and it was a big group called a bunch of other people. And she goes, the worst thing that can ever happen to you, as a coach, is for someone to read or watch your content and leave that content thinking, Man, you sure are smart. Because then they don't fucking buy. And at the end of the day, you don't want to be smart, because now it's like, oh boy, that's super interesting. And that's really interesting. You're really smart. So that person leaves your ship and they go on research and they go into diving down into rabbit holes in all sorts of places to be able to learn more about that thing that you introduced to them because boy, you're smart, and it doesn't result in them actually joining your shifts and changing their life



Tyler 14:59

Exam. way. So make it about making a bunch of clients make it about what they want. It's not about the program, it's not about the bones, it's about the results. It's about the outcome. And it's about getting a person to move towards it. And there's no trying to convince somebody who's far away from something, to get really close to something and then commit to it is a fruitless endeavor. So the thing to do this is why you again, you get all the feedback from within your gym, from your member base, it's like, what are you what would you be very close to pulling the trigger on, because then being a little bit persuasive goes a very long way towards making you money, if you build a product that's much closer to their wants, as opposed to building something that is basically 100% About your wants, and has zero fucking like zero input from them.



John Fairbanks 15:44

My wife calls me out on it. And I think she calls us both out on it a little bit. Because she gets to a point where she goes, everything can't just be fucking beards and bald people in like power lifting all the time. And she will give that to me when I might be a little more critical to things that aren't as awesome as we are when I hear other ideas, especially in a gym space, right? And I'll say, this is super stupid, or this is lame, and they're making a mistake. And she's like, well, you know, and she gets out, right? And it's like, well, I can't do that. I'm like, I'll make no mistake. If I was thinking or trying to get a gym to do a ball beards, powerlifting and whiskey only program and that was all their marketing, I would equally tell them that they were fucking up, and that they're making a mistake. It's on each side of the spectrum. And again, it's just get the fuck out of your own way. You have to understand your market and understand your people. Yeah.



Tyler 16:41

So from there, though, the nice thing is, when you have something that is that close, right, so for example, the muscle building program was really close. Like we knew we had some people that really were interested especially in a functional fitness gym. Most of them are small, most of them do way too much mid level conditioning to gain any size. Most of them once they get to a certain level of leanness, they wish they could get bigger, but all the fluffy 18 minute fucking chippers like aren't actually gaining them any size. And so like, it is a pretty easy market to sell muscle building to if you can actually get them to do the work. That's what they want. That's one side that's, that's one of your kind of customer avatars. The other is the person within maybe a functional fitness space who doesn't really like those types of workouts, they have grown to resent all the conditioning, it shouldn't be like, I'd rather just get jacked. So there's kind of two sides but then you can pick those people. And so we did the branding. So this next step here is kind of branding, name it, title it, have fun with it, but just connect it to those people. And so we just took kind of a fun tone with the whole thing. But the way they sold it is we were like, you know, we took it started out like I'm trying to remember how some of those first videos went. We just had a Q & a, like who is this program for? It's like going for anybody who's looking to get muscle? Who would ask all these like increasingly silly questions about us like, well, what if I don't? What if I don't want to gain any more muscle? Or what you know, if I just want to do cardio we have the guy just knock the phone off the thing. So it's it's very kind of quick, rapid fire but that just made the building muscle aspect of this seem cool. It was just like, Oh, that is pretty cool. Now what if somebody who sees the same and wishes? No, I just want to do more cardio, and then you kind of get like a Yeah, fuck that guy thing. And so the whole thing connected to them. It wasn't brilliant. But it was just a, it was a perfect piece of content was just one little thing between that, that piece of branding and the name. And then all we did was send emails out regarding that flow. We just kept it kind of thematically the same or as Hey, it was kind of fun. You want to get jacked. Instead of just like right Hello, we have a hypertrophy program designed with the perfect period. It's no it's like, let's get fucking huge. You want to get jacked, let's go like like, like Gone are the days of doing endless cardio. Let's get yoked big pecs, rippling fucking delts destroy patients of the month, like all that stuff, you could just lean into that. But when you have that thing, you know, it's already connected to him, you have a fun concept. Now you can be creative, now you can actually create and it's fun. And you know that people like and that that was compelling enough, it's sold. It crashed immediately. And it's crushed now every quarter every four months, five months. Every time they run it now it's a program that probably makes the gym anywhere from 60 to $100,000 a year now. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. And it's only essentially run a few times a year for 12 weeks. And it's three or four coaching sessions a week. Like it's just, you know, in a semi private, smaller group and, and it's Yeah, so the crushes, but you can't just go I'm gonna do specialty programs and do a big ticket, and you're just gonna wing one because you want money. That's the problem. You can't just say I want that money. And then I'm just going to make the thing that I want. If you want that money, you need to make the thing that they want. So that's going to be like that piece. Once you get the branding there. You can start flowing it you can sell it, but let's get into the details of that John, like how to actually sell that stuff. So we started. Again, this is an internal play exclusively. So you're gonna run specialty programs. You can Do a specialty program that's an external play. And we'll maybe get into how to execute that later. This could be multi layered, meaning you could run a special offer for someone coming in saying, hey, you know, maybe we're not just a CrossFit gym, we got this 12 week get jacked to get huge get fucking beefy program if you want in on this. And then you can run ads and do that social people coming in but know that your organic traffic usually for say a functional fitness gym or group fitness classes is going to say what the fuck, you know, if you just dropped that one on him right away. The way to



John Fairbanks 20:31

that we do this and have had success every single time is an important metric for this always is the first step, you always test drive with a very specific sequence, right you test drive it with your one on ones just you testing an idea testing a theory, then you maybe branch out to a small group, then you open it up to only in gym, all of these things and a few more that we go over with you in the year Academy a few more before you take it out to the public, like you said, and have it be something that you're gonna throw out there because that if you want to lay an egg and confuse your people, that's definitely is to have something never heard of or seen it before.



Tyler 21:12

Yeah, and especially if it's purely associated with your brand externally because now people get very confused as far as what you do. So once you start from paying the promote that people your people who maybe want to come over and just want to lose weight and I'm a regular average Joe and you know in some extreme branding for a specialty program, all of a sudden people will go I don't want I never want to go to that place and it will it'll cut the throat of all the other things that you do so know that that's very important. Now, on the other side of that when we do the stuff the most important thing is consistent communication about this if you think that sending an email to your email list in your gym once about this program and stopping in wandering wildland No Nobody really was interested I had one or two people talking I couldn't close them and stopping you didn't fucking try no that to that that is that is absolutely like it this is this is this is the same mindset with gym owners who are afraid when a new lead comes in to like talk to them about their the full offer stack and the if you just go ahead and handle here's our membership, do you want it? Or do you want something free instead? That's a big fucking nono, too. Okay, you need to just be the person who has the thing, which means here's our thing you interested in via email marketing, you kind of got to be consistent with it, you need to continue to send if your emails not good, you're not writing out John, what do we do for these probably the lead up six email seven emails going out over the build up to this thing. And so we're simply reminders, some of them would be embedded in that video others would be Hey, you got any questions about this, we are gonna get started on this day people are pretty excited. Ask your coach, there's a lot of different ways you can go to justify that outreach. But they need to be talked to about this thing, and they need to be talked to about it a lot. Because the way your emails go in your email inbox, it gets ignored unless it's urgent, meaning they're gonna ignore eight, they may pop into one if they see like, Oh, they're really talking about this a lot. What is this about? If it's intriguing to them? If you're only one and daunting, you might as well have done none. Because that's it, that's what you get. I've seen it with supplement sales to send dumps, Copy, Paste be like, Hey, we got a new here's a here's a laundry list of the copy paste shit that our fucking supplement company said, Do you want these just maybe tell us and like and then no real, no real, no follow up on it. It's like, yes, that's why you're not selling supplements, you have no love, it's just as pure, like symbolic gestures. Like, here we have them. And now please just, you know, make money happen. For me. It's cowardice. It's not trying. And it's a pure lack of effort. So if you want to sell this thing you need to try. If you've done all these things, right, your people want it. So once you get in and you pull the trigger, it's email, email, design, the whole sequence ahead of time, this is one thing you can kind of build out. Because you do just need to map it, you can write the copy. There's great tools now for writing copy with some of the AI stuff that maybe we'll get into the specifics of some other time. But it used to be a thing that was like, it's a lot of work to do to do it really, really well. But you can do it pretty well for not very much effort if you just take a very practical approach to these emails. And that's the thing you and I did a lot because we tried to do a lot of charming, slimy shit that just imitated what everybody else does. It doesn't work. I don't like to write that way. So here's the program. Here's the funny stuff about it. Maybe we drop in a few clips here and there. But it's never a thing where it's like, Hey, did you know that it's like, Hey, I'm closing the gym, as the subject is like, it is like a bait and switch ship for email subjects and stuff is very disingenuous, and people will hate it. But you can go through and you can just be practical. One of the things we always did was we touched it off the start date, and contact points every time so it comes like hey, it's just a reminder that we're starting in three weeks or two weeks. So if you want to do this, then we say something about it. And then we go through it's like hey, the week's wrapping up. If you've had a chance to talk to your coach at the gym, you know ask him about it otherwise if you're able to text me just a slightly different call to action. It's not so repetitive it really Leah's just about updates. If you tie those things to an event going on in your gym, which we did just attach to one time with a what was it, it was just like a barbecue that they were having. But the nice thing was just like hey, and we're gonna kick off this thing, remind the barbecues at this time and also, if you want to get in on it, that way the emails were useful. They weren't just solicitations.



John Fairbanks 25:24

Yeah, and it's important to have that balance right, that balance of you if you're someone and this is a mistake that we have seen get made time and time again because the other guys right the folks that are in this industry that you all know you know the names, you know what they're called, you know who they are. If you've ever gotten like swipe files or downloads from them and get a PDF of being like getting my best email sequence or text message sequence, holy shit buckle up. If you have not communicated with your population before your community before and you plug in one of those fucking tech sequences or email sequences, and you've never made an Ask you've never like given informative shit or you've been kind of off and on and all sudden you come you come hard in the hole of just ask ask ask as it is, like, flying overcharge. It's fucking brutal and your people we literally we live early early on, we watched a gym owner take it, plug all that shit in just didn't edit didn't update bucket nothing. And he literally started getting phone calls and text messages and emails from his longest standing members that were like, Hey, so what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? Like, I like that you're hustling? You're doing all these things. But like, this feels wrong. Like this feels off. It's like everything. Okay, like literally almost.



Tyler 26:58

There were almost threats to leave. Yeah, that too comes with some you know, running ads with content that are not there. So you have people saying like, why is this ad that I saw for my gym? Show a bunch of people that aren't working out in my gym like in the video of it? Like, what the fuck is this? And why is this awesome shit that we don't do. It's yeah, so it's got to be you. It should be you. It doesn't but it doesn't have to be slimy. And nor does it have to be super time. Listen, if you're, it doesn't always have to be your voice. But it should be about what should fit your business. And that's the thing that we do that we try very hard, especially within the gear Academy to maintain that the other guys out there don't the other guys out there do just want to plug you in to just this pure high electricity high octane fucking growth mechanism. That's all doesn't give a fuck about you doesn't give a fuck about your brand doesn't give a fuck about the thing that you've been trying to build at its heart doesn't have it has no soul. So it just turns up the volume and turns up the noise. And your people, the ones who actually liked you, the ones who you're trying to attract the ones who appreciate at your heart, what you're really trying to do at the center, what you're trying to do with your business, those people are going to go this now sucks What the fuck. And every gym that I've seen that does this, that's the one thing that they will cost you your soul may make you some money, but it will cost you your soul. And it does not have to be one thing or the other. It just doesn't. Okay, so you can do this, you can make money, you just gotta be a little bit mindful about your approach to going out with these things. So writing email sequences need to be slimy. Something you got to do. And you can by the way, you can be very thorough, you can hit up email stuff a lot. But if you're going to hit people up a lot, you better pay attention to the tone. And don't let that scare you away though the practical so you're getting this new program out John. All you do is you start sending some emails, letting people know. In a handful of those make sure people know that your coaches are able to answer some questions about it. Then in your staff meetings, okay, anytime you're gonna have a product launch you need to bring your whole staff on to like up to speed with it. This goes from supplements to new programs to just saying you shouldn't be having staff meetings regularly. staff meetings are not just about teaching your coaches how to coach or about what muscles mean what or whatever bullshit that is, it's like staff meetings should also be about your business because you're paying them money to be in your business, not to be your friends or not to someday become as big of a fitness guru expert as you are. They're there to help you make money by helping your clients and part of helping you make money by helping your clients is helping your clients identify programs that they would like to do and selling that to them. So your coaches whether it's in class or in a one on one need to be briefed hey you need to bring this up in class every day. And that can be simple it doesn't need to be slimy again it can be in the beginning Hey, if you guys are interested in this new function whatever operation beef house program we're running here at the end of the month let me know I can answer some questions about it or I can have you know owner come in and chat with your I'll just have him shoot you a text message if you have any questions. You could have a simple someone if you want to know just let me just write your name down. I'll just have him follow up with you later today if you want, but whatever that is like you need To make it very known that that is the thing that's being talked about in class. Coaches are divas. coaches don't give a fuck about selling anything. Coaches only want to coach and then they want to fucking leave, but know that you're paying them to be a representative of your business. And if your business does not thrive, that coach can go fuck himself. I have seen a million coaches that we give sweet deals to on commissions and all this shit, or we overpay, we've we've built some very lucrative systems for coaches and all that does, if you do not apply pressure, those coaches will become lazy divas, they just become more entitled, The more you give them. So know that you cannot just give them money and then have them say, well look at me, I just I really here to work for you. You can't just pay them well, either. Because if you pay them really well and you do not apply pressure to outcomes, okay, you do not apply pressure in the direction you want them to be things going, they won't do it. Because there's a level of hubris that comes with a fitness coach, that means I'm the one here, I'm the expert. And while there's compassion and all that other shit, they will take whatever you give them and they will at some point outside of the coaching aspect, they will do as little as possible in your business. So know that these people have two functions, to coach your people. And to be the consistent bridge to bridge the gap between your business as a structure and your clients. So you need to have them be there like we have a new product, talk to me about it because they're the person in front of them all fucking day. And if they're not willing to do that, then that coach does not fit your business that coach is just a person, a person pointer tour, and a clock runner and an exercise enthusiast who walks people through exercises and that person may be better suited to be a personal trainer then then he's going to be to simply an independent personal trainer than he is to be a coach within your business. So you got to know that the coaches need to be brought in speed this thing needs up to speed this thing needs to be talked about constantly in your business and in a positive way if you get a coach that snarky about because they don't want to do it, cut them out right away because they will be cancer in one month, two month three month for the ones who like oh, I can tell you you give them one shot at that and then that's it. No, you need to start looking, you need to start hiring because that is a role of the coach noise to fill and if they don't, they're a poison. You cannot let the fucking inmates run the asylum. Okay, you cannot and coaches will do everything they can do to make this place into theirs. If they can



John Fairbanks 32:20

Oh and just cool guy it up. Right exactly like Oh, I'm too cool. Like oh no, I don't know bro. Like I don't know what that is you know like so and so he's always



Tyler 32:28

Even really great coaches will do that cool guy syndrome shit to the point where like I'm just under the cool of asking people about this. Fuck that guy. I don't care how good he is at teaching people how to squat fuck he's because he's what he's doing is cutting your throat within your business. And what and what you need for your business as regards to your staff needs to be presented presenting a unified front. And that means all your coaches need to be fired up about it all they need to be enthusiastic. They can't. You can't have a quote. If I'm coaching here, and we're going to a gym, and they're going to offer a you know, say endurance program, right? Like, we're gonna, we're gonna go like some big long distance cardio like Mega endurance program. And if I'm, here's the big muscle guy, I can't go like a doll mode a bunch of little people in even though like, and because I don't think the stuffs done. It's just something I wouldn't be doing. Right? But I can't even say that. But again, you still need to be like, Nah, it's really cool. Like, it's really cool. It's like, you know, I don't know, the court is built for me like, it's sweet. If you're interested in like, the here's, like, they got to be on board with the benefits because it's not again, not about them, or their wants or what they think is cool. It's about what the person wants, could they need to connect those dots.



John Fairbanks 33:37

And I don't want to go too far on this. But it's, it's super important where it's, it has nothing to do with the fucking program. We get too obsessed with the program, we get too obsessed with the machine, we get too obsessed with the actual movement itself. Squats are cool. But what the fuck do you do squats? What's the point? That's why we do squats. So the squat is irrelevant. Whatever that movement is front squat, overhead squat, whatever the fuck it doesn't. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. The program. If it's a high endurance program for small people, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the program is, what are the goals of the program you're building? And that's what everyone should be communicating? Yeah, what's the point of it? All right. One of the things I wanted to hit on that I think it's, you're the fucking general of your organization. You're the king of your kingdom, the castle, whatever, like you are in charge. In every one of these scenarios, you can not assume that anyone knows what they're supposed to do. If you assume right, you make an ass out of you and me. Like it was that's one of the oldest school teachers they just lay. It's the assumption pieces where I see the gym owners buck up the most and most consistently, especially when it comes to managing people. Everything we've hit on is driving towards why that's so important. When I played football, on Fridays before our game Saturday in college, the head coach would come out. And we would do one of the most fucking stressful things of the whole goddamn week roster check and package checks. The head guy would stand out in front, and he would have the fucking sheet. And he would say, first team punt team, and you had to be there in like, three fucking seconds. It had to be that there was no hesitation, no confusion. And he did it with every single package across every single part of the team. And Holy fuck, I have watched guys that were going to start tomorrow, not play, and certainly not start because they fucked up that check on Friday. Because it was when shits going gnarly, and it is the fourth quarter and there's a minute to win the goddamn game



Tyler 35:57

and you're not sure whether it's at all the



John Fairbanks 36:00

the wrong guy doesn't know. And it was you who had to know who your backup was? Yeah, it's right. So and so you're out who's in like, you had to be immediate. It had to be something that was so and because that no assumption was ever made. But it's like, oh, they know. They know the second string and they know who the backup is. They know who the guy the junior left is going to be no assumption was ever made. So we didn't fuck that up. How often do you see it get fucked up where it's all personnel issues wrong guys on the field, and they don't know what the fuck they're doing.



Tyler 36:27

You know this in, in, especially in football, what happens so often and that such in those situations is you know how it goes the first you get very close to the first game of the season. And it is kind of like that we know what he really likes. Man, I don't know, like you barely quite understand the packages. And what's like, okay, like, it is really not that sure if you're in there on the you see it on TV, you're watching stuff and you're like, you're like, Oh, this guy's like, obviously, what is it? I mean, they're gonna go for it. But literally the difference in having a punt team. And having like a two tight end package out there is like that the decision has to be made that needs to be voiced across the entire sideline, you can't have one coach parrot that thinks the wrong, and then all the right people need to be out. And if you're on the ground, if you're playing that is that that is much more on that situation is on much thinner ice than anybody watching TV knows. Because like that is, that's a level of like organization that is like, that's a lot it has very little to do with once the fucking ball is snapped, what happens? And can I outplay the guy and outperform the guy that I'm going against? It's not like that. It's like, hey, motherfucker, like there's a lot going on here. That's not just seeing what's going on on the floor. And that pack of checks is a big deal. This is really one of the great functions of your staff meetings, and we'll get into what you should be doing and staff meetings, but it's got to be, guys, here's what we're focusing on this week, I need these and there needs to be accountability to metrics. It needs to be next week, guys. You know, like, at the end of next week, in the next meeting, guys, we only got like two of these people committed. And so I went through and I've been I've been asking Jim members who have been in class, you know, if if they had heard of the program, or if you would talk to him about if you had brought it up, and they half of them didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. Okay, and this happens in every business, you know, we used to offer maintenance agreements with clients, you know, in the heating and air conditioning industries, we come through and say they have a service cost, something breaks. So are you offering maintenance contracts to these people, they're like, Hey, we know like, we come in twice a year, we check your shirt, the beginning end of the season, whatever. We would find out like somebody's numbers just wouldn't quite be right. So we shoot an email like, Hey, did our technician mention this, or we did what we started doing, which technicians hated. Follow up call at the end. After the service technician leaves and gets paid, you call them 20 minutes later, like, Hey, this is so and so from the office. We just want to make sure we got everything squared away. Cool, said he got payments on all that should be good. Did our client mention a maintenance agreement? And if they go, Oh, no, really, that dude is in fucking trouble. But the reason you do all that, and it's great for customer satisfaction, people actually want this shit. It's not because you're afraid or your coaches are afraid to ask if people actually want the shit. And if you don't offer them, you don't get it, you're not going to sell them. And the truth is for the business, that person getting asked, versus them not getting asked if that goes across the board that cost the business 10s 20s of 1000s of dollars over the course of a year. And that's recurring income, that's now you're getting a technician in their place every year. Like that's a big, big part of that relationship. So staff meetings are super important. This needs to be universal, like all the way across the business that needs to be plugged in. From there. A follow up via text message I think is another like slick little trick that we've done a lot which is you know you do if you do have the ability to text people, all of your people that are within your gym, when you do announce that new program, maybe maybe the second or third email that you send out about it. Just shoot a text message to everybody like hey, did you get a chance to check out that email I sent today? And the ones who kind of responded then that's all you do. And the ones who responded like Like, yeah, actually I did. I was not really that interested. Cool. Hey, no big deal. Thanks, man. And then the ones you see, yeah, what's going on with it. And then now you have a dialogue started. And by the way, depending on the price of this thing, you only get a few of those people to take a step or two towards you. And now over the course of that, combined with the in person stuff, combined with what they get interested in directly via email. Next thing you know, you got 15 people who bought a thing for 1000 bucks, 1500 bucks, 2000 bucks, that little bit of effort. Now it can be done over the course of the year, two, three times and it gets crushes.



John Fairbanks 40:33

It's really important to not underestimate what we just said or like, that specific question is said that way specifically, did you get the email? What I'm doing, what you're doing is psychologically, is you're opening up for hopefully, a yes. What you want is a yes. Now, yes or no. Now, if they say no, great, you've now just directed them that email, and that's going to help get that started again. But if you get a yes, psychologically, you just got to Yes. So now you need to go back to the last episode we just released which is the idea of closing via text message, but we went deep on this, but you are now in a sales opportunity, you are closing? They said yes. Go close. Take advantage of a yes, because the yes was just said, the more yeses you stack. Psychologically, you are pushing someone closer, the odds of them agreeing and joining something is just math, it's math. It's just, it's higher. And so take advantage of that, always open up the opportunity for someone to say yes, and agree to something you're asking you're talking about, just because psychologically, it gets you closer to them take because if they don't fucking want to talk to you about it, they won't respond. It's easy to go to someone so understand where you're at in that scenario.



Tyler 41:53

So at that point, your program is as you've if you follow kind of these, this guide here, your program has had, from its conception, to its marketing, to your outreach, your sales, I also really want to plug in one more thing, if you can offer up sales, build some sort of a stack to someone who's interested in the program, that's even better, don't try to fold all things into the program, have the program be the thing, right what someone is interested. And then make sure you offer like, by the way, if you want to add one of the great things for hypertrophy programs, or fat loss, body scans for accountability, or nutrition add on if you can like like we do to all that all those things, like, it's just a great way to make an extra three to $500 of fucking, you know, a Pete, for clothes, which, again, across 10 to 15, sales makes a big, big, big difference. So, building in some sort of upsells, like making an offer that matters, is great. So then it's not just about the program, the program can get to this, what other things maybe would you like this to have, make sure that you can, you can have it bundled with all sorts of stuff, don't force everybody into a yes or no situation. So when you do this, though, now you have a product that gives you the best opportunity to make the most amount of money out of it. You have people that are like you have the best chance of enticing people because it's at its conception, it's based on them and not you. And from there. Sky's the limit. When you fulfill this thing, then when you get done, follow up, follow up after the fact ask everybody maybe even an official, you know, out exit survey from the program where you can want you want testimonials about the program, because this is how you're going to sell and especially programs should be something that you can recur. So harvest testimonials, at the end, make sure you get testimony like the program was great, I did this and that should also include for specialty program, metrics for result, I put on X amount of pounds of muscle and it was like that matters before and after pictures are great if they want to do them. And then again, ask the question, you know, if we did this again, a few months, you know, how likely would you be to participate? Because now you know, because by the way their successes, will leverage more will convince more people to come in to do the thing the next time you offer it. And if you know that of the 15 people that did this program, that eight of them are like 10 out of 10 for sure I'm gonna do this, when can we start again? Well, now you have that money, you really guarantee if they put their money where their mouth is, and then you can still mark it tomorrow after that. Because by the way out of this specialty program that we've run, that we've kind of touched on this whole time through, I think we've got three people or four people that have done it every single time, which means of those people you've gotten, like $8,000 out of each of them. Now, that's $8,000 More in the last two years than you would have got if you were just selling them $150 memberships.



John Fairbanks 44:36

There's even another layer Tyler. So people in the first iteration of doing this have really rolled out and are doing a great job of having a specialty program come out. When it finished. They didn't want to stop. Yeah, so what ended up happening because there was an exit interview for conversation. And essentially, they wanted to continue; they didn't Want to go back to the group stuff they wanted to continue. So they sold themselves into either a semi private or personal training where they could continue that style of training because they liked it so much that you didn't even have to sell it. Now, if you said nothing, there's no opportunity. And that is why you have all those stacks, you have all these things that are in place. And folks, just please, can I give you more money, and when you don't have to ask. And when people say I want to give you more money, that is when you are playing the game, to the level that we want you playing and we have our people play inside of the gear Academy. And it's the whole reason why we wanted to create this entire thing to change the game completely.



Tyler 45:44

So if you want in on all this, get into gear Academy, because this is not about just hearing all the dollars that we mentioned and saying I'm gonna launch a specialty program, because if you do that, you've missed the first fucking step that we talked about. It's not about your wants, it's about theirs. If you can fill a need, serve that person and find out what they want. And you can do that knowing that that demand is there, that the demand to spend that money is there. Now you're set. If you come into the eye of John, we've talked about the successes for these programs that we've run with clients before and every gym owner within a few weeks goes on doing a specialty program. And they do it in a fucking lays an egg because it's about you and your wallet and it isn't about them and what they want. So just know that if the demand ain't there, you ain't got it, build it connect more with your people, open up that dialogue so that when people are actually telling you what they want, and from there, you'll know what to plug in. If you don't know what to plug in and you're just winging it because you want some scratch, you're fucked and you got a lot to learn. So join the gear Academy to solve all these problems for you to get into gear Academy. I don't know what it is. It's four or 500 bucks a month if you want to do it out there. We can pay up front but it's one year long. We're gonna go through and we just completely we do the offer stack we can choose each of these milestones whether it is a specialty program launch, but we make sure especially program launch to supplement launches to getting plugged in with creating new revenue streams or whatever that's going to be shoring up your systems helping you with staffing helping you with marketing we do a lot of stuff for our gear Academy gyms and we've had a few gyms have had like the most successful every month we have two gyms our every month have been the most successful month that they've had in their business for like six months since they joined every month more successful than before and every single month the most successful they've ever had. Okay, so get in it if you're shit sitting still, it's because you're sitting still. So quit sitting still getting the fucking gear Academy message us via every anything you want. Message me at T Tyler if it's on Instagram, message us on the podcast at the gym owners podcast on Instagram, get in the Facebook group. If you want to find out more you want to get faster here's Danny if you want to get in the gear Academy can't afford it. Get in on some of this offer building workshops that we're going to do for you in the next couple of months. Because you will sit down and have one or two sales opportunities if you commit to this, you will have made enough money to fucking float the gear Academy for a very very, very long time. And then we can teach you how to scale that up forever and make that money work for your business for the long term. So get off that fucking earnings treadmill and wondering why your shit keeps it and still getting the gear Academy. Get in the Facebook group links in description follow John at John Jay banks FL Go Gators. Later guys go Ganas.