The #1 Marketing & Sales Concept Most Gym Owners Get Wrong

gym, people, coach, post, lose, work, sucks, business, owners, tyler, clients, conversation, success, person, money, service, exercise

Tyler 00:01

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler stone over the way is John. Hi, John.



John Fairbanks 00:09

I'm very excited about that. We're getting our technology figured out. Tyler,



Tyler 00:13

we are getting there. It's some by we I mean me, you but John stuff looking good. Sounded good. We're bald. Bald is beautiful. Welcome to the episode here. You can see us both very clearly. If you can't see us, it means you're listening. If you want to see us, you need to get over to the Facebook group and join the gym owners revolution Facebook group. Link is in the description. This week, guys, we're gonna get into something that fucking riles me up a lot. And so John even said as before we're starting, he's like, this one's gonna maybe get your madness I'm gonna try not to and he said, you're better when you're mad. Tyler is a good Tyler to be working with this is you know how Bruce Banner starts to feel exploited because people only want him to fucking hulk out. And this is kind of how I feel about somebody. It's better than having hot takes on shit. That's not interesting. I've had podcasts in the past was like, fuck it. Let's just riff on the news. You know, and that's the worst. But I do think this, this, this is the thing that holds near and dear to my heart because I think it's the biggest trap that gym owners fall into, in regards to their marketing, their sales, their messaging, everything. Okay, the entire thing that you guys do as gym owner needs to be about one thing. We're gonna make sure that you orient everything, focus on that one thing today. Before that, make sure you follow the gym owners podcast at the gym owners podcast and Instagram. Go to the Facebook group. Obviously, it's in there. If you want to find out more about what we do. Go to the gym owners revolution, we have the gear Academy which is 12 months of super intensive like not a ton of work on your part. We're not making you do 20 hours of work a week of extra work, we're going to help guide you and your business to these next milestones that need to happen based on where your business is starting and where you want to be going. So if you want in on that go to the gym owners revolute gym owners revolution.com Get in the link in our description for the Facebook group and follow John at Jay banks FL follow me at Tyler F and stone all those things are on Instagram. So let's get started. I have been experimenting a lot with some just very fundamental messaging. When I'm doing stuff like my personal training stuff, and it's principles that we apply very much so in with our gear Academy gym owners, right. But it still makes me fucking crazy what I see out there in the world from gym owners regarding let's start with social media, right? We talked about two weeks ago. A couple of weeks back, we put out an episode that is kind of your DIY social media guy to what content sucks, what's good, how you get it done, how you can at least make it effective , why you need to debrief and go back and check. What metrics are you using to determine that it's successful? Right? Your social media strategy. And this kind of goes, there's some principles that underlie that, that I think are underlying principles that we need to cover in regards to sales and marketing. as well. You as a gym owner, you're selling a service, okay, you're selling a service, you're not selling a physical product, you're not selling time, that's another big one. If you're doing personal training, you're not selling time, okay? While a lot of your math that you're establishing is per hour, and blah, blah, blah, that is not what you sell. And I prefer that that not be how the conversation is, even if your pricing is per hour, the entire conversation should not be about sessions, it should not be about time, it should not be about anything. Okay, what you're trying to do, and I'm gonna make this very clear, your job is to get your clients from where they are right now, to where they want to go. They have something that they want to accomplish, what is that? Okay, that's the thing you need to talk about. That's the only thing you need to talk about. Identify a few different types of clients that are out there potential clients that you may attract your business, the ones that need the services, the specific services that you do, if you do sports performance stuff, you're going to worry more about speaking to someone who's trying to improve their 40 yard dash time, okay, trying to improve their this that their agility drill stuff, that's a different message than if you're in the weight loss business. By the way, you may do both. So said it, but you cannot just sit and talk about how smart you are, or how much you know about exercises, or how much you know about this or how much you know about that or your expertise, I would say should represent 10% or less of the post that you're making on social media. That's a good equation. One in 10 should be here. I am a professional. I'm good. That's okay. I think it's to get to know you. It's the about us page tab on every website. And you know who looks at the about us page on every website? Fucking nobody, but it's okay to have it there. It's fine. But it's not attracting or closing anybody. It's where they look to be like, Man, is this these people really deformed? Are they ugly? Like that's what that page is for and that's fine. And you can go now and this the thing I did a lot when I was a gym owner when I first started, it was like here's what we do differently. This is why this other stuff, but it was wrong. It was the wrong way to do it. It just wasn't attractive. It was too much inside baseball. For the average person who's thinking about joining a gym to go oh, well, this is how a deadlift should be done versus this. People who are worried about deadlift technique, guess where they do that? You want to guess, a fucking gym, they already go to a fucking gym. So if your business strategy is to poach fucking fitness clients from other gyms find that'll happen, people leave gyms find their way to bet, that's great. But what percent of your new leads, your new clients that you're gonna acquire in a year, are going to come from another gym that they leave directly from and come to you?



John Fairbanks 05:33

Why do we see? So why did we see it? Why? Why did we see this mistake?



Tyler 05:37

gym owners started out as coaches usually. And I actually think that's a problem. I would love working, we have a couple gym owners in the gear academy that started out as business people, and they got into the fitness business because it was a viable business. And then they're able to look at things systematically. And I really appreciate that. Because their fucking ego and expertise is not a part of the equation. When it comes to what's happening on the floor. They know I don't know that stuff. I want to qualify people, I'm gonna plug them in there. But their messaging is still attracting clients to your business. Not telling the whole fucking world how smart you are and how much you know. Because it sucks. It fucking sucks. It's repulsive to potential clients. It's just all about you. And like, I've mentioned this in the past, you're not a fucking influencer. And remember, the people that you follow that you looked up to was your learning to become a coach, guess who they're speaking to other coaches. So if you're emulating shit that they talk about outwardly, and all this stuff, and you're just emulating that on your own social media for your business, understand that that's only going to connect to coaches. That's it, it's like, it's the biggest there's a, it's this pass through. And it's a thing I've seen a lot in the fitness industry. I've said this, and I think it's on our Instagram as well. But like, you cannot just keep parroting other people's shit. And being just a vessel to pass it through. It sucks. It's uninteresting, and it's all about you. And it's also not at all yours. So it's fucking point. I don't get it. But I see it constantly from coaches. And the problem is this. It's from coaches who care about being good coaches. Yeah, that's the biggest part is you're the one who actually cares about being a good coach. And somehow in here, all of your messaging is simply to placate your ego. It's not to attract, or to connect with what they're trying to do. Or even let them know that you can get them what they want. I can go through accounts that I've seen with this that haven't posted fuck all about what they can actually do for somebody in months or years. That's maddening.



John Fairbanks 07:41

Absolutely, it's important to call it out. Because if you are someone who's like, well, that's not me. It's like, well have a healthy dose of shut the fuck up and step back and actually look and say, Oh, is that me, because you may be



Tyler 07:56

doing your business's social media account, don't do it right now, go to your Instagram right now, while you listen, go in there. And get in my DMs at Tyler effing stone on Instagram, and send me you can go you can share your profile, you can share Profile link or whatever, send me your gym, social media, don't make any changes, I don't want you to make any change, don't go in and start patting this thing. Send me your shit. And I can go back and see how many of these things have any potential to attract anybody, any potential to attract a new member at all. Now attracting new members is not the prime. It's not the sole function, exclusive function of your social media. Retention is nice announcements, kind of fostering community from people that are already within that's part of it.



John Fairbanks 08:41

But that's a lot about a lot of other things, though. A lot of fun, a lot of other things.



Tyler 08:44

And so it's about you. Yeah.



John Fairbanks 08:49

And I And again, it's the examples, we have so many bad examples. So unless you have someone that's saying, Hey, this is a really bad fucking example. And if you're just trying to grasp at straws, and you're not sure exactly what direction to go, you're just going to be like, well, this is kind of popular, and this is what I see. And these people do that. So maybe I'll do that. And that's where the error is, which is understanding who is giving you advice, or understanding what you're trying to copy will, why do they do what they do? And you probably don't have enough fucking time to sit back and contemplate the marketing strategies of influencers or brands or whatever, and somehow bring that back to you and your business. Yeah. The reason why we noticed a lot of work is because that's what we did, is what we do is what we work with a lot of folks on, which is when we work with a gym owner in the gear Academy, it's we need to take whatever you're doing for marketing, and we need to bring it back to what you all do for your people. Yes, there's one other there's one other ego piece to that. We see a lot Tyler and I think that this is talking about from a coaching perspective that gym owners still fall into a whole bunch. And this is when you create a thing, right? Whether it's your business or a program, or you're really stoked about the machines that you have. And that really awesome back hyper machine that you got, right? Whatever it is that it starts to become like, man, isn't this really awesome? Isn't this sauna great? Isn't that back hyper machine? Great. We have this really sweet, competition bench press rig that's here. And it's, again, it has nothing to do about the person that you're speaking about and what they want to achieve.



Tyler 10:47

Talking about, you're talking about the features are, I'm really smart. This place is really nice. I know everything I can do, I can do that, the sauna is great. Our machines are wonderful. Okay, am I sitting here going? I need to join a gym with this person that doesn't have a gym . You know, what I want is a sauna. No, they don't need a sauna. They want to lose weight. Okay, do they want to get fitter? Or if they're going to look for performance, I need to accomplish these things. And this is what we're going to get into next is there, there's three criteria. Okay, that is not all, but the majority of your marketing needs to be covered because this is about setting expectations from the very beginning. A lot of you guys will miss this thing, your marketing talks about you, or whatever, or how much you know, or just stuff that's not about the client journey that they're trying to do, that journey that they're about to embark on? And where the fuck do you fit in in that? Okay, what is this about? Can you articulate that? Can you do it simply? Can you do it about them and remove yourself completely from it? Can you do this? Because if you do this early on in the process, like the way if you start marketing that way, but making social media posts about overriding like writing your copy in that tone, then you can set expectations when you're talking when you're following up on leads for your sales meetings and things like that. The expectation is gonna be the very same thing. Okay, so this criteria, there's three criteria, right, this fucking down, please. The first one, the very, very first one. And this is the, this needs to be again on your marketing. And the first question you normally ask in your sales meeting is, what are you looking to accomplish in the next few months? Okay, because what is that? Now, you don't need to ask that question directly on social media. You can also assume, right, because the people you're trying to attract, you should be able to know if you can't tell me three or four different things that a potential client who would be a good fit for your business would like to accomplish and then make social media posts explaining how you can help them with that. Or that you can Jesus Christ just that you can, like, that's a start. Okay,



John Fairbanks 12:59

So can we give you a hint on how you can go find that right now? If you're a gym owner, and you've been open for a minute, go for it, go for it. Go look at your reviews. Yes, go look at Google reviews, and see what people have bothered to say whatever it is that they said they have will have said something that they will have achieved something and the last whatever amount of time that they were fired up enough about to say hey, I did this thing.



Tyler 13:24

And which one of them and which ones of those align with the 80% or higher of your target demographic? Okay? Because you'll have some special cases that are very enthusiastic that are going to say some wild shit. Okay, don't worry about it. Like we got some m&a Jam where it's like you got some revisions like, came in it was awesome. There's fucking blood everywhere. Fucking it was the shit and that person is very enthusiastic. I'm not preaching to that one blood. Because the moment blood moment, the moment that we start putting that stuff out there, we alienate the other 80 Because it's like, Well, that seems weird. Now coaches, gym owners, you're talking about your expertise so much? That seems weird. It seems like if I hired a plumber, he's like, No, for real guys. For real. I know how to make your toilet not be plugged in anymore for seriously, it just seems like that person is really trying to fucking prove something has nothing to do with me. I want to know we're gonna be there within an hour of you calling. And obviously anyone I'm gonna call them and assume they can. Like by the time I'm showing up, I assume that they can solve this problem. Okay. But the first one, what are they trying to accomplish? Speak to that. Absolutely. You need to speak to that. How do you speak to that? Okay, first off, you can speak about the goal like as far away that's okay. You can speak about that goal as though that person is standing at the starting line of that little adventure. All the things that go into their monitor. I know what you're thinking, I know what you're feeling. It seems like it's far away, but here's how I can help. Okay, take that thought exercise. Run this over and over and over you should be able to make 1000 As in, fucking posts, leverage AI if you want to, if you want to get good at chess GPT start getting good at being prolific at this very, very narrow thing. It's very, very now, the next piece that can help you to develop content to establish that connection from the person where they are now to their goals. What do you hope to accomplish? What do you hope to accomplish is the first one, the second one? What obstacles or barriers are in the way of you accomplishing that right now? Right? I did a post on my personal for some personal training stuff recently that I did very specifically so that I can use this post as a teaching tool within our group, because it's very simple. Here's the list of things that are in the way for most people. And if you can get people to ask when you can identify that for them, because it's in their head, in your sales meeting, if your social media content reflects this conversation, this principle as well. All you gotta do is say, Well, what's, you know, what do you think is holding you back from being successful? What do you think we need to address? And you can plant some seeds if they say I want to lose 30 pounds? So I'm just hoping to get back in the gym. Say, is there an issue with food or nutrition? Just just drop the question. Yeah, you're just getting them to own these few basic things. There's only fucking a few. There really is nobody holding me accountable. I just stopped showing up, I quit. I wasn't seeing results. Nutrition, whether they know it or not , is nutritious. Like it's always nutrition, right? It always is, which is why that should be a thing. You don't have to force, you just need to let them identify and teach them to help efficiently let them identify like, yeah, that's what it is.



John Fairbanks 16:28

I think psychologically, don't go ahead. See psychology psychologically, this is really important. Because as people start to think of like, well, this is, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to achieve . These are the goals that I have. Or, you know, these are the goals that people have successfully achieved, that I've worked with you, as someone that's new that's coming in, they're going to have they're going to go through, as soon as they go, Hey, I think I could do this, or I want to do this. And because everybody's got that voice that's going to be in the back of their head, they will start to go through the classic series of self doubt, which is a will I couldn't do that. Because, right and whatever those reasons are, right, whether it has to do with, I mean, it can be a lot of things. And that's where you if you already are thinking, marketing wise, what are the obstacles that people identify as being a problem or that you see when you talk to people as being the problem, if you identify it, you just get ahead of that. And you knock those dials their big dominoes, right. And there's a domino of one obstacle here, one obstacle here, one obstacle here, and you knock them down to where now when it's time to have a sales conversation, or put the price in front of them, you kind of have already knocked these things down. And if you're really good at Tyler, you build your offers in a very specific way in your packages in a way that systematically knocks down every possible objection that someone could have. Because that's how it was built as a



Tyler 18:05

product that you sell.



John Fairbanks 18:08

And, and you're just give them the opportunity to choose what makes the most sense for them, because they no longer have fucking obstacles. Because



Tyler 18:19

if I come in and I say, you know, John, I just I know, I didn't see any results right away. Last time I went to another gym, I didn't know what I was doing in the gym. So I just had my membership, I went for like two weeks, three weeks, and then I failed. So when you kind of recap that to somebody, so Well, it sounds to me like you needed some guidance in the gym, and just want to be there and stand there, probably need to make sure we're fixing something with your food so that we can start getting results fast. Because if we don't fix food results, we're not going to come fast. You know, measurable things are helpful in regards to knowing that maybe you're not going to notice in the mirror, you may not notice in the mirror and two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, because you see yourself every day. But what if we actually take body measurements and body fat measurements? So what if I'm having you for your own benefit, just your own sake, not mine, photograph yourself in the mirror every day, every other day, whatever it is for the duration of this time. And what is by hiring a trainer that you are accountable to actually showing up and you can know that you're going to be covered when you're in the gym, that you're going to get a good workout and you're going to show up right , that covers all the barriers. Now I don't need to convince that person that they need to buy nutrition coaching. I don't need to convince them of anything because what they've told me is these things are the reasons that I was not successful last time. They are things that I should address before I move forward.



John Fairbanks 19:40

You never said the word nutrition coaching. Oh, yeah, I mean, like in that conversation. You don't you don't fucking say that phrase. And the reason why you don't say the fucking word is because you don't know how much fucking baggage people have when it comes comes to certain words.



Tyler 20:01

Yep. When you weigh more,



John Fairbanks 20:05

right, and just using the words that they use, and again, the people that use because it's, you talked about this in the last episode Tyler, where was the idea of like, the word diet?



Tyler 20:18

Yeah, elitist roaches are allergic to that word for some reason.



John Fairbanks 20:22

But man is like, Ah, well, you know, so you can and you don't have to open the can of worms at the end of the day, just as all you heard was whatever their obstacle was, and just said, Boy, wouldn't it be great? If you could not have had those things be obstacles? And what are they gonna say? Oh, well, no, no.



Tyler 20:43

And in that process, now, what they've done is they've said, here's all of the things that I wish could be addressed. Because if all of these things were addressed, they're telling you, this gives me the highest likelihood of success if all these things were addressed, based on their past experience, person, everything they know, and everything they're willing to tell you. If these things were addressed, they would have the highest likelihood of success. Now, that's a piece I want to touch on. It's a piece that I don't know that Hormoz invented, but it was in his book, 100 million dollar offers, and I give credit where credit's due, he has this thing, it's something about the value equation one way or another right? One of them is like whatever the results are, right? The pace with which a person gets to those results, the speed, right, so if a person comes in and wants to lose 20 pounds, and I tell them is going to take what it's going to take and we're gonna move real slow and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and, or if they will come in want to lose 20 pounds and say I am a surgeon, and I'm going to cut it off of you. Which one of those services is going to be worth more money? Okay, the one that has the highest likelihood of success, liposuction, highest likelihood of success, it's 100% Guaranteed nearly how much effort does the client have to put in towards that success? Zero, I get to sit on my ass. I get to spend a couple of days just chillin watching TV while I recover, that's awesome. Time fucking tonight, like tonight, you could you could sign that check. And then five hours later, you could be 20 pounds lighter, Brother, let's go. And once the other one is that it might be good effort speed, whatever the actual results to the scale of the results. But that's the difference between a service that then is going to cost $20,000 or $10,000 or five, whatever liposuction costs, versus say a standalone gym membership for 40 bucks, that's just a gym membership, right? If I go to spend a $40 membership, I know when I'm comparing these two things that like wow, this is probably not very likely. And I'm going to succeed. And it's going to take a long time. I don't have to do all the work, I have to handle all the responsibility and expertise to figure out what to do here. Christ that sucks, you know what I mean? And it may or may not happen, and it might take a year or two or never. Right? That's, if you're having a hard time, like upselling . That's the problem. You're trying to take someone with this low expectation of your service, and trying to drag them up without having them actually identified. What is valuable to them. And that's the very important part of that second piece by letting them identify all the obstacles. What they're telling you is clear this up for me. And instantly your service becomes way more valuable to me. That's the truth. Right? They know that. Okay, so those are the first two. Okay, the first two are what they want to accomplish in a few months. Second one, what's in the way? What are we? What if what things if we got to clear it up would make you like 100% guaranteed to get the ship docks, right? The third one sounds a lot like the first one. But it's different. It's different for a reason. The third one is you and them both, but you need to allow them to define their own terms of success. Okay. And however you get them to do this, okay. But if it happens very often, the way I always transition into that part of the conversation is that's where I addressed the timeline, as the easiest thing, because that's where I'm going to check back in. That's where I would check back in and things need to have been changed at this point. Because if they're not we have failed, I have failed you, You have failed me. We have failed each other. This arrangement is not successful. If so, right? So someone says I want to lose 20 pounds, and they want to spend 12 weeks with me. It's like, you know, that's that's a lot. That's a hefty pace. But we can do this. What if 20 pounds to them is do or die, and in 12 weeks, they've lost 18 pounds. If they tell you ahead of time that that's a problem you need to get, you need to get on the same page early on. Right, you must and we'll get into reasons why after that. Someone says I want to lose 15 pounds in the next 12 weeks. That's, that's pretty easy for me to do if we're doing all these other things, right? That allows them to define the terms of success that allows them to know the game that they're playing. I want to lose this way. I want to lose this by this time. It also allows them to determine the kind of measurable components that need to be done which means now there's a pace with which you can check in on accountability, and you can check in with the results. Okay? This is how you actually make sure that they are successful, not just you closing sales. And this is important, okay? Because you're not going to close sales for very long if all your people fail, okay, you'll do, you'll turn and burn. There's plenty of consultants out there in this business that can help you turn and burn. That ain't what we're trying to do. So, but that piece is, it's nothing. Okay? If you can do that, a client comes in and says, I want to lose 15 pounds in 12 weeks, that would be perfect. I got a wedding coming up, things are gonna sit Okay, perfect. They've identified nutritional assumptions, the weight? Great, great. Well, here's what we can do. Okay. They've they've they've they've laid everything out. We know what is six, we know then that if they only lose eight pounds, or they're out, what if they're on pace to not lose any weight and they're halfway through. They've already told me that they want to lose weight. Something's missing that they're not doing. That's why I'm checking in. If I don't check in. In this throughout this process. I don't check in until week 12. And they haven't made any progress. What am I doing towards helping them be I say, hey, we had this conversation. Okay, and if it's nutrition, let me let me jump back, I'm gonna jump back a little bit. After they have a tab established that turns to success, all you're going to do is present them your offer, right? My top option has all these things that basically you mentioned, that you needed, right? That's all these things now that when we do prepay for 12 weeks, that level of commitment is the commitment it takes for me to guarantee these results. But we both decide, we're both we're both if you go to the car lot, one guy that the dealer is talking to you about car A? And you're like, yes, that's the one I want. He goes and you take him, you write him a check, and he takes you over and shows you a different car. Like Wait, what the fuck, right? Can't have that. Okay. But when we go through this process, you're able to close them on exactly the thing that they're talking about. Right? So you said, you need nutrition coaching, you say this, we've established your terms of success. Now we know what results I'm willing to guarantee you're not willing to guarantee.



John Fairbanks 26:56

But how is that possible, though? Tyler? How do you know you just met the person? You're not? I love the idea of being a wizard with your own services and knowing exactly how to build offers just right there on the spot. And you just know, oh, I am gonna put all these things together. And I know how I'm going to package it out. So how is it possible to know exactly what they were going to say? That does align with what your top option is going to be in the package you're gonna put in front of them.



Tyler 27:28

Because everyone's the same. In the grand scheme of things, listen, people have the same needs for the same things, right. So we narrow this up in a lot of ways like we do now, we do narrow this up in our offers in the way that our interactive offer stack works for you as a gym owner, if you'd if you're not working with us directly, you don't have kind of the app that we use that puts your service together, what you're gonna do is you're gonna put, you're going to do this thought experiment, and you're gonna go, what we're gonna do with you, yes, and we're doing the same thing. We're doing the workshop here in the Facebook group for people in the group. If you're not listening to get over the group links in the description. We're gonna do that next month for people that we're going to help you define this and build this up into an offer stack that works. But your top option, thought exercise. What would you have to do to guarantee if someone paid you a million dollars and wanted to lose 20 pounds? Right? What do they want to accomplish? If it's performance? Have this thought exercised through performance? If it's strength gains for Offseason training, what is that? Alright, if it's weight loss, if it's stage, if it's God knows what strength sports, whatever it is. But if someone came in and paid you a million dollars, what would you have to do to guarantee that they did it, to truly say that I want to lose 20 pounds, this is the only way that I will guarantee this million dollars, take it or leave it right? That I can guarantee that you're going to do it. And that may be as simple as when you go through this thought exercise, throw everything at it, throw all the shit at it, and then clean it all back towards things that might actually make sense to things they actually want, not things that you say they should do. It needs to be done in the tone, the other their own concerns, it needs to be done in the voice of their own concerns. Because there's a lot of people we're having a conversation with. Of course, like, you know, it would be best if I was able to actually get in and do a full movement assessment with him like three times through this process. So what the fuck does that have to do with them losing weight, you're also already coaching them one on one, this doesn't do this doesn't do anything. So you have to say, well, that's something you think would make you more successful. They don't give a fuck about that. So you need to make sure that as you're crafting all of these things, right, that you can do to guarantee their success, then obviously not gonna do all of them. I want bad ideas in there and good ideas. I want all of it. I want the pure, all the money in the world option there. Okay, then you're just going to scale it all back to something realistic. And something that when you have had enough of these conversations with people, if you learn to speak that way and let them tell you what's stopping them from being successful, like stop talking about yourself. Let them tell you Yeah, these are the things that I need. Give them that for Christ's sake. Someone comes to you and says, I want to buy a car and he's four wheel drive. I don't want anything too big. gets too high gas mileage, and they come and they fucking, and you give them something else, they're gonna get the fuck dude, I told you, I told you my budget, I went to a car dealership a while back. And I said my budget was this. And this was what I wanted. He went and showed me two cars within my budget. And in the next, I would say within three minutes of us being on the lot that goes, I mean, you think you stretch your budget a little bit, and he added, like, 50% to my budget, because then we got some goodwill. So no, I set the criteria that I wanted to be playing with, I'm the fucking customer. And the first thing you do is come in and tell me what you want. You need to want something different. Buck off, and fuck you, okay, you need to do this as a gym owner the same way you need to be what they came in and told you they want what people are often telling you that they want the way that they want it. How do you then package that in a way that works? That's important, okay. And it has very little to do with the product itself. It's a service, it's a service service service, it's not a product.



John Fairbanks 30:59

And it doesn't take away from it's really important that your gym is clean, it has fresh paint, your equipment looks nice, maybe it is important that you have a fucking sauna, especially if everybody else in the area maybe doesn't like it. But that isn't something that you put on the packages to convince someone that this is what's going to allow them to achieve their goals. It's a perk, it's a feature. And I think that this is a big part where if we talk about like them, I love the idea of a movement assessment, being part of your one on one personal training service that you provide. Because Holy shit, it would set you up head and shoulders above other personal trainers that you just have this thing that you do that allows you to be able to be working with your client. But understand that that's not, that's not a package built for a person for what their goals are. So there's a huge difference of perks and features. And then the package of how you sell that goes directly back to what their goals are, the obstacles and how they've identified what would make them successful. And when



Tyler 32:05

it comes to selling big ticket stuff, you need to check all the boxes that they want. Okay, here's what's gonna happen guy is not going to come in and buy $100,000 car that's got some shit, he don't like that, ain't it? Okay, in it if I had a fucking budget threshold, and if I was going to spend just a fortune of money on anything, I'm gonna spend that money because it has what I want. Okay, not because what you told me I want. That's not the way it's gonna work. It's not the way it works with any of this stuff here. So as you start to have these conversations, if you post about it, people will interact about these things. They'll they'll talk about this, but it needs to only be in the contents of the context of them being successful. That's it. That's it you where you want to go, not me. Not hardly. I had to do a thing the other day because it was a while back because it's what we do have it one of the gems that do some personal training. I just like a little coaches bio. And I just realized that I had never had to explain. Like, for a long time, just like, Oh, here's me and I wanted like credentials and like here's what and it's like, oh, this is not there's a reason I can sell big ticket personal trainers because I don't fucking do this shit. I'm not sitting here going, here's how smart I am. Here's how it's worth it. It's like no, because I have enough of an influx of leads from just my organic social media posts that are about them. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Cool? Let's do it. You this. This is you. This is you. Let's go. This you know, you're not this guy. You're that. Let's go. Okay, cool. I can do that with you. Let's go. And then we talk. But if it's me, me, me, me, me. I'm so fuckin smart. It sucks. It's it bombs. And I'm telling you if you ever felt like you were just stranded on an island and a sales conversation. It's because your marketing started with you and your fucking ego and all your shit. And it was not about them. And they stumbled through all of that and didn't know what to expect. Because there's so little clarity in any of this. Someone wants to lose weight and you don't mention it ever, ever in your social media? Not once. Well, how the fuck do they know that that's even something you do.



John Fairbanks 34:07

And that was when you brought it up earlier. And it's really made me think of that exact thing as well, which is the reason why you want them to determine set expectations and determine what would what success looks like is so you know what to fucking sell them. Because you could get 20 minutes, 30 minutes into a conversation. And if you haven't determined you could get ready for the close. And because you actually don't know what you're trying to talk to them about. You could feel really good because man, you've been there you've been able to talk and blah blah, blah and then it gets to the close. And it is just crickets. They give you 1000 Yard Stare you missed it by a country fucking mile. And it's because exactly what you just said you didn't actually know what you were trying to sell. So you went to read it, and you missed it, because you read about your products. And it's because it was missed from the get go. It was fucked from the very start from how the marketing was they showed up and how you're used to talking about it. That is how things can feel. Just got to feel like it was good until like the last five minutes. Yeah, and then Holy shit. Something went awry. And I have no idea how to fix it.



Tyler 35:24

You don't make the comedian good. The audience laughs right. They're funny. Yeah, that's it. That's it, you don't get to be funny in a vacuum doesn't work. This talked about this a lot with stand up comedy. It's like one of the few things that were recorded. It's one of those few arts that requires the audience, not only for it to be developed and refined, but for it to even be considered good. An audience has to experience it and react a certain way. Okay, as a coach. You know what you have to do to be a good coach. You got to get people results and fuck off. Nobody gives a fuck how much you know, nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares. They only care what you can do for them to understand this. You're in a service in this industry. If you're in a fucking, if you think you're gonna build a personality brand great, go for it. But it's a lot easier to build a personality brand when it's built on the foundation of getting results for people because then you actually have the experience that fucking matters. Don't be one of those guys that has a failed fucking business and fitness and has never done anything and fitness business who then just goes on to be some guru shit. Okay, because it isn't Good luck but you're just you're foregoing you don't come to me because your gym is not successful. I wish my gym was more successful than Why are you trying to be some fucking other thing? Why are you trying to be an expert? Don't be a goddamn expert. Be the person that helps people. Okay, you ever hear this is one of the you ever hear comedians talk like inside baseball about comedy, the art of comedy? It sucks. It's the least interesting conversation they ever have. It fucking blows. All of it is just like, oh, and then this and then you go that? It sucks. It's like, oh my gosh, shut the fuck up about this. Can you go back to being funny? If you're not making sense to a lot of comedians on podcasts. And every time I was Lucy Kay on Rogen. I love Louie and I love that episode. But the last hour and a half of that episode, instead of just talking about comedy in this pretentious way, and just knowing that if you're a coach, and you're talking about this shit, you suck, man, you suck. It's about the laughs Louie makes me laugh. We're good. His shit. This makes her funny and it makes me laugh. Get your clients results make it about that nobody gives a shit. Except other coaches, just like other comedians, when they're talking inside baseball, about comedy, who's good, who's not what works, what did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I hear Joe Rogan saying this guy. Don't give a fuck about any of that at all. Because it's just not funny. It's just not. So talk to me about your clients. Okay, use testimonials, because that's about clients going through that journey. Use your clients' reviews to create content, and then you if you're creating content, or you're going to have your staff create content. Now you have a plan, just like we rolled out with a DIY marketing strategy a couple episodes ago, someone is doing a social manager for your coach. Tell them say I want you to define five potential goals that potential clients of ours might have. Okay, and let's kind of map out what that journey would be for them and map out maybe what each then have different obstacles in the way for each of those things. Tell us to make a post addressing the whole journey for each one. Yet maybe each obstacle, one obstacle along the way, all in the context of that eight to Z, eight to Z, what's in the way that gets it to play that game and now they can play that game for you. Now you have content that fucking matters, and it's not showing people exercising, which I hate. You can do it, people should know you exercise but showing people exercising is like doing weird exercises that people don't understand as part of fitness, like if you're doing stuff that's super unique and novel, great, but nobody is going to be attracted to that. They're attracted to the results. So here's a show to show people exercising. It should look approachable, not elitist, not special.



John Fairbanks 39:12

Showing the special exercises is the same as listening to insider baseball for the comedian's and is the same as talking about all the different muscles that make up the hamstring from coach to coach, right? The best case scenario is that somebody walks away from listening to those three examples or seeing those three examples and they think man they sure are smart. Or man they know a lot or boy they think that that boy they do. The worst case scenario is what happens to you when you listen to comedians or it makes you want to fucking die and just shut it off and most of the worst case because then you leave, you're not you're not there. And that's what's important is that it's the goal for the You guys, whether you're a comedian or your coach or your gym owner, if you want to sell. So it is it's important to note where it's, you're not buying tickets to go see Louis, because of an hour of inside baseball and boy, isn't he smart or a little pretentious when it comes to the sauna, or when it comes to how he feels about how comedy should be written and done and executed. No one is going to fucking buy because they see somebody do some gnarly fucking exercise. The best case scenario is you are talking to the right people that like weird fucking shit like that. And they say, Oh, cool. They do weird fucking shit there. I live across the world. So I'm not going to fucking by their worst case scenario is you show a weird fucking thing like that. And some of that could have been interesting. goes. That's really overwhelming. I don't know what that is. But that looks terrifying. And they say fuck off and I'm not interested and they ain't gonna buy



Tyler 41:00

every post you make? Is it going to nudge somebody who's on the verge of joining your gym? Was it a good fit for you? Is it enough to nudge them forward? nudge them towards action? Is it? Does it have a chance to do that? That's the question to ask. Okay, if you're going to post this and it's going to alienate or confuse people who are about to join your gym, then don't post it at all? Doesn't it sucks. It's just not good. It's like that. And there's a great Stuart brow Brower posted today on his WTF gym talk Facebook page channel, check them out. This guy is our competitor and mentioned them before. Good. And again, I've never shed on a good idea because I didn't have it. But His thing was there was a post that was a billboard that Jim had posted. Did you see this job? I posted it like aliens, aliens are coming. But they're taking the fat ones first. You're gonna serve or whatever. That was funny. Now, he said, was this out of line? He's probably He's, uh, but you gotta look at it this way. And he has called his 51. And I haven't dove into all of this stuff. So I'm paraphrasing, I might mess it up. But like, he does like a 5149 principle where it's like, if this can compel 51% of the people who are the 51% that are like, you know, my type who are about to join who are a good fit for us. And it pisses off the 49% who never were going to join, then it's worth doing. Right. Yeah. If the ratio is off, or it's too extreme or too offensive in general, it's probably not worth doing at all. But I thought that was pretty funny. Okay, and but but there's something to be said for that, I think, across the board is that like, it doesn't have to be for everybody. But the worst thing that can happen for you guys, is to get a bunch of then positive feedback from people about these posts that are all up your own ass are all just about exercise, people who aren't about to join your gym, or people who are who don't live near you going, Oh, this is great. Yeah, I really, really like there's nothing worse because that is going to feed your ego. Your ego is the reason you're making posts about yourself and your expertise. That's why someone would come and say, Yeah, I really liked this, I feel this for sure. But they're not if it doesn't bring anyone from your town to your place to your brick and mortar. Just know that you're playing the wrong game, you literally did a good job of attracting people who cannot do business with you and won't. What the fuck? And it's



John Fairbanks 43:24

again, it's again, why



Tyler 43:25

don't you put effort into this, and that you don't have enough members, and then complain that you need more money. This is the problem, you want more money and you're doing things that are inhibiting that you're putting effort, and I'm all about pet projects. I'm all about doing some stuff just for your own sake. But know that your plan still needs to be what is your what is your plan? What are you trying to do? That's the question: what do you need to do to help your clients, okay? Tell you tell them you need to both agree on what they're trying to accomplish in the next few months. Okay, know what they want to say about that. Okay, the next move Absolutely. You and them in your marketing and in their conversation, identify the obstacles to that success, all the things they're gonna have to deal with along the way all the traps they fell in the last time all that stuff, okay, and then come up with a definition of a successful relationship that should include a timeline it should include results if I want to lose 20 pounds, then it is 20 pounds. Okay, 20 pounds, that's what it is. Let's make it about that. And you being good at making sure they train without getting hurt and all your experience and all your knowledge and all the things you know about muscles and breathing and fucking wizardry and how you deadlift for so other people deadlift and why this exercise sucks, and this was right. Those are things that you're going to do along the way. Okay, those are things you are going to do. Those are about you. They're not about them. They don't give a fuck, they don't care. So just know that okay, you've identified the success. Now all your brilliance goes into that process. You're trillions goes into fulfilling, okay, that's what it's about your brilliance attracted fucking anybody. John's message just said recently that the worst thing you can do is talk to somebody but that guy's smart. Let me just talk over and confuse. By the way, I get that a lot in my personal life, like day to day social interactions a lot. If I get to talk with somebody, I don't want to talk to you, I just go at heart because I don't have small talk, I don't do small talk very well. So if you give me a conversation in person, we're gonna go and I'll confuse the shit out of you. And then I'm going to notice the deep water, and I'm gonna leave, and I'm gonna leave. Okay. But I think that those three principles are very important. Identify their goal, identify the obstacles, let's both define success and agree upon those terms that include metrics that need to be measurable to prove because the last thing you do is tell someone someone comes in while losing 20 pounds, and you say, I'm gonna make it about something else. All you're doing is saying, You're not gonna get me the thing that I came here for what the fuck, but that let me touch on that real quick, because retention is where you eat shit by not allowing them to define the terms of success. That's the biggest one. So let's cover this before we leave. If you don't define the terms of success, fully, you keep them in this limbo. And Limbo is rough when you want them enthusiastic, you want them getting results, you want them charging forward, or remember, they have the right to choose, we don't just hear people's obstacles to their goal. And just make them say you need to buy this product. And then you need this. And they know, we get them to say those words out loud, like I need help with my food, I need this, I need that I need this perfect. Okay, once you get all that you pay for it, repair it back to him, then you say, my top options are this, it's got food stuff we're going to measure and renew. This is like it covers all the bases. They know, they know because they already said those words, you got them to say those words, the only thing you need to do, you don't need to if you ever say you need this fucking up big time, because you're not pushing don't push, they need to have options in front of them and allow them to make a choice. Okay, so they're gonna see this top option. And there, maybe their budget just doesn't allow it, the top option doesn't allow the second, what if their budget only allows the bottom option, which by the way, for most of you is the only product you sell anyway, so who gives a shit, you got all the head all the opportunity to let them choose the thing that they know, fits their needs, fits their wants, fits their timelines fits all the problems that they've had in the past, but they can't afford it. But at least they know you offered it now. They know it's a service that you do offer. And then they go with what their budget allows, which means you're not pushy, because they can't fucking afford, who cares? You had the best chance of success up to this point. They say, You know what, let's just go with this straight membership, just your group classes or whatever, I can't afford to do the other stuff. Okay, perfect. Perfect. That's it, that's no problem. But you mentioned you're looking to lose that, whatever that 20 pounds. So can I check in with you in 12 weeks and see how it's going? I want to check in with you at that time, then when you want to check out of your sales meetings, whether it's you or your staff, who does that there should be a note listed right? What they like are, again, those three criteria, what your notes need to be, that's your sales notes. That's, that's how you hand them off. So you hand them off to a coach, it's how you do everything. And after that point, you check in with them. Now what happens if, if you if someone comes in and you don't offer them all those services, right, and they, let's say you did all these things, but you don't have an offer stack that makes any fucking sense or you got pushy, and they just told you now and they never have to see it all or they've pushed against you, not just a sheet that they got to passively choose on. But if I come in, and I just choose your membership, and I came here to lose 20 pounds, I never got offered this other stuff, and I never got the opportunity to decline it. And to say I am still at this is what I want to achieve at the end of that 12 weeks, and I have not achieved that. Whose fault is it? It's yours. I came to this gym, I want to lose weight. They even know that I stopped going, because I didn't know what to do. I kept eating off the rails like it is what it is. But your gym is the place that they probably won't go back to steal. Versus if they say like, Hey, I can't afford it. Or, you know, I know I said that I need all these things. But I can't, I just can't swing this. It's perfect. Again, it's the nicest car in the lot. They want it, they can't afford it. It's okay. But they get in, they go and they don't accomplish it. You are the you now exist as the solution. So instead of losing a person to their own failures, when they don't choose to go high level with you and choose more of your services, you'll instead of losing them at the end of that because they fail just because they fail. You're now still in their brain as the guy with the solutions because they said all the stuff that they know now that the solution is actually to go deeper in their relationship with you financially as opposed to cutting ties because now your thing is adjacent to failure with them.



John Fairbanks 49:39

And it's and they can go deeper and further with you. Yes, guess how brutal it is when you have had conversations with folks where they're like, I think I'm going to need to leave this gym. It's like oh, what's going on? Well, because all that they have to offer is just this And I want more. So the fact is that if you have somebody that buys lowest here and you have things that are available, if you are, you are the closest and the nearest solution for that person to be able to achieve their goals. But if they don't know that, they will look outside your doors for a new solution. So when they are ready to invest a little bit more, that pain for them is a little bit greater for why they want to achieve that next step and willing to throw down some more money. But if you're not the one that's positioned yourself to do it, they will look outside of you. Yep. Because you missed that opportunity.



Tyler 50:39

Yeah. So take those three principles. This this



John Fairbanks 50:42

if you feel like the sales conversation, from marketing to sales to clothes should feel like a straight line. It should feel like a fucking home run. And you should want to message us and say, Holy shit, somebody just bought this. God dammit, it went so smoothly. I can't believe I just did this in 20 minutes. Yeah, that's what it should feel like. If your sales conversations don't feel like a straight line, and you feel like there's fuckery afoot and you feel like something's wrong. And you're always fucking off and it's a swing and a miss. And you miss by a goddamn country mile. Shoot us a DM. Just call.



Tyler 51:22

Yeah, that's it. And again, because your marketing is gonna reflect it. People go, Oh, these guys so they can help me lose weight, you know, they're gonna talk to you about right away. I want to lose some weight. I'd like to do that. And then guess what? Now the whole thing moves forward in the context of fucking what they want. It's very tough to talk about yourself or show exercises, and have somebody go, come in and go. I want to lose weight. I'm a big fan of your exercises. Fucking What the fuck? No, never. And if you think your social media tone is good, send me a message. If you think it sucks. Send me a message. I'll tell you what I think and I'm not gonna be that nice either. So just know if you're doing this. I'm not trying to be mean but you're not paying me any money. I'm gonna look at it and I'm fucking give you a paragraph of what I think. I think it sucks. I think this I think that I think you're inconsistent. Baba, baba, baba, baba, bah, it'll be what it'll be. But I'll offer that for free. For the month of February, shoot me that message. Let's go. If you think your rules, let's go, I'll take a look at it. And because I don't manage social media for people, I have one we have one, Jim, that we work with quite a bit that I'm helping with that. You and I have our hands in quite a bit of on the execution side of things. That's where we're at. It's a very high level of service. And if you're DIY in your social media, I promise you can't afford that. So if you do do it yourself, or you're paying someone else to do it, whatever, shoot me a thing. Let me see if it's aligned with the things that we described. If it's not, maybe you know, and maybe don't send it to me, there's always been a longer time. But I'll tell you, if you're having hired a social media manager and they suck. I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I think Sorry, I'll tell you



John Fairbanks 53:05

how much it sucks for



Tyler 53:09

sure, yeah, if you handed your social media off to you to a coach, and you're just not checking in on them at all, and not making sure that converts or anything and just letting them post stuff constantly. I'll probably know that immediately. Or if it's you doing that same thing I'll know and I get your feelings hurt either Elphinstone on Instagram



John Fairbanks 53:28

and if you need help with custom packages and sales systems and marketing strategies, execution plans, lead generation just message Yeah, this



Tyler 53:42

piece of software that just does it, that's not it, we're gonna teach you're going to learn how to do this, you're gonna learn enough to be able to outsource the things you can't do so that you can actually make sure that this stuff works for you. Okay, I'm gonna put some big fat price tag on something since everything is done for you and now your thing is like everybody else there's plenty of other gym owners gym business consultants stuff out there like this so your stuff here is it's we're gonna require you to level up your skill set just like you had to do when you learn to be good coach. You got to get better, you got to get a better eye for things you got to learn, this you got to learn. It's about them, you gotta learn all that stuff about your business, it's the same thing. Okay, we're not going to turn your business into some soulless fucking process machine it's not it's this is why we always everything we did that we explained today is anchored about the client it's anchored about the client success their goals their wants their that's the impact John and I have wanted to have in the world is spreading fitness. And you people out there are good. Because you're trying to do it. You're trying to do it well, you're actually caring. That's exactly the reason we work with you as opposed to the people that just have all the money and don't care. It's because those people fucking suck because they're the bad ones. Okay, we you're the good ones we want you to act so we want to make sure that the good ones who give a fuck about the people can be financially successful still keep their voice and still, but but there's some things you got to fix. You just you got to fix it and if you want to grow beyond This thing that you're just fucking turning on right now like you choose a message we're gonna help you because that's that's our thing is we want to keep your gym soul while you get fucking rich helping people because you don't need to be poor to do this that's not the name of the game you don't need to be a martyr you don't need to be broke and you don't need to just fucking be an expert you don't need to have our highest paid personal trainers in our system has been our highest paid personal trainer in our system since her first month of personal training of coaching at all and she's still out produces it everybody else everybody else she makes more money than any personal trainer you got on your staff too.



John Fairbanks 55:35

She makes more money from some of the gyms



Tyler 55:38

yes she makes more money than just



John Fairbanks 55:42

like it is the ability to do it and the best part is it ain't about money right all the structure for her is all about the client and then it just works it just the money comes money's the symptom right it's



Tyler 55:59

your money is just fuel that's fuel man you but you need it man you need it so that you can grow the system can grow money's fuel the fire will fucking avoid it don't be a martyr. We'll talk about your wizardry just to get people and help them get paid handsomely to do it because then you can do it more you can teach more of your coaches more your staff do it. growth, growth, growth, growth, growth growth there's an endless amount of abundance out there in this world to be had. Especially in this fitness space. I say it all the time. There's plenty of fitness to be sold. We're not running out of fitness here. Okay. America is not fit right now. So there's there's there's a need okay, and you should get that money and then that may be the fucking healthcare system doesn't get it because I don't really trust all the what they've been doing with it. I don't think it's efficient. I don't think it's useful. I don't think I don't like any of it. Okay, so that money is yours. Okay, get out there and take it. shoot us a message or DM me at Tyler effing stone John Fairbanks, FL or the podcast itself at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. If you want to know more, go to all the shit our description at gym owners revolution is the website. Go there for all the links in our description for the Facebook group and all that jazz. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks, John. And we'll see you guys later.