Thursday, April 06, 2023
coach, gym, people, clients, quality control, sales, staff, business, owners, selling, important, email, problem, happening, run, john, week, decision
Tyler 00:02
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode The gym owners podcast. This week we're gonna talk about things you can do for quality control to cover the basics, but I think it's a really important aspect of your gyms. We'll call John like, just a larger system that your gym needs to exist in, which involves, we've covered a lot on marketing and getting leads, and then what products you should sell and pricing and how you should offer those, all these other things that are one side of the equation. On the other hand, there's things that we still need to be addressing, from staffing to client results, and lots of other issues that go into fulfillment and quality control. And this actually all started from a larger conversation, John, that we were having the other day with, in our gear Academy with some of our gym owners from that group you want in the gear Academy, you can just go to gym owners revolution.com. But we were talking about, you know, emails, how a lot of gym owners and business gyms, specifically under utilize email as outreach email as you're trying to get new sales on stuff and we meet needed to make sure that we paint that conversation. It's not just about hitting people up for sales all the time, your email is not just marketing. It can be and it should be a lot, but it also needs to be more than that. And we'll kind of build on that story here as we get going. So before we get started, make sure you join the Facebook group link in the description. Make sure you follow me on Instagram at Tyler F and stone Tyler eff on Instagram follow John at the follow show as well the show at the gym owners podcast. And John I work and they follow
John Fairbanks 01:33
us on Instagram, you can follow me at Jay banks f L on Johnny RAM really
Tyler 01:39
used to me cutting him off at this point now. I listened to quite a few podcasts and one of my favorite hosts of all of them was Big Jay Oakerson. But Big Jay and I have a lot in common and that like once there's a thought that goes into my brain that I need to say I just bulldoze it out over top of everybody else. And John has been really patient about that over the years. So
John Fairbanks 02:01
It makes me a better person because I, too, am very natural at trying to interrupt, so it allows me to fully appreciate everybody else that I do that too.
Tyler 02:10
So let's start where this conversation began. Actually, I do want to give the context of this as we're talking about emails, and I think the gym owners very much are not using your emails enough, especially specifically for doing reactivation plays, I think doing things like setting expectations. So it's not all about solicitation, setting expectations, what's going to happen for my first class, what's, what do I need to know for my appointment? How do I schedule this? What shoes should I wear, like, can we be more informed before they walk in the door for almost any situation? The better off they're going to be, the more comfortable they are going to be. And then you really can immediately break a lot of that resistance or temptation to cut bait and bail. And that's how you're going to think . I think it's really, really important for retention for people to kind of know what's happening, what's next. And everything that they can expect.
John Fairbanks 03:01
And we can get really funky is that, like the so-called experts that are in this space that really start to nerd out. And if all you have to do is think one day, hey, I think I want to get better at trying to get leads. And for the love of God, all you have to do is click on one link one time search one thing one time, and you're about to be inundated by every single shark that's out in this very, very bloody ocean water of people that are trying to manipulate and use every trick they have in the book to help you get leads. And what will happen is that if you go too far down this road, you will follow one of these groups of people or or invest in, say, a client management system that comes with a bunch of pre-canned emails and a bunch of shit. And what ends up happening is that a lot of work gets done on the pre sale. So you can almost over communicate during the wooing process of trying to find a client. And then because there's no money in it, to help you continue dating your clients, right once you've got them. The idea of now being able to communicate after you've kind of sealed the deal, and almost like it just drops off a cliff.
Tyler 04:16
Yeah, that's one of the really important things because I think it's the thing that we emphasize the most with our gear Academy gyms is that we want them to it's very expensive to acquire clients. And I think in the long run I think most people stay focused on that one side, get a new client, get a new client. But the thing John and I rally the most against is that kind of turn and burn, you know, high low retention, like just kind of the bait and switch short stay not concerned about the client results or delivering a real premium client experience, or what the other guys in the industry will tell you is that like, oh, we just assumed that you're great at your job and that that's we stay out of it completely. But the problem is the truth is you get the Things that you put energy towards is what you will get as outcomes. Meaning if you're just going to put energy towards getting 40, new leads a month for all of eternity, I promise you, you're going to end up having kind of a dogshit product, because in that you're going to end up failing to fulfill well, and failing to deliver a quality product, unless you put equal energy into retention. And retention isn't just contact or communication, retention is a lot of things. And this is why when we were going over with one of our gym owners, their pre-sales meeting sequence, and it was good after it had been fixed. Again, because you kind of gotta get your hands on these things, don't let these automations just run amok, you need to check in on him every once in a while, because sometimes they can be broken, make you look really bad. But there's like six or seven points of contact before someone makes an appointment with them. Follow up this, text this and send them this and whatever. That seems like a lot of effort has gone into it. And then there's very often very little beyond that point. Very little check ins, very little, you know, how are you doing very little opportunities. One of the first things that we do with John with gyms that we work with is we just have them start giving us a Google review. Right, get a hold of everybody via email, in person, whatever it is, but everybody in your gym and everybody as they come in early on in that relationship, let's get them early on at that point about, give us a good testimonial, give us a good review. Right? Well, that's good. But then what about in three months? What about in four months? What about in five months? And there's lots of other things you can use the email for, which we will get into later. But this one is really about quality control. So we started this by seeking advanced levels of testimonials, right, we start with that first one, I just want a Google review. And then we have you guys as a gym or you can harvest that content. And you can use those words as text, whatever that person does for social media, at least it gives you some content to post in somebody else's words. And I think it's super valuable. I also think we've talked before, that review counts are just really critical for search engine results, someone searching for a gym in your area, if you have 100 reviews, the guy next year has 20, you win, you win that battle 10 times out of 10, frankly. So that is extremely important. And I think that that's the thing that if you're doing that you're already doing that part better than the rest. But you still need to be doing it as you continue to go. And this is what we found is one of the gyms we work with, we had them do this kind of midway through low this is, I don't know, a few months in. But they have a lot of existing members. And it just went out in the form of a Google forum and email that goes out to everybody who's currently a member of the gym, and treats it kind of like a survey. But this is how we wear this because it's not like an opportunity to tattle. It sounds multifaceted. You're asking many questions, many different ways, and then kind of run through it. But what this gave the gym owner is a really, really, really good sense of what actually was going on with the gym. And the gym owner had a lot of suspicions about cheese. So there was, I was having trouble with this staff getting this person to maybe sell this way. Or to go through this process, I was getting resistance to these things I was trying to do and this person has multiple locations, so they're not really there all the time, it's getting to be difficult to know. And if you're going to ask the staff, guys, you know how coaches are, they know everything, don't worry about anything, and they're gonna keep everything as easy going as possible as it can be for them. Right? And so yes, the staff, everything's fine. If you ask the staff why they don't want to do new stuff you're asking them to do it's because it's, it's your fault. So he went around, he asked all the members. Turns out, we get a lot of bad feedback about a lot of this coaching stuff. Bad to the point, John, where it was almost immediately, like, all these coaches have to go.
John Fairbanks 08:43
For sure. And the one thing that was nice is because it's not, it's not an email that goes out being like, Hey, I'm worried that fuckery is afoot. Tell me right, it ends up being a thing that, like you said, is multifaceted. That has a lot of things that can benefit from it. But what's interesting is when this gym owner started to alert us to what he thought was an issue, he came and wanted to get feedback from us because it's what we do with our guard gear. Academy coaches are owners. And it was no. I'm getting a lot of resistance on the sales stuff. Like things that I just know that are difficult. So immediately, it was like it was sales. And I can't tell you how many times we've been working with someone taller, and you will hear them say it's always once we get to a certain point with a gym owner where they are scaling and leveling up enough to pull themselves kind of out of that day to day.
Tyler 09:41
Yep. So the moment they hand this simple sales process off to somebody else, it's not it's not a system. Now here. Here's how you do it. You run a few of these sales conversations, see how it goes, plug someone else in, and boom, you just see I see numbers coming back bad. And by the way, these are This is a formula that we use, and it's optimized. And it's easy. Like I said in the past, if you're wondering about what this sales system is, it's nothing. There's no fucking secret sauce, we've used it many industries, you give people choices. So it's not sales, like the negative. If you have, if you're a coach, the negative connotation about sales, this thing is not the thing. It definitely is not that so that's how we find this, like, if they were actually doing it or cared to do any of this at all, or were capable of doing any sales. This is the only thing that they could do. This would be the thing where they would go, Oh, damn, this is super easy. So when I hear the coaches, I don't, what I find is, it's a coach that just doesn't want any new responsibility. Staff that doesn't want any new responsibility. And I say the word coach, because, unfortunately, in a lot of your businesses, you're having coaches, and you're plugging them into doing other tasks. And it would be great if you could have a salesperson do sales things. But frankly, you're not bringing on a full time salesperson. And you're probably not hiring a full time coach from zero to 100, either.
John Fairbanks 11:00
And that's when we realized early on again, as we saw what other gurus or consultants or other people were doing, it was always the goal to build a fully functioning sales team. And you and I just looked at each other, we're just like, This is so it's anyone because here's the cold, hard truth to this fact, is, anyone that's worth their salt, that is a really top notch, I'm talking a fucking ace at selling, ain't gonna be selling your fucking shit at your gym, no, just hard stop, they're just not, they're gonna go to a more business, that gives them a better commission structure where they are going to pull a quarter million plus a year in money. And so if you can't provide that, then we cannot play just because somebody can create amazing salespeople in another or adjacent industry does not mean that this is going to apply to you. And that's when you and I really wanted to buckle down early early on and said, okay, then whatever this system is, how we implement what we have seen success has, the reason why it was successful is I never had a full sales team. I never worked for an organization that had a full time sales team. When you saw this system work that we use, you all didn't have a fucking sales team,
Tyler 12:25
no technicians selling the exact people on the ground. So on the ground, by the way, do you want to know why I think it should be that they'd be that way? There's something to be said in many industries, I think salespeople doing selling, I have a sales man doing salesman things I get it salespeople should sell the issue, I think and when it comes to in the technical field that we were doing heating and air conditioning, when I've shown on a repair, and then I'm selling you your options, one for that repair to your options for replacement. So you trust me, because I'm in your home? Sure. And I think that it is important that as if you're in the fitness industry you're working with trust is pretty major, especially if you're selling higher end products. Now, if you're just selling casual gym memberships, trust doesn't mean anything. 24 hour access doesn't mean there's not a lot of trust, that needs to be involved there. Truthfully, it just doesn't matter. But for anyone who is considering anything beyond a 24 hour gym, actor access beyond just a key card, there's probably going to need to be some sort of trust that's going to need to be built there or trust, it's going to need to be assumed. So that's why I do believe that those people that are able to see the word to display the trustworthiness to people enough to have someone coach them that trust is exactly what you need to guide them to help them make a decision to a different fitness product, whatever that may be. And I say that that weight guide them to help them make a choice, present them with their options, and then get the fuck out of the way. But when that's the issue when I was when we're not having these coaches, by the way, this is a long story saying the sales software that was being asked if these staff is not that hard, it's not it's very simple. So now with this, ask them three questions, hold this iPad in front of them and let them push the buttons and go through and just talk. And it's not it's not a fucking spread. It's not a PowerPoint. It's not anything. It's like, hey, well, what are you looking to accomplish? Okay, cool. Sounds like this. Yeah. All right. You want to look for personal training or a group fitness group? Okay, cool. How many days a week? Okay, cool. Well, here you go. Here's the top options, got all this stuff? Take a look. What do you think literally, that's fucking pretty much it. And when coaches don't want to do that, what it is, is they don't want to talk about money at all. I don't want to talk, I don't want to have to actually own the fact that I'm a professional at this. They don't want to have to be a professional. And they don't want to get to the point where there's any sort of risk and then being like, having to actually answer for any of the things that they say or do explain any of it because a lot of them can't just let a dog shit coaches out there in this world a lot. So the reason I want coaches to do this is that you know what, it's gonna weed them out, frankly, like, in this case here, the ones that came through, they needed to be weeded out immediately. Because the reason this gym has a hard time scaling is the owners having to sell everybody everything all the time. And when he's not the one doing the selling these people were bombing. So we come in and put a brand new sales system in and we kind of just bring them up on this or what happens? They're just resistant to having it all together, and completely don't want to do it. Well, that's his own red flags. But what's he going to do about that? What are you going to do? So we just start doing the regular things we're doing. And let's check back in with all the members. Not about I'm going to fire my staff, but like, Hey, how are we doing? What do you think about the staff? How have you noticed this? We're cleanliness of the facility, bathrooms, one to 10. Right? What about the other clients, he felt friendly, you felt welcomed, there's any number of ways you can put together these surveys, right? Yeah. And these surveys don't need to be too direct. You can give people opportunities to elaborate if they want. But once you get to a certain point, you'll get all this feedback back and you look back and you go, all right. There's some trends here. Exactly, that maybe clients are just slightly less satisfied with all of them, though, are less satisfied with this coach than that coach. What does that mean? And then maybe you could then maybe you could reach back out to those clients and say, Hey, is there something here, I promise not to tell you anything we're trying to, we're trying to build a system that delivers a high quality product. And if there's any information, you get to help me, I'd really appreciate it. And then it turns out, more stuff comes out and more stuff comes out. And in the end, he fired every single one of his coaches. And I can tell you, it was absolutely 100% the right decision, not only that it should have been done many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many months ago.
John Fairbanks 16:35
Well, here's literally what he said. He goes, it's it was, it was worse than I thought. And why didn't I do this sooner? Were his literal words. And it's how swift he was making this decision, I think it also needs to be once he got there, it was I'm here, I kind of I'm hearing problems. I'm seeing problems in the books. So quantitatively, I can say there's issues here on the back end. But you know, it could be a number of things. And then he starts to hear the issues. So he just goes for himself and checks. Once he got the questionnaire back. It was like, Oh, they're all fired. It was just like it was instantaneous, and the ability to rip off that band aid. It's, this is this was true, it's as true as it was for you all as gym owners as it was for me. When I was a principal at a private school. I start hearing the kids talking about problems with a science teacher. And it's not the usual bitching, right? These are and I'm like, okay, you know, I'm paying attention, but you gotta take it with a grain of salt. And I'm hearing it. So then I hear it enough that I'm finally like, you know what, I'm gonna go observe this teacher during the class period. I'm like, yeah, there's there is there's something, there's something wrong that's here. And so then I reach out to a couple of my families. And then I get that questionnaire back, essentially, that feedback. And it just was like, this is a major issue. And the problem is, once you've heard it, and then you kind of see it, it's this phrase that forever needs to be in everyone's brain. It's worse than you thought. Yeah. Because for you to hear it. It's bubbled up, right. It's gotten to the point where it is now bubbled to the surface. Think about just all of the shit that's going wrong for you as a gym owner, if you are somebody that is like, Oh, I have a good staff, whatever. And I can leave at noon, I can leave at three, I can leave at whatever. You do not know what's happening. When the cat's away and the mice are at play.
Tyler 18:47
Yeah. Yeah, it turns into very quickly the inmates running the asylum. So we talked about the most especially in the fitness industry very specifically, because it's fucking summer camp, summer camp camp for adult kids. It's what coaching staff really is for the most part. There's some sort of developmental thing that happens. We're like, now we're just gym people. It's all fucking fun all the time. And so it begins to lack professionalism. Okay, professionalism is not a thing that happens accidentally in a business's culture, it's really important. That doesn't mean your business can't be fun. It can't be wild, it can't be a fucking riot all the time. It absolutely can. But you need to have it tethered to some sort of professionalism as long as that's, you have any desire to make a fucking long term living out of this and be able to actually control the variables that you hope to be able to control because that's the most important thing. Okay, this whole thing goes back to you needing to be checking in on this stuff way more frequently, way more often, and should have done it long ago and he would have seen these things. The other reason is, of all the other issues that you were having with these coaches, right as far as them not being able to sell their numbers being bad performance metrics for whatever other performance we thought it was. What are the performance metrics for your employees for Are you? Yeah, what are they? What are the measurables? That that should be there? What are the KPIs key performance indicators? Okay, what are they? What does it mean that people are? What does that mean? By the way, customers set customer satisfaction ratings one through five, if every single client that worked with one of your coaches got a simple, one through five star rating for how they would rate this coach's performance this month. That's great. Because if that starts coming back with ones and twos, you have an issue and they don't even need to elaborate if they don't want to. But it is that simple. Some people may not fill it out whatever it is, but like little pieces that are a piece of data in that piece of data matters, because that is about customer satisfaction. And who the fuck are you doing it for? I don't know, who's this business for? And that's the most important question. I see so many gyms that exist to serve the coaches. If I walk into a lot of gyms, that gym is crafted to serve the coach. So these coaches can hang out and they can have a harem of women around and they can fucking workout for four hours a day. And then they can pretend to be respectable human beings while they're not. Okay, the gym is not there to serve the coaches, is there to serve the clients? And in what ways right? Are they having fun? Are they getting results? Are they injury free? Are they making progress towards the things that they're there to make progress? All of those things, by the way your coaches need to be answering for you need to get data about each of those things consistently. And your coaches need to be answering for this in regular meetings. Because John, we meet every week. What do we mean when we go over a week? Revenue, sales numbers, sales opportunities are dropped . What does Facebook group at what is this grown to? What are these podcasts? Every single piece of data that revolves around this business gets they're not all important every week either. They're also not things we can do something about every week, but it's a piece of data we check in on every single week and we go for something skids. Fuck we don't want from if we went to two podcast listeners, I'd be like, Man, this thing stuff now, what are we doing? People started listening, we got it, what is going on here. And so that's why you need to be checking in on this stuff regularly. And it's and again, most people don't even know what you would use to hold a coach accountable for that but I just gave them to you, right? As all your members have those questions, right, give it just give us one through five star ratings, just do that one through five, one through five. That's it, and just see what comes back, do that for six months, once, once a month, and then you're gonna know at least you'll know that people don't like this guy. And you're gonna find you get rid of somebody that people don't like, all of a sudden, things were a lot a lot easier in your business,
John Fairbanks 22:38
I think it's important when we're talking about quality control, this also goes both ways. So first, it's your job as a gym owner that you need to have your house in order, you need to first you need to have your shit together. That's your job, you're the boss, right, you need to know what the fuck you're doing, why you're doing it, you need to have a plan, then you need to make sure your coaches have their shit together, because they are an extension of you. Whether you are there all the time, and you're not there, it's they are representing you and your brand, like whatever it is, that's why we'd say pocket and put them in a polo shirt, or put them in a goddamn matching shirt that has has the logo says it's coach like they are representative of you. As long as you know that you are doing those right things, you have questionnaires, you're meeting regularly, you're doing all those things in house, so your house is in order. This quality control also goes the direction of the clients that you also are serving, because there's just going to be bougie Conte motherfuckers that you shouldn't be in your facility anymore. They're a piece of shit. And the reality is, is that first, you're not just immediately going to fire someone from being a client of yours. Because it goes against everything we have anyone ever hears or thinks about when it comes to business. So you're going to hold on to problem clients much longer than you should. I mean, for fucksakes Tyler, we've worked for organizations before, whether it was they either a coach that needed to be fired, that was on staff, or they were clients that needed to be fired, that were being served, that it was like we were doing everything in our power as an organization just to avoid the conversation. It was like that and now like, we'll just let them like we'll give them enough rope to hang themselves. Yep, it's like everyone suffers because of it was it's fucking miserable. And the exact same emotion of when you finally do step the fuck up and fire you have a story of somebody one of our MMA gyms did something similar.
Tyler 24:43
Yeah, yeah. Well, you finally get rid of problem clients. Well, you know what happens? Everybody goes, Oh, this huge sigh of relief throughout your whole business. And by the way, you don't even realize because as the business owner, you're just kind of shouldering the burden of everybody's vibe on your own. So you know Not like, you're like, oh, maybe they don't hate it as much as I do, you know, it's just the thing. It's just an hour of their day. It's my all, you know, it's a ton of time for me, why don't you cut cancer out of your business and it's the it's it is an instant feeling of. It's amazing. Now the reason is the reason it feels. The reason you need to move quicker with this, though, is what most people do is they wait until it's not going to hurt for financial reasons or whatever, especially with staff staff, the big one, because you got to cover that time. You got caught, there's, there's a lot of headaches to happen if you're going to turn over some staff, clients, maybe someone was family or whatever. It's like, I'm gonna dump a few 100 bucks on our friends. Yeah, it's like, Nope, I gotta go. But waiting will only make it worse. So the reason you usually know you've waited too long, is that the moment you finally cut it loose, it feels amazing. Like, you're like, oh, man, it what it was, that means you let the pain stack up on the other side of that equation, way too long, that you waited until it became so obvious. And this is what we're talking about here is you get some data along the way. And you're actually going to be able to play in reality the entire time, instead of constantly trying to predict what is real and what isn't, and what people are thinking about what's really going on in your gym.
John Fairbanks 26:18
And one of the huge benefits that we bring to it, we've helped three different gym owners in the last six months fire people. Now this isn't what we do. Like the goal isn't to get you to fire all your people. But what ends up happening is that we provide a like, as a third party, as long as you don't let us speak to your people, we stay unbiased. Because as soon as you do allow us to talk to hear coaches, Tyler gets pretty, pretty confidently belligerent about what you should do next. Because, again, we're coming from the outside. So it's not like this is your world, you have one of them. The odds are this is your gym, you've had one of them, the benefit that we have is that we get to work with hundreds of gym owners and look at hundreds of different models, and get to vicariously participate in ownership across the board in multiple markets, multiple industries, multiple styles of gyms, like fill in the blank. So it's the same benefit where for us we combat is not a guess, if we know if it smells like a duck and it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. It's a fucking duck, and I don't care how long you've been fucking the duck, I don't care how long the duck has been in the family and how long the ducks been fucking your
Tyler 27:43
clients.
John Fairbanks 27:47
That's it. And that's where it allows us to come in. And that's where every time so 100% of the time that we have found because we are able to be this unbiased Board of Directors style support. When a gym owner comes in, says, Hey, these are the problems, we just say exactly what we say, which is he should probably fucking fire those people. And again, there is very rarely pushback. It's just like, you're right. Like, it just is like they just need permission to make some of these decisions. And it's not just in this but we're finding it's a major benefit of just being able to have someone that is just far enough away.
Tyler 28:26
Yeah, this is the benefit of doing things like this is why you need to be in some sort of peer group. And this is one of the things that we do with the gear Academy is it's not just a peer group. React is almost like a coal board of directors for you with your business as well. We started, we bounced decisions off each other, we kind of brainstormed and came up with ideas, plans, whatever your ideas are, that's how we're going to execute delegates, poof, off we go. And you'd need that it was the thing I needed the most in my visit. John is the thing that people come to us the most, this is why we don't do it very often. So when we don't like meeting calls with people before we get them. It's like you better give me some information, a bunch of information about your business before we just hop on a call with people because they like the podcast, because very often it's just people that want us to validate their other decisions for them already. It's like, well, that's kind of what we do here is we, you know, you want us to tell you this is the right decision that well, that's just kind of the purpose of our business coaching thing. So but as a business owner, you do want especially a new business owner, you that's the thing you need, like I always felt this is why we kind of built this product is that I always felt like I needed somebody to be like, who I can lean on but hey, is this the right move. And I was fortunate to have people outside of this industry, right that I was able to talk to and who really understood that the quality context was different. There's some overlap, and they would give me they would put their hands up and they would say I think this is different because of the things you're doing. And there were times where they would say this is absolutely the same. You're making a mistake, you know, and they will see and so but it's super important. This is why masterminds peer groups, whatever it is as some sort of business coaching product, we talked about this all the time, like you're, you're working out in a program to fucking grow your motivate most gym owners and coaches, you know you're going through a program to try to develop your goddamn legs and abs and strength and all this shit and fitness. And most are spending no money actually trying to level up their business acumen at all zero and then wonder five years later, like, Why didn't Why didn't this business just improve? Like, well, you know, you have to, and by the way your coaches have to your staff have to the whole system needs to rise up. Now, I want to jump on this data thing one more time here. Okay. So pieces of data that I want you to get out of this email, right, whatever, whatever it is, like but, but this is we're going to stay within the confines of the quality control discussion here, right? Yep. So that can be followed up from anything right. From a personal training session from your first personal training session. What a great opportunity to get. Hey, we hope you liked your coach. We hope you really enjoyed your experience. Do you have any feedback here? Give me three great ones this one through five this one through five this one through five boom that's it. Right you start to build that type of stuff into your master email sequence and next thing you know you can have a very foolproof system you want you want to know why the reasons some of that should go out on let's say you have someone hires private personal trainer they just spent a lot of money right now in a perfect world as a gym owner you don't want to be the one fulfilling all your personal training. You may be the one doing the selling right now though. Right? It'd be great to have in your part time personal trainers who are maybe or maybe aren't in the gym being the one making all their own sales calls. But that may not always be the case. Okay, but if you're able to sell a personal training package to someone that's a couple $1,000 Right paid up front, and you say we're going to send you with Coach Steve here Coach Steve is going to meet here at this time. If you go right you should be able to still be able to do that. Again, in the perfect world, that coach would be selling their own stuff, but it ain't perfect. And they go and they train with Coach Steve the first time and they just don't connect with them. They just don't. Or Coach Steve was late. And maybe Coach Steve is a great coach. But Coach Steve was 15 minutes late. That person now just spent two grand which meant they were hoping to enjoy it. They really were spending a lot of money which means you want this to be a good experience. And Steve fucking let them down fucking Steve. Right. So you need to know that right away immediately, because then you can make contact with Steve, you're gonna have Steve make it right with them or you simply know it can immediately pivot them over to another coach. While you address the goddamn Steve problem here, versus what most of you guys are going to do is most guys, I was talking to Jim Mora the other day. Most of the coaches he hasn't staffed personal training with are really bad. They're bad mannered with the clients that clients if the clients are having fun, you'd be fucking really fooling me from having seen it. If the coach knows anything, you'd really be fooling me. Clients are getting results. Boy, I don't know at that I've seen right but the fact is, is gym owner has no fucking way to tell. So I'm watching these coaches coach poorly. I'm watching them show up late regularly. I'm watching the clients like I roll. I'm watching the clients longingly look over to interesting fun coaches that are in the room and go jacked and funny and fun. And his clients are having a blast and they're doing cool stuff. His beard is moving. Yeah. Or they look over at Megan like mountains. You know, gosh, she's having so much fun. Why are they laughing so much? And they look like their workers? I don't know how to do those exercises. But then oh, by the way, why do our people move so much better than their people? Right? What does it look like? How do people know what they're doing? Right? Well, it's clear you're a better coach. Clearly. It really clearly is. However, as a gym owner, you don't know. Exactly. You just don't know. So a gym owner goes well, how do I know that coach A and Coach B suck. And Coach C and coach do okay, they're getting plenty of feedback about Coach C and Coach D because when the goal is oh and oh my goodness, it's fantastic. That stuff bubbles over. Right? You almost can't miss that. Okay, but the bad thing, John, we talked about this with a strong fit a lot is that like the problem is people are loyal to shitty coaches. People are really loyal to shitty coaches, man, it's, it's crazy. And it's more about fearing change. People end up in a borderline abusive relationship with their coaches. It's a it's a, it's a this is there's an act of submission a little bit that goes on with just giving yourself over to somebody who's going to coach you and tell you what to do and you're going to do it okay. And so you're going to assume that they know what they're talking about. And you can't just be questioning them on everything or doubting them. But what if they suck what their intentions suck? And what if they are lazy or they're taking advantage of you and what if they're just bored and disinterested the whole time. So, in getting back to this point, right? All of those people should be asked very regularly, what's going on in the gym, like, like, like, who's your coach, how's the sessions been going? Are you more or less like, just think of any piece of data that you would want to hear. But that five stars is just the simplest one where they don't feel the need. If someone starts giving you one star, you follow back up with him and try to meet with him and talk to him to get to the bottom of a real issue. But you have these bad coaches, Jim water doesn't know. Well, now Jim, what we're gonna do is you're gonna be advertising personal training, you're gonna funnel this and this is what happens when the system is broken, and there's no quality control in the backend, you start then paying for leads, and you invest money and get people in. And if you're doing it, right, you're trying to attract high value people, which means you're not just generating leads, generating leads for a $30 product and trying to upsell them to personal training. You're actually trying to attract people who want personal training. Okay, so while you then are starting to attract high value clients, talk to them about high value products. You're getting good at closing big ticket high value products, fucking home run, and then you plug them in with a goddamn flunky of a coach fresh out of fucking Exercise Science School who doesn't fucking lift at all? The person who's just obnoxious in the gym, when they are on their own that is off putting is late, like that shit exists? And there are a lot of them.
John Fairbanks 36:22
Do you inherit? Or you inherited them? They're not yours, you didn't hire? You didn't hire them. Yeah,
Tyler 36:30
yeah. So but that's what happens. And it'll break your gym. Because of your gym's reputation, you can't get back now, because what you did is you attracted a bunch of high value people. And you gave them a very low value product from a very, very low value coach. And now those people walk away going, what was this and never again, and they tell everybody around town, and they may not tell them that your gym sucks. But it's not going to be involved in the premium experience conversation at all.
John Fairbanks 36:59
And within the quality control conversation as well. This is another piece we're talking a lot about how email, you can get out ahead of this. But understand all of the steps that can come. Because you are doing you know, you're doing step one, which is this is the bare minimum when it comes to quality control. But this then enables you to feel maybe more confident. A phrase that we use all the time is you should always be hiring, always. Now, I don't have time to give you a dissertation as to why that is important. surface level, you may understand why that's important. But understand that as you go deeper, it's because of quality control. A guy that was is probably one of the richest guys that I've ever gotten to spend a lot of time with. He was like the VP of Shell Oil back in the 70s. And he drove just a fucking beater of like this car that was like 30 years old, was a little Squatty Potty old man in his 70s when I was with him. And one of the smartest things that I've used my whole life was to say, you don't have a decision to make unless you have more than one choice. And so that was something that would come to them all the time. Totally unrelated things. Hey, call uncle Hiram, Uncle Hiram, what do you do? What do you think about this? Because well, how many choices do you have? Like a well, actually, is this one that he's like? Well, then why are you talking to me about it? It was just, it was just like, god dammit, I'm gonna be right. What the fuck am I doing? Because again, I was calling somebody. This is good validation, but I just It doesn't matter, dude. Like, it's if you are saying that you need to go do X or you are feeling you need to do Y. Unless you have more than one choice. There's no decision to make, period, you don't get to make a decision, you just must go with option A. And that is so many of you find yourselves when if we're in a conversation of quality control, and we have challenged you and pushed you into an uncomfortable position of saying, hey, you know that thing that you're hiding from right now, which is that coach that continues to show up late that coaches who has left your 530 members outside of your fucking door and the gyms not open because his alarm didn't go off or whatever the fuck
Tyler 39:24
coach who spends half the time he's coaching, staring at his phone scrolling on Instagram.
John Fairbanks 39:29
So you know, all those things. You've seen them, you've been hiding from them. And the problem is that we're trying we're open up that scab, and we're pushing that out into the light a little bit and it's gonna make you feel uncomfortable, and you probably want to turn this off. But the reality is, the reason why you haven't taken action on it is because of what we hear all the time. I can't find I can't find good coaches. I can't, I can't find you know, it's hard to find And good people, you know, like, it's, it's just I would rather deal with, you know, the what is the deal with the evil I know than the evil I don't or whatever it is like it's, you can have so much so many excuses and so much ways to be able to rationalize your way into this situation where just the mere fact, of quality control of, if you are always hiring, there's always you have more than one choice. And it's just it's putting balls into play. It's the idea is here, you're not even hitting singles right now, you're just hoping to be able to hit a fucking Grand Slam every at bat, and you're not even fucking swinging the bat 99.9% of the time.
Tyler 40:37
And to elaborate on the hiring thing. So what we've done so far is we've covered how you can essentially leverage your clients to snitch on your staff to prove that they fucking suck. But this goes even further right bathrooms being clean fucking is a placement too hot or too cold, right? You get like, let's beat the dead seriously my place. Last thing I want to do is every 75 to resolve fucking winter, it cost me $2,000 a month, it really did. So I pulled it down and listened to some verbal complaints about it being cold. It's not until you send a little message about Hey, guys, do you think it's warm, perfect, too cold to you know, that you realize, you know, 80% of my people think it's too cold. Because the ones that are gonna say something to me are the ones that are complaining about literally everything. So I kind of ignore them. So I need some actual data. Now, not just going around them about your staff, right. But this is about accountability more than anything else, and that you have failed to hold your staff accountable and to set the expectations for that. And you have not been touched. Touch base with your staff about these things beforehand, which is why it's run amok. So how do you make sure you're not in a situation that when you send out maybe these quality controls, little testimonial surveys, or whatever it is, you're gonna, you're gonna send out here that it doesn't blow up in your face? Well, the best way to do that is to have your staff actually doing the things they should be doing. So that's very simple. We've talked about this before on some of our hiring stuff, but what are your staff accountable to? What do your coaches need to be held accountable to? What do they need to be held accountable to when they're selling? Right? So for sales? Let's start with the first one showing up on time. Great. Are they sending out the messages to the people that they're supposed to be sending out? The ones that aren't automated when they are getting to sales meetings? Okay, perfect. How many sales meetings? Are they showing up for a week? Great, that exists in writing somewhere? How many of those sales got closed? Okay. And of those closers, what was the average ticket price? Now, if you don't have a good sale system, and you're just parking an inexperienced coach with no sales experience in front of a client with no Gohan, having no sort of guided conversation, and not giving the client choices, and just being mad, because this coach couldn't upsell people into expensive products out of the blue with no resources or fucking skill, or training or anything whatsoever that's on you. It's not on them. Okay. So this is why having some sort of sales system, a plan for how you're going to sell, how you're gonna present people options, that has to exist. But now that gives you something you and your staff can train towards, hey, let's work on this now. And then when you check back in at the end of this week, let's see how these numbers are all you sold all base level memberships? Okay, we still need to talk about it. Right? Or have you mentioned personal training, what were the reasons it was a budget? Was there anything new, they just went all fell or fell? Okay, perfect. And you don't need to say anything? Two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks go by? And you say okay, well now and the numbers still say the same? Okay, well, I need to start sitting down on some of these with you, we're gonna start recording some of these to figure out what's going on, or you need to sit in on some of these, when you see me do them. I need to train them. You need to equip them to be successful. And then you need to give them all after you've given them those tools, you need to hold them accountable to the metrics of their success. That's simple on the sales team. Second is on the coaching, client results. That's important. Okay. Are you debriefing with your clients? Maybe not every week? Maybe have maybe every other week with your coaches? Are you debriefing with your coaches about their clients? Have them sit down with a list of their clients that you would describe or specifically, they're their clients, what their goals are? Simple weight loss, strength, fun, whatever it is, right? But can you sit down and go through that list with them? Stephanie has been here for six months, she's wanting to lose some weight. What she weighed now, what did she wait for when you started? Oh, we never did anything. Kay, what do you mean? Well, and by the way, maybe she came in for weight loss, and she didn't pay for any other services. She's not doing nutritions Well, great. Let's find out if she's losing weight. Let's ask her this week. Yep. Right. So then what you have is this week, you're gonna talk to Stephen Hey, he came in about weight loss. How's that going? Like, however you want to check in on this and then if she's failed to lose the way that's an opportunity to be like, Okay, well, do you want to do something about this now? But that is actually this everything I'm describing to you right now is the definition of serving your clients like that's the fucking job. And I promise you, if you try to implement this to a coach who you've had is just like being around or who you inherited who's who is the typical An inmate running the asylum type vibe. They're going to hate all of it. I want to show up and be the fucking Rockstar for 60 minutes, I get to run the radio. It's awesome. Digi to run the radio and radio and do two snatches in front of the class and fucking walk around. Like, I'm a cool guy. That's what most of it is. Okay, so, but how you define, like, mathematically via numbers, what the job is, is very, very, very important. And you need to be sitting down with him and talk to him about that. And it's not just, again, showing up on time. But client outcomes are super, super, super important. Okay, that's the biggest one. What are we got John?
John Fairbanks 45:44
Now that's it. It just comes down to what we probably could call this podcast, gym owners expectations. Because at the end of the day, it always comes back to the expectations. Are you setting the expectations for your clients? Are you setting them for your coaches? Right? Are you setting them for yourself? Like, what are those things of what? What are the lines you're willing to draw in the sand? And this is? Yeah,
Tyler 46:13
the expectation and by the way, the expectation is what it should be on the up and up, right, John? We're going to McDonald's, I'm gonna order some food. McDonald's and I both have the same expectation. I'm gonna get some relatively low quality and not so much low cost food anymore, but it's going to be what it's going to be. We're neither of us, me nor McDonald's, you're gonna be very surprised about what goes on here. Right? Sure. But in the end, you know what, me and McDonald's both get fucking receipt. If I go to McDonald's and I order 10 things, I get two things. I'm like, Hey, motherfucker, this ain't it here. The same. And there's a big issue is that most people in the fitness industry, there's no fucking receipt for what is really supposed to be happening. For anybody who's failed to live up to these expectations. There is no like, you told me there'd be this and this coach kind of sucks. And he's kind of uninterested. And then I thought I was gonna lose weight. And nobody's really helped me. And maybe it's you, maybe it's me, but like we need to be about this thing. And this is, this is where I think a lot of people and businesses focus only on leads, they miss it, they miss this completely, because this is the heart of your gym. Right? Everybody, this was important to me, let me let me double down. This is your gym. Your gym is your staff, your gym is their passion. Your gym is a connection between you and the people in your gym and their desire to better themselves, and your coaches and all the people there their desire to help guide people along that fucking journey, not plug people in and just see what the fuck happens. Okay, and if you are not doing anything to preserve, to protect, to develop to advance that those pieces What the fuck are you doing?
John Fairbanks 47:59
You're grossly out of balance. Because what ends up happening is that you are going to get hooked up, you want to do better. And the problem is that you will get tunnel vision on whatever the thing is that you feel like you need to fix. Which is clearly your ads. Yeah, right. Like it's, it's clearly the ads that you have going on. That's what needs to be fixed first. Because the issue of why you don't have enough members, you're not making enough money, all of everything, you don't have enough time to spend time with your family, whatever those things are, that eat at you that why you want to do better or be better. Which can be all for ultimately altruistic reasons, which is you want to help the people in your community, you want people to feel better, you don't want people to be in pain, but it comes down to money. And the problem is is that you are going to get distracted by people that are fucking autistic about a particular fucking thing. And they're gonna make it sound like that solution. Your your client management system is somehow going to be the difference maker
Tyler 49:07
the your fifth choice for a client management system over the course of careers Yeah, that's gonna be that's gonna be the decision that finally we're talking makes it happen
John Fairbanks 49:17
and that's where it is no, right? Just just know understand that it's this is why for us it never came down to Oh, yeah, just download some fucking email, swipe file things and you'll be fine. Like you'll it what that is is that's pretending that and this is why nobody else is going to spend a whole bunch of fucking time on these things with you. Because there's no goddamn money that is going to be able to be put on autopilot for recurring income, tougher to be passive income. Right? Everyone on the planet is trying to hustle or grind or do all the bullshit making their own business and then sell you people shit is trying to find a way for them to be able to create a passive income machine. And the fact is, is that this can only be done fucking boots on the ground in the weeds. And it requires somebody that gives a shit about you, and requires you to shout shit about the people that you want to work with. And that's our line in the sand.
Tyler 50:26
Yeah, that is the one thing that I don't think we ever have any intentions on budging on because there are so many people who want you to do more work or to have more clients and more members. And we want you to kind of be able to do all those things. But it all needs to go along the lines of you being better. Business being better starting at Good, let's get good. And then let's move on to better but it has to be that way. And not better. Like just all the boring fucking metrics of the business. It's like, no, no, no, it's it should be something special here like you should be changing people's lives really, really, really should like don't, like, don't get fucking don't like poopoo the power of the thing that you're doing respect, and this is this, what I find is so many people just either respect it too much. And then they just don't sit frozen, or they don't respect it at all, they just worry about all the other stuff. So the things that are happening on your gym, on the gym floor matter, your clients matter. Okay, and that matters equally as anything else that you have going on in your business. And there's ways to check in. So this isn't just go and observe bitching at your staff. Right? There's no rah rah shit. And this is why we kind of kept this in the context of email follow up. I think William had done this in the past and add on scared, I don't know if he does this anymore. He used to have it at the end when he's at the exit. Just like when you leave it like a truckstop restroom where there's like a one star or five star thing like how was that class? Right? That everyone, he could just accumulate that data, but BUMP BUMP BUMP up, I don't know if he still does it anymore. But like, you can do that. As simple as just sending an email out once a month to all your members, send a follow up email after somebody's first personal training session. Just stay in touch with that information. And you don't have to blow people up and make them give you some long diatribe because I don't want to be bothered. But if I can just click five stars, it would be great. If I want to ignore this, it's gonna be five stars. That's great. That's all the data you need. Okay, and so stay in touch with that side of the business. And it's not something you can do conversationally. Get information, stay in touch with what's happening on the floor, and hold your coaches accountable to that process. And the moment they give you any resistance to you holding them accountable to that to the expectations that you've already set, set the expectations, hold them accountable to it. And if they push back, you can tell them to get fucked in a heartbeat. Okay. I've seen this a lot. And I'm telling you, you're the moment you feel that push back. You're right. I was right. And there's no worse feeling in the world, guys. That's my wife. There was no worse feeling than at the end of it all, so I'm gonna go on. Yeah, Tyler was right. It was right. It sucks guys. It sucks. You don't like it? And I'm gonna like it. So, thanks a lot for listening. Everybody. Go to the Facebook group link in our description. Follow the show at the gym owners podcast. If you want to get in on the gym owners revolution, go to gym owners revolution.com. That's where we got the gear Academy. We're also running some audits on your social media stuff. You can find those links on our social media as well as in our Facebook group. So if you have any questions about any of that stuff, shoot us a message. So thanks a lot for listening. Everybody follow me at Tyler Elphinstone. John,
John Fairbanks 53:26
follow me at Jay banks, FL.
Tyler 53:27
Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week.