The Gym Owners Blog/Podcast/Stop Hoping and Start DOING

Stop Hoping and Start DOING

Thursday, April 13, 2023

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML

EPISODE KEYWORDS

people, gym, business, owners, talking, instagram, coach, program, class, john, app, sit, building, grow, run, fitness, client, jujitsu

OUTLINE

  • ​Introduction to this week’s episode - 0:00
  • ​The importance of your communication strategy - 4:56
  • ​If you allow more than 50% of your business to come in through paid advertising, you’re building your business on a shaky foundation - 9:45
  • ​What’s important for you as a gym owner? - 14:35
  • ​The problem is not that the kids program is not getting enough interest. The problem is that all the things that require people to have interest in it are not getting done - 18:57
  • ​Why you need to stop trying to solve problems with new shit - 24:37
  • ​The cold, hard truth that is hitting a lot of business owners right now - 31:56
  • ​What to do if it’s an insurmountable task and you don’t know what you’re doing - 38:17
  • ​Why you need small, intimate levels of service - 42:08

TRANSCRIPT

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Stone over there, John Fairbanks. How are you doing, John?



John Fairbanks 00:07

I'm doing lovely Tyler, how are you?



Tyler 00:09

I'm doing great, guys. This week, we're gonna talk about when you asked you guys. The question is something we brought up a lot on the show: the things that you're trying to fix, work on, grow, develop, advance, sell everything you're trying to do within your business. What are you actually doing? To advance those metrics? What are we trying to do to move those things forward? And it's a question of man, I asked gym owners this stuff out loud, I told them to ask the question. So what do you want to accomplish? Or what are you looking to do? Well, I want to make this amount of money. I want to do this, I want this program to grow to this, this. Great and have you and is this what I find is they've, they've wanted these things to happen for a long time. They've been wanting to do this they've wanted I just can't seem to get more members, I can't seem to get this. And guys so often, when John and I started looking back through everything from email marketing, to what your advertising has been, or has it been to their social media, what we find is what they've done is fucking nothing. Nothing. And so the question I was asked is, Are you are you? Are you hoping that this stuff is gonna get better? Or are you going to actually do something to make these things better? And when I started getting in that type of tone with gym owners, they got very defensive, because most of them, if you're in that situation, are like you just you know, and so you're gonna redirect the conversation to something else or blame it on God knows what else. But the fact of the matter is, guys, are you hoping that these metrics are gonna improve? Or are you actually going to do something decisive about it, to fix it, and that's where we're gonna get into today. Before we get started. Go to the gym owners revolution, Facebook group links in the description there. If you want to learn more about the gear Academy, our coaching product, what we also do for an address or the blog, lots of other stuff we can do for you here. rolling out a monthly newsletter, that's going to be the real fucking deal you want in and all of that, go to gym owners revolution.com. Follow the gym owners podcast and Instagram. Follow me at Tyler effing stone on Instagram. And John, how can I find you



John Fairbanks 02:02

and follow me at Jay banks f L on Instagram.



Tyler 02:05

Alright, so I was talking with some gym owners this week. We do it every week. But one of the things we're talking about is trying to identify where a person's where a business's growth opportunities lie, it's the first thing we try to do is kind of triage, we break down and try to figure out exactly what your next moves are, what the best moves are where you have room for growth, right? To a lot of people it may just be as simple as a time slot, it may be oh, I want to sell more personal training or, you know what I'm not making fun of, calling for money off of supplements, there's always things in your business that are lagging behind. And it's very easy to say God, I just wish those things were going but wishing doesn't get you very far in business hoping does not get you very far in your business. Especially when you're the one in charge. Okay, because a lot of times in a lot of other real life situations, you can wish and hope all you want and then some other grown up will come in and take care of it for you. It's not gonna work if you're the gym owner.



John Fairbanks 02:59

No. And as my grandma used to say, you can wish with one hand or with the other and you can see which one is going to fill up first. Yeah.



Tyler 03:04

So one of the things that we started looking at here with some of the gyms that we're working with, and gear Academy is what just what programs are we looking to grow? That's very simple, right of the products that you sell, which ones do you have the most room to grow, we have some like solopreneur businesses where essentially personal trainer, it's developed into a personal training client base and then run some group fitness and now they have a physical location, very common progression into gym ownership. And very often it's like I'm completely booked on my personal training, but I really need to grow my group classes. And we start looking at things situations like this and very often we find fuckin talking about your goddamn group at all and, and and, guys, this this seems like this should be really like a basic thing but like you need to be more direct when you're talking to people on your social media. Your marketing can't just be about here's our gym, our gym, gym, gym, gym, gym. And it can't always just be about what we talked about so it should be about you know, your client who they are, their results, but one of their desired results, the desired outcomes, or the starting point is all their concerns. That's all great marketing. It's all a great copywriting strategy. I love it. But at some point, if you do have a time slot that's available for group fitness, so your morning class or your 6am class is just dead. It's dropping off sick five 6am Whatever that is, what do you need to do? Start advertising for those classes to literally say, Hey, did you know that you can work out before you go to work? I don't have time after work with school and kids like that. It's an approach that seems obvious if you've been playing this game. And I'm telling you a lot of people listening to this are just wondering why things aren't working, wondering why things aren't changing and it's not doing you any goddamn good.



John Fairbanks 04:56

Well, a big thing that gets missed is that it's we who may be doing an excellent job in one particular part of your communication strategy. So you may do a great job of having signs around your gym, you may have posters or signs, and you may do a good job of just talking about it generally. But the reality is, everyone has a preferred mode of communication that they prefer. So you're gonna have folks that are, they are email readers, or openers, or they're only on social media, or they



Tyler 05:31

are neither, or neither, you're gonna have me neither, yeah, you're



John Fairbanks 05:35

gonna have folks that are going to be your typical SilverSneakers, your Silverfox group, your 65 and above 60. And above group, stereotypically are going to be groups that are gonna still not be on your app. And they're not going to be doing emails, and they're not going to scan your QR codes. Like they're just, they're not going to do those things. So you can't just abandon that population, because they don't deserve to be able to have personal training or group classes or whatever. So this is where you end up tricking yourself. And this is we talked about this a lot where it's, I man, I feel like I talk about this a lot, where I feel like I do okay, and then it's like, well, we looked at your Instagram account, and you haven't posted anything, or you haven't talked about this in two years. In fact, your business doesn't even look like it's open. And it's like, oh, well, you know, and again, it's oh, well, you know, is this at this point, stop, don't talk anymore, just except it's like, Ah, fuck, that is something that is a gap that I did not realize was a gap. And the problem is, if we can see it, that means other people have been seeing it. And they're seeing that as well.



Tyler 06:48

And this can be in programs, this can be in demographics, this can be about specific class times, this can be about other accessory products you sell. And just simple things that sit on your value ladder. One of the things that we've been testing quite a bit here is we've done a lot of the marketing testing just social media content strategies out of the MMA gyms because I think grappling and jiu jitsu is striking. I think martial arts studios have been growing, what was the numbers, almost 20% per year for like 10 or 15 years, significant, significant. So for John and I represents an opportunity as a business, we want to make sure that we figure this out. Because I think there's a ton of growth, I think that market sits very similar to where CrossFit was in 2011 1213 1415, that that that era where things were just just getting started, we get a lot of people than on passion projects, and it's going well, we see a lot of the same issues that we saw back then, in the functional fitness space, sort of seeing it here. It's one of the things we've been doing has been testing, a lot of just content strategy to see, okay, let's just blow up our jujitsu program, tons of it, let's make sure we fight very much to make sure in this marketing that we want to be approachable, want to beginners, we're not in a place here where there's 500 people practicing jiu jitsu here in this community. So we need to attract new people. So that doesn't do us any good to be talking about high level jujitsu ship, nobody gives a fuck. So that cloud chasing stuff is no good, doesn't do any good. Your brilliant expertise doesn't mean anything, you need to diffuse the main concerns of somebody who was thinking about possibly joining this thing. So duplicate these principles in your fitness gym, whatever your gym is. But what we did very much was just made it look fun, made it approachable, still spoke that it was legit, guys don't try to do this all in one post. That's where everyone fucks up. So what we did was posted multiple times a day, really, for months. Now it's been two months, three months, probably at this pace now. Because we wanted to grow that program, because that's the program we have the most classes, it's one we can support the most people, we've grown that program quite a bit. And now we've kind of had some data coming back. without spending any money on paid advertisements. We've been getting between four and six new leads per week for those programs, four to six leads per week. So that's 20 to 30. Give or take 2025 leads a week, a month. Now, John, what is the main thing you're gonna see when you're getting pumped to be running ads? Right? We're gonna get your 30 leads a month or whatever leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, leads. The thing is there are two kinds of effort that have time and effort, and then there's just money. And I'm not opposed to you choosing one of the two but you better do one of the two. Other than sitting there and complaining about a problem that's not working out for you while you just sit there and twiddle your thumbs and hope it's not going to fix it.



John Fairbanks 09:45

It's really important to think for all of you that either you are playing in this leads game right now, or you're playing in the paid ads game right now if you allow more than 50% of your business revenue to come in. If you allow more than that to come in through any type of paid advertising, you are building your business on a very shaky foundation and a very shaky structure. You're dependent, you are too dependent, you are going to leave yourself vulnerable. And these are things we've all heard. You've heard horror stories of businesses going belly up in the.com bubble bursts and everybody's Fox and whatever it is, it's that comes from years and years of experience to where you cannot expose the business to be that drastically dependent upon daddy Zuckerberg or Big Daddy gates or whatever those things are, those players are right, you took called out the idea that Google were removed to do no evil from their, their core ethos, right?



Tyler 10:47

If they remove Dobby, evil is no longer part of the thing, which opens the door to



John Fairbanks 10:51

evil, lots of evil witch and the last thing you need is somebody to be that's who holds the cards that your revenue. And so that's where I really like what you 've been doing with those MMA gyms most specifically, is that this is an area where organically to be able to take something that's so abstract, as we're a place that allows you to choke people unconscious and hit people in the face. It's fun, it's attractive. And you know what? Do women want to participate too? Yeah.



Tyler 11:23

Yeah, you know, and that was another piece. So we talked, this was the problem. Sometimes you do need to focus, right? We do need to focus, you cannot promote everything all at once forever. It gets confusing, right? So we kind of pull everything back into a holding pattern. We still talk about striking classes, we still talk about overall benefits. We still do general branding posts, just our logo and some cool stuff. And we say some things right? We still have a group there so we still do all of the things. But we got to hit the gas hard on one thing, right? And it's as simple as you're making decisions when we're doing our copywriting or content creation. Sorry, are we showing females doing this? Because by the way, go look, go look through your gym, go look through your gym, social media, go to whatever someone's going to find. This is an exercise I always tell people to do. Act like you're finding your shit for the first time. Put yourself in someone else's shoes, click through, stroke, scroll through yourself. Check this out by this great exercise to see if your stuff works. Click click your link tree, click through some of your links. What are they? What is their debt? That's kind of you're kind of going to be dead in the water and seem very unprofessional to a lot of people. Right? Can you follow that process? Simply, you get to the point where there's some hiccups. It seems really dumb, but when you go through and you're looking at this look through, does your place look like it's just for fit people? There's always a fine line if you're a gym like this just show and Jack people doing Jack people's stuff that's great. If you got enough Jack people you want you wanna be the place where Jack people go to be jacked. Wonderful. But if you're trying to attract new people that can maybe be a little bit off putting and maybe by the way, Jack's people. Currently Jack people, at least in the Midwestern US, are a small demographic so that's not so you're not gonna be able to attract a ton of people. So does your business look approachable to the types of people you're trying to attract? And that's very easy, as simple as finding representation, direct representation, or simply testimonials from someone who said, Hey, I thought I was like this too, but it's not. I came here and it was wonderful. But you need to start diffusing all the concerns that are going to restrict somebody from taking a step closer towards whatever program it is you're trying to do. And that again, every time I say these things that sounds obvious to me because we really sit in this world but I can tell you I'm looking through tons and tons Jonathan 500 Some just Instagram accounts just Instagram accounts alone 500 Some and we've been kind of nosing through them ad nauseam repeating and trying to extract some patterns here. Jesus Christ guys, I just I don't know what your fuck you're talking about what you're trying to promote? Who are you talking to at all? And I know these gyms can . I know for sure if I told him what are the three things you want to do to get more money, what program whatever it is, I want my kids class to get more people, I won't be able to sell more personal training and whatever. It'll be some third party thing or just general membership numbers. And when he asked what are you doing to promote this? Well, I made one post about my kids class when it opened up. And then that's it. John, you have an example about the kids program as well where it's like it's these people who are not promoting it and it's an issue still for the few people that are in it because it's starting to limit the program.



John Fairbanks 14:35

Yeah, and your coaches typically what is important for you as a gym owner is that if you have stepped back just enough to be able to run the gym or you're focused somewhere else and you have handed something off to either a coach your GM or maybe that topic specific coach so if you have a Kids program that's typically not typically right your your powerlifting coach is not going to also be your kid's coach, right, you're probably going to have another coach that does that, or specializes specifically in your kids program. And the issue that can happen is that coaches will just continue doing whatever it is that they're doing. And will be like, well, well, you know, we just don't have the buy in, or there's no interest, and there's gonna be a lot of excuse is that come out of like, well, this is why the program's not growing, where at the end of the day, it's, again, step back and do just an assessment of what is your because I can tell you right now, when I have someone that says, it's most specifically this example was our kids class, we just can't get it off the ground, our team's classes doing great, but our kids class is not. And I take a look at it and like, well, you've successfully not talked about it ever. And then it continues to cause stress on every other family that is inside your program. Because you never know if it's open. And it's just that it is something that people will have goodwill for only so long. And then eventually it's like, well, like do they have a Kids program there? Well, yes.



Tyler 16:05

And the answer is kind of, by the way, to any stuff. I know tons of gyms that do this with personal training. Specially functional fitness gyms. Personal Training is like running with it. I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. Heaven forbid, you know, you have this pocket where you can really help people directly. It's whatever. But like, when I asked gym, do you sell this? Do you sell supplements? Kind of? Well, that means you've wasted the effort to get it set up. And now you do fuck all you don't do anything about it. Now, the same thing with personal trainers, you sell personal trains? Kind of but okay, do you have a Kids program? Kind of, but it's only like, if kind of the answer you are exactly sitting there where the reason it's kind of and not? Oh, yeah, it's really successful is your effort, you've sat in that pocket of hoping that it's going to work hoping that it's going to do better instead of actually like, no, no, no, I have to build this thing. This is John, this is a concept I want to transfer over because I've talked about this very much in gym ownership. From a startup standpoint, guys, if you started your gym, or whatever, you got deep pockets in school, and you can just like, you just could do whatever and it was easy. You could just spend all the money and have the great facility, you had a bunch of investment, whatever that is great, I'm happy for it. It's not the way I started mine. That's not the way a lot of the gym owners that we work with kind of the ones we prefer to work with, not the ones that they started with, either, because I like somebody who came into it passionately, and is trying their best. But a lot of these people, and quite frankly, even if you got a bunch of money behind you getting your gym branded, named, built out, it's getting a location, getting it open and getting a facility, getting your first members getting classes run and getting the gym, existing is a starting point. We feel like it's a finish line when you're building it because it is so far away. You get all the way through there, you feel like you've accomplished something, but all you've really done is build a thing that now you must feed where else it dies. Okay? Every single program and product in your business is the same way. You cannot find oh cool, I got a deal with supplements or I got some apparel or I've got Yeah, we're gonna I have a guy who can maybe do some personal trainer, I have a Kids program time slot, kind of. And then we go, okay, good. Hate to break it to you, your idea is worth fucking nothing. An idea is worth absolutely zero. You need to know that. Okay, the only thing that matters is can I carry this ball across the fucking endzone? Can you do it? Can you carry it across the line? And that's but that's but that's what happens. You get a Kids program, you have the idea? You got a couple parents who by the way, it always starts. It makes it very easy for you to be like, Yeah, could you do this? Yeah, why don't we, but then you just leave it there and expect the rest of the growth to be that kind of easy and automatic. And that just dies on the vine.



John Fairbanks 18:57

And the problem is to keep our kids' kids example. Thinking that the problem is that the kids program is just not getting enough interest. Right? The problem? Oftentimes, the problem is not the problem. Right? So that problem is not that the kids' class is not getting enough interest. The problem is, is that all the things that require people to have interest in a Kids program you aren't doing which therefore is leading to us thinking oh shit, and this makes a lot of sense in the fitness world where it's like, well, my shoulders really fucked up and it's like, well, yeah, but it's probably the problem isn't the fucking shoulder at least if you're like worth your salt, like, it can be the shoulder that you fucking have a torn goddamn shit in your shoulder, but also can be that like your fucking lat and you have a bunch of other shit that's wrong with it that can ends up causing that problem to happen in the shoulder. And the issue oftentimes is going to be coming from these areas where It's, you think that you are doing the right things or you think you are focused on the right things. And then you are completely off base because you're getting distracted. And that's been the number one thing if we think about for a second, like, that wasn't hyperbole. Tyler, when you said we've looked at over five 500 Instagram accounts, right, we really have dove in because we wanted to start to see the patterns that we were seeing, from everything, how how LinkedIn was used, how websites are then harnessed out of those accounts, how marketing is coming across how community and services and products are being talked about. And we absolutely found patterns. And the probably the biggest pattern is seeing an overwhelming similarity of everyone doing the same fucking thing. Yeah. And that was when we knew what we are seeing the clear 97% of the population doing, that's when we knew we have to be able to help our people, our gear Academy, people, that people that are in our world, our gym revolution, people, we have to get them to zag, everyone's digging in that direction, we have to get him to zag in another direction. Because when you look like everybody else, and sound like everybody else,



Tyler 21:18

you and your price is the same as everybody else and your marketing is all about cheap or free or $1 or 99 cents or whatever. It's tough to differentiate to talk about what you are instead of what I don't know . There's a lot of balls that I think get dropped as we go through as we're going through a lot of these accounts. And I think there's a place for effort here that just it's not a ton of people that I think the reason I think people kind of stall on products and services and just continuing to promote them is because you have so many alright you have five different things you want to do and you're like well I just got it am I just adding this it's like no no, you just need to shine the spotlight brighter on this you need to focus on this one for a little bit get it moving this was a fucking we talked about this quite a bit but I'd like Jocko is Extreme Ownership book they were one of the things is always the cover and move, cover and move, cover and move. Right? Okay, well, you can do this thing and it can fucking Grow Your Business enough to give you the space to where you can let that program run on less effort, less promotional effort, while you then go to the next thing and grow because this thing is now producing. You run into this when we grow that jujitsu program at this MMA gym quite a bit. And we also very much grew the female population there. Matter of fact, last week, we had our first smaller class Friday class 50% Men 50% women, five and five. That's and if you're if you've If you've attended martial arts ships, that's an accomplishment. It really really is. Where there were many classes a couple of months ago, that was just all dudes. You know, and that's you. Somehow you're like, fuck am I and we alienating 50% of the population in our area? Are we really doing it but somehow we're missing we're completely dropping the ball. Meaning we need to make this approachable because this product is and should be for them. Why are we missing this we just put forth the effort we made sure it seemed approachable Jesus when we up by the way, when you have females there, make sure they have a good time make the effort to make them comfortable, like actually make people feel like they're welcome in your gym and they'll stay make sure your marketing this marketing then covers all those bases. But in all of this process, well we started it we started noticing kickboxing classes taken a little bit of a hit. You know, because this is like all things right? Okay, we have not put the same effort towards growing that kickboxing program. We have not. But again, Christ we you've seen it we're pushing, there's a lot of promotion going out there. So we don't want to just be blasting everything all the time. But now we know we need to place extra focus Next, on upping that kickboxing program, especially for summer because that's some fun stuff we can kind of get to outside. But that is a time where now we pivot. And we say okay, we can do the minimum, we've understood this formula, let's grow based on referrals, as opposed to external promotion. Let's really grow based on referrals. And, you know, our inner network of people that we have already in this group are grappling. Exactly, let's pivot. And now let's put our outward effort towards growing this other program.



John Fairbanks 24:37

The reason why I'm so confident about what I'm about to say is because Tyler You and I have made this mistake before working not with gym owners specifically but working with coaches and our past lives and different companies has been this overwhelming desire or feeling that I have to create something new all the time. So this notion that it's, I need to be a constant builder, instead of just an owner over my things, causes you to whether it's shiny object syndrome, or whether whatever direction you want to go, it would be so much worse for you all to say, hey, we're the rest of the business is struggling or this class is struggling, we probably should come up with something new. And instead, it's no, no, it's not anything that's new, we're going to take something that already exists. And we want to make it better. And the understanding of where to own it. So stop building, stop feeling like you need to keep creating, that is something where you can find yourself chasing constantly. And you're just like a dog chasing cars, we're going to have this opportunity here. Or it could be an opportunity here where your best opportunities are sitting in your gym right now. And that's where the ability to whether it's referrals, renewals, being able to have people content, if you have a bunch of women that have all done a great job and have come in or enjoying jujitsu, right, the ability to take people that have now built trust with you, the ability to then have them ascend or try something new, is infinitely easier than trying to go find a whole bunch of new people or build a whole bunch of bunch of new shit. So we have to stop trying to solve problems with new shit. And being able to understand that that renewal business that you're getting that month, a month over renewals as people that are in like you said, in your community, they're right there, they're just waiting for you to open your mouth and give them an opportunity to just walk through the door.



Tyler 26:43

And this applies to not just programs or trying to fill not just everything, let's just say you realize, Johnny, you're missing out on referrals, we can you can look back, if you're if you're paying attention, any metrics that matter, like how many referrals have have, we gotten how many people have said they were referred from an existing client, you're gonna find? None. One, two, like how many this month came in with a direct referral from somebody. And if that number is low, it's not because you suck at coaching or the people you have the like you, they just need to be asked to put themselves out there to tell somebody they really do, or they need to have an offer made to them, they need to have the thing, we did something very similar. We're like shit, we're not getting any direct referrals, we're closing people in the system. And they're not identifying any current members as the reason that they came in, which is good, it means our outward marketing is working great to attract new people who are far away who are disconnected from our current audience, or from our current membership base issue, though. We're missing the biggest opportunities all these people have internally. So what do we do? All you need to do is ask but you need to ask across all platforms, okay. And that's the thing we talked about, John mentioned earlier, is that, okay, emails go out to everybody say, Hey, here's what we're doing for this referral program, we're gonna give you 20 bucks cash for everybody that signs up for a membership who mentions you by name. That's, that's what we'll do. We really appreciate you baba, baba, boss, and then I'll email, send that out via text message a couple days later. Same message, same type of thing. If you have an app to the App, send it into your, into your group chat, send a token, whatever it is, we just talk about it in class, you knew all those things, and not just the ones, you probably need to just plan that we're going to make this effort to push every month, right? Let's just hit it hard for a full week, every month or whatever. And the biggest issue we find with people doing outreach, say via email, or any of these internal communication strategies, were talking to gym one of the other day, and it was like, Well, no, I don't send emails I just but I use an app, I have an app that on my members on and then I set it up and I have them runs out push notifications for stuff that I think is really important to say, Oh, well, nobody gives a shit about that at all. Like nobody, like my wife can't call me and get me to answer my phone. Like you don't get to push, you're not pushing any notifications through these people. You're saying you're gonna give them a notification. But I'm sorry, if my gym has an app that sits on check. And I guarantee you your open rates, your engagement rates, they suck, they just suck compared to everything. And even if they're okay, all of the people who are ignoring that, because that's just not their preferred platform. There's a thing called App fatigue. It's very real name a fucking app that you have that you guys have adopted, that you use regularly. In the last six months, name one that you put on your phone that you now use regularly. I can't and the only ones that I can identify in the last year and a half. Jesus John, I had Voxer two and a half years ago for me communications just for the business and just for our clients. So we can all have it in a singular and I resisted it very, very, very much because I just I have been existing in this space of app fatigue very much but this is very useful because I go to this place just for this The boxer works for me, almost no other apps I've used, I've downloaded and used maybe one app in the last six months. And that is an app that via AI will completely extract the vocals, drums, guitar tracks from music. Yeah, it's a paid app. And I don't use it for anything other than that very hyper specific purpose. Okay. So I don't know what kind of apps you guys think you're using, or whatever your communication strategy is going out there. If it is not multifaceted, it might as well not exist. Okay, it says no different than give, it's telling people reminders in the gym, right? Hey, reminder, guys, we've got supplements on the shelf reminder, we got this new program coming up next month, hey, here's a reminder, if you're looking for nutrition, coaching, get some weight down before summer, you know, talk to so and so at the front desk, they can get you set up with it, right. But saying that once in a class when maybe people's attention is just somewhere else, right? Or maybe they're just busy, or maybe they didn't hear you or maybe they're in a conversation with somebody else. If that's your only time that you're bringing this up, you're swinging and you're missing. And that works for everything. By the way, if you're only sending stuff via email, and not having things happen in gym, via text message, also on your social media via group chat, or Facebook, or whatever that's going to be you're missing the boat as well, because you're sure it'll get tabled, it'll get ignored. Nobody circles back. But this is 2023 Ain't nobody circling back around to any email they got from two days ago, that they didn't know that it didn't happen. Unless that determined it was urgent that if I didn't decide at that moment to open it, it's not getting opened. So you need to be consistent, and you need to be consistent across a bunch of different approaches. Or else you're going to just feel like you're yelling into the void, and then you're going to sit there, there's nothing worse than hoping something's gonna work in it not working. The only thing worse than that is just wondering why, you know, you're gonna sit there and wonder.



John Fairbanks 31:56

And that's where it is 2023. And the cold hard truth that is hitting a lot of business owners right now. And people are starting to feel it or see it or get squirrely or antsy because he's starting to sense that something is different as whatever has been working in the last two to three years within the fitness industry. Over the next 18 months, everybody that was winning because of those tactics and those things they started to deploy and do over the last two to three years. Those folks are not going, they're going to be losing in the next 18 months. You have the people, society, everything has evolved. And yet, you and I are continuing to look at our competition within what we do with gym owners. And we are looking at gym owners in general. And we are seeing a bunch of people that are still doing the same old shit from 2017 18 and 2019. It hasn't changed. And you all feel that, and you might be guilty of it right now. And this is what motivated us to be able to get the gym owners revolution together and do something to give gym owners a place where there's only two things that are going to kill your business. Right, it's either going to be the problems that you don't see coming, or the problems that you do see coming, but you don't fix them fast enough. And the only way that you know how to do either of those things, or to get a competitive edge on everyone else that's around you, is to have a solid network of people that either that you trust, and that you have done these things before. And that's what we just saw, it was a massive gap, a massive void in the industry of people that were trustworthy, because the industry is full. And I've called it out before like the Shake Weight, add burner, 3000 type hype hyperbolic bullshit that's out there. And right now, it's even if you pride yourself at not being guilty of those things, you still are unsure of what to do. So you know that this is a craft, and it is your passion and you want to help people. But yet, you still end up finding yourself allowing software companies to give you emails and swipe files and Downloadables and all this other shit just to copy and paste and put into your system. So while you view yourself as somebody who's really radically different in the industry, in your community. And yet, when it comes to marketing, or how you run your business, you're just as guilty because you're falling into those same traps that haven't changed in five or six years.



Tyler 34:43

Yeah, and by the way, software is a great solution for a lot of things. Software is not a great solution for your sales. Software is not a great solution. It's not a one stop shop. So it's a big thing I see all the time. Well let's pivot to this new fucking backends New Account Manager system a new CRM, we knew all this stuff. It's like, well, what the fuck are you doing? That's where your needs lie. As far as questions like you're, you're, you're leaking money, your programs are under sold, you have all these things that you're failing to fill. You want to pivot like that's probably because I'm not on Push Press. Get the fuck out of here with this. And so one of the things though, we talk about, I want you guys to start looking outwardly or looking externally things outside of your own outside of the fitness industry. And John, you mentioned on Instagram a while back about one of the things that companies like McDonald's do, what do they do when they have a promotion? Okay, McDonald's is gonna have the Super Bowl, fucking whatever. $2.20 piece McNugget, right. How do you promote that? Does McDonald's make one Facebook post? And then just sit around? No, McDonald's has texts they have. It's multifaceted. They have people on a text list that have signed up through the app, they have the app, they also have email lists, they have TV, they have newspapers, they have magazines, they have all the shit. They also put billboards on the street, they got billboards, they got signage up from the building. If there is a promotion at McDonald's and you don't fucking know what it is, you will find out by the time you get there, there is no way that you're entering the drive thru. Getting there not knowing, right, you're going to be if you're a customer of theirs, you're gonna know that it's fucking fillet a fish Friday, Bro, why? See fucking talk about it a lot. And I got damaged. Every time I'm re saying this, this seems really obvious, but 500 Fucking accounts later. And talking to so many gym owners. I can't. I'm just having a hard time selling personal training. Well, you haven't mentioned anything about personal training. You've talked about your gym, you've just seemed to post pictures of people exercising. You haven't talked about personal training, you haven't shown testimonials from someone mentioning your personal training. You haven't posted videos or pictures of you personally training anybody? You haven't put the words personal training on a fucking picture at all. No. Infographics, no anything, you haven't announced that you have prices for personal training or packages available for personal training? Nothing. It just sits. It's a fucking problem. And you're the problem. I hate to break it to you. It's a lack of effort. It's just it's just sitting, you're just sitting there wondering, this is not any different when you have a weight loss client who goes. I just need to do something that guys there's nothing more frustrating to me as a coach than someone waiting to start. sad about the fact that they're in a situation and sad that they need to do this, okay, well, let's just let's go. You want to do it or they don't, they just want to talk about it. They just want to live and just want to wallow in it. You can't be that way with your business. You just can't. It works in fitness because it's common in fitness because it's human nature. To trade. There's a lot of weird mental illness and shit that goes on with someone being obese, lazy and out of shape. There's a lot of psychology that goes into this. But you're not fucking running a goddamn human body here. Okay? Just run your business. Just do it. It's just not that hard.



John Fairbanks 38:17

And it is if it is an insurmountable task, and it's so much that you don't know what you're doing. This is why we are opening up. Right? We're opening up so many spots every single month, where we are going to sit down with gym owners with their accounts and say get and we're, we're we're we promised to only be kind of rude to you. Face Oh, clown on. Yeah, by the way, the reality is that the whole goal, the truthfully the goal is we want to be able to sit down and say, Listen, this is something that you can handle. We are 100% confident in all these things that we do, because this is what we do. And we never deviate too far from our lane, right? We stay right in our pocket. Unlike people that make software and then immediately all of a sudden become mentors, consultants and whatever because they happen to have data from the last three years. And now all of a sudden, they know everything that they're talking about. It will just sit with you. And most importantly, just give you Hey, this is what you go and do. And then you go and do that. Because the world is changing. It cannot just be audacious, flashy shit where it's going to be well if you fix this on Instagram, you are going to make $20,000 a month and don't you want to be a gym that can make $75,000 a month download this thing and it will help you be that



Tyler 39:37

That's a crash diet for your lead generation strategies. What that shit is man it says it'll work until it doesn't and you're fucked. Your reputation is shit you can't scale from there you can't maintain it. You wouldn't sell that shit to your clients is why we don't sell it shipped to you. You got to improve. I got a client who wants to lose weight. What are we gonna do, man you got to fix all these things. You have to create an ecosystem where your skill set, your habits, your All of these things that you're executing on a daily basis now lean towards success in the realms which we are identifying that we want to succeed at. Right? Works with weight loss, it's going to work exactly with your business. And, John, we're gonna do these for you, for you guys out there, and it's going to be free. But there are very limited spots available. I do it every Friday. So if you want in on that, we put that link in this. Send me that link. I'll put it in the episode descriptions here.



John Fairbanks 40:26

Yep, it's also in the link tree on the gym owners podcast. Yeah.



Tyler 40:31

So but that John and I are not fucking Super brilliant dudes. Let's be real. Like, it's not like, it's not like we see it with God, I figured this out. Because I'm so smart. We've just seen enough of it to know that like the path, the things that you're missing are easy to identify, usually, because there's so many patterns in there. So when we go through this stuff, guys, if John and I can identify kind of where you're missing or where you're misaligned, especially compared to the things you're trying to accomplish that gap, we can identify that in seconds from scrolling through your thing, which means it's not that hard for you to remedy. It really isn't. It's not this thing where you have to be a wizard to sort it all out, you just go. Okay, let me just start checking these boxes deliberately. Let me learn about a few of these things. And just frame your tactics a little bit better. So it is just framing your strategy to the point where Oh, yeah, like, if you say out loud the things you're trying to do. And then you say out loud the things that you're doing, to do those things to make those things happen. It all seems to make a lot of sense. And if those two if you say thing A and thing B it doesn't work, it's very easy to go like you. I want to lose 20 pounds, what are you trying to do to lose that? 20 pounds? Nothing. I'm not doing anything I'm talking to you but not going to do. I've not been exercising. So what did you eat yesterday? Well, okay, that becomes very awkward at that moment, that single moment, that's the moment where you can overcome, oh, it's very easy. Let me just start doing these things. Your business isn't all that different from that to that approach. It really isn't.



John Fairbanks 42:08

No, it needs to be small, intimate, customized levels of service. You know, that's what your nutrition clients are, your high end personal training clients and your body transformation clients, you know that that's what they require? Could you imagine just trying now there's ways to be able to streamline those things as a gym owner to help people and different types of people with different types of goals, etc. But at the end of the day, you need FaceTime, that's customized FaceTime to help those people feel accounted for and be able to be successful. And it's exactly what your business needs. And you know what it feels like, if it's anything that's different than that. Another thing that would challenge any of the gym owners that are listening is if you've outsourced your social media, if you've outsourced it and give it to a digital marketer, or you have given it to somebody to create the content for you, or you've outsourced it to a coach, do you think they're doing a pretty bang up job? Please, please come see us. We will have I will. Because at the end of the day, you may have that nagging feeling in the back of your head, which is this : I like what I'm seeing, I like what they're doing. And it's what we do with our people in our highest level programs. And this is where we will sit down with you and give you peace of mind that everything's going great or help you rub the right rose colored glasses and get them off your eyes and say, Hey, no, listen, this is a problem. Because ultimately, you only get to come to us because you're saying, well, this isn't doing what I wish it was, I wish it was more. And that's where we want to be able to give you actual simple actionable steps that you can take and immediately start to implement as soon as that we're done working with you and talking with you for the short minutes.



Tyler 43:52

And this is so that you can know what should be done. This is against the issue when it comes to handing off your social media, handing off these things to staff to external external contractors to just a coach to do it for you if you don't know what you want. You don't really you're and nor are you holding them accountable to what you want. Or you know, you're holding them accountable for the outcomes. So we want to teach you to know what you shouldn't be doing, what the outcomes should be. So that you can go back and just start to build a process that gradually self corrects over time to the point where things are working for you. That's it. So if you want in on those, we're gonna do those, we're gonna help you with kind of IG Instagram, we're gonna do it on Instagram, but kind of on your Instagram accounts. We're also going to make the one assumption on all of those things is make sure all of this stuff is also going out on your Facebook. That is a piece that like I'll tell you what, that's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit for you as much as I think Facebook is one of the most uninteresting platforms right now for sure to be on like as a person. It just has more novel reach in my opinion than Instagram because nobody's going to simply click share and show it to their profile and go to anything else. Your ability to get secondary reach from Instagram. Not great, but it's a place that people check in. And it's important. So if I find your business, I'm going to check Instagram, especially if it's fitness, personality based and anything like that, like, I want to see what's going on. So, but I may not get my first impression of there, maybe from Facebook. So the lowest hanging fruit for your stuff is anything that you put on Instagram should also be on Facebook. It just should. You can make separate content for each is whatever but like for you to get your brick and mortar. Meaning you need people in your area to find it. And there's just going to be a lot of people, especially in the fitness space, there's gonna be a lot of people that may not be on Instagram may not be that interested in Instagram who can still do good business with you. So I gotta find you somehow, again, multifaceted for everything. So you want to hit on those links that will be in our description here. I gotta get going, guys. I kind of go coach. So we'll see you guys here. Next week. Thanks a lot for listening. Go to the gym owners podcast and Instagram to just give us a follow in that link tree you'll find the just pick your spot. We're running them every Friday. You can make this Friday check the next one. The next one. The next one. Just book your appointment. You won't regret it for sure. It says it's the most valuable thing we've ever decided to give away for free and we probably won't do this forever. So now. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. You're gonna get in it before it gets expensive. Thanks a lot for listening. Follow me at Tyler reference. Don't follow John at J banks FL go to gym owners revolution.com. Get in the Facebook group as well. Links in the description. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next week.




























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