Creating an Ecosystem of Success in Your Gym

coaches, gym, john, clients, people, success, business, podcast, ecosystem, tyler, selling, conversation, system, products, succeed, eat, services

TTyler 00:01

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



John Fairbanks 00:07

I'm doing excellent Tyler,



Tyler 00:09

guys, John is this is his week here by the way if you need to be checking out swamp kings on Netflix is the number one show on Netflix right now by the way, I don't know if I heard that John played for those teams the Florida Gators as and so John's actually releasing another podcast that's going to come out it's gonna start out as a companion piece for this thing. So you guys need to check that out. Follow John at John, what's your Instagram?



John Fairbanks 00:33

J banks f L



Tyler 00:35

follow John on Instagram for updates and I'll share them as well on my instagram at Tyler essence stone. But we're just going to be rolling out some companion episodes when you watch all of the debauchery of episode one episode 234 episodes on the swamp. And so you'll have kind of a precursor and then you're going to have an after Episode one episode where John goes at this thing here. This is what was going on. He'll have kind of branch off stories, some behind the scenes stuff, it's gonna fucking it. So



John Fairbanks 01:06

I took a bunch of notes last night on those first episodes. And I was like, oh, man, I have a lot of notes. And it'll be fun, because I'll be with somebody that I also played with. Correct. I'll have another guy there with me. And



Tyler 01:19

so we're stoked for this. This is a fun little side project. And I'll tell you one of my favorite pieces of content. I've said this before, I've been podcasting for a lot of years. One of my favorite pieces of podcast content was to remember the Chernobyl series on HBO, totally. And that was like four or five episodes on HBO. And they released it like HBO did . My least favorite kind of podcast is when, like, they're like, Hillary Clinton has won, great, I can just put it on NBC. Nobody gives a shit podcast world. But when HBO made these, they did like a companion episode and for the series, and it covered some of the history of what was going on in that episode. Also some of the behind the scenes from it's like, you kind of mentioned it's like bonus features on a DVD a little better, more conversational and not running along with the show. It's just a you saw this, let's go in and out this actor was great. And in the real story, here's what happened. And so it became a really cool piece of content that made that show even better for me. So John, the show is called Walk on podcast, walk on podcast. Yeah, and so make sure you check that out. And we will follow John at Jay banks FL on Instagram for updates, that's gonna be pretty cool, because we're gonna get into gym ownership stuff. today. We've covered a lot of specifics this last couple of weeks and what's going on in the industry as a whole. Some CrossFit Games wrapped up some affiliate franchise stuff last week. And so this week, we want to talk about some of the larger concepts that we see, and some overarching concepts, I guess, that we see a lot in the fitness industry. And I always figure the things that I can relate to coaching and individuals in fitness and health, whatever that is, I can usually draw quite a bit of parallels to coaching and operating and improving a business. So the principles of kind of improving a system involving a human at all, whether it's them themselves, or you know, the business that involves a bunch of humans, I just see so many parallels that it's tough, too tough to avoid. And so one of the things that we see most common in the fitness industry, when you're a professional, what are people trying to sell you what is the service they're trying to sell you leads want to get people through your door, new members, new members, and John and I have rallied against that concept like as the be all end all but you do need obviously new members, that's a plugin goal. Growth requires new people but it also can just require improvements in efficiencies, improvements in how you sell, improvements in your product placement, stacking your offers, giving people opportunities to spend more money with you . there's a lot of ways to improve your outcomes. You're to grow revenue wise without having to simply service a bunch more people and serving a bunch more people may be it may give you an opportunity to make more money while not fixing the other things that need to be fixed. And then that's the thing, John, that's where John and I started to kind of put our foot down. I was like, no, no, no, no, you still need to be good at this and you still need to be helping people or you are on borrowed time.



John Fairbanks 04:21

Yeah, we really rail against his idea of like leads, leads leads, How many members do you have in your gym? You know, we've called that out. So specifically, but it's really probably if we were being more specific. We hate the idea that what we always say is you need more money. You don't need more members. And what we mean by that if we drill into that it's you could get more money by getting more members, but there's so many other revenue stream opportunities that exist and oftentimes, putting more on top of something like it we all we all lift weights, if you listen to this, you lift weights, and then we ality is the equivalent of like, I'm gonna get better at squat by just adding more weight to my squat. And it's like, yeah, you could, you could get better and you just keep lifting heavier and heavier and heavier. But you also would like to break your shit. And at some point you will. So it's not even like, it's, it's not maybe you will have and so that's where, for us was always the danger was just like, no just fucking pour it all in, just get as many people as humanly possible.



Tyler 05:26

And those are there's what happens in this is and it's fine. By the way, if you're a gym owner and you recognize that I need to get more leads, I'm not getting more leads, that's it. But if there's one thing that's broken very often, there's more. And that's the thing that we start to notice. So that we get we boiled down to this principle here that John and I have kind of defined as the ecosystem principle. And in coaching people for weight loss and coaching health and also in coaching business, you have to understand that progress and growth requires an ecosystem that is able to an environment essentially, that is able to facilitate that growth, it is not one variable. It just is not it's not one, it's not two, it's not five, a status of health is a it is a it is a status that involves the entire environment around you, okay. It's very rare to find a healthy person who is happy and is lean, who eats shitty, who is around shitty people, is in a bad mood, has an extremely stressful job, doesn't exercise and is miserable and unappreciated. And all those things like, and if you'd if you were to tell that person that they need to be eating brown rice versus white rice, you can go fuck yourself, like doesn't matter at all. And I see that's, that's kind of how I relate this conversation to business. But when I'm coaching people, you know, for health, that's what everybody's inclination as a business owner is. What's the one thing I got to do to make my things better? Right. And as a human, this is what people do as well. I get people to come to me all the time. Hey, what do you think about this brand of supplements, I was like, and I'm at the point now where when someone asked me about this supplement, or this brand, or this type of food, I'm a bit of a dick about it now because I can't pretend to even be interested in any singular aspect of it at all. Waiting on this protein. I said, Well, I don't fucking know like, what are you not eating? Not eating me? Why? Why are you eating protein? Why are you what you like, and when I get asked about brands? Do I have clients? Mm hmm. Very often. So what do you think about this brand of fucking what was the stuff John Bullock in the bone broth, clothes? Yeah, own broth, collagen type, whatever. And I was like, I'm sure there's all sorts of science. But I'm also sure that you don't eat well. You don't exercise outside of this little bit of thing that you do here. And I don't think simply introducing bone broth collagen powder, that tastes like just chicken fucking dust. I just don't, I just don't think that that is going to be that, in fact, impactful to you. That doesn't mean it's bad. And if you want to roll with it, go for it. But I can't pretend to give a shit about that one thing. And that's kind of how I feel when gym owners come up to talk to me about their software, or their CRM, or whatever it is that they're trying to push forward at the moment and I just don't give a shit at all. Because it's, are you really doing



John Fairbanks 08:22

it? Are you tripping over dollars to pick up dimes? Right? Like, it's like there are major pillar aspects of your business. And this is what we're talking about, right? Is this the idea of what makes your ecosystem major sections? And then there's little things like we were like scaling up a pyramid, right? Like, it's like, there's foundational pieces that need to be working well. But man, they're not sexy. They're not fun. They're fucking boring. They're repetitive. It's like, it's If Tyler if you and I dedicated the entire podcast to like, the core, only foundational principles, and we didn't like throw shade at CrossFit or fucking stupid things. Every once in a while. It would sound you know what it sounds like, every other fucking bullshit podcast that's out there of like, because it's just it's the same things over and over again. Yeah, and nobody wants to hear that. So



Tyler 09:12

for your business, and I'm going to draw parallels for health because most of you guys are in the fitness business. So I want to make sure that these things cannot be avoided. You cannot avoid all of these things with your clients as well. So I think it's important that we address both of them because fundamentally, what is the first component of your ecosystem for success in your business is your clients? Is your system set up for your clients to succeed? Now, there's a lot of layers involved in this right? But remember, a fish can only grow as big as its tank, okay? The environment facilitates its growth. All right. Therefore, if your gym offers no coaching services, you just are just selling access and I have no problem with that. Right? But just know that if you're just selling gym access, you have a very low likelihood just on its own of people succeeding in your gym. People can succeed in your gym, if we're looking for someone to go from a fitness wise zero to a fitness place that maybe makes sense to them, if you already got fit, if he already got fit people and you're selling fitness to fit people, great, I hope you have a lot of them in your area, you can have a cool spot, but those people still want progress too. So whatever you can do to facilitate their progress, and that starts with my opinion, how do you attract them? Is your marketing indicative of that? Right? Are your products rooted in the success of your clients? Are your products built to make them actually succeed? Right, meaning go over this all the time? Why? How are people having success without any nutrition changes? Without fixing the actual habits that get them there? The other 23 hours? Do you offer coaching in some of those regards? If you don't, by the way, maybe you can't fulfill it? Nor do you care to? Do you at least have resources that they can use? Do you have recommendations, and if you don't want to do nutrition coaching, it's not a part of your thing. But can you at least pick fucking five people that do a good job then and just point them to them that don't even I don't even care, I don't care. But if people are going to succeed in your gym, they need to make changes outside of the gym as well. And your place needs to be a place that they find that you need to nurture that. Without that you're going to have a lot of people fail. What if your coaching sucks, your coaches don't connect with people, people aren't interested, they don't want to come back. That's another recipe for them to not succeed. If your coaches are disinterested, it's another recipe for them not to succeed, if your coach is just, if your programming sucks, and people are getting hurt, that's a problem, people will not succeed, they will not continue. If your programming is just not effective. That's another problem, right? And so each one of those things being off is going to fuck up your entire system. It will be like every one of those things is like you ever see these completely self contained ecosystems, they do like in a jar or whatever, your seals, right? But you get like one little bit of the wrong type of bacteria in there, what happens, it just molds over and will fucking destroy everything. Okay. And this is what happens if we see this a lot out of franchise spots, that kind of our Mo effort is their reputation amongst the community is a bad reputation for how they lock people into contracts is rough the reputation for people to go there, they never really got. And it's like, yeah, because they're not offering a service that is really going to nurture people from their starting point to where they want to be, you're doing your best you can at a $30 a month product. But just know that that's where you sit in your market. And I think that it's really important for gym owners to start to understand that your systems need to not just work for you financially. But the ones that are going to work for you the best financially, they're also going to be the ones that give your clients the best chance to succeed.



John Fairbanks 12:49

There's another there's a bigger problem, because like in the analogy of the self contained ecosystem is you know, like you can probably be able to break down like, fuck, like either we didn't sterilize the bottle, like we didn't do something, right. You don't have a bunch of people coming and telling you what you did wrong. Like it's, if you go to a bone doctor, every problem you have has something to do with your bones. Yep. Right. The issue right now is when it comes to business if you have so many people who are just like, Oh, you just don't get enough leads, because I sell leads. He's just like, "Why sell leads?" So like, we can fix this, like I can fix this because I can get you better leads. And it's like there's an element here where it's, there are elements of your business that are broken. But you don't know what it is. And so as you start to self diagnose, or there is something that's majorly like is a major issue. You just kind of bypass it, but it's for sure broken. So you spent a lot of time like, I don't know, updating your website or whatever the fuck



Tyler 13:51

yeah. So we talked about your products, what are your services? Are they aligned with what people want? And the question is how does your sales process work? Does your sales process actually align the conversations you're having with new members? Does that align with them, your clients being successful? Does it also align with giving them a choice to really have ownership of their thing, which will increase their chances of success? So we always pitch the offer stack. Here's the US selling the thing that is one of the things that we do here as the solution but many things right? And so you then need to start to build a system where when someone comes in and they want to make a change, I know here's what I want to do. Here's the reason I'm not able to achieve those things. Do you have certainty that you will present them with services that can get them from A to B? And if you're just like, Yeah, I'll give you a key card and then that's it. Well, how someone comes to you says I need to lose 80 pounds, I don't eat well, I don't know what to do. I never really know what to do in the gym. I've had hundreds of these conversations. So I know this, okay, I know this is what they're all they're all gonna say some version of that or they're gonna say I know what I'm doing. And they're all alive. And they're definitely not awesome. But when you have a bunch of those kinds Ever since you know that there are services that need to check those boxes for them, and if you don't offer them, you're missing out on an opportunity to make money. Because they would pay you for them, they just told you that they would do it. Therefore, this is for the success of your business as well, because there's a metric that matters a lot, which is your average sale price, monthly, average, and also your client value per month for that person. And that increases the lifetime value of the client, which then means when you are getting leads, and you are closing them, they're actually worth something to you. The ecosystem begins to feed itself. But too many people just have dollar membership. Can you buy my $100 membership, and it's fucking it's just it's not it, okay? But if your sales process, then let's say you're falling short, then you can troubleshoot your sales process, I think people want to introduce one thing or offer SEC is not going to change anything if your coaches suck. Or if your products are bad. Social media is bad, by the way, or what if it's bad, and we come in presenting offers, and you're not getting any leads, that's a problem too. So coming in, but you can start to troubleshoot these things when you view them as systems that feed off of each other. And so you do need to troubleshoot, and then you do need to immediately address some of these issues. Because when you have a problem in the tank, there's a problem. Yeah. And so when we covered the offer stack stuff, we covered how they're being presented. Covering client success, accountability is a big one as well. And this is where we use a kind of fold in how is your staffing? How is coaching? Your staff? How are you coaching their relationship with the clients? Are you checking in with them? Not just showing them how to lift weights or talking to them about other processes. But when you're checking in with your members, your coaches? Are you covering the other stuff they need to be doing? Are you going? How is Suzy doing here? I know she's got a back issue? Are they reporting? Injuries? Are they reporting client wins? Are they reporting difficult clients? Those are conversations if you're not talking to your coaches, probably at least once, I'd say once a week, every other week, is the farthest out I would go okay, but like do you need to be having conversations with them? Of a specific member? Okay. What are your big wins? What are our big troubles, someone got any injuries, weird stuff troubles, we're trying to do programming questions, those are all good troubleshooting those things, then it's what else do I need you to be doing? Are you talking to them about supplements? Are you talking to them about nutrition? Are you offering some of the other services we have, as a service technician, when I would go to somebody's home to fix something if I was not talking to them about the other things that we could do for them? asking them questions about what you're interested in, got issues with humidity, or you need to do mountain humidifier? What about wireless thermostats with thermostats you can start you're interested in so if I am not the technician, most technicians want to show up and fix and move away. But your business may need more from your coaches in that at the very least some seeds need to be planted so that people can constantly know and are you checking in with your coaches on it. Because if you're not, they're gonna grow away from that. And that task is not going to get done. And that's going to start to create a hole in your system. Again,



John Fairbanks 18:06

I think it's really important to call out your technician example if someone could view that as you're just looking to try and make more money. Right? You're just going to try and just throw a bunch of stuff at somebody and see if they just buy more stuff. Yeah, but at the end of the day, if I do want a humidifier, like if I do need some of these things, or if I am having a problem, I don't know that you have that solution for me that I want. So it is flipping this concept that I think oftentimes we've talked about before with the idea of like, sales, and and having a conversation that is, is yes, it's technically a sales conversation. But if they need it, it ends up just being a conversation to where it's Can I help you? I'm already here. We already are doing something together, you're here. It's what all the things are like if you can get them to tell you all the things most people don't even know, right? They don't know all the problems that they have. Right? I don't know that I'm having problems XY and Z until I am asked enough questions to where you allow that light bulb to click or it's just straightforward, which is, hey, do you have this problem? Can I help you fix it? And then it becomes just that conversation? And if you've done it the right way that is very straightforward, which is Yes, I can help you fix it. As a matter of fact, I have this right here. And I think it's that aversion to even being like well no like it's. I don't want to be put in a position where it makes somebody feel uncomfortable or I feel uncomfortable because now I have to have that conversation.



Tyler 19:45

That's an important benefit by the way of actually having these conversations with your coaches about how to go about this because if you just turn them loose I'd like you to the people need to be coached need to be trained. So developing your staff isn't just teaching them how to squat. A lot of times Teaching them how to have a conversation with somebody that's about their needs. But understand that they are paying you for a thing. So like, if someone is in somebody's home, it'll simply be we'll be talking about any other issues in the house. Wintertime is coming around the corner, you will be shocked by your outlets or anything like that. When you touch a wall that static comes up in the winter, things get dry. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's like, well, we can have humidifier options. If you'd like to see them, they tend to take care of most of that. No, no, thanks. Okay. Move on, by the way. And this was a thing that's really important. I didn't try to sell everything to anyone and talk to everyone all the time. They say nothing about things. One, I'm probably not going to roll out things too. Well, what do you think about UV lights? Have you thought about can I get a more specific, super extreme air filter for that's not you know, it's like, now, if there's the door open, walk through it and talk to them about it. And I think that that's with your coaches. We do not expect your coaches to become great salespeople, I would like them to be salespeople. At some point, in some capacity, I think it's important that they be able to market themselves sell themselves at the very least be able to tell someone what it costs to work with them, show them their off an offer stack or whatever, for their, their service, for Christ's sake, it would be very nice if the coach that's going to be working with them, is going to be the one talking to them about what they want to do, right. But you don't again, but you need to train that stuff. Those things need to be developed, otherwise, those conversations won't be had. And now that's a big hole in your system, where you start to lose the opportunity for lots of internal sales, you're gonna wonder why your supplements are just sitting on your shelf, and you're gonna remember stone people, only some people kind of by the amount of gyms that I know, could be making lots of money on supplements ethically, that are choosing to make just whatever people just come by and grab off the shelf without ever coming up in conversation, marketing, email or otherwise, is crazy. I would say 80% of the ones that we worked with for sure, in the beginning are doing nothing supplement wise, if they have them, they just sit and say okay, well, yeah, let's be making some more money. Well, could you just shoot out an email once in a while and say, Hey, we're running a promotion every once in a while, we'll just do something to draw some attention to it. Because if it has value, people will buy it. Yeah. And it says that it's not about being coercive. So that's on your staff stuff. How do you keep your staff on task? How do you make sure that your staff is nurturing the ecosystem, right, by making sure your clients have a chance to success, which means the best chance for success given the opportunity reinvest to move up your ladder and buy more valuable services, they either are succeeding with the service they have now, where they understand that they can spend more money to go with a service that gives them a higher chance to succeed. Or they can invest further in nutrition coaching supplements, your clients succeeding and paying you money to do it is the route. This is the photosynthesis of this goddamn operation, mitochondria, whatever. It's the powerhouse of this. That's the only thing I've learned. Okay. But I think that all of your other systems need to turn back inward, to nurture that and then you work on your external stuff. Once that's there, your external stuff. Now it should all be about that. And that's how the feedback loop comes in. Meaning from the outside, I find this gym, it's boom, testimonials before and after pictures, products that speak to the exact needs that I have, which is Yeah, I had a tough a tough time like like, now there's products, there's ad copy, all of it starts to make sense for your social media stuff. If you're going to start running paid ads, if you're going to do partnerships and things like this, it's very easy to get partnerships out in your community, it's very easy to have a good reputation in your community, when you're the place that people go. And it changes their life for the better. And they are fit and they're healthy, and everyone around them knows. And



John Fairbanks 23:54

The issue is that it's inverted right now. Right? The industry has this ecosystem this model we're gonna get we're gonna get a fucking a graphic or visual for this because it's right now what you've just described Tyler's stuff that it's, it's completely on its head, we're so focused on these. What's the marketing? What's social media? What's this? And this and we dedicate a lot of time talking about that as well, because that is what's talked about, but it's it when you get into the gear, what do you start working with us one on one, you realize very quickly, we do. We flip that pitch upside down. And we drill in very, very quickly and efficiently. What are your products and services? How are you selling? And how do we get this stuff broken out so that you can start having that feedback loop because otherwise you just end up feeding yourself shit. Everyone gets



Tyler 24:46

Ailing around is a big problem. And in regards to client success, there's more to it than just injury prevention. There's more to it than just prs. Right it's it's it is the whole thing. So many people get hung up on John, I spend a lot of time in the fitness education space. And so it's teaching people how to move injury, possession prevention muscles, this and that and all this other shit. But where does that bake? And how do you sell that? How does that work into your larger system? Are these people actually having success for the things that they showed up to have success for? So I'm gonna show us how to lose 30 pounds, you make the whole thing about their shoulder because they have daddy issues or some fucking nonsense, fuck off. Okay, you need to make it about what they what they're there to do, can you help them all the so you end up with people that focus very much on coaching quality and movement and it misses, they think that that is making it about the client. And it's not making it about you as a coach. And it's, it's, it's not taking them where they want to go, it's giving them telling them that that is the excuse. Yeah, you're going to use and that they're going to use for not getting there. Okay, so you so your system then cannot help them succeed. You're just helping them fail. And looking smart in the process, which is a big problem that we see very, very often, when coaches who care about coaching, coaching, the way they look at it very often it's just about them has very little to do with the outcomes that the clients want. If you cannot give the people what they want, the people are not going to tell people that they got it from you. There is no outward message, there is no noise in your community, if someone comes and wants to lose 100 pounds, wants to lose 50. And they still need to lose 100 pounds a year later, but they like you. Okay, that's not going to pay the fucking bills. Okay, that'll work, that person may stay with you. But that is not the feedback loop that we want.



John Fairbanks 26:36

And I think this is important, because we're talking about like, it's, if you're hungry for more rice gym, or if you're hungry to be able to achieve more than feeling like you're breaking even because it's if I'm talking to a gym owner, that's a 24 hour location that has a general membership. That's right, 45 $50, right, it's, you're gonna get tons of people that are going to come in and more than likely, you're probably not going to be able to have significant success, if that's all you sell. For my CrossFit and functional fitness people. Right? This is your group class. Right. So as we all knew, very quickly, when we unanimously all made the same mistake with the soft gym math, which I only needed certain so many members, and that I would be rich and everything would be great. And I would have group classes. And that would be it. And you realize that's not enough. So for clients it's like you have to have something that's more tied to that client's success, to be able to provide more, more education, more to be able to do personal training, to be able to help those people that do need to be able to experience that next level success. Because if I'm somebody that needs to lose 70 pounds, but I'm just like, well, I just need the $10 membership to go to Planet Fitness, you're not saving that person. No. So so but there is those people that do need the help and if you don't have the means and the ability to put it right in front of them and give them the opportunity to step through the door to make life long lasting change the way beggin every year has a fucking client that loses 50 Goddamn pounds.



Tyler 28:21

Yeah, yeah. And what's also interesting is she will fire clients who aren't doing the things outside of the gym. That's the other thing you people if there's excuses that pop up the first thing that happens is Megan's one of our personal training personal trainers that runs our system. From since the beginning she has made very high level money from her first client her first hour makes not



John Fairbanks 28:43

not virtually not virgin personal, it's all in person.



Tyler 28:48

And so but in doing so just setting the standard high immediately she's dealing with people willing to pay to succeed which means now there is actually success coming through the door you try you try to charge 20 bucks an hour like you be one of those $20 personal trainers or, or only do 30 minute sessions and just kind of turn and burn and run people through. You are going to have a lot of people not making any results and that covers a lot of ground in your community. Okay, be expensive, do a good job, be thorough , hold people accountable, don't deal with any bullshit. If someone comes to you and has a life this is these life impacting changes. Most people never lose 7080 pounds in their life. Truthfully, won't ever they'll keep putting it on and they will need to lose it most will never lose 50 pounds ever. Never. So that is in my opinion, a life impacting achievement as much as a graduation, a marriage, any of those things, right? That is a landmark achievement in somebody's life. That's worth fucking money. Okay, for sure. I don't fucking do that for $20 I don't do that for $40 I don't do that for $60. Okay, that costs a lot of money. And there's a lot of variables that go into that level of success and you're going to do it or I'm not going to work with you, because it's my effort for any amount of money that does not go down that drain. And it's super important. So she'll, she'll have once while you get a client who just insists that they know what they're going to do, what they need to do to eat, and then it's like, no, you're 140 pounds overweight, okay? You don't get to decide you're paying me because we want to do this, I'm gonna help you do this, but you're gonna do the things I tell you to do. And the moment they start deviating or they say they're doing you know, they're lying. It's very often in these cases, you're dealing with mental illness, you say, Alright, you're gonna track everything you eat for now. And you're gonna do it for the next week, we're also gonna give the rest of the money back, but I better see every single thing that you eat. Sometimes I get it, sometimes they don't. But I don't. I don't deal in allowing people to fail, not on my watch. So you're either lying to me, you're not with me on this project, we cut it loose, you're out. Problem solved, right? But there's a big one that is maybe a bit further than you need to go to your gym. Okay. But that principle, like you, you absolutely need to cover all of those bases, because guys, in her case, the reason is, it's always food. It's always people outside the gym stuff. So what does she have to do, she needs them to comply, they need to comply, or it doesn't work. This is what they're there to do. So if you are not willing to be firm, and to truly coach John, the best coaches, you had swamp tanks, let's go, the best coaches you had are not nice. They're not sweet to you. More out of you. And that's how they get it. Right. And absolutely, I don't believe for your business as a personal trainer that you need to be a dick. But there are moments you need to be firm on when people are wrong. They're insisting they're right, they're right they are, they simply want to be argumentative, or they're setting themselves up to fail. Right. And someone who is 100 pounds overweight has allowed themselves to ignore reality for a very long time. And if at that moment, they're still defending the way that they are eating. They're out of their goddamn mind. And you need to make that very clear to them. Okay, and when you do that, when they have that realization, that's when you get more out of you have code, you've had coaches that have just beat you down, push you hard, like, like, really the best coaches that I've ever had in any sport, were the ones that expected the most out of me and took no shit from me. And we're very firm, because the ones that I could kind of push around a little bit John got nothing out of me. Of course, I made no improvements. It was Yeah, well here I am fucking just awesome. The ones were like, Nah, that ain't gonna work. Fuck. And but you got sometimes you got to ride people to cross the finish line. Sometimes you gotta dig the spurs in a little bit.



John Fairbanks 32:35

And, and be unwavering with that. And this isn't just with your clients, right? This goes back to like, it goes back without your staff as well. Yeah, right. If you're not holding your staff accountable, if you don't hold it, how you communicate and the language that you use with your staff, and what those that we talked about expect a lot. The expectations come through leading by example for you as the gym owner, what are the expectations that you set for yourself? What are the expectations you set for the business? And then how is that then being translated out to your staff? Again, it's this infinite loop. That's an infinite feedback loop that allows you to have essentially infinite amounts of success if you maintain that house in order. And it's everything being built on the foundation of client success.



Tyler 33:31

If you have five clients who need to lose a pound a week, right? The end of each month, if you're checking in with coaches, and they're not there, you can make these corrections right now, you can make the corrections, you can have the conversations with the clients, you are checking in on that data, you know, because this is what the clients have asked these systems need to exist in your business. So to do this, or these tasks need to be done by you. If they're not now you end up with somebody who likes a lot of gyms I see that are running coached products like coached classes and shit. Like this was people that have been there for three years and there's heavy as they've ever been. Just walking in the YMCA runs a gym and Tony was like, everybody's is the biggest I've ever seen them. And they've been going there for four years. Well, I get it your selling community is wonderful, but that's not a good look. And I think these people would be happier if you help them more. If you really figured it out, help them figure it out. But there's no conversation and that's the problem. You need to sit down. You need to go okay, well, they're not getting heavy. We talked to him about food, we need to make some changes. What's going on? Is this happening too? Because they need to know hey, we're behind schedule here. What's going on? Okay, it doesn't. Why do people treat it differently when it's a person when they do it? Your job John, if you're underperforming at your job and you're not closing deals and you are costing your business money, there's going to be a conversation. Okay? Yeah, get back in line, dude. Let's go. Okay. Sometimes people just need to feel that because especially on the client success side of things very often these people are just ignoring they're like, you know, just put blinders on. Don't think about it. While I'm here to help, I like I care, but that there's somebody else who's noticing this. Now we want to fix this, what can we do to help this?



John Fairbanks 35:09

A bad coach, a bad boss brings you in and says, You're fucking up. You need to figure it out. You need to do better. I get the fuck out of my office. Yeah, right, that's a bad coach. That's a bad boss, what should happen is, you're fucking up, they still call you on the carpet for it. And then we put in some fucking parameters that we can start to follow, that will then allow me to not fuck up as much anymore. So go back to if, if you were fucking up in the classroom, and you could not do well, and your grades were shit, it's you had to go to the office of student learning, and have a goddamn tutor be with you. And you had to clock 30 hours a week, because you were red. And it sucked, because you went to practice, you went to class, and then you lived in this goddamn building with a tutor until your grades got better. And then you do that and you have to check in. And if you didn't check in, then you got punished. And then eventually you get yellow light. Now you only gotta be there for 20 years. And then you eventually get green lighted, which is feel free, it doesn't matter, you got your shit together, because you showed that you can like it's, it's those action items, those action steps that then lead to the desired output. It just can't be and so this is where it's you can have go ahead



Tyler 36:32

its route. That is what coaching is by the seat. That's important when people are hiring a coach to produce this goes beyond I guess your 24 hour gyms and things like that. But when people are paying for a coach product, you know this, I don't remember who pointed this out to us many years ago. But the origin of the term coach is from the term skills, the word stagecoach, which is that as a person who is there to bring you from point A to point B here to get you coaching is how it gets you there. A coach the situation you just described as hey, I need you to not be a fuckup I need you to also they need you to be good in school. Because if someone's not in school is slipping, you start going out and murdering people in the streets and shit like this hashtag swamp gangs. And so you need to hold people accountable on these little details. Because then a larger and a larger view that is so let's be honest, John, a lot of the things in the swamp King Kong thinks things reflect very poorly on the University of Florida a lot of the outcomes in the end of this meaning in the grand scheme of things had they kept everybody in line and still performed? Well, you would have got all of these success without all of the absolute madness, madness and multiple homicides. Right. But there's some failures there. And the ecosystem just starts failing, flailing around. So that's the success side, I guess, for your gym, for your coaches, you need to understand that client success, it's at the root of that. And from there, everything else, you're shining a light on that that is attractive to people, okay, you're selling an experience, you're selling coaching, expertise, fun, all of it, but it needs to be rooted in those things that are actually achievable. Those things go on in here, not just here's a gym, here's our address. Here's what our coaches look like, here's our logo. Like it, just none of that stuff is as important as if everyone in your gym is having success, you can almost stop advertising.



John Fairbanks 38:25

Yeah, you absolutely



Tyler 38:26

don't also encourage but now the market. But this



John Fairbanks 38:31

if it's one of those, it's one of those things where it just is a lot of you have you've tried just to sell whatever that base membership is, you've been doing it for years. And you are now trying to figure out how the fuck are you going to get out of just that same old same old repeatable process, we're just as man, we're just breaking even, we try something new, we get a little bit ahead, but then we're a little bit back because we lose some people. And it just says you never quite can get ahead. It's always one step forward, two steps back. And there is a recipe to fix it. And it is simple to fix it. You just don't see it because you're being distracted by pure and utter nonsense bullshit. That doesn't matter. And so that is that's where it's constantly as we're hitting these things, of being like there's a better way



Tyler 39:20

and you can't just coach better your products need to align with it. Your marketing needs to attract people who really want change. By the way, if I'm selling a lot of weight loss stuff, I'm just trying to attract powerlifters looking for the next meet that ain't gonna work either. Right? So there is a matter of making sure that your marketing is aligned with those things, your products, your sales process, your staffing, your coaching, your programming, all of those things need to be focused on what can give people the best chance to succeed. And then all you really got to do is price and arrange things in a way that makes sure the business is successful. That's it. Everything else works on it. But don't just start shoving people into a system that sucks and doesn't get people results and isn't really profitable for you for you as it sits now. Just turning the volume up on shitty music is still shitty music dude You know what I mean? So another thing about this that I think is, I mentioned this before for any GM wants to take us up on this, I would, I would, I would love for somebody to do this, you want to have the best promotion, you got to put a little bit of effort into this. But say I want to shave 1000 pounds off my community. That's what I'm looking for 50 people to lose 20 pounds this year, or more, right? Do the math on that, whatever that needs to be, but, but like, can you do that? Are you tracking this with your client? Like how much weight have your clients lost over the course of years? If you're listening again, if you're selling fitness to fit people great, there's plenty of fit people there's a lot more than that. So if your business is trying to grow, I like being positioned in a marketplace that has an endless potential for growth. So getting good at helping people lose weight and that again 1000 pounds what ton double it up if you got enough, but I'd love to see a gym do that promotion, if anyone's out there willing to do it, do it. I'd love to see it. I'd love to see the marketing. I'd love to see the whole thing. Okay, I think I think that's an Once you accomplish that in a year. Euro it's your next year is a fucking breeze because everyone sees people walking around town. They saw them before they saw them and after that's a lot of people. But if your focus is that, man is that going to crush. So again, turn your focus to have more leads to how can I make more people be successful and that's not about coaching people for free. That's actually about getting them to invest more. That's getting to invest more in nutrition coaching that's covering the bases inside outside the gym, making sure they're held. That is a third more thorough, higher value, more expensive product first off, which should make you more money upfront. This isn't about just giving shit away. Okay, but make that your focus if you're into that type of thing. And I think that that will change your gym forever.



John Fairbanks 41:42

I'll do you one better Tyler said he wants to hear from you to do it. Why don't you message Tyler? You will do you will do. I would love it if somebody wants to do this. And they just feel like they don't have that. Like I don't even know where to fuck I would start with that sounds awesome. I've just been looking for an excuse to fucking work with those guys. Here's your excuse. Everybody reaches out, nobody reaches out to John. You know, don't reach out to John Doe reach out to Tyler



Tyler 42:09

Tyler effing stone on Instagram. You can message me if my shit rings a little better. It's



John Fairbanks 42:12

more fun. It's more of a message.



Tyler 42:16

I guess so. Yeah. Let's talk about if that's a project you want to do. Like, let's fucking go we'll do it. Because you got to remember for John and I this is why we're in this thing. Okay, we're doing this to help gym owners do the right thing and make sure that they can make the money doing it because if you don't make any fucking money and helping anybody over the long term, and I don't know what world you're walking around in, but there's plenty of people that can use some good coaching and getting in a little better shape. So you want to help shoot us a message shoot me a message on Instagram at Tyler F and stone John's just given away my services here. Don't message John at J banks. Whatever you do to message John, keep an eye out for the Wacom podcast and it's gonna be on John's thing here. And watch swamp kings start now and start getting caught up in a little walk on podcast for the companion episodes. It's gonna be fucking great. So thanks, everybody go to the gear. What is it with here? What is it that the gym owners revolution.com join the Facebook group yet too many URLs don't even know when the Facebook group gym or gym owners revolutions in the description. Follow the show at Jim Morris podcasts on Instagram. John is Javed SFL. I am Tyler Elphinstone. We'll see you guys there.