What Are You Selling? How Are You Selling It? How Are You Communicating It?

gym, talking, products, selling, people, coaches, business, tyler, marketing, clients, social media, brand, john, supplements, planet fitness, training, buy

Tyler 00:01

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



John Fairbanks 00:06

I'm doing fantastic Tyler.



Tyler 00:07

Lovely. Real freakin 'lovely. So guys today, John, I just wrapped up a conversation we're talking about. For us we go through and we try to assess gym owners, what problems they're having, what problems they think they're having, and kind of maybe really how to prioritize that, in an order for us. And we kind of came across this point where we were thinking a lot, a lot of gym owners, a lot of fitness businesses start to think that some of these systems, processes, marketing strategies, products that they're using, that the problem is those things that aren't very good. It's like, you know, social media, maybe it's just not that effective anymore. Like, I just thought, if I put 10 times the work into it, I'm not going to get two times the work but the money back out of it, and, and we started going through some of the things that not all gyms, but there's a few spots where some gyms will will say, Yeah, we just we have a hard time selling supplements, or, yeah, we're having a really hard time growing personal training, or nobody wants to buy any of this big ticket stuff. And we're there. And what we found is, well, not everybody struggles with all of those things. The point that John had brought up is it really is, it's about what you're selling, how you're selling, and how you're communicating, like more than anything else. And I think that we found that like, it's not that Facebook ads, or social media or email marketing or trying to sell software, it's not that those things are effective, it might just be that you fucking suck at them. And that's totally fine. So we're going to jump into some of the concepts we use behind that underpin some of these products and some of these methods to try to make it a little more successful. And we think people are doing this a little bit backwards, or at least a little bit out of order. So we're gonna hopefully help you get this stuff back on track. reframe the way that you think about some of these things so that you understand that it's not the tool, it's the person using the tool, usually. So before we get started, make sure you join the Facebook group that is the gym owners revolution link in our description. We also still have some openings up this month for the gear Academy. So if you are looking to get your gym indirect working with us one on one, working on your ship right away, we got quite a few different options we can work with you on so that you can shoot us a message or the link is in the description as well. You can also go to gym owners revolution.com. So, follow the show at gym owners podcast to follow me at Tyler F and stone Tyler eff ironstone. And John can be found at Jay bags FL on Instagram. That's me. Alright, let's get to it. So we've talked about a lot in the past John, where we go through a lot of these gyms, social media accounts. And just we're seeing obviously, of course, there's a ton of gaps. And we've touched on that over and over and over and over again. Some of it's really bad. Some of it's even worse, some of it's okay, and there's always room to improve. I think that's the truth about almost anything. But when we start talking to gym owners about what they can do better very often, they're almost at their wit's end about having to do more or improve and do any of these things. And I think they're under the impression that the efforts put in for things like social media, that it's just not worth doing. It's like Well, geez, I I tried doing it myself, and it was a huge pain in the ass and I sucked at it and I didn't get anything else. I didn't get anything out of it. Or I hired somebody to do it and it was really friggin expensive and all the other things that didn't really convert I wasn't getting a ton of leads. I get like I really do get it. That's getting good at that thing. Maybe it's not your job to get good at but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because you have to be doing something there's a minimum base that you have to cover. I think that it can't be doing this. We've seen a lot of gyms posting some shit once a month, man and it's just not enough. No, you don't have to become two sides of this coin. posting once a month once every two months. Often once a summer. People come along and see your shit. We've talked about this before it makes them think that you're not even open. It's hard to know what you're doing. Is there anything to be excited about at this place? At least McDonald's is like the fucking MC rib is back dude. And while everything else that's going on at McDonald's is the same as it's always been. There's Hey, there's a new exciting fucking weird looking thing that is coming out this month. So get in on it. Is your gym doing anything this month? That's interesting. This week that's interesting. Or what about just talking about the basics right the basics McDonald's still gonna talk about the goddamn Big Mac. Have you ever seen the Big Mac on sale, John? Never know. Very rarely, very rarely. But there's still talking about the Big Mac because it's like a centerpiece product right? Just in hand with their brand. I think a lot of gyms fuck that up because they only taught They're either talking about nothing, or they're only talking about the big stuff, you know. And while I understand big community workouts or big events, or we're just making a fourth of July post, or God knows what it is that you're doing, those are those are like big easy things to make a social media post about. And this isn't just frequency, you have to be good. It can't just be chocolate, there's so many things that you do, I hope that you should be communicating better. So what are you selling? And how are you going to communicate it? And we talked John, we talked to a lot of gyms that like, I'd love to sell more personal training, I'd love to write. The big app for this is, I think, 24 hour gyms that have some personal training coaches. They have a pretty easy time doing it, and that's almost very easy to turn on. If you're having trouble with that talk to John and I, we can, we can definitely help with that. Because you have everything in place that people that are coming in are either working out on their own. And there's a very easy upsell. But the gyms we find the most are struggling to sell personal training, or often a functional fitness gym or having some sort of group fitness product. We're not like, well, nobody wants to pay for one on one, blah, blah, blah. Cutting your own throat limits the amount of people who maybe don't want to do a group aren't going to come in and work with you. Or maybe simply guys. You're not talking about it enough. And when we go in and we look at a lot of the gyms that are struggling to sell personal training, you'd be hard pressed, especially the CrossFit gyms functional, you'd be hard pressed to see any fucking conversation about personal training going on, outwardly on their social media. So maybe it's happened in some back channels, maybe it's happening in your gym, but I don't fucking see it. And if I'm going to join your gym wanting to become a personal training client, how am I supposed to find that out? Am I supposed to look through your page that's devoid of any real information or anything that's like, actually points out what you do and what you can do for me, and what things cost and what products you have? Or do I have to navigate through all that and still decide I like you enough and still go to your website. And at the bottom of some bullet list is shit that you maybe do kind of like that you just threw the wall is personal training.



John Fairbanks 07:09

We're also talking a lot about marketing specifically in social media. But the one thing that stands out, and is the most clear now having seen so many different accounts, so many different gyms and have worked with so many different gym owners, is that the issue right now is that we're seeing a symptom of a problem. And so social media will oftentimes be a symptom, it's not our underlying, to truly the issue that the gym is having. So continuing with the personal training concept, right, I want to sell more personal training. If your social media, let's say you're not somebody that only posts once every two weeks or once a month or once a quarter, you are somebody that posts all the time, you worked your way up to get to that point, right, you probably now have either you are really into it. So you do it, you take time to have really high quality images and photos and videos be on your account. And everything looks really sharp.



Tyler 08:08

You got staff that's handling it for you. But there's a system in place and a standard that's been set.



John Fairbanks 08:13

And you've done a good job of doing that. And we see some of that as well. The problem is, is that just like you said, dollars, if I 10x. Or if I put a level of importance on this, it's not returning what you anticipated. So the issue really is we can look at your social media, and we can give you tons of tips and tons of advice on how you can improve that. But the problem is, is that you are improving it on top of instead of a solid foundation, right? Sandy found that it's unstable. You're already inefficient, you already have a problem. And that problem is a misalignment with what you are selling so if it's personal training, what we often find is like well, okay, well this looks really good. So you're still having problems. Oh, yeah, you know, we're not doing here or I'm losing, I'm losing coaches, or we're not the revenue we're just not hitting the revenue that we need to hit like well this is this looks really sharp. So then let's look at another layer deeper. And this is why I can say so consistently like you laid out in the intro is that any problem that you're having, that's going to ultimately come back to revenue, is going to come back down to what you're selling, how you're selling it and then how you're communicating it. But because our world is all about social media, everyone is getting waterboarded with how you can perfect to make things look good look sharp do this do that. Now you have captions now you have auto captions. Now you have AI. Now you have all this shit that ultimately what you're doing is you have a turd. And you have just been sold a bill of goods to get that turd as shiny as humanly possible. And so you've shot Saying that son of a bitch up to where now, man, it looks really good. But fundamentally, you're still cutting your throat with every single sale that you're making. Because what you are selling and how you're selling it, how you're communicating talking to people about it, it doesn't matter how sharp you become on social, you're still having those issues on the back end, that is either fucking your coaches, so therefore they're leaving, or it's not serving your people to where the actual success of the client hasn't been first and foremost. So therefore, it drops off like there's, that's where oftentimes between those three areas, that's where we can start to pull apart. And that's when it becomes, Oh, you thought you had a social media problem. And it's a rat's nest of issues that are in here. And it can be solved very simply. But you're gonna have to be able to check your ego at the door a little bit.



Tyler 10:53

Yeah. So John walked me through this, this first piece here, you talked about kind of things going this way. There's a process that I think people think it's how things go in regards to marketing with Jim, you're just screenshotted I do have it in our, in our show notes here as well. But yeah, the thing that I'll summarize the first piece is the direction people think going as you go from Marketing, and then people are going to reach out via DM and phone. And then it's about your services and products. That's what you're talking to them about. And then boom, their new client. How often people that suck at marketing or avoiding it, or simply just haven't figured it out. Don't take it all personally, when I say suck, it is what it is. This is what ain't working for what that's when we hear all this stuff is like, Oh, we get all our clients for word of mouth, it's all word of mouth. It's all word of mouth. Well, either either that either means your marketing is the fucking best, or it's non existent in his trash. There's two things there. It's, it's you're just you means you don't mark it and whatever you are getting, whether it's abundant, or fucking very scarce, is just happening. And you're just if it's working at all, you're like, Yeah, we get all word of mouth because we fucking rule. It's like, Yeah, well, you could do a lot better if you didn't suck at the marketing piece. But that's the that's, that's one thing that I think we see a little bit is that people kind of, if they're failing at one thing, they just assume that the only thing left is the success is the success of my word of mouth is like, well, you need to have a lot of different pathways for leads, whether that's online marketing, email strategies, conventional marketing, we talked about regular Word of Mouth versus traditional referral stuff. Partnerships, community partnerships, things like this go on. So I think that's a very important thing for people to realize, especially when it comes to marketing. Like, oh, just because something else is working kind of doesn't mean you need to, you should abandon all of these other marketing efforts. It's like, no, that's now the hole in your ship that you need to fix.



John Fairbanks 12:51

And everyone's going to keep telling you to do more. So that's, that's how I've been able to identify and how you and I have talked about now for years is like, how can you identify when someone is selling you a bag of goods? Or if it's bullshit, or if it's outdated, it's because they just want you to do more. It's like, well, you should just do more of it. And there's an assumption that you're just being lazy, and you're not doing enough as it is. And for me, it's, I want you to be able to know, in the back of your mind, it's already if you are doing enough, if you have been dialing it up and you have your business where it needs to be more is not the answer. No more will fuck you over to where you will strain, everything that's in your business and shit will break. And you'll begin to hate your business. What we have found is it's always about simplifying back. So this is where the main failure points, because this is what you and I hear all the time, I need more leads. I just need more members, I need more leads. When I get someone in my gym when I can talk to them. Like I close it 90% I just need to get more people to walk through my door. And so that's what we hear. So what people end up so then then it just becomes an insane list of recommendations of what you need to do in order to be able to go get more people where if it's going to be ads, and and then DMing people and then doing all just so many things that will suck so much time away to where there is a simpler answer. And it all comes down to again, like you said whether you begin doing the marketing, looking at those services, and there's products, and oftentimes those are the two main areas for us. If there's a failure point, with the leads that you are getting or not getting, that is well where the failure point is happening. And this is the number one mistake people make. Because all we talk about is social and we specifically talked about marketing. And that word doesn't mean what you think it means. Marketing for us, is you kind of gave that big umbrella where it was like all of these different every thing which email is the most neglected fucking version of marketing that you do in your business right now? I don't have to know you to know that that is being neglected. Because 97% of the gyms that we talked to that have been open for five to 10 years are not using their email the way



Tyler 15:20

that they should be. Almost not at all



John Fairbanks 15:22

I think it's shocking. Yeah. So it's so convenient weekly



Tyler 15:26

newsletter because that's it's, it's again, should be about your products and your services, and connecting them to the people that you want to participate in those products and services. It seems like an oversimplification, but I think you need to fucking listen to me, okay? We're not just sending emails out about the gym. And that's a big thing that I hate that happens just on social media, right? It's what you're selling and how you're selling it. And how you're communicating it. All you're doing is talking about your gym, here, we're at a gym, we have this. Here at our gym, we have this come join our gym, here's gym, this is gym, our gym, we have a gym, where gym, we do gym, things come to the gym, here's a picture of a gym person doing gym things, come join our gym, how's the fucking cost? What are you? What can you do for me? What different things can I do when I participate? I go through the goddamn car wash. And I get more choices out of one single fucking machine than I get out of an entire gym full of people with varying levels of expertise, experience, preferences, and I go in and it's what a catch all membership or hire a personal trainer for X sessions doesn't mean anything to me. And I'm not saying that that's a problem, if that's your starting point, right? If you're trying to sell some personal training, and there's some ways you can level it up, but you're talking about it, then that is the problem. If you're having trouble selling it, you can't just bark louder about the whole thing. It sucks. And so an email is a big one as well, because people I'm all about a newsletter for your internal people. But what are you offering these people that say, what are you offering these people? So when we say something like your emails are underutilized? What would you like these people to participate in? And the problem is a lot of us don't have anywhere for them to go. If they're already and there's nowhere for them to go, and they're just stuck.



John Fairbanks 17:13

And what we're presenting is that what we're talking about is not improving your current systems. This is not improving your current strategy. This is a completely new way of going about it. It's a completely new opportunity for you to take your business and start to look at it in a completely new different way. That then not only puts your client first, but allows you to be able to actually make money doing what you love to do. Because if you've been doing this long enough, you're not in the ideas business. You just want to be able to handle the next onslaught of the big fucking financed monsters that are starting to gobble up every single strip mall. That's where your gym is located. Yeah, because Planet Fitness is and major corporations Nike and Lululemon and all these motherfuckers are coming. They're coming to Main Street, they're grabbing up real estate, and they're going to plant their shit in your communities. And for you guys that have been successful, how are you going to handle that next step, that next onslaught,



Tyler 18:23

I was talking to someone who owns a coffee spot down here in downtown on Main Street here. And she said it's, you know, it was a lot easier years before when there was us and maybe one other coffee spot on Main Street and two or three others in town. Now we have I would say that I would say a dozen different chain type coffee joints, right some are very fast turn and burn to go drive through types of solid business models if you're just investing by the way that's what I'm saying. So Planet Fitness isn't so there's sure things are right. And then every couple little other Mom Pop spots have kind of popped up and come and gone and it's like, yeah, man, like you you need to be resilient because at some point, investment is going to come in and start to crowd your market. And it's not you and you are different from them, but you need to be you still need to be something fucking publicly or else when someone comes in and something with a brand that people recognize you ain't on the UAT near the top of that list and you unless you've already been doing some fucking groundwork and it's it's tough to say but like you're gonna get pushed out if you don't if you're not able to somehow differentiate yourself and if you've got a head start and they're not they're not there yet. The fuck are you doing? Just chillin like just waiting for Planet Fitness. You're stripping out your malls, your strip malls, they're all dilapidated. These big big joints are coming in. They absolutely are and they're working their way from bigger market to midsize market to smaller market. It's really these people who are just choosing what businesses they're going to place in what communities because they have the money to do it and the resources to do it. It's an investment Don't do on their part. And are they likely to invest in your little thing that's like, probably not. So they're going to invest in competing with you directly, in a very big fucking way. So I just think by putting your products first because all those other things that I'm talking about is Planet Fitness's first brand, for sure brand of affordability, you know all of these chains, it's the brand that they put first. That's the reason by the way, it's the only reason someone would buy it. Because there's very few processes behind some of these businesses. Truthfully, it's equipment, it's a layout, there's a handful of employee policies, but there's not a ton of like, legitimate processes about how we're coaching that doesn't it's not it, it's facility management. And that's about it. So they're able to put those things first, but they're going for size, brand, build brand, visibility, affordability, convenience, all of that stuff is first. Wonderful. You're not what you need to put first in the right order, and this is what your services and your products need to be first. It needs to be better. If you're a boutique gym, a small scale fitness studio, functional fitness gyms, small 24 hour, not even a big one, if you're just owned by your own shit, and your brand is not national, your services, your products your people need to go first. That needs to be the thing that you're talking about the most. It needs to be that's the thing you're selling, that needs to be the thing you need to get good at selling, that's everything needs to line up towards pointing connecting the right people with the right services and products, not just connecting everybody with your gym membership because everybody else is going to do that better. Because everybody knows their brand. And you have sucked at social media and failing at your marketing for a long time. To the point where you're just so set. I'm so sad at word of mouth dude. Like okay, you know who's got word of mouth? Planet Fitness, fitness. Yeah, Nike Nikes got word of mouth, Nike pops up people gonna talk about it, you open a second location in your town, and nobody's gonna give a fuck compared to Nike dropping in I promise, not in the grand scheme of things. So you have to understand that they're coming in, and they're going to say that you're the thing that you do better, your differentiator, you better be, you better already know how to do that. If you don't need to get on it right now. Because when they come in, that's going to be the thing. You're not going to be able to build your brand beyond what theirs is. They're already going to know I've seen that. I've seen this in other places. I'm stoked to get one. Yeah, we live in a little town here, John. And we have a couple Mom and Pop style grocery stores that are nice and big. You're fortunate to have been in a nicer one. We also got some other stuff from Walmart, right? But the talks been banging around people have been like begging for like a high V for like a fucking 15 years. You don't mean just a high V, right. But when there is a high V, by the way, there is no high V here. And all these local places are like fucking why would you want to IV we do the same, but they just want a high V because it's a high V, they go to another place and it's and it's nice and and it comes in if it shows up, a lot of people are going to take the money they were spending at these local spots, and they're going to go to the high V because it's the high V and they've heard about it. And it's going to be the same way with Planet Fitness popping up next to your gym. So we better do what you do differently, which is don't compete on brand, which is what becomes the most of what these gyms are marketing for right now. It's just, there's a brand here's a gym, here's gym, that person gym, make it about your services, like Make, make sure that people know what you do in your gym and what they can do with you and the different pathways through that that will automatically feel different from these other things.



John Fairbanks 23:39

Make sure not gloss over this. You have to be extra careful that you think you know, especially my mid level gyms that are listening, if you are a new gym owner, God forbid if you are a smart or heavily certified coach. I'm also a gym owner. You have to make sure you do not get caught in this fucking trap and we're going to call it and hit it dead on what Tyler just said is your market your services and what you sell is all about the customer, the client and what they can achieve at your spot. It's their transformations that they have done. The biggest mistake that we are seeing in the market in general with really good coaches is that you think your differentiator of how you're going to separate yourself from the planet fitness is that brand brand brand $1 $1 $1 That race to the bottom. You think incorrectly that what makes you different is that you are smarter and that you care more



Tyler 24:49

your big fucking brain. All those people don't do you think all these people go to when they choose to go to a big change gym? Do you think that they go there because they think that People at that gym or that business cares about them more? No, do I go to McDonald's, I think they care about me more. Now. And by the way, don't don't let me gloss over this because I do get it. One of the things that makes me a good coach is that I actually do give a shit about my clients getting results, but I don't just give a shit and a fucking vacuum. The products exist to prove that the products exist to optimize their chance of success. And if I can't convince them through my products, I gotta convince them with my big fucking fancy words. That shit sucks. So being smarter, don't talk about your expertise. Don't talk about how brilliant your coaches are hooked on the, it turns into this really silly pissing matches over stuff nobody gives a fuck about, I promise you, you will get infinitely more clients, if you just talked about what you're actually doing to help these people, not how much you know. And it's and we're saying this very specific is John, we worked in the fitness education space for a lot to post a lot of these people through this process and because they care, but put your intelligence, your intellect and your ability to care. First on your marketing, they don't give a shit about you yet. They don't. So I want to know, what can you do for me if your product makes sense? It's so much easier to set. By the way, John, we see gyms that, like, do really, really well selling products that aren't really about the gym at all. Like it's just a program, you know, is just here, if you're looking for this, we have this. And like, Oh yeah, I'm kind of interested in this. It's not about your brand, it's not even about you, it's it, that stuff comes so far down the road, that if you start with that, you're just talking about your own ass. And it sounds really, really, really pretentious, and people don't like it. People really, really don't like and the problem with some of that stuff, is if you're talking about expertise, and you're saying we do this better, we do this better than crossfitter I do this better than this type of coach or some coaches are like this, or, or here's all this big brain shit that I got to say about fitness and exercises. And here's how you do this exercise over that one. None of that stuff connects to the end user that well, it just doesn't. So when you go through all of that stuff, it just ends up being a, what's the word here, it just ends up being a thing that you're talking about, it's only going to reach people outside of your area, it's going to reach other coaches, it's going to reach other people that and the problem is is you start chasing. So it's a false sense of success. When you start posting a lot of likes, I'm a smart guy shit, you start making your marketing about how good you are with these sets as different from the big chains as this, and you're gonna get you're gonna get you're gonna get a lot of other coaches who feel that same way. And they're gonna like your same shit. And you know where that's gonna go for you and your business, this local buck in nowhere. So if you want to do a bunch of that to put in a bunch of groundwork so that hopefully you can become, you know, an online coaching guru and you want to float to the top of it's the rest of the 100 billion people that are trying to do that right now. Go for it. But like there's people in your community that you're trying to do business with right now that could use your help. If you're a gym owner, I would hope that you want to help people in your community. Otherwise, why would you open a gym in your community? Why not just your remote coaching, if that's what you want to do? And the answer usually is, oh, well, I don't have a big enough following. I don't make enough money doing that. It's just all effort and no money will be great. So why don't you stick to the side your fucking bread is buttered on the people in your gym paying you money, get more of them, please, for Christ's sake. So making it about your products instead of your brain is great. And that really I think crafting your products first with the clients in mind with what they want in mind making it not a convoluted presentation, just make it simple. Give them choices. Start with that that will attract the right person. So it's not just me as a gym going here is Jim come see my gym, we are gym, right? It's now I have a weight loss product that is six weeks long, that's going to do this for you. Oh shit, I kind of like that. Or it's, Hey, we have a cardio class that we're doing at this time. It's 40 minutes long and fits into your lunch break. Oh, that sounds fucking great. Like that is connecting a product to a person. Okay, talking about how to do the fucking best bicep curl in the world is fine content, but it better be peppered in with a lot of the other ship. And I see a lot of people missing. They either go or they do nothing. Or they do a bunch of stupid guru shit. That just makes people think you're weird. Or they kind of just sit in the middle of that and just kind of talk about their herd. Here we are. Come see us and there's a ton of work you can do more and it can be better as long as the services and products are placed first. Trying to do more in a vacuum is where you run into trouble because you've run out of ideas or you're making very long pieces of content that's just laborious and takes a lot of time.



John Fairbanks 30:00

And it also ends up becoming whatever you're most interested in at the moment. Yeah, so there's core pillars that are inside of all of your businesses, the core things that you want to have success in, and that you are having success with. Right? There's a lot of you that are very successful with personal training, you're very successful with your weightlifting, or your teams or your performance stuff with athletes, like there's areas that are, they're the core pillar of what you do. The problem is, is that what I see on your social media is some fucking trendy, bullshit, tick tock type thing. And I haven't seen anything to do with not one of probably the three or four things that make your business what you do, I don't see those anywhere. Lots of people working out, lots of people doing this, lots of people doing that. And the issue is, again, the symptom is what I can see, I can see that on the marketing side. But the root problem is probably how you are presenting those four pillar items, it's too hard to understand, it's too hard to be able to connect with on the buying face for someone to then do business with you. Because you can you can bypass, if you really do have success, and you have folks that will give word of mouth or give that straight referral, you kind of get to bypass a little bit of that marketing and you just get to walk yourselves and how many, how good, how different, even for Utah with the folks that you're working with, for your personal training stuff? How much easier is a sales conversation with someone from some of this? Like, no, like I told my buddy about this, this person is now here. Like it's, it's an assumed close, they're begging to work with me. I don't want to give you money.



Tyler 31:53

If the only thing I really ask for essentially, is when I have a good chunk of time. But when I get Yeah, if I get somebody who comes in it's like, it's already done. There's no question. There's no informing them. At this point. The ones that I get who are normal are still very rare, it's mostly just people see me in the gym, see me there that'll go, Oh, my goodness, you're a personal trainer. Oh, great. But like the ones that I get that are from literally like, like a true referral solver. It's also because that's the type of client you have to you want a type of client that has, has money who has influenced so if I have somebody who's like, has their shit together, has this disposable income, spends a couple $1,000 a month on personal training like that, when that person tells somebody, oh yeah, I got like they're telling the right person, that type of person with a budget that I want to be dealing with, about the product that I want them to be buying the most valuable one that I sell. And now everything works that way.



John Fairbanks 32:52

But when a gym owner tells us that they're not making the amount of money that they believe that they should be making, or they want to make more, what that tells us is that something is broken. Because if you're also telling us that you're not making the revenue and you want to be able to increase revenue, and then you also make the mistake by telling us that the majority of your business is word of mouth, your Tyler and I immediately know that you have fucked up your sales process completely because the way our businesses work the way the gyms that we work with, if you're getting 90% Word of mouth, that means those are 90% assumed closes that you are having a significant chance of making four figures per sale. So get the fuck out of here that's impossible. If you have 200 to 400 clients that are in your gym and you have 90% of those are assumed closes you are sitting on a huge fucking chunk of change every single month.



Tyler 33:58

Usually what that means is actually the overall number of leads is actually really low and that's why that's why you guys are out there getting preyed upon by these predatory consulting slash ads arrangements that are guaranteeing you 40 leads this month 40 leads every month forever and ever and ever and ever. Well, if word of mouth is working so well why are you not rich? Why it's just so that piece is going well relative to I guess what itself so then it's time to shore up these other things. And not only that, then your products need to be in place better because these people should probably be spending more money as well. So I think that there's too much missed opportunities when people say yeah, word of mouth it's yeah, we mostly word of mouth. But you're here because you need more, you want more money, maybe not needed. Maybe you're doing okay, but you want to grow we'll tell you what, if word of mouth is your only pathway to fucking someone getting in getting In other words, let me rephrase that, okay, if you want to grow. But right now most of your leads are coming from word of mouth, that's not a good thing. It means that it's great, it means your people are talking, which leaves so many opportunities on the table, it's crazy for one those people to be spending more money, okay for also for you to be attracting more people by actually talking about your products, better, more effectively marketing them better on different platforms, whether that is Facebook ads, or just general social media content, or your email marketing or conventional marketing.



John Fairbanks 35:33

And what we're talking about this is so fundamental to your business, it's, it's bigger than ads, it's bigger than challenges or certifications, or a fucking god dammit, you're about to get so overwhelmed with Black Friday shit. Like, buckle up, prepare yourselves, you're gonna get inundated with Black Friday opportunities and you're not only for you to buy, but for like, you should be running a Black Friday sale, it's this stuff is so fundamentally different than that. That is why I'm saying it's, we cannot be looking at how you can improve what you've got, you have to be able to step back and kind of relay a new foundation and it can be done, you are capable of doing it. Because we do it every single week with the people that we're working with. And it starts with what you want to be selling, who you want to be serving, how you're talking about that. And then things just fall into place. The biggest lie that the fitness industry has ever told somebody is that you don't already have everything you need. It's whether we're trying to sell somebody a shake weight, or like it's you, you know what to do to lose weight. Fucking don't eat like it's so fundamental. Yeah. But no, no, we need to buy more shit. You just need more stuff. You need better shoes, you need better clothes, you need whatever. And now that same stuff, of course, fundamentally is now being done for you. When it comes to your business. Oh, well, you're not, you're struggling here. Well, let's do some more stuff. Let's get new software. Like I cannot, I cannot. Our most successful personal trainer that we've ever worked with Tyler had barely any formal education or certifications. And no software, no, nothing like zilch, nada, no app get fucked. And we're talking 1015 20k? Like, it just was like, it was so fast. Because all we did was simplify the two main pieces, what were the products and services being sold? And how were those being talked about? Yeah, that's it. It was so quick. And again, those failure points we talked about? Are you failing at the marketing side? Are you failing with your market with your services and your products? Or are you failing with how you are then following up with people, and how you are communicating via DM or phone and be able to have that follow up sequence? There's no money for large companies that want to turn and burn and just sell you software as a service, to be able to sit down with you and say, What are your products and services? How can we improve that to be more aligned with what your clients want to achieve? The reality is that's the longer game. It's also the more soul fulfilling calling game that I wanted to play because that's where you and I Tyler saw, that's where the error is. That's where the problem was. So all of you guys, you have great software, you are building websites, you have



Tyler 38:39

any worse than any of the other software out there. No.



John Fairbanks 38:42

So you've sold them already. So that's where it's like you already have it, you've solved the problems, but you've solved them out of order. And this is why this is again, I can't come back to it more than enough . It's a new way of looking at this, where everything will start to line up because now you'll finally be speaking in straight lines. And so,



Tyler 39:00

to go there's another piece that we want to touch on a little bit. So we've talked about how like if you're struggling to sell personal training, so everything else is going to your gym, but you want to grow a new revenue stream, right like shit you identify like we're not making enough money on personal training. That's something we want to focus on. Very often it's that it's how you're selling, how you're selling it how you're communicating it, right so you need to go through all of these things all of what are the tools you have at your disposal Facebook ads, run them, okay, maybe you don't want to figure that out right now. You don't have the budget to figure that out right now. Find them, don't run them, go to regular organic social media then by the way if you're going to do one of those you need to do both or if you're gonna you're gonna do Facebook ads that doesn't mean don't do your social media. But it also means you need to work on some conventional stuff seek referrals you need to use your email lists both current and former clients you need to add former leads we've talked about this too like all your leads need to be on this list as well leads that told you know all your knows your people Was it were maybe some of your deferred stuff, you should have them all into your system. Those are also worth reaching out for any of these things. But when I hear Jim say, I'm really having a hard time selling nutrition coaching on it when people don't want it wrong. You're fucking wrong. You're absolutely wrong. You suck at selling it, you don't care about it. You wish you just wished it was selling itself? Fine. Then make it good. Take a bit of time to make sure Okay, who is this for? What can it help them like just do a little bit of thought exercises, write some shit down, and then go to it. Go to your social media, go to your email list, do this stuff consistently. I promise, promise people buy it. I don't know what to say. All these people are googling to get like the dumbest information, the worst information they could possibly sort out they're coming across on the internet and run with it. So I promise you if they're already in your business, or they've already sought out your business to do group classes, regular membership, personal training, I promise you if you offer them a group, if you offer them nutrition coaching, a lot of them are going to buy it. So your sales process is broken. Your product sucks or you don't care about it, you're not talking about it and you want to blame the product at that point when it isn't necessarily right. It's now the way that they're communicating that same thing with supplement sales. John, it's the most egregiously blamed for the most dreams my people don't buy some bullshit, right? Bullshit. They don't. And they will and it doesn't mean you have to be pushy. There's I listen, I'm all about when it comes to supplement sales in the gym, doing it ethically and not turning it into some. Now you got to buy our fat burner package and the blah blah, blah, like all that stuff sucks. But Jesus Christ you guys, what do you give you give, people will spend an extra 100 bucks at 80 to 200 bucks a month on supplements, the people that have the money to do it. And maybe that's not all of your people, but it might be the top third and a bunch you're gonna spend 20 bucks 30 bucks a month 4050 Whatever. But there's a lot to be had there so just fucking, but when they do it, they put on the shelf and ignore it. Or they'll do a little mini launch and they ignore every single gym owner that we've worked with. Who has not completely turned the corner and is selling supplements regularly. It is 100% because they don't do anything to do it. 100% of them do nothing to sell supplements and then they say people don't want my supplements. People don't want to buy supplements. We're not that kind of gym. Okay, well just let GNC take their fucking money. We're even worse. There's nothing that pops up here a couple of times every once in a while. There's these little pop up nutrition stores that pop up in strip malls. I don't know who fucking owns I've never set foot in them, but they just it's like so and so nutrition or dis nutrition or that nutrition, but it's all just on the self. It's just a GNC but it's somebody who has you know, maybe not



John Fairbanks 42:54

I guess at work spirit Halloween of GNC sort



Tyler 42:57

kind of yeah, they're just pop up until they go away and it is what it is and maybe fulfill one year of a lease and see how it goes. You have that stuff and then you have also the pop up we talked about before like the pop up MLM people where they try to convert their MLM supplements strategy into now we make shakes. The dance club Shake Shack. Yeah. And so does every gym that I know who's failing to sell supplements, like all your people are buying supplements somewhere else. They're googling what they want, maybe what they think they should take, and they just come to you and go, What do you think about and I get asked this question all the time we think about this brand of fucking chicken bone broth. Whatever it is, I don't know.



John Fairbanks 43:40

But what about collagen? Tyler wooden is



Tyler 43:43

I don't know about the collagen man. I've heard things that are good. By the way, I bought bone collagen, whatever, like a couple of times. Tried it. I'd get it again. If it was around in a fort, but I'm not fucking good. I'll be like, yeah, rules, because he's like supplements. It's a supplement. It's also a way to reinvest. It's also a way to make sure that you're putting healthy ish things into your body in lieu of being bored and stopping and buying fucking candy and shit. You don't I'm saying sometimes you just, I don't take fucking BCAAs because I'm an adult. And I read things that tell me that I don't need to. But if I threw BCAAs in my water all day, it's like, well, drinking that instead of coke drinking that sort of Mountain Dew. It's just a constant reminder that I put effort into this thing about my health. So I'm carrying that with me all day today, all day today. Ah, yes, this is a decision I've made to put something good. That does matter. That does matter for someone's psychology. And their long term ability to be successful matters that they're walking in gym clothes that they like, right? Just it does. So but people are gonna buy and they're gonna buy him somewhere. They're gonna Google and then oh, I should take this in there, come to you and ask about the brand instead, and they're gonna go buy it somewhere else Jesus dude. So I really don't think a lot of these things can become pillars of Your business, like constantly easily producing revenue pillars within your business. But you're just not doing it right? You're not talking about the services and products in a way that's worth a shit. You're not using these platforms, these communication methods well, and you're not using them consistently enough because you're afraid of being told no. Even worse, by the way, when it comes to emailing things, they're not afraid of being told no. It's like, even more lame, like, You're just afraid that like people won't. A bunch of people are going to open the email you sent them. Like, like, what is your fucking fear here, I don't get it. But I don't know why people get clammed up about this.



John Fairbanks 45:36

Or you just don't even think about it long enough to execute the next step. Yeah. And that's where it's, so if we were going to draw a line, I'm going to draw a line in the sand where it is, it doesn't matter where you are, if you are someone that has, you've done a great job, you have tons of people that have either been in your gym, you've been open for five to 10 years, and you have big followings of either people that have been with you for a number of years. And you're talking like former lists of people from what Tyler read 1000 plus people, right? If you're that person, there are very specific steps that you can take that incorporate everything that we've talked about, that will absolutely allow you to double whatever investment that you would make with us to bring in and help you do that. We would double it within 12 weeks.



Tyler 46:28

What do we see? So one gentleman, we just went through a process similar to this, John, kind of heard from them for quite a while. I was struggling to sell personal training. People don't want to buy personal training, nobody wants to buy personal training, why would we hire coaches, we can't sell personal training, they can maybe bring on a coach, they worry about bringing a coach on and go, Yeah, but then we can't sell personal training and then go, okay, what are we doing to sell personal training? Uh, well, and oh, we're almost never posting about it. I was, I mean, literally, almost never posting, okay, well, let's start doing that. Let's just start doing that. Then let's start doing some email stuff. And all of a sudden, now this gym, which used to be personal training, was as close to 0% of their monthly revenue as possible, right? For sure. Was it literally zero,



John Fairbanks 47:14

it might have been, there may have been like one or two clients kinda like it's, they would buy 10 sessions and it would take 12 months for that person to use up the 10 sessions or whatever.



Tyler 47:24

And now it's over 30% so it is a true 30% gain in overall revenue. And it also it's not just taking from this it's not just redistributing the monthly revenue you see it this is his new business because hey, you know what, people who want personal training want personal training, they don't want just the gym access, they there's a one of the things that stopping them from being successful is I don't know what to do in the fucking gym. And I don't have anyone to hold me accountable for teaching me. Oh, great. Now you offer that and boom, your business producing 30% More money every month, and you can bring in new people and you have something for them to fucking do. By the way, you can continue to turn this up at one of the other gyms we work with who have been a gear Academy for a long time. Almost 40% of their revenue is personal training. Yeah. And that's a 24 hour gym, and doing very little personal training before.



John Fairbanks 48:14

And they're still not like they have another level that they can go to. That's what's the most exciting about them is that they are crushing on the one on one personal training side. But there's a whole nother level that we can take them and are starting to talk about with them. That will allow you again, it seems silly and ridiculous. But these moves are not a percent here 10% There, we're talking like it is 30 to 40% jumps in revenue, as you are doing this the right way. So it allows you to make these very large jumps, revenue wise, that doesn't require you to now burn a bunch of fucking time, or be able to put in a whole bunch of new systems.



Tyler 48:59

And let's talk on the other side of this. How else could you do a 30 to 40% bump in revenue. I don't know what the other guy's gonna tell you to do. Turn and burn baby on a bunch of unethical bait and switch bullshit ads, stuff a bunch of low quality leads through your business and get a bunch of low value people. No offense, low value clients, low fat, low spending value clients. But these are the types of people that bring McDonald's into your championship so kind of fuck them. But like you're gonna get a bunch of low value leads, you're gonna spend a ton of resources trying to sell these people they're gonna frustrate your staff, all of a sudden your premium who what are these people coming in here that are not interested in this you're gonna have a very frustrating time dealing with it. It's an alternative burn, it's all borderline unethical in the end, the way the money kind of shakes out versus what they're being told. Okay, and then your reputation starts to scared and scarred and scared but hey, you got that extra 30% versus these gyms where they take our most people spend a lot of money like this the law So we're talking about with the 30% shot where they take on seven new clients, but they all spend, but it's real money. Real money now said if set of set of set of spending 5060 bucks 80 bucks for a membership, now suddenly some people are 1000s of



John Fairbanks 50:14

dollars. Yeah. And if you had another gym to be like, we had to make the differentiations we were talking about within our larger gear Academy of the gyms that we work with every week. And it was, hey, understand that like they went from this is a $415 average sale from 50.



Tyler 50:37

Yep, the average sale normally was 50 is a



John Fairbanks 50:39

$50 sale to now a 400. And it's not weird $600 challenges that are living in escrow that they get for free, but it's not free. Like it's, it's no, it's they had an idea. They had a goal, we said yes, we can help you achieve that goal. And the best part was, they weren't even members of the gym yet. And it wasn't with ads. So there's like, there's so many ways to be able to go about this. So whether you are somebody with over 3000 people that you have at your beck and call through emails having been open forever, or you have less than 3000, there are different paths to success, and what needs to matter to you. And this is where for us, it's then it's going to be great. Let's help you do this. This is something that we do so consistently, that it's anyone that's ready to beat, if you're tired of just having a pee, the same old thing, where you continue to spin your wheels, or you feel like you're going in circles, or if you're just not in the business of trying to figure shit out on your own. And it's like, I would rather just have somebody who says, This is what I do. I go from here to here, and it ends up with my business having success. Because, again, this is that new way of going about it. That's not the way other people are doing this right now. And I guarantee you it's nothing that you've done before. And if it's even remotely close, you had to sell your soul to the devil



Tyler 52:09

before. Yeah, yeah, and that just ain't gonna sustain your brand for long enough, you can't be slimy for very long, not not in a local business. So if getting the gear Academy that's that's what that that's what that pitch was getting the fucking gear Academy, let's go. So get in the shoot us a message. If you want to get started, you want us to actually help you with this or just aren't. If what you're trying to sell is general membership, supplement sales, nutrition, coaching, personal training, more big ticket specialty items. And you're not having success at those things running Facebook ads, social media, your email list, whatever, right? If you're not having success, just understand that the methods you're using to communicate are probably not the problem, it's probably that you're not very good at those things. Just doing those things wrong, you're talking about them wrong, and you're not using social media correctly, you're not using Facebook ads correctly. You're not used utilizing your email list either fully or fucking at all. But it's not the fault of those methods of communication. Because those methods of communication can be successful, whether you're ethical or slimy. So you can choose your path forward. But if you 're not converting for you, it's because you're not doing it right. It's not necessarily that you're being ethical. And now Facebook ads don't work because you're not being a scumbag. No, that's not true. Okay, put your products and services first. Use these tools the right way to connect, connect people to your product, then your brand will grow from there. Then when you're talking to people, they will go this guy's smart. But don't do it the other way around. Please god it's super cringy so thanks for listening everybody. We love you to go to the Gear Academy. Where does it go to where it gets in links? All the links are in the show description. So can follow Jim on his podcast and Instagram. Follow me at Tyler essence. Don't toddler eff ironstone and John,



John Fairbanks 53:58

you can follow me on Instagram at J banks f



Tyler 54:01

your academy gets in. See you guys