What’s Your Next Move?

people, coach, gym, talking, coaching, personal trainers, work, business, clients, personal, training, owners, model, product, membership, john, functional fitness, fitness, hour

TTyler 00:01

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



John Fairbanks 00:06

I'm doing excellent.



Tyler 00:08

We were talking with one of the gym owners in our gear Academy. If you want anything gear Academy, by the way, quick plug, get in it message us. Jim Morris is our ongoing coaching group we do where we help you with your business seven days a week, we're constantly working on week to week, month to month, year to year making sure you're actually implementing these ideas instead of hearing them and going, I'd like to do that and then pursuing one of them, you know, partially and then wondering why someone sits in the same position now as it was a year ago or two years ago. And I will tell you this, if your business is a little better now than it was in 2020, you might as well still be in the same fucking place because 2020 was a downturn. We need you guys to be making progress. Every month, every quarter, every year, we have to be making improvements because a business that is not growing is failing. So we were talking with one of our gym owners. Let's real quick go to the gym owners podcast on Instagram, go to the gym owners revolution Facebook group, that link is in our description. Follow me on Instagram at Tyler effing Sonas Tyler e FF I N stone and John,



John Fairbanks 01:12

you follow me on Instagram at J banks.



Tyler 01:16

Let's get to it. So we were talking I uploaded



John Fairbanks 01:18

my light here, it's gonna get dark real fast login your light Tyler.



Tyler 01:22

We're talking yesterday to one of our gear Academy coaches, Georgia or gym owners and trying to get a sense for the ratio of people that are in group classes and 24 hour just gym access and in private personal training. This Jim does not have any semi private personal training implemented yet either. But we'll get



John Fairbanks 01:49

a special specialty class that they have.



Tyler 01:53

But we started looking through and so this gym has 24 hour 24 hour access as well as a couple of different specialty group classes like a one functional fitness program, and then a weightlifting program. And we're talking three total personal trainers. Yeah,



John Fairbanks 02:08

four, or who does some. And so they just were like a new hire recently as well. One



Tyler 02:14

of them has a brand new hire. Yeah. So now, we start going through, we want to figure out like, you know, a few numbers said, how many of the people do you totally do have it as a whole, and I think they were around around 300 or something like that total. And when we started getting to it was like one out of every three people in this gym, that's essentially a 24 hour gym, one out of every three is paying money for a coach product, either personal training or for the extra access for group fitness, which is pretty goddamn impressive, John, for a 24 hour model. And I think and I think that that's one is a testament to just making sure that like the actual service, because we talk about this all the time, the highest chance of success that someone's going to have when they're coming into your gym as a client is to be in a coached product where they're accountable to somebody, they have a little bit of guidance in the gym. So they're not just wandering aimlessly, that includes maybe nutrition coaching, or some sort of sense of community to belong to, and that gives someone a better chance to succeed. Just coming in off the street. Pretty I think objectively,



John Fairbanks 03:23

it makes it to where you're if you're going to try and compare their spa with another 24/7 model that's in the area. They're completely incomparable. Because the majority, like one out of three, right, so almost the majority of every person in there is not there because they have equipment. Right? They're very, they're there for a very specific reason to work with a very specific coach, they have a coach opposed to well, you know, they have like ellipticals, and I like that. Well



Tyler 03:54

In this way, less than 30% of the members account for more than 80% of the revenue basically, which kind of follows the 80/20 rule. Yeah, but a lot of gyms are not optimized for that. A lot of gyms are even one this is a thing. When I hear gyms that say oh, we are struggling selling personal, personal training. It's no no, you're not trying to sell personal training, the difference. And so when we start looking at this, the point the takeaway for you guys from this episode is you can start to see some things based on the distribution of some of these ratios. You can start to see how it falls and you can start to troubleshoot where your real opportunities lie. Right where it really some of may require more staffing or some of them may require a little bit more effort on your part. But the fact is, if you're a 24 hour gym, and your model is or not even 24 hour let's just say access only gym right and you do some personal training. I want you to see what is possible with effort if every person is brought in and is just talked to given the option you want to start with just gym access Personal training group classes, just let them choose go through the sales process, as we have described on this fucking 1000 times on this podcast, we're work with us in the gear Academy, and we can help you put it together that's custom for your gym. But that everybody running through that consistent sales process gives everybody a chance to like, settle into their desired product that's going to give them what they think is the best chance of success and gives you the best chance to make them successful, while having the highest potential earnings out of that client out of every person that comes in. If you're still trying to sell gym memberships, and you're worried about getting told yes or no. You're completely fucking up. I don't understand, like, oh, maybe they don't want to join. Okay?



John Fairbanks 05:44

Why are they there? Like they can walk through the door,



Tyler 05:47

and reasons. So what it means is you just show them your equipment, or told them how smart you are, and it just didn't fucking work. And instead if you make it about them, and in this process, it lays out now what does this say for us, John, when we look at this one, I would describe this as a very successful gym, I would describe this as their sales process. And their model is a very successful one, because it's successful for the coaches earnings, it's successful for the business. Absolutely. Because imagine that if those people are all in a regular 24 hour, product, instead of buying a coach product, there goes, fucking 80% of your money, right? That's gone, that's 80% of your money is gone because of this. And now you can reverse engineer those guys. And understand if you're sitting in a situation where you do not have that many people in your actual coach product. Or if you're doing group classes, you don't have many people in a personal training product and a premium product. That's the segment you want to try to fill. That's where your effort should lie. That means fixing your sales, it doesn't mean just offering another product or charging more money. It's got to be beginning to end, from your marketing, to your social media, to your outreach to your sales products, to your referrals, what your what your asks Are your offers. All of it from beginning to end needs to start to align with this, this new pathway that people should all be walking through and can have a choice along the way. And if we're trying to reverse engineer this, when I look at this now and I see Jim's numbers, it's tempting. And I still think it might be the right move to go. Which is that we need to fill more people into that 2424 hour membership. And not because by the way, we want to be doing more low value business. But because right now, John, they don't have coaches. So the other coaches are full, which means you always need to be high pushing this staffing solution constantly. That needs to be a problem that you need to be working on. But your pool of people is going to be like your potential upsells is going to be coming out of this. It's like growing your email list, right? So if you're doing a great job selling personal training, and you do have an easy, what's the word low fulfillment cost for you too, with labor and effort. Like it's 20 for our membership, getting more people in there is more people who are closer to your business who are warmer, and who are maybe more likely to pull the trigger who at least you have them in your email list, who at least you see everyday people you can sell supplements to people you can offer nutrition coaching people whose trust you can earn a little bit easier when they're inside your building than if they're just some other person in town.



John Fairbanks 08:25

You've hit on so many different points on this and like back to like where the revenue piece in this model is. Again, if you're listening to this, and you have anything that's even remotely close, right, whether you are an access gym, whether you have personal training, think about the revenue difference your topics, I did the math really quick when you were talking it was if they didn't do personal training, like the way that they do the way they have it established on the coach product side in this gym. They would lose 20 grand a month. Yeah. So I want you to think about it , think about what these numbers are for you, as you think about like when we said it's, they have 300 Total members. And they would lose 20 grand. So like if you're just so those of you that have maybe more people than that 300 members in an access type spot. And you're just not making the revenue that you'd want to make. I mean, they would literally be making, they're making less than half if they have what they're currently making, if they just were sticking with an access model only then yeah, because they moved to that with those personal trainers and the value that those personal trainers have. It's it's 10th You know, I mean, like between between six to $10,000 per trainer, is that overall value for these individuals. And I think like you were saying is diversifying those trainers as well. Like as you look to hire if you're gonna hire out more people having a diversity of what those trainers are, Who they represent, who they attract. That's where you do just by default have the ability to track people at that lower level. Because these folks that we're talking about specifically in this example, they haven't maxed out their total membership yet. No. So that's oftentimes where we see a lot of people will be like, based off your square footage, and based off of the popular times that people come in, especially for access spots, you can have a ridiculous number of people that are on your total list of membership, but you have no clear path to move them. From a like you said, a captive pool captive audience to then say, hey, we have these coaching opportunities, just because you never talked about it? Well, you made it all about the price, you just made it about oh, so it's 4040 bucks a month, or 39 plus $12 key fob fee or whatever. Like, it's, that's what you did. That's what it was all about. You never even talked about anything else. And you're literally just. It's money is silly. So the



Tyler 10:56

money being left on the table, right? If and by the way, we John and I were just going through kind of how we would launch if we were to launch this hybrid as we as we start to communicate with investors and other opportunities as we pursue some different markets for us to maybe open some physical locations with our business model, is we go through in this and phase one because it's easy, and does not not easy. But Phase One does not require a bunch of coaching training, not a lot of human resources, it can kind of almost all be on the build built on the back of one or two people with some decision making power and sales, is that first phase is going to kind of be your gym access model, right we get you get equipment in you get the place equipped, you get supplement sales set up, and you get a manager who's in doing sales, who's just closing new sales constantly, right? That's probably how I would start the business anyways. And if by the way, if your CrossFit gym, or functional fitness space, where we do mostly group classes, that's the base, that's your basis as well, right, you're gonna get in, you're gonna do that your main consistently operating product, you're gonna get that up and running. But from there, most gyms we see they get into, we're gonna do this one thing, right, and I'm fine with it, your orange theories, your F four, five your cycling studios, like, that's great, but it doesn't occupy enough space in a client in the clients lifetime fitness journey to where someone comes in, and they do SoulCycle for a little bit of time, and then that becomes a thing that they did one time in their life for a little bit like it's just very rarely is that somebody's form of exercise is that their centerpiece of their fitness, and you want your gym, or maybe you don't, but we want our gyms to be like that. So pivoting from your main product to then starting to bring in humans. And this doesn't. By the way, this doesn't mean you have to manage a bunch of salaries or anything like this. These are coaches that are getting paid, essentially commission based on the time that they're coaching, right? These are personal trainers that come in. So it's not like I'm sitting there going, oh shit, how do I get to float $50,000 a year to bring this person in, it's really not the way this is going to work. So all you got to do get in, get operating, get people in your pool, this is again, your your base membership, whatever that is, it's not a bad thing that people end up in it, we always kind of shit on it right that like, if people are only buying your base membership, maybe your marketing is bad, maybe you're attracting the wrong people, or your sales process is incomplete. Or simply you don't offer anything up above that ladder. But I think it's important to know that that base membership is still the ripest opportunity that you're going to have to get people to reinvest in their commitment to recommit or to simply commit even further into a nutrition program, personal training, joining some semi private stuff or specialty programs. But



John Fairbanks 13:42

this, let's parse that out for a second, the reason we shit on you, and shit on people that only have that base membership is because when we look at it, you have over 100 members in your spot. And 30 of them aren't doing fucking anything else. Like, they're all just doing your base shit. And what you've done is you've made the mistake of having every fucking member in your gym just get access to everything. So nothing is customized or unique or prescriptive of where they want to go. So when you give somebody everything you've just given them nothing. Nothing unique. Almost



Tyler 14:23

every client that I work with, and I don't have a ton of availability for personal training, but I don't think anyone works with me at any frequency for less than six 700 hours a month. You know what I mean? So like, I don't. That's what I'm saying for those of you that are struggling with getting totally yes or no and your sales opportunities for trying to sell $100 memberships, $150 memberships, $60 memberships, you're just having their own phone conversations too much. That's the problem. Yeah. You're having low value conversations with low value clients and it's fine. There's a place for it. That is where your base membership sites. But if the conversation isn't about like a Hey, here's, here's the thing that we can really do and think, Oh, that would be great, I can't afford it, then that's fine. But mostly only and having those conversations. So you want to have a bunch of 5060 or $100 conversations, and you wonder why you're getting nickel. And you know, while you're pulling nickels and dimes at the end of every month, it just doesn't work. So to identify, in your model, John, and I said is, your basic your basis, your base is the reason you got into this business? Usually it really is. So when I started my CrossFit gym I was gonna do CrossFit classes, personal training was an afterthought. Oh, it was something that we kind of maybe got asked to do a little bit of, right. And I was too busy to do it. So my business partner handled most of that. The other coach handled most of that, but I wasn't going to, I didn't have the time to do it. And nor were we ready to seek hiring other coaches or bring anybody on. But in hindsight, that's the time like that is exactly when to do it when you're like shit. Most of you guys, if we do the math, if you're selling them, don't just base memberships right now. What would it take? How many new members would it take for you to have a to lead a significantly different life than you leave right now, the new lead right now financially, is, what is a newbie people coming in this week really do for you? Not a lot. For hundreds. It's just it's not a lot in the end, but factoring in the cost of doing business. How much of that money makes its way to you, it's not that much. So you need to find a way to start taxing the deals that you're going to be doing at least you have somebody give somebody the opportunity to spend 10 times the money that they normally would. And you'd be really surprised if you build some real value and how effective that is and get you more revenue to attract a high value type of client. And three, getting people results because that level of buy in is true commitment. Okay, the person that comes to me and says I just want to throw the least amount of money at this problem as possible, and then just go kind of stand in your gym, that person is not going to have very much success compared to the person that pays 1500 $2,000 in a month. And



John Fairbanks 17:07

I don't want if you're listen, I don't want you to shrug off it when you said you totally said 10x which is so catchy. And it's so hip these days with the kids. But it's always hyperbolic bullshit. But what's crazy about this particular statistic, this particular is this. It literally is 10x This is what's crazy, like if on average some of these gyms, you're gonna have a $40 membership. And with 10 people, if you get 10 new people to come into your gym, it's $400. Right? Math. Got it? Yeah, but 10 people we just saw with a gym, that is super similar to this exact model that we rolled out that personal training piece. And with 10 people, they hit $4,000 Yeah, with 10 new with 10 new people. So it was literally 10x. And so that's it is not hyperbolic, it just is, oh, there's a different way to play that game. And the best part was, they all came in for personal training didn't come in. And we had to convince them that they needed to pay more, because the goals that they had, they just stopped paying for Netflix. And they just wouldn't eat out at a restaurant twice a week that you somehow convinced like, I've been into those access spots, where I've been in those offices talking to the owners and talking to the GMs. And they got whiteboards, right, whiteboards all over the walls and like behind where you sit, so they can easily see behind you. So you're sitting facing them. And then they have these whiteboards on the back. And it says like, Netflix is bad. Restaurants, like it, have all these little things that are written on the boards. So when they're on the phone or talking to you, they can remember to go through the sales script where it's just like, well, you know, if you want to lose 10 pounds, it's going to cost this much money. You know, it's not going to happen if you are fucking in watching Paramount plus or whatever. And it's like, no, no, no, guess what, you don't have to have any of those conversations, the people walk through the door, they want personal training, they're there to get a specific result. It's all about client success, and like fucking magic, they just pay you.



Tyler 19:11

And now because there's a high labor fulfillment on some of these things, right? Versus this isn't, you can get 10 people into your 24 hour gym or funnel 10 new members into whatever the litany of classes you have throughout the course of the week and may not have a terrible impact on your fulfillment. It's not that you don't have to have new staff, you don't have to ask if coaches are working any longer, right? Because you're dealing with usually in group fitness or your 24 hour model. You're dealing with a fixed labor component. It's fixed, it's the same across the board. So yes, continue to fill it, it's wonderful. But adding more pieces to that it's not infinitely scalable. So you're just gonna keep filling it to the point where it will have some impact on you financially. But that's not the end game here. And that's the thing I just I think people miss out on this is like if that's not where the that's not where this train stops Okay, so if I were to go in and launch one of our gyms, right, for the sake of implementing, implementing, implementing all the back end systems and getting a manager brought on board and somebody operating all the sales and, and the day to day operations going well, and answering questions and selling supplements, all that can be built on a fixed labor component for us, for the most part, right on a manager, maybe assistant manager. But no coaching, right, there's really isn't that big of a deal. But we do have to start expanding your labor, your labor pool. And that's the nice thing is, if you're not floating any of it. And for any amount of time, right, you're finding a decent trainer, and then you are going to start paying them when you put clients in front of them. And that works really, really, really, really, really well. And so if you're sitting in the spot right on your go, geez, I'd love to sell more personal training, I can't sell any personal training, I don't know where people aren't buying it. There's a lot of pieces most likely you're not talking about enough on your social media. Most likely you're not hitting up your email, list your existing membership about it consistently enough. Also, maybe you don't have a coach in place. That's part of it. It's like you're dragging your feet on that issue. And therefore, all the other pieces you're holding, you're holding on to the brakes a little bit. And for the most part, when I hear gyms that are saying, Oh, we don't really sit, we're having a hard time selling personal training. If you can't sell private personal training, you're not trying you're just you're not trying or you're so objectively bad at coaching people that they know right away that they just don't want to spend time with you. Which is why you need to get another person there. It's okay to be just your bad steward and not be a coach, that's fine. I know are some of the absolute fucking worst gym owners on the face of the earth. They're terrible. Their marketing sucks. They're up by their own ass about coaching philosophy all the time. It's off putting their kooky like creating arguments about fitness specifics that no effort, no average client or potential client gives a shit about creating all these weird behind the scenes fitness drawing lines in the sand and some silly fitness battleground shit. It's all dumb. And they make for terrible gym owners that don't make very much fucking money. So I understand if you are a gym or want to be a good gym owner. And that may be coaching people one on one, or maybe your group, great group fitness coach and coaching people one on one, it's just socially a dynamic that you're not that interested in.



John Fairbanks 22:27

If you're the best. If you're the best coach, it's like being the smartest person in the room. Like you're not supposed that's not supposed to be it you guys like it's supposed to behave, if you really want something to be great, fucking surround yourself with people that are better than you. I promise if you're gonna get somebody that's coming in and you get put them in a position to be successful, you should have some coaches that can fucking run circles around you in their



Tyler 23:00

specialties. Yeah. And very often what we see is we'll see a gym owner who starts out as a coach and they bring in new staff. And it's, well, they got to learn how to do things my way. It's like, No, you fucking idiot, they need to find their way. So they can sell their people because they are the ones standing next to people all the time. You don't want them hurting people, they're trying to fuck all your clients or whatever other stuff goes on. But like, those are boundaries that you can set via the terms of employment here, this isn't that fucking hard. And I just, it's very frustrating to me when I see people say they can't sell personal training, when I know it's an effort thing, or I know it's simply that, by the way, as a gym owner, you know, you know, I don't want to be coaching more, I don't need more on the floor hours, then you need to start find a part time person with a bit of a passion for fitness who'd like to coach one person and you put one person in front of them by the way, maybe this maybe this coach only has a few hours a week available and they liked it. But that's some good extra money for him. You sell it for him. So they learn to sell themselves. Then you bring on another person, your job is to pair the right people with the right professional, you're not always going to be able to facilitate a lifetime professional career. But when you start actually trying and you start actually producing some decent revenue from these products, you can and that's the real difference because I see John I see Falcon personal training on a daily basis that I fucking hate. Like I'm in it, I'm next to it, and I like you hear it. I hear it literally the opposite of how you should do an exercise being told to someone and I'm a big advocate for there's no right or wrong. There's just like here's what I want done out of this. Now I do many different things, in many different ways. But you know, there's some things that aren't. If you're doing farmer's carries the solution is not to shrug your shoulders to your ears and squeeze your shoulder blades together behind your back. That sucks. That's topped by a person who doesn't know how to do that exercise, and doesn't want you to get strong or care or whatever, they're just saying things about it, which is fine. But it makes me crazy if I got to sit there next to it while one of my clients is going is that I'm like, no, just just just fucking ignore it. No, that's not how you're going to do that. Just just out, just be glad your dad hired me. You know, that's how, that's how I went through it. But the truth is that bad coaching comes from bad coaches, and bad coaches are usually people who aren't devoting their lives to being good coaches. But you don't even have a pathway to get a decent coach if you don't hire any. Or if you're only going to maybe get people in a couple hours a week, if you really push, I want you to fix this fucking ratio within your business as the centerpiece for this, that ratio, how many people are paying for a coach product. And again, if your group fitness, personal training is what I described as that leveled up coach product, and right, if your group fitness, that's your base membership, but what percentage of people are paying for that upper level of service, that highest service level you offer? Maybe not your highest, most expensive package or product, but the highest level of specific service that you offer? What percentage of people are in John? Most gyms, if you're doing 10%, I'd be surprised



John Fairbanks 26:20

10% of your revenue, 10% of your people. Oh,



Tyler 26:24

I would agree with that. And in most 24 hour gyms, often it's shit, it might be three, two to 5%. Maybe, you know, you get into 10%. And we can start talking numbers and frequency and but I truly believe that if you can get one out of every five people participating in some sort of group or group some sort of coach product, that's 20% of your people that have a way higher chance of being successful what they're there to do, they're going to have more fun there. That also means they're connecting to a human every time they show up to the gym, which means accountability community, those people also then talk about a trip. And that group attrition is better, the average length of their relationship with your business is going to be longer. And fundamentally, they're paying you way more goddamn money every month. And it doesn't make any sense to continue to avoid the pursuit of that avenue. I don't. I don't understand why you would not try to push that piece forward.



John Fairbanks 27:23

Did you know as a gym owner how you could fuck all this up? Let's say you have personal trainers, and you choose to not even pay them 50% of the work that they do for you. That is how you can fuck this up. Because you're gonna have a hard time. There's two weird complaints that I've heard. Probably just over the last year so one, we can't find personal trainers. We can't find coaches. Okay, get fucked. There is multiple little gyms, that every



Tyler 28:02

a person who's a fitness enthusiast would love to make an extra extra with that. What if a person needs a little extra money? They're gonna go work as a cashier at a gas station for 15 bucks an hour? Or it's gonna hang out? Is this right? Or can they go hang out in the gym and take home 40 But this audience right comes up.



John Fairbanks 28:22

And you can't find it. It's in communities of 30,000 people multiple times, there are gyms that we work with that have to they turn on the ads, like job ads, not fucking Facebook ads, turn on actual job ads, and they have to immediately turn it off within like two to three weeks because they have 50 or more resumes to go through. That's how quickly you can get personal training resumes. So if you're not doing that, right, then you're fucking that up that should not be the problem. The other problem that's interesting is that they can't keep coaches and this isn't the usual somebody gets married a girlfriend moves away they go back to school, it's not that you are losing your coaches to other professions or to other gyms this gym in my community that's lost a coach a month free year, a fucking year and it doesn't take it's not rocket science as soon as you start digging in you look into it be like why is everyone leaving? This doesn't make any sense was like well you know you can't make you only make like 40% of any of the business you do and they don't charge enough



Tyler 29:35

to make that worth that either. That's the big thing you don't have any say in what you charge and you're really handcuffed to this relatively low wage. The truth about personal training to people who don't get this is the types of business consultants out there in the fitness world who are going to tell you to pay your coaches, you know, 15 bucks an hour for every hour they're on the floor. No matter why they do. That person has never fucking coached a person or spent the day coaching people, because you can't, you just can't do that I can't spend eight hours, eight coached hours, I can't do that if I if I, if I have five in a day, it's a lot for me, it's energy, it's a lot of, if a coach is good, they cannot be coaching a straight hours or four hours on an hour off and forth. It can't be that you're lucky if you go in a row, if you go back to back without having a break, right, it's. So that type of business model is just predatory. And you wonder why you can't actually maintain or sustain some sort of professional coaching staff, it's impossible at that. So you got to give them a bigger piece of the pie or you got to make the pie bigger, you figure out how you want to go about that. And ideally, I would love for coaches to be able to generate their own leads and to be able to be in the community and to market themselves. But can you facilitate that for them? Obviously, you're gonna have to feed them clients one way or another right in the beginning, someone comes in, what's your availability, I'll use my email list and my social media, here's some assets you can give to a new coach. Here you go, here's your picture, your thing, whatever you can post about yourself and your availability as well get bring some people into the gym, you then can teach that coach the sales process as you go, because eventually they can start to get sales commissions on top of they're actually coaching the coach hourly commissions. And now you can start building a goddamn professional who cares about other aspects of the business? There's a kid there I won't go too deep into detail. No, fuck no one localizes for this thing, but just when it came in, was trying to talk about coaching, like maybe started coaching at a spot where I'm making a contract through and was like, poking around and asking like, well, how are we going to get how asking how are we gonna get clients? How am I? How am I going to get members? How am I going to get get people to coach and I was like, Well, do you fucking know anybody? Can just anybody trust you? Or do I have to use the trust of this brand to completely bridge that gap, which is possible if you're new. But if you're so confused as to how a person who's a professional personal trainer doesn't need anybody else to market on their behalf. And you have a lot to learn. Because you shouldn't be good. People should talk about you. And you should constantly be talking about what you do. Because you're a goddamn professional, the amount of people that are afraid to ask people to do business with them about the thing that they do business at is nuts. So if you're going to bring in a personal trainer, no, yes, there's going to be some hand holding, yes, you're gonna have to put some people in front of them to get them started. And it's going to be a slow burn, right, I would never hire somebody off the street who expects them to be full time, I just couldn't Assist is going to start as a side gig. But a side gig where you're taking home 40 bucks an hour, 3040 bucks an hour on the side. One is way more worth your time. And also, it's very easy then for you to cover that revenue gap in their life, where it's like, okay, we start getting you more work, it's then easier for you to pull the plug on the other gig and shift over to full time. But that is how it has to be unless you have people just beating down the door to coach this person. Fact is I wouldn't hire anybody full time until I've seen them coach for a long time anyways, I wouldn't, I wouldn't give them that many clients hours. Until I've seen them. There's just I couldn't even if I had people begging to get started, I wouldn't come in and give somebody a full plate right away. That's too much trust that I'm asking from my membership base to deal with someone who I do not understand completely yet. When



John Fairbanks 33:19

it's got to be you give them enough rope to hang themselves with. And you very rarely will be burned in that type of scenario. Going back to the phases. So this is why for us if we're building this out in our model, and building it out, literally in a brick and mortar through our own systems. That's why phase one, phase two, phase three, bringing in personal training, and getting that process perfected. It is phase four ish, right? Like it's, there's multiple phases ahead of that. And that's honestly the reason why we would be very confident in what in our system and in our business model of what we're preparing on our end is because this is how we this is how we diagnose the gyms that we work with. You start looking at those phases, you start looking at, what is it that you're trying to target? What is it you're trying to improve in your own spot? And then we say great, what does this look like? Right? What does this look like? Before we even get to start talking about, like the models, a lot of times we have gyms with different models that are coming to us. And how we diagnose and look at those, the same as our one of our recent episodes talking about how all attrition is not created equal is those models, the different gym models that are out there. They all dictate or require different attitudes through different things. And I think this is a mistake that I'm seeing from gyms and gym owners right now that are closing or appear from all intents and purposes looks like they're going to close in the next year is that they are confused at what their model should be. You don't have enough square footage to be able to justify large group classes or group activities. You have square footage That makes you a personal training facility. Yeah, right. We're not talking about Globo gym 24/7, because it's what we would do. And we have worked with gyms that have that access model. But if you don't have the square footage to support such a model, then you have to kind of change how you're priced, how you present what you're presenting, and what personal training semi private personal training looks like. Because if you only have enough space for fucking seven people to be able to be in a facility. We just I mean, it's been I was talking to John,



Tyler 35:33

Let's be real, though, right? Why aren't you in a bigger space? To where you can run your group classes and say have 234 personal trainers operating at the same time when I couldn't? You know, for the fucking money. Okay, I couldn't afford it. Well, let's in this is always about maximizing the situation you're in right now, which is like, Okay, well, do you have a system in place so that you can start to sell some personal training? Because right now, these people are just hunkering down in the cave. They're just hibernating in this current status that they're in, which is when abilities move big enough. Okay. I don't know what the fuck and Talia, you know what I mean? Like, I just I, there's, there's solutions to these problems. And people so often just accept them as this is what they are. And maybe this is, you know, a symptom of being a person who needs to control everything all the time. If that's a, that's a flaw. But the fact of the matter is, if I don't like that part of the situation, it isn't on my list of things that I want to solve at some point, maybe not this year, maybe not this week. But at some point, if it's either way, if your business model is, if you want it to be, I just want to coach, I want to coach, I'm going to coach my group classes. My one other person will coach a couple classes a day, and then you know, I'll do some personal training. Great. There you go. They don't fucking complain to me about how you don't have any money. Or don't complain to me when your gym closes. Like at that point, you have chosen to be less successful. Great, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with having a nice, humble lifestyle where you work and you do a good service, and you make an OK living. But is it enough? Don't complain to me that it's not enough if you're not actually trying to solve these problems. And that's where I get really, really, really frustrated is this, the acceptance, this constant acceptance of the status quo is fucking maddening. It's a problem with, generally, the health and fitness of this country as a whole. And I see a lot of gym owners doing the same goddamn thing with their business, we're just gonna, Oh, shucks, Oh, shut up. People don't buy personal training. People just don't want to spend that kind of money. The people I asked about, they'd never spent great, you're asking the wrong people, or you're not offering you're not, you're not offering that to enough people. And once you get started with that, you'll start to create momentum. And this is, you know, it's fucking frustrating John. But now, this is also by the way, the global gym model, one of the things that I like with having a, you don't have to be huge, but having a access, plus some coach products, as your as your business model is you get to actually have the benefits of a larger scale as a whole without having to instantly deal with all the labor that's associated with it, right? If you're going to be a functional fitness gym, and it's only coach stuff, it really gets the benefits of an email list that has 1000s of people, you gotta be open for a long time. Or you have to be very diligent in how you're doing it. So how are you going to market externally, internally, even if you want to sell supplements, how less impactful a supplement sales, John, when you only have 100 people, because you have a tiny little space. And then by the way, then the solution is maybe you can't get a bigger space, than you need to get more revenue per square foot, which starts with okay, then I need to start implementing semi semi private personal training, maybe I need to bring in a coach on these hours where maybe I'm not busy. Earlier, later weekends, I don't fucking know. But figure out how to wring some more money out of this little spot that you got, because adding supplement sales to a gym that's of a smaller scale, way less impactful way of using your email list, it's gonna be way less impactful, right? You're just not going to get as many leads when you don't have that many people to choose from. It's so I think that the benefit is of scale, that for sure it makes every move you make a little bit more impactful for your business. And I think that that's why again, the models that John and I are trying to put together are exactly that. I want a 24 hour model. Then we develop into having some functional fitness programs, maybe some other types of fitness programs in a larger space that's connected to it. And then definitely absolutely private personal training and semi private personal training. You think you know what, you gradually lead into more labor. So you need to decide as a gym owner, am I ready to take on more labor? And that's not more labor cost? It's not because the money will come in before that cost goes up. It's about labor management. Am I ready to manage that extra bit of labor? Am I ready to do the interviews and bring somebody in And then do that



John Fairbanks 40:00

and make sure they're proper. Like they're, they're doing it properly. Right. And that's also another element where for you and I, we've talked about this too, as we are building out our metrics and models and things is one of the huge benefits. If you are in an access space that has leg extension and leg curl machines and shoulder press machines, you get to lower the barrier of entry. For any coach that comes in there is like the risk of a really good point. That's,



Tyler 40:34

That's a really good point, that the functional fitness and CrossFit coaches got too far up their own ass about everything needed to involve barbells and freeze space like and just gripping and ripping bunches of shit with high intensity if I got a coach who needs to get people work. It's really difficult for me to get a brand new coach, I got to onboard a lot of training, kind of to get them to safely give somebody an effective workout, you know, a room just full of barbells and squat racks and pull up bars and fans. And med bones like that's tough. That's, that's now a lot to bring on to somebody. And yes, you can outsource some of that training. But when someone wants to work their chest, it's pretty tough to do the PEC deck wrong. And go and then you can, you know, do a little bit but know that these are these higher risk exercises, or the higher skill exercises now within your gym. They're not the only thing that this coach has to be teaching now. You kind of like it, I like machines, because they're practical. There's not a lot of risk for injury necessarily. And they are just a crutch. So if I have a shoulder thing, I'm not. I mean, I've had a shoulder thing. John has been Oh, you hear me complain about every day? Yeah, I'm not bench pressing. How do I stop my kids from falling off John, because I got to do something that I can find pain free. So machines are great for that. Every coach wants to be the guy who's a wizard who can get somebody out of pain and not a great dude, but like, fucking labrum torn and rotator cuffs shredded and I got ligament damage on my scapula like, Okay, you're gonna talk, you're gonna talk me through that? No. Okay, there's a surgical solution to that. In the meantime, what do I do, I do, what doesn't hurt. And I need more options for things that don't hurt. And machines, I think are great. If I have to bring somebody in. This is the thing I tell my wife all the time. It's like, you start to run out of ideas when you're coaching, especially semi private group stuff. And I'm like, yo, strap these people to a machine each, have them alternate and just kill them. Be like, let's go, we're doing 50 Likes but you can get really good work really safely. And it's fun, you would not have to think about their hamstrings and their obliques and their old googas and their you know, all their silly little muscles that you have to worry about, just get them work. And you can have machines that model. I think that that's the biggest benefit. I think that and I'm glad you brought that up. It's a lot easier to bring on a coach. And you can tell them that in the beginning, hey, if you don't really know what to do, like, let's make sure they're doing some sort of heavy thing that they can do that's heavy. And the main thing is we get them work, get the boards and the machines are wonderful for it.



John Fairbanks 43:14

Because once you get these things into place, right, you have the systems in place, you have the structure, the sale system, right of taking and presenting and giving options, giving choice to those people to be able to walk through those doors that's directly aligned with what they want to achieve on the client level and the client success level. Once all these things are in place, it's as simple as when we were talking with this coach, when we were diamond, even all these metrics, we've talked about, like this example that we've been given these metrics, the all the whole episode. He goes, we you very plainly just say, Well, it sounds like you guys just need to hire another personal trainer, like you're ready for more staff. And he goes, Yeah, he goes at this point, every new trainer we add adds another $5,000 to our bottom line.



Tyler 44:06

Actually, it was almost seven.



John Fairbanks 44:10

So it's like so I guess if we add somebody else, and that just adds another seven for next, and then play that game, right? Like it's now now that's a game. So



Tyler 44:22

viewing those aspects of your business as this now if I add this, then this equals this. That's the whole point of this data. And that's the point where we talk about it's very important to have your sales structure in place your offer stack in place, and your marketing strategy in place, not just Facebook as well like when you bring in a new coach as how are you going to fill their hours it's in everybody's best interest that their hours get, get booked right away that they get trained. They get coaching. They only got three hours a day available. Great. And then they want to phase it into a full time gig at some point. Whatever they have the veil, whatever your starting thing is, get them moving. Get them paid, it gets you paid, it gets clients to go On with them, you start building new relationships within your business. Being able to fill those right away is the key last coach they brought in and was filled up almost completely right away. It was maybe a month or so. And then now it's like the availability is kind of very limited, we would describe him as at capacity for the most part. The truth is, once that is the case, now, now that we know this, right, and we've had this conversation, and they had some other events and things like that going on in the last month or so. But once that's the case, this solution is absolutely we bring out more staff, absolutely. Bring in another coach, bring in another coach, you should always be trying to find another coach who fits your people. So to touch on another thing, the diverse backgrounds of your coach matters as well. Yeah, right, that we're talking about a spot that has all of their coaches right now are male, jacked based on anything that is what it is, but it was, you know, a weightlifting club, and then another trainer who was king of the manager person there and then the owner. And then they brought in another guy who was a male. Well, I can tell you this is a person who is a personal trainer, a male personal trainer, who has helped manage and done sales for female personal trainers as well. I think women are more inclined to hire personal trainers than men. That's what I've seen based on my experience, my very, very subjective experience that I would absolutely, it's how I coach female clients, most of my clients are male. My wife, who coaches female clients, has maybe one or two clients in semi private programs that are male, but the vast majority are female. So it's very, very, very easy to start to sell to a female who maybe wouldn't want to go coach by someone like me, right? Just seeing me, maybe knowing me, the way I look at Taylor seems like a lot to deal with. And I get it, right. But Megan has availability like oh, she would be great. The person who has the same goals as before, right, the saint's goals didn't change. But if Megan's available, they're liable to pull the trigger on it versus me. And so that's where if I have 155 pounds, skinny guy with ABS trying to teach my offensive lineman, son how to be strong. That's his pitch. I'm gonna go with somebody who may fit the bill a little more, right? Right. If you're a, you know, housewife who maybe wants to lose 1520 pounds, get back in better shape and just feel a little bit better. A guy like me who's 300 pounds with traps to his ears is maybe not on your shortlist of people who you like to have training, whether they understand that I can get you all or all the things you want or not, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. But diverse backgrounds, I think really are important because for clients that much FaceTime that they are spending with a personal trainer. So like you just don't want to have to get over that thing, like so I just think it's really so in this case here that we're talking about very specifically if we want to kind of open up when we start to look for personal trainers to hire. It's like we want to find somebody who has experience in coaching women of ages blank to blank for weight loss, nutrition coaching and designing training programs and methodologies. Very specific to females. Now, that will probably attract hopefully some more females or at least a male who has a lot of specialty in coaching females. Because that's what you want. That's the demographic you can open up. It's no different than when we were marketing for the MMA gyms here. Shoreham, same thing. Listen, if all I have is all we have is coaches, and most of your members are dudes, it's tough to take pictures of classes and things and attract females. It's just a bunch of meatheads, right. So you make the most of what you have. And gradually we start to show that there are females. Do we sort of talk about the fact that women enjoy the benefits for women, and then you get women in and now it becomes self-sustaining? Right, Greg comes to the self -sustaining system. And so, but those diverse backgrounds matter, you know, it really does someone who is a it's nothing less interesting than a CrossFit specialist coach or a functional fitness specialist who's all great on movement and sizzle, who's never any good at any sports ever, trying to teach like offseason sports coaching. That's a big downer. It's a big downside to a lot of these CrossFit gyms. But the truth is, let's,



John Fairbanks 49:22

Let's do some CrossFit.



Tyler 49:26

I've probably worked directly with more CrossFit coaches than most of any of you who are listening. If you don't know anything about my background, I'm not gonna explain it to you. But we've coached, taught and worked with a lot of them directly over a lot of years. Not very many of them are what I described as good at sports. Other than that, up until that point in their life, very rarely, right? Not a lot of a lot of those ones are Division One athletes, not a lot of one where, you know, high level state athletes even in high school for the most part CrossFitters for failed athletes who weren't good at Real Sports who are good at work, who got good at working, usually habits as well. So, habits are okay. But again know that that limits your perception, no matter how much you know, it doesn't matter it's what do I trust that you okay? It's no different than when the school presents the hospital funded weight training specialists to the fall sports meeting or whatever every year at the school. Here's our strength and conditioning specialists that Sanford hospitals brought in. And it's like 155 pound man who's 24 and I was like, Okay, well what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing to actually teach these kids to be strong when you never even figured it out yourself? Dude, like a fine coach my D backs how to do twinkly toe shit, but are you really going to be and by the way a person absolutely could be. But my initial impression is get the fuck out of here with this stuff like my kids stronger than this guy already. So that's an issue. And so the diverse backgrounds within the staff that you bring in is important and make sure you have people to cover different needs, and then market to what they want to do. Right? If everybody has to come in and be a, you know, what's the word be a cardio bunny fit leggings, wearing sports bra wearing female thing, know that you're not going to maybe we'll get a lot of dudes. But know that the like strength training bias is going to be something that's you're not going to attract that much. So get a meathead in, see if he can attract some meatheads like that. I'm okay with not everybody having to conform with your specific type of fitness. The real benefit of private personal training is that you allow a different pathway and a different relationship to be Ford, which is to coach their specialty with your needs. And I think that you can't gloss over how important that is for growing your but you want to grow your business, you're just going to do the same thing in the same space with the same people.



John Fairbanks 51:48

Because you will eventually hit that wall, right. And that's what we've seen whether we're dealing with gyms that are just working their ass off to get to 10,000 a month, to gyms that are making 50,000 a month is eventually you hit that wall, if you're not diversifying, right, those little tweaks, right, it doesn't matter, everyone will meet that point at some point. And you may never want to do something that's different. But that's where it always comes down to. And this comes back to you of kind of calling people out earlier where it's like, if you are unhappy with your current situation, if you wanted to be more or be better, have more time, more revenue, whatever it is, it's okay, then you're doing something wrong, there is a way to fix it. And then to be able to streamline it so that you are not making those same mistakes. And it does, it comes in and I really like the idea of looking at, like your cost per square foot, like the amount of revenue you're making per square foot and your facility and being able to diagnose those pieces and looking at what are all those things you have in place that allow you to maximize that square footage? And I don't know, wanting to be bigger? Or better. Do you want to serve more people? Or do you just want to be like you said, A FUCKING WIZARD in a cave that people come to and you can help. And then



Tyler 53:10

Here's the thing, none of them make any money.



John Fairbanks 53:15

So the amount of impact you can make, because this is what's real, really real when I'm talking to you, is its impact. For us, it's all about impact, we want to make the largest amount of impact as humanly possible. And



Tyler 53:29

I think the boutique fitness studio space is going to continue to grow. But I think it's gonna be very much you know, there was one thing that member Stuart Brower from WTF Jim said. One of our competitive organizations, I suppose, but I think he does, like I've said before, I never shit on a good idea because it doesn't matter. One of the things he says is, it's very tough for a boutique gym to provide a full time income to one person who'd like to or like, you can just not work in it. Right? You can't just be hands off and make money. So either you're going to need multiple locations, if you're going to do the small little studio thing, where you're going to need to scale up. And that's what that's for you to decide what your product is going to be. But I think that it's important to understand this to a certain extent. At this point as the gym owner, do you just have a job? Doing what you own is a job for yourself, and that's fine. And it may pay you okay? But if you're trying to grow it, know that you have to get past that point, and you have to start, you have to have a system and the impact has to be larger, or the value has to be higher. That's all it is. And so does that mean more personal training? Does it mean opening up more time for just simply higher revenue producing per man hour products? Maybe? Does it mean you need a second location? Do you need a bigger location? Does it mean you just need to try a little harder to do some of these things that are worth more money, and implement these systems into your business? That's very likely and that's where I would start Because I kind of have a feeling that the boutique space thing is going to work. But it's always gonna stay in that small, small thing to where like, you're not going to have something you can walk away from and just have it produced for you forever. Not very well, that's my concern with that model. As always my concern with that model, our first thing when we get into a gym like that is we start to grow it, grow it, we grow the revenue, and then from there, we decide what we really want what they really want to do after that, and that's for the gym owner to decide, right? It's your business, it's your brand. That's what we try to do within the gear Academy. We don't want to change your shit into our shit. We just want to make your shit work for you, your family, your customers, your bank account. So get into gear Academy, we have some other business coaching products that we do as well. You can message us directly at the Jim Morris podcast and Instagram. Or me at Tyler F unsewn. That's Tyler EFI. And so John, where can they find you?



John Fairbanks 55:50

On Instagram at Jay banks FL



Tyler 55:53

get in the Facebook group gym owners revolution links in the description also go to gym owners revolution.com For more info on the gear Academy. We'll see you next week.