Gyms are Closing... Why? Who is Next?

gym, owners, closing, business, money, members, price, fitness, coaching, mcdonald, put, market, year, buy, people, boutique, great

Tyler 00:00

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



John Fairbanks 00:06

Hello Tyler.



Tyler 00:08

If you're watching the video we're coming in horizontally today by accident no because we forgot to change it and I don't think we can do it in real time so we're okay. Nobody watches, everybody listens. Thank you for listening. If you're listening to the show, make sure you follow us on Instagram for the shows at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. go to gym owners revolution.com If you want to work with us directly follow John at Jay banks FL you can follow me at Tyler Elphinstone this Tyler he FFI and stone, guys, let's get right into the shit. James is closing. It's happened, gyms are shutting down. I'd love to see the statistics. This is we're dealing with kind of anecdotally anecdotal numbers from markets that we have gyms that we partner with or gyms that markets that we work directly in. And we're just seeing a continuous kind of like gyms are still continuing to fall off. I don't know if they're being beaten. Or if they're giving up. You know, I still believe a lot of this is it's four years later, it's pretty tough to continue to blame this stuff on COVID. But I still believe that a lot of that stuff depends on your market. If you were shut down for a year, it's very difficult to crawl back from that, there's debt, there's burnout, there's second jobs that had to be picked up. I think a lot of that stuff plays a factor. But it's happening. It's happening. We're at where we're at, it's happening where you're at. I don't believe it's an indication of like, a major trend that like the industry is blocked or anything like that, do you John?



John Fairbanks 01:30

No, no, because you all made it right. Like it's one of the things where like, you've you made it through COVID. There were so many that didn't, right, they said that it was like you have a massive percentage of people that have lost their gyms because of COVID. And if you've made it, you at least got through that hump. Yeah, I don't think it's not an indicator of anything that's new.



Tyler 01:55

And I do think there's a big issue though, in regards to gyms that have failed to implement the cornerstone principle that we always apply to everything, which is customer experience and client results, right? Jim gyms that failed to do that feel put that first tend to run out of market share pretty quickly, like you can come in, you can pop, you can turn and burn. But once people have came to your gym and chose to leave, fuck, they will not come to your place. It Is very, very rare that your place is the next place that they go. Very likely they're gonna go the next way, if they liked your place, or the vibe your place had at all, they're probably just gonna go someplace near you. Near them that's similar enough. And then when that doesn't work, they tend to find a different type of gym. Or they'll try a different type of fitness, the lifetime average, the lifetime fitness journey, something we talk about a lot on the show, but I think it's very real. And I think it's very important for gym owners to understand that you can't just drop the ball on that especially franchise gyms because I see a lot of franchise gyms doing a lot of low effort shit putting very little effort into acquiring new clients just existing in the space and having a brand and that will only get you so far for so long. At the very least it is not a I've seen gyms like that settle into a pocket where they can produce some revenue they can stay open, things are going to be okay. It is not a recipe for growth. And unfortunately in business if you are not growing you are actively dying. And there are sharks circling the waters here. There are new players coming in, there's new players in every market there's going to be, it's going to be in the functional fitness space, there's new ones in the franchise large global gym, there's new ones breaking into new markets all the time. If your market is not competitive, it's fucking going to be and I think that most gyms that have made it for a long time kind of settle in and kind of rest on their laurels and I think that's a huge mistake. So we've seen very often in these gyms that are closing a few things that are in common and most of them are not very service oriented at first . Yep, that's a big one. gyms that go under are not building a team they're not really making the most out of the revenue they can get from each staff member very often these businesses that struggle are the types of businesses that are they just run right they just pop open they just run they run like the what was those she fucking really trendy frozen yogurt shit that popped up or cherry berry or how yes leaf right? They have like a two year run like this town where we got like two or three joints like that in like a year. Absolutely indistinguishable from one another. It was all done. It was money by numbers. And that's fine. But it's just strictly business by numbers. You're never gonna go in there and go damn, I really connected to that place. You know, you just connected to sugar. And then you got on and out the door. There was nothing endearing about that business model. It was as lean and just pure profit driven as possible. Until the fact was there was nothing connecting you to that business model. So people stopped fucking going. It just wasn't interesting or compelling enough to keep people involved. Well,



John Fairbanks 05:06

we're and we're a small town and on the ice cream and frozen yogurt thing, there were two frozen yogurt places that have opened in the last decade. They both have closed. Yep. Because there were already established kick ass ice cream places that everybody already liked. And it's been around for 50 years. And guess what, nobody wants your city, your city frozen yogurt, if they can go get custard over down the street. And



Tyler 05:27

Like I said, I've said this before: all yogurt or all ice cream is the same. There's no such thing as a good ice cream place. Like anyone who tells you that it's junk. Don't start ranting about this. I know you're gonna disagree with me here, I have a different, different angle. But there is no such thing as a good ice cream or bad ice cream store. There can be bad service or whatever. But the fact is every old , like a 40 year old ice cream place in every town that you live in, that everybody's just in love with. It's only based on like, memory and nostalgia and the fact that fucking sugars, sugar syrup and shit tastes awesome. And candy. Like it's just that I've never ever ever gone to an ice cream place be like, boy, this is fucked up. I've also never ever had great ice cream. It's always within like a 15% margin of error of being the exact same thing. It's all the same.



John Fairbanks 06:19

And this actually, surprisingly, this takes us in the direction we want to go anyway, which is your you're right, ice cream is ice cream is ice cream. But the reason why places stick around isn't because it's because of all the other things. So the ice cream joint has been around for 40 or 50 years, they have the right location, they're right across from the school or whatever it's going to be. And that has now become a meeting hub. So just like you said, when graduation is over, everybody goes to the ice cream place when the band concerts are over . We all meet there after the football game. So all of a sudden it becomes a pillar of building a natural community because you are in the right place. And that I think is where boutique gyms and those are the ones that are most at risk. Because every statistic that's out there not only are we seeing taller anecdotally from the folks that we have followed that are in the networks for us generally are two or three degrees away from us that we've seen closing why we want to do the episode. But even the statistics are showing that boutique gyms and the small gyms that were the antithesis of LA Fitness, 24 hour, right large planet fitness, these large chains, they're the most at risk of closing, because of the fact that you really have to do all those other intangible things well, because you can't just be fitness in the way everybody else's fitness thing. Because at the end of the day, a gym is a gym is a gym, like if you were looking at it really, the way regular humans look at it is, is this a place that I can work out? That's



Tyler 07:57

a piece of the psychology that I think Stuart Brower has talked about, at length, give him a follow on Instagram On Facebook And shit to protest some pretty good stuff, probably our direct competitor, but he talks about how often they are unique. What is your unique fitness proposition? CrossFit had one. And after that became well aware enough people knew whether they were right or wrong, whether the methodology was being done correctly or not, whether it was dangerous or not, whatever it was, it had an edge, people knew it was different. And that is a thing that I do think is important. You either need to be very personality driven. Or you're gonna really need to define what it is you do that's anything different than anyone else. And if you don't fuck, better start building a team, you better start really driving for client client results because you can you can overcome that I think, I think if you are just a personal trainer, that's fucking fantastic. If you're a personal trainer, get a small studio that starts bringing some staff in, and you end up with a kind of a hybrid model. I think that fucking works. And everybody has their own different thing. But then what is your thing? It's not about CrossFit, then it's not about SoulCycle it's not about Nikes treadmill fucking boot tread treadmill studios or whatever. It's not about that. Your thing is x, right? It is weight loss, it is to help guide you towards getting fit, then your thinking is to completely pivot and not be about the methodology, your unique fitness proposition. It's about what are you trying to accomplish? We can help you do that. And then that needs to really be the centerpiece of everything and I see so many gyms like they kind of like to dwell in the middle of all of it, but they never really do any of those things externally. And it starts to there's no identity at all. And then the identity is just well I'm the person well, you better be real fucking interesting. And unfortunately a lot aren't. I mean, just generally like, like you can, you're gonna have to literally get into the world of like, constantly vlogging Am I constantly putting videos out and like that's a that's a whole thing and after a while that can be tiresome to someone who's just worried about getting results is they don't want to deal with. I don't want to deal with a fucking personality every time I go anywhere, right? It's not a thing that I want to do out of every aspect of my business. I don't know if I'm gonna buy cars, it's tough for me to get to buy cars from somebody who I like, now it's like wanting to be a supercar sailing influencer. It's like, motherfucker, I can just get my car. Right? That's, and so I do think that that is important. Sometimes also, I think the reason that these boutique gyms struggle is there's like a never all the way in never all the way out aspect to the way, these boutique gyms kind of work. If you're a one off and you're not really taking it, they don't. How do I phrase this? It's not taken all that fucking seriously. And I'm gonna sound whatever. It's like most boutique stores, boutique gyms are a lot like most boutique stores, is it somebody who doesn't need the fucking money, who's not really going all in on it, and they're just kind of doing a thing so that my wife can have something to do, or whatever, and it's like, then this business just loses money forever, until the husband's tired of paying for paying for the loss. But there's 75 boutiques in every small town, little boutique stores, and they all kind of do the same thing. And most of them kind of do nothing. None of them are probably all that profitable. And it's just like a little fun pet project, you know what I mean? It's like a kid's fitness . A lot of these boutique gyms are the fitness equivalent of some kids like mowing lawns in the summer business, which is like, it's not really real. He just posted on Facebook and lowers two loads a week, but whatever, we'll let it fly. But I think a lot of it is there's never really a full commitment to making this work. And I don't believe you have to burn the boats, I also don't believe you have to be all out of money when you get run in your gym, but it should fucking matter. And when we see big gyms closed, it's because it didn't fucking matter to the gym owner. And when we see small teams, small gyms close, it means have usually kind of either stopped mattering a long time ago, or it, you know, since you started, you just started to care too late about the rest of it. And go ahead and well, how



John Fairbanks 12:04

often we talk to gym owners of small operations that either have been in business a couple of years or in the beginning. And very quickly, we realize, Oh, you don't need any money. You don't need any money, right? Like it's Hold on, wait a second, like it's fundamentally what you're doing doesn't make any sense. And that's why you're not growing. And so why aren't you changing? Like some of these basic things, you could just change these things like these are on? Do you think so? We do one on one conversations all the time with Jim. So Jim, a gym owner, reaches out and wants to touch base with us. We want to be able to get a feel for where you are right now. And we are having that first conversation with literally no sales implication tied to it. Because we don't want to do business with you. Yeah, right. So there's, there's that tweak, right? You need to understand that, from our perspective, not everybody is ready to want to be able to start working with us. And we especially don't want to be working with everybody. So that first conversation we



Tyler 13:08

think that we do one on one work with it's like, are you ready? Are you really about this? No, then don't. I gotta fucking look at you. I got to talk to you. I have to put energy into this. I'd love to commoditize this. So yes, you get x leads for X dollars in X days X members what plus why? Like, it's, I can turn this into fucking math. But that's not like math isn't gonna solve, like just a simple one single variable commoditized equation. Like, if these gyms could just put no money down and get members, everyone these gyms it's closing and no risk, and they never spend any money out of pocket. Like all of the marketing that's directed at gym owners. If that was really viable. None of these gyms were closed. That's the thing that they should all do before they go tits up, right? I'll fuck. Well, if I could get 100 members in 30 days, though, and I don't have to pay any money out of pocket. Boy, that really would save the ship, wouldn't it? Why wouldn't you do it? Right? If it's literally sink or swim at that moment, but that stuff doesn't fucking work. And it's too little too late. And you've already exhausted your market. And there's a lot of other reasons to play there. But that is one of those situations where what we do is not that because that doesn't work. Okay, you and I are gonna come in and go, yeah, we'll just get you more members. We'll help you tighten up a lot of things that will get you more members, but you have to fix you. Right? I don't get to come in when I have a weight loss client say I'm going to take a fucking knife and I am just going to carve those love handles right off for you. It's gonna be over in no time. You don't gotta do shit. That's wonderful. But it doesn't work that way for me as I'm not a surgeon. So for me, I need them to do things. I need them to change their habits to change their behaviors. Same thing with the gym. Your gym is much like the human body. It's an ecosystem. What's not fucking working? Right? I see gyms that don't grow. I see gyms who sit back that don't spend any effort marketing. Like none It's like just try something I don't know you should be try something, it's just seems like there's a, there's a minimum effective dose in there where like, you could fucking Mac get the most out of the least instead of choosing to do nothing. It's a huge problem I see a lot, I see gyms that then just run a placeholder shit out there too. That's like, what's too little, too low effort. I see gyms that have fucking been around for a long time and have less than 10 Fucking Google reviews. It's been a low effort for a long time. And when I see gyms close, I look at it and I go, What the fuck? Well, no shit. And I don't believe that. It's like something tragic that happened to the gym owner at that point, either. I think the gym owners wanted this to close for a while. And I said this during COVID. I said there's a lot of gym owners who have been looking for an hour that they realized this isn't for them. Maybe coaching isn't for them. Or maybe the coaching is for them and being responsive for the whole business isn't. And as soon as COVID made made things a little harder. That was like the perfect excuse to get on out. And yeah, it really was a gift which by the way, take it for those of you who watch it, if you're not in it, like you feel it in your heart like fuck, I tried this I thought it was then go, just please just go and go find something that you're going to enjoy. I'm not going to talk every gym owner into making their gym a success. I'm not going to, I'm not going to reluctantly convince a client to lose weight. I'm not going to fucking convince you to reluctantly make your gym profit profitable. What a fucking fight uphill, that would be for me? Well,



John Fairbanks 16:28

because if you want it more than the person that you're working with, we know exactly how that works. From a client's perspective, when we're working with somebody, if I want you to lose weight more than you want to lose weight, this won't work will drive me insane. And I'll hate it. But you feel that out in the beginning like in those initial interviews, as you are working with someone, you're getting ready to sell them. If you're doing it the right way. You can identify what their actual goals are. Because that's what we do when we're sitting with that first initial contact with a gym owner, it's like, do you act like what are you doing currently? Well not you know, usually it's nothing or whatever it is they've been doing just just like you said, the bare minimum. But it's like, well done. It's clear through every action that you're taking, you really don't have an interest in being able to make more money. And that's where you look at somebody being like, what are you trying right now? Like, what are you wanting to do? What type of effort have you put into it? And if it's nothing, then it's like, okay, well, then you're not there yet. Like, you've got to at least take a couple of steps. And this is why nutrition. What's the number one thing you do with anybody that's interested in working with you or nutrition and you kind of are starting to smell that they're not super interested? Or they might be bullshitting.



Tyler 17:43

Yeah, one of the first things we would do is I'd make them tell me what you're eating first. Right right. Make people track for a while just track for a week, let me know what's going on. That's, I don't normally drop that on people if I feel like they're ready to change. But if someone just is like having a passing conversation about me just that feels like they're like I'm thinking about maybe getting to the gym sometime. Like they're just spouting off. Perfect. Well, if you want this what you all work with, I'd like to help you have you helped me with my food. Okay, well, here's an app to log this stuff just for a week, enter your stuff in and nobody ever does it and it's just an easy way for me to not have to tell them no and then they can carry that burden. And again, I'm not here to ruthlessly sell anybody on anything. That's the whole point too. A lot of these gyms I think that are closing have either done nothing for sales or done lots of the worst shit for sales. You know, we talked that complacency is the thing that I think is really frustrating though, is that if it wasn't enough or it's just it's not quite enough, but it's not not enough to make you have to do something else. Or you got a second job John, we were gym owners who have other jobs and there's no desire for them to transition back over the other jobs to really push great benefits and take care of their family. What am I supposed to do at the gym can still grow and still be great they just have to be less hands on but in my opinion if you're not looking at your numbers right now as a gym owner, you're true your revenue, your personal earnings are the same thing in my opinion as well is if you go if you're not thinking at all about how can I double my income? The fuck are you doing like you should always be trying to identify like, where's my 2x at if I make this much, I'm just going to be in here so I can make 1.3% more next year than next year. A lot of gyms don't even do that. But like I think your gym if you are the driving force behind the success of your gym, you should go how do we grow next year? What does that look like? What are my opportunities? What are we and what did we do wrong last year? What can we do? What do we need to shore up? How much money am I leaving on the table by making mistakes or by doing certain things poorly or by not executing on new projects or just not staffing? You know when we talked with Dylan on set last week, we talked with Dylan one of our gear Academy coaches or gear Academy gym owners and he said very early on that he was like I was maxed out I got to hear how had my own studio, I had a couple people coming in, it was like, I now can't make any more money. So I have to know what is next? What is next? And a lot of gym owners. And I think this is where businesses get stuck, if they go, here I am. That's it. There is no what is next? There is no where are we going next? There's no, this is good, can it be great. I mean, if Starbucks stopped at fucking one coffee shop location, is that their coffee is not probably going to be any better. Still probably gonna be the same shit. But like, think now of how much that growth model is taken off by someone had just a little bit of fucking ambition. And I see a lot of gym owners that lack ambition. They're fitness errs. And that's kind of what gets them into it. And they just kind of want to be a gym person, or even worse ones that aren't even gym people. And then you're just dealing with an investment, an operation and an asset. That's even worse, corrosive, people can ride a loss a lot further than a lot of you guys can too. Or they can just skid without a bunch of growth for a very long time. But I think it's really, really important for you guys to be a little bit ambitious, be bold. This is what why do you it's not ours, it's not us that got Dylan from being in a studio to getting to his next spot to opening to having a 24 hour access to bringing on four or five, we were there for parts of it, bring on three, four or five new coaches to now getting to the point where revenues, their money's their membership interest is their reputation is there to where they're going to build a giant, huge, enormous facility. Next, we did not do that. For him, we were just a piece while he was being very fucking ambitious and wanting to grow and develop and wanting to have an impact his community, he could have settled in his little studio, he could have just charge twice as much money. That was his other growth plan. By the way, you guys in the beginning, if he was not going to be the only other way for him to earn more money, instead of doing more business building a team and growing his overall fitness presence. The other way he could double his money is just charge all of his members. He currently has twice as much money. But that's running out of room there. You start running out of room. So his ambition got him there, then you need to make the right decisions and partner with the right people to make all the right moves in the meantime. But if you don't have that desire, what the fuck do you think it's just gonna happen? I'm John. I've never seen it. But I've never really seen anybody go from like 400 pounds to 200 pounds by accident, like, oh, shit, what the last couple years, really. And this was great. And in a business, I see so many gym owners go, oh, that's gonna keep doing the same exact thing that I'm doing, it's just, it'll, it'll probably do better. Even worse is to assume that it's even going to stay the same. If you keep your inputs the same as nuts, it will always decline. And I think it's a real shame. But hiring is another aspect of this where I think a lot of gym owners fuckup. I think a lot of gym owners make the biggest mistake by thinking that hiring is a financial investment. And it can be right you can bring somebody on a deal and it early on and never made sense, by the way never did right. Hiring is not about spending. It doesn't necessarily mean I have to now spend money and invest in this person, maybe invest in time, and you're gonna invest in some opportunities. But I still believe in bringing people on to coaches as personal trainers, you have a cut arrangement with them, you can market for them, they need to market themselves as well. You can market to your members, you can also market externally, they need to market externally, and they start getting lots of people drawn in any hour that they're working, they're getting paid for the work that they're doing, by the fact that that's a bigger ticket product. So this is not this person, if they are actually coaching. That's a fucking absolute profit machine. Meaning that does kind of sit as like the key to you doing this in regards to personal training, right? In regards to personal training, you need to if they're in and they're on the they're on the floor, and they're coaching perfectly. That doesn't cost you any money. That's free money to you. That's the easiest Chenoa now you gotta if you think you have to hire someone, and they have to sit on an ask for 48 hours for six 810 weeks like, well, yes, that's going to be real hard. But that doesn't seem like a very good use of anyone's fucking time. Because



John Fairbanks 24:13

you're lacking ambition, yes, because a hiring that coach efficient



Tyler 24:18

that correct is immediately going to have, they're going to have a void and the one thing that they really need to be successful in this industry, they need to get reps coaching people, they need to care, they need to get success, and they need to want to do the work, they need to actually want to be coaching because that is where they make money. And so if you hire coaches and staff and they're not coaching we're just losing money would you're just losing money on that person, that person has a loss, and it's gonna take a lot like we're not in an industry where we can come in and just eat our hat on a new hire for six months, and hope that they get good, because getting good is what it's getting clients. It's getting good if you're working and you're not fucking it up. They're making you're making good money off of every hour they're working and then guess what And when they're not coaching, they can fuck off and go somewhere else, they can go to their day job they can they, I do believe people need to start with a little bit of a short leash, here. And I think that that gives them the perfect ability where you can start to grow and be identifying people be making money, while you're identifying new people for you to maybe move from part time to full time or, or start to really start to fill their schedule so that you can pull the plug on their day job and bring them in. But there were a lot of us coaches who didn't need it and didn't want it. It's an awesome part. It's an awesome second job. What a great side hustle for someone to come in and take home 50 6070 bucks an hour,



John Fairbanks 25:35

One of the most costly things you can do as a gym owner is that you try to do things on your own for too long. Yeah, it's the most expensive option. And I guarantee you a lot of these boutique gyms, those are solopreneurs, or husband, wife teams, I'd be willing to fucking guarantee it. Because without that ambition to grow, or to be focused on the business, the way you're supposed to be focused on it. You cannot be you cannot be a gym owner, because it's so common. When we talk with folks, I was just talking to a gym owner yesterday about it, where's this idea where it's, you have someone that's new that's coming on your staff, you want to put them in a position to be successful, and take load off your shoulders and your plate. So you can step back, and then work on the business not so you can step back and fuck off every day at noon, and go home. Like that's the misconception, which is if you're gonna bring staff on, they need to be able to feed themselves, they need to be able to run the business and they need to free up your time. Because that says I just don't have enough time. I don't have enough time as the gym owner and scout because you're doing all the things. And because you're doing all those things, you never have your ambition, you're empty, your cup is full, your energy is full at 100% every single day and it gets drained to the point where you never make time for the business, you never make time to do all the things that only you are going to do. And because you're burning it out on your clients, and that's not what it means to be a business owner. Like you're no longer just a coach. And that's why we definitely have clients that are not gym owners. Because it's No, don't go big. If you are a gym owner, DJ, we'll talk about the best, the most succinctly of this idea where it's like, I have no desire to run a business like this. I want to coach people, this is what I want to do. And then I lived in that pocket for 20 years.



Tyler 27:26

And then your space is just fucking another it's just a simple expense. It's probably your solitary expense unless you're spending on marketing, which so I think that that's always an interesting play. I think that people need to understand that difference is that like, you're not just here to coach Moore now you're in the helm of a larger system here. Now a couple of things you obviously business, it is just hyper profitable, it's not going to go under even if the gym owner is too busy or doesn't want it right. That business now is valuable. Either can be bought in with partner Dan or it can be when you have the resources you can get work done without you having to do it. So when there is revenue trouble. One of the things we see is gym owners are just not flexible in fixing that issue. Now, obviously the inflow of new members is one thing the other thing is just what if your pricing model is fucked? Yeah. You know, sometimes I John, how many gym owners do we talk to? What percentage do you know set their price just arbitrarily in their head? Because it just felt like a number that they thought would be okay to tell people? I bet I bet it's three quarters 75%



John Fairbanks 28:28

For sure.



Tyler 28:29

There's gyms I know right now, there's gyms that work directly with like, when I ask them why they charge what they charge is like, oh, because we just kind of have once you do everything else goes up. Why don't you raise it? Can we go into that and you start having problems or you're not able to upgrade things in a good way or you're not able to market you don't have the time resources to like, actually grow your system. You're either putting too much in your pocket or you're not fucking don't have your eye on the goddamn price here, which is like let's be honest, McDonald's has tripled in price in the last 15 years. And there's gyms that I know that haven't raised the price in 15 years. The fuck?



John Fairbanks 29:10

And obviously, because McDonald's has raised their prices Tyler they've obviously lost massive portions right of the community. And they're struggling. I



Tyler 29:20

I just went through this with you and I was talking about this yesterday. I just read this deal. And it was obvious that obviously everyone's mad. It's like a running meme that people don't even go to McDonald's anymore. It's fucking eight and a half dollars for Big Mac used to be three bucks. Where's my dollar MC chickens and guys, I'm with you. If they still had a shrew dollar menu, you'd catch me at McDonald's once or twice a year. You would, because I do it. I go in and I get 10 Fucking sandwiches and with a bottle of ketchup and I just go home and get high and go off. It's what I do. I'd love to do that. But I will refuse to do it at three or $4 for one of those sandwiches. It's fucking just insane to me. There's no way so



John Fairbanks 29:57

but here's the shitty math Tyler and this is The shitty math, it used to be $1. And now it's eight. That means you can have an eighth of the people show up.



Tyler 30:09

And so that what they've decided on is McDonald's is saying that what this is what we've seen is, you know, we, there's a big problem, we're not able, we're not serving these, what's the word low, it's low income, or he basically just said, we're not doing a good job making products for the pores, right? So the pores feel like they've been neglected by McDonald's, and they're mad. And you think that would be bad for their PR, because by the way, no one is thinking that McDonald's because they charge $8 at the burger is worth $8. It's just what it charged. But there's people that don't care, they still want the convenience and the same damn sandwich and they'll pay eight bucks. Because of this, it's kind of looking like McDonald's, if they make any play, to try to maybe fight that perception, it's like a PR game more than anything else. And they're gonna still continue to prioritize, keep the ticket prices high, and keep the menu simple. And they are AOK with much less drive thru and foot traffic. Because, guys, McDonald's is more expensive. Everybody I think hates them more now than ever, right? It's still junk food. So it's the same junk food reputation. And now it's expensive. It's a straight up comedy meme at this point, right? McDonald's is more profitable quarter after quarter than they've ever been. Stock prices are higher right now than they've ever been ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I know this because I have a family that invested in McDonald's a long time ago, things are looking good for them. Okay, they're very, they are not fucking worried at all. And the fact is double your price and you do half as much business you think, Oh, the same amount of money. It's not only the same amount of money, the same amount of money and half the work. Now, when you want to start to automate systems, it's way less stress on your systems. So if you're a gym owner, you're stressed out, you're having a hard time. God, I gotta sell so many people it's really tough. What if every sale was twice as impactful? What if your prices would? What if it was double? Or what if you gave them opportunities to spend more money? And maybe they chose what if it's a combination of those things. And next thing, you know, you're averaging maybe like 60 70% more per transaction that you're doing, all of a sudden, that fucking rules. And it's not more work, because getting more members getting 100 more members is not going to fucking help get 100 more members, if you're already stressed, and money's tight, and time is tight, like, what does that gonna do? Like really what is 100 more members in your business in the grand scheme of things like, especially if it's going to be a high turn play like this is like, boy, I would really like to have some things in place where I can make the most out of those opportunities for me for my business for their ability to choose good products, as well as for their ability to have success in their endeavor so that they fucking stay. And so that allows me something to stand on while I build my reputation up, right? If I just get 100 members sell them into the cheapest shit ever, and they're gone and 45 days will fucking good. Does that do me? None? Absolutely not. So I think not being flexible in the business model not being willing to make changes, or at least not making decisions based on fucking information. There's a lot of big gym owners that make decisions based on feelings. And like we're talking like pricing and product and hiring decisions and shit. And like I'm all about trusting your gut. But you kind of fucking have some wins with trusting your gut. And before, before you just let that lead the way. Like there's a lot of people out there that maybe shouldn't be making decisions just grabbing pricing out of thin air, a little bit of market research to the last round, at least do some comparisons. Go and compare to everything else that's in your area. See where you land, like spend two hours deciding your price, and do a little bit of just your own research if you need to. But that's worth doing. Like sitting down and spending two hours writing it down. So what do I do differently than them? What do I want to be perceived as where do I fit in this? How does any of this work within your market? Your physical market? I think that's important to do. Like I said before, we said ours it's 50% More than the next gym than the other gym in our place. And if their prices went up, ours would go up to match his budgets and I would let that speak for itself.



John Fairbanks 34:13

Don't be confused, right? If you're listening or watching Don't be confused. This isn't this isn't a recommendation to just raise your prices blindly. Because I'd be willing to work for you Tyler for you guys compared to the other CrossFit spot in town. How much better of a product did you have? Three times



Tyler 34:32

at least? Yeah,



John Fairbanks 34:33

you know I'm saying so like that's where a lot of people will be like oh you guys just saying like raise prices and surprise surprise that you make more money will go



Tyler 34:41

plus a really good point. Here's and here's the real difference. And I truly believe it's three times better. We were results focused. We had stability in our coaching staff. We weren't fucking underneath the umbrella of like a fucking YMCA like our main competitor was which is just churning, burning, hiring morons. Terrible programming all of this stuff. Right? Right. So I knew we were three times better. The problem is imparting that information and value on a new client is very difficult. There is a line where I knew that just I feel like at this point I know that this is good this is a very easy increase in the perceived value. If I start to be double people just go out to Christ. Have you ever tried to buy cheap shit on Amazon every once in a while? Do this right like if it whether it's a kitchen appliance or like fucking god, that one of the dumbest things I do. I do this I've done this constantly, is I buy pots and pans, like at fucking Walmart. And I buy like the cheapest shit. It sucks. And I buy one at a time and a fierce like, it's fucking $20 What the hell and it makes me mad. But then I hate it. And I hate it within two days. And I use it for fucking 10 years. And it sucks and it makes me miserable the whole time. And if I would just ever spend $200 on a nice fucking nice past iron pan. Got one but I had a class I sold . It's not that great a holiday. So yeah, fucking preach to me with your homestead and shit. John, I'm covering my bases here. But then that, but I find that like, Yeah, but to get me to spend $200 When I just know I can spend 15 There is a line in buying psychology where that where that where you do cross that. So I did see there was an Equinox offering like a super high end thing. Did you see that? No, no, they're offering like a, and I think just like their Manhattan office or some shit, like a $3,000 a month membership that doesn't include the membership. So basically it's more like $40,000 for the year. And it comes like crazy like biometric scans, bloodwork, and all this stuff and like a fully comprehensive plan. And I don't there's like, there's sciency shit on there that I can't imagine is really all that relevant or worth the time and you're doing those blood draws every month. You know what I mean? Like God damn that some of these people are just bored. I don't know, are they taking drugs, I don't understand why you need that much data. But it's great. They're constantly but it is just a thing, where we're going to, we're going to keep heavy eyes on this constantly for a year. And they're just going to try to develop some of those technological processes. So that actually eventually they flesh this out. Now there can be more affordable versions of that type of stuff that can kind of trickle down to other systems. So it's like building the, from the top down your services from just we've talked about this before, from the most expensive highest level of service you could possibly imagine offering or someone pays you just an astronomical amount of money, you can do pretty good at anything, right? I don't know, I'm no good at washing cars or detailing cars. But if you paid me $20,000 to detail your car this weekend, John, boy, I'd hire good help to figure it out. And I'd still make out okay, I wouldn't be as profitable as I could be if I didn't DIY that myself, but it wouldn't be as good. So I think that this is an interesting concept that they're running. But I think that's viable. Anyone who buys that is choosing to have a good experience because they could go and choose to have a much cheaper experience. And that's what I did by setting my prices higher than the next guy. That's part of that thing is like, well, if you're choosing to find the cheapest functional fitness gym in town, you're already making the wrong decisions based on the wrong things and I don't give a shit to help you. Like if that's your factor, I 'm gonna struggle because you're not choosing to appreciate the things that we do better. You're only choosing to appreciate the price. And then I don't care if this is going to be a failed relationship. If you come in and we're cheap, and we do it better, but you're not gonna appreciate it because you only appreciate cheap. Correct, it's a lose lose situation for the most part, I'm coming in and really over deliver. But John, I don't want to fucking over deliver for no goddamn money.



John Fairbanks 38:58

So you just psychologically you. Right? Yeah, you don't. I mean, like, even if you're not making a truly conscious choice. It's like, if you're worried about bills, if you're worried about payroll, like if you're worried about money, that is going to dominate, and therefore make what you choose. When it comes to upgrading your spot, what type of equipment you buy different things that you're going to do. Well, no, no, like, we can't throw an event because then I'm gonna have to buy like, if you're cutting hair, if you're so tight that you're squeaking then it's really hard to run a business like there is an element of like to make it good, smell good, feel good. All those things. It takes time and effort and money. And if you're just so worried about those fundamental pieces, it is that slow decline of what we talked about all the reasons why a spot will close, but there's opportunity. Every time that the spot is closing. There's opportunity for those of you that are not closing your doors and you're coming Introducing, you're seeing competitors that are closing. Or if you are someone that's part of that dream or class still, your coach thinking about it, you want to get out of the spot you're in, you're thinking about wanting to become a gym owner one day, every time someone closes, there's a unique opportunity for you to take advantage. Well,



Tyler 40:18

and that is, I think, let's move a segue into that right gyms are going belly up, some are going to do in your area. Definitely within driving distance of I see sale auctions for gyms, in two of the biggest markets around us here, there's probably been like three or four in the last year. Or hey, like nice equipment, by the way, so to wonder why they so here's the deal, when you start to wonder why they went up, it went belly up, you're like, Man, you spent a lot of fucking money before you got good at anything else. And a lot of money on equipment and good for you if you had the resources. But for you guys that are looking at opening if you're kind of like, consider it. That's a great opportunity to get equipment. You don't need to have the fucking brand new sales stickers on everything when you when you put it in, and people don't give a shit. And in a gym, I don't know if you guys know this shit gets used and not always the most taken care of ever. So I'm not saying your gym has got to be a shithole. But having equipment that's been in a gym for a few years is just fine. If you decide, you know. And what a tremendous way to save money, I bought all new equipment when we went to the gym. There just weren't any other options. It just wasn't. But I bought all of it. And it fucking sucked. It was really expensive. It was still before material costs were way, way, way up. So I know it's harder now. It's absolutely more difficult now to equip a gym. So if you're thinking of going the boutique route or boutique route, or the studio routes or smaller scale, depending on your branding, I think finding a close and closing gym or even better a distressed property altogether, again, whether the equipment or the whole thing, because very rarely is the location. The reason a gym goes belly up, I don't I don't think it could be a financial arrangement on that location. But it's in a location that's near people, you're fine. Right? If it's way out of the way that does suck, don't get, don't take any part in it. But at the fully distressed business, I would just buy it where it sits. And I would completely rebrand it on my own and then it would still look and feel like an absolutely new business, we would do very different things. But that's a way to start it you start your business for pennies on the dollar. So we always talk about this, you know, the sharks in the water, the vultures are coming to pick the bones clean. You can be the shark. You can be the vulture, it's okay, like I'm on the fuckers eat. So like there's nothing wrong with identifying that as an opportunity. Where if you're a year out from opening, I'd be keeping a real good eye on that stuff. At least for some of the basics, like let's steal weights, nobody gives a fuck if they're new bars, you can get a good chance on I'm like, benches rack, stuff like that as if it's quality stuff is nearly invincible. So nearly indestructible, I would definitely recommend that route. That's a great opportunity that happens when gyms are closing in your area. The other one is their fucking members. For sure, we'll get them. Like go get them.



John Fairbanks 43:14

And if you haven't been a prick in your community, and you just get all over everybody publicly or whatever your competitors are, a lot of times because we've seen this now a couple of times where a gym is closing, and they have a partnership that's been put into place with another competing gym. And the whole idea is that we want our people to be taken care of, for whatever reason why that gym owners decide to step away, can't run the business anymore, whatever it's going to be, and no one's gonna come by it. There's also like, there's some you gotta understand, if you're a dreamer, and you're looking to get in, I would much rather take a distressed building, and start my own thing with equipment, right? Then try to take on someone else's brand because that's oftentimes where people will get way too emotionally attached to please my people and this is my brand. I want to do this and I don't want to see it die. So are you willing to take on the lease? Are you willing to take on the brand take on my people, and it's like, you gotta be really



Tyler 44:12

in regards to that like a business that's going like there's nothing worth buying in a business it's not equipment. There's just not right, there's very little in a fitness business, there's just very little that's worth buying. So John, if you're, if John's Fitness Center down the street is closing, and you obviously are going off to do something else whether you're moving or making a career change. Like if I come in I'm sure you'd love to sell me that business for a quarter million dollars. Sure, you know the brand. And then you can have the equipment that's worth 15,000 And then you know we're good or you get to cash out people in this industry and kind of in a few others to like get very delusional about the value of their brand. There's a boutique store in town here. Like I said of the 25 that are open that don't produce any money that I know their rent is like fucking, like $6,000 a month, I never see or know of anyone who's done any business there. I coach right across the street from this place. I laugh at it every time because it's just one of those like, I'm certain just some rich farmer's wife's pet projects where she can do pallet put pallet projects with cursive paint on him or whatever, that type of bullshit, right? He has a tax write off. That was that business was not going under that business was for sale, John, that business was for sale for a quarter million dollars. Do you know what that included? It did not include any of the inventory inventory at the date of when the business is when the closing happens will then be assessed and then added to it? Whatever inventory is on the shelf. Okay, it does not include the building. But you are obligated to the lease just forever. And so they want a quarter million dollars for the name. And I couldn't even tell you the name offhand. I don't fucking know. Because it's all some small far away font like all these boutique cars shitting all cursing the bullshit like everything's oh my god, I there's, you're gonna get me fired up. It's these fucking businesses. They make me crazy. And there's actually one in town that I do really, really, really like what they do and they do think so far in a way differently and better than everyone else. It would be a great case study of what this is like when it's done right versus what the fuck all this other shit is. There's the originator, then there's the imitators. There's a lot of pretenders that are just not going to pretend to be. I don't want to sound come off sexist, but it's like fake Girlboss shit, that makes me crazy. And it's like, oh, you're just losing money every month. Where'd you get that money? And so it's really frustrating for me. But this is a quarter million dollars for the name of a business that nobody knows. Nobody goes through, nobody fucking wants. So of course, nobody fucking bought it. Nobody's interested in this at all. If you're going to get into that business, slap a new name on it, who gives a shit? You think that you think the people that own that building aren't going to let you take over that lease when they go under anyway? You trust me, come in and start paying, you'll have fine inventory, well, you still got to pay for it. So you'd have to pay for that no matter what. So just know that in your gym. Specially and especially in a service business too, which is whether it's coaching, restaurants, honestly, even in contracting service contracting stuff, is you couldn't borrow any money to fund this purchase at all, it would not happen because they're going to assess the biggest risk to this businesses, whatever current valuation is, is that the owner is the business, the owner is what's keeping the clients there. And so once the owner is out of the equation, like well, I can go anywhere else. So I wouldn't want to buy John's Fitness Center for quarter million dollars to get $20,000 worth of equipment, and then all your members can choose to leave. John, I'm not John. And so I think it's very important. Don't get, don't play those games. You just don't want it. No, would I buy the gym and the building as it sits and rebrand it and give you $20,000 for it. And I'm not interested in your name or your brand, or really any of your members, I'll extend them a great offer. If you want a great introductory offer, I'll even lock in a price like that, that's how I would play such a thing. But let's say now even though John says hey, John's fitness center is going out of business and I'm already in a location, I don't need any equipment, maybe I buy some of it, whatever, you're just you're going up, you're going away. This is a situation we're dealing with here locally as well, with some one of the chimps that we work with is their number one competitor in that in their industry, this is all very small businesses going away, people are moving. So all their members are ours, kind of, or they're gonna stop doing what they're doing. This is a game in town. This is martial arts, it's not like you can just go get a garage gym on your own, like you need to be taught by someone you need training partners and all this stuff. So when they decide to go away, what are we going to do, right, so we started assessing what our opportunities really are. And so I'll walk you guys through this process real quick, which is, the first one is how we could extend an offer with a discount. Well, there's some thin ice to walk on here. One, they've talked a lot of shit about the competitors over the years, publicly a little bit, but very much like directly to their members and behind stuff. So it's not a situation where until they make an absolute formal announcement that we can like, we could never put an offer to them that they would give to their members. Because part of me likes the kind of things that they'd rather all their members stop training than ever have them come to us, which is nuts to me. But that's okay. There's a level of pettiness there that you can smell it on them, you can smell it on. And so in that case, we need to preserve our reputation. We need to not involve ourselves in their failure, right? So we have had them members when they're finding out even though they're not doing a very good job making it public, they're all finding out like behind their back, and they're pissed about it, because they're just telling everybody, everything's fine. And they're closing in two weeks. And so their members are reaching out to us and ready to get started. Well, absolutely, you guys are all more than welcome. Please tell everybody there that we're like that, that's what we're telling them. Come try the class for free. But the question is, John, should we discount? Should we offer a discounted offer? I said, No, I don't think so. Why? Because it's going to be a headache, classes are going to be inundated. The other thing is, it's not going to entice them, they don't have anywhere else to go. Now, if this was a fitness situation, it would be a little bit different, right? I'd be offering half off for a couple months to come in and give it a try, goodwill, get them in and get them comfortable with our people or five, that would be great. But in this case, we already charge less than they do. So there's no way it's, we will just gonna take it, it's gonna be what it is. And we're not going to chase too hard. Because if they're not going to, they're not going to sign off on they're not going to endorse, hey, we respect these guys, because they don't, they're afraid of us, right? So they have to talk to shit to make it work. So because of this, now we're like, not able to really be like forward about it, because I don't want to be reaching out to their members. But anyone who comes in, we make sure we tell them to tell everybody, they're there, please come check it out. We don't want you guys to stop training, that would fucking suck. Because if we went belly up, we would all be there wouldn't be about it's about that thing trying to do. It's not about the personalities involved or anything like that. And I think that that is the real ground. When you have tight close markets like that, where it's like, there's only maybe one or two, like direct competitors that directly compete with you. When they get up and go away, you have to tread a little lightly, you have to be careful, because you don't want to, I just don't want controversy out of this thing, we'll get what we get. We're going to be very available. All of our gym members are brought up to speed about the issue so that they know when these people come in, like we want them to feel well. Because if this was the other way, we went over there, and they're all motherfucking us like, damn it. So I think that's really important.



John Fairbanks 52:13

There's a good point that you brought up, which is the idea that price can act as a pressure control. I think that that's that's important for any of you at any point to where, if there's, if there's times or seasons, or as you are moving where you don't have, let's ignore the fact that the example you gave is that you're cheaper than the competitor. That's closing. Yeah. But the fact is, if you look at your business foundationally, it's, we actually can't handle if every one of their members came here. Yeah. So we can't handle the load. And since we can't handle the load, we cannot offer a discount, because then that puts us the most at risk. This is where you have to be practical. And again, if things were being done a different way that allowed that you had the staffing, you had the ability to scale it up, you had those things, then you can just turn that lever, offer a discounted rate for a certain period of time, take advantage of it and just clean get three quarters of the people, but you'll break your shit if you're not ready.



Tyler 53:15

And here's another factor in this issue. By the way, you mentioned that we are cheaper, right. And that is true. But this is a bit common. We're trying to raise prices, price raise, it's common, it's not my work with this business, I do not make all the calls, right. So price raises needed to come for a long time, especially when revenue has been tight. So hey, just raise your prices, owners have been a little bit resistant to raise the prices because you've got to raise prices, it's going to be on existing members, you're not getting a big influx of new people. So a $30 a month price raise is not going to move the needle if you're only getting two new members a month. So you just have to apply that all the way across the board, and some people are going to be happy, but nobody's happy about having to pay more. That's never gonna happen. But the issue, John now is I had to and I thought good and hard about this. This was one of the calls we had the other day. Do you know if we raise the price right now, for everybody, for our people, for their people, right. But the reality is, there's been a couple of weeks of them knowing our prices, seeing our prices, we put our prices out front, you know, like on our marketing and on our website stuff. So there's no I think it would be fine for this business to make this practical decision. But that's where we're deciding to earn the goodwill by not doing that because as soon as they went under, if we just raised our prices, and then they all came over. That's now a thing where we're not earning their trust. We're not you know, and so trying to be good guys about it. It's not all about being good guys. But I'm guessing now what we're going to do is we're going to honor this pricing for at least six months. We need to get into the price rates and that will be something that we talk about anyways. They'll all be happy that the price is lower, and I want you to inform them that that is temporary and that's fine. And that way there is still a perceived value. They are still paying, they're coming over and paying less and they know we are doing them a bit of a solid Uh, but that's the flow like it's there's a big long spectrum and here on what you can do, you can be ruthless. Pardon me, I like the idea if you got one competitor in your town like I do, I'm all about growing the pie so we all can share more pie, but it's kind of fucking nice to absolutely crush your competitor to truly shut them down and run them out of town. For the there's a listen, there's a visceral, there's, it's nice, it's nice. Yeah. The



John Fairbanks 55:28

catharsis of knowing and especially because it was so much sweeter because they were shit. They were, they were, they were so confident about it the whole time. And you're like, Ah, fuck you guys. Like this will be our last steak like right in the chest quote that



Tyler 55:42

They were telling people about the other place. Well, they just started in some garage over there. So yeah, we're the first ones here. And when the fuck were you how were we else were we so start doing jujitsu. So you started with the guy that knew the most and you started training as Roger fucking South Dakota. Where? Right so what I got to hang a picture of Helio Gracie on the wall and bow to it until what? Like what legitimacy does that give you? It's also like, come over and fight us policies. Let's go like WHAT DO YOU FUCKING mean? Let's go. This is a thing. Yes. We're all doing this. Yeah. Yeah, we can do this. If your soulmate if it's so much better. We can all just fight. Like we're all training to fight like we're down. Like, let's not be such a Sally about it. Don't be cocky talking shit. Like putting it on a mat. Let's go. And actually, we're not like confrontational means, we've gone to seminars that they've hosted because we encourage our people to cross train, and they are the opposite. They tell other people not to do so. It's been all the red flags over there. And we're just trying to be good guys over here. But yeah,



John Fairbanks 56:42

and now let's Yeah, we do like that. If they're if the situation isn't that somebody is closing, and they were Kunti bastards the entire time. The one thing that we have talked about, which is an idea that came from when we saw another gym that was closing, where they were giving a discounted rate, or they were giving that discounted rate to those members to come over, they were actually going to honor their existing gym by being more expensive. So they were going to honor the previous gyms rate,



Tyler 57:13

they called it a membership transfer, which is a partnership that you're going to negotiate with the closing gym. And I think that's a viable thing to reach out and do. I think that's super valuable. Because whatever revenue they are currently making, whether it's not enough to cover their nut, or to keep them in the game, it's all yours if you can have it if you can negotiate that deal. And there's a few levers you can pull with that too, which is like, if I'm an owner, my business is going belly up, and I'm going to shut the door. God, if I could just get maybe a month or two after I'm gone. If I could get like half of the revenue. Even better, you know what I mean? Like, so there's a way you can kick back some of that for the people that that are gonna like, Yes, I'll tell you what, I'll put my stamp on the closing business, I'll put my stamp on this partnership, you give me half of the revenue from the membership transfer for the first few months, and I'm out the door. That way I got a couple of months, it's like my severance package, it's a better deal than they're gonna get if all these people just walk. And just know that you as this becomes a situation where both parties don't have full intense shitty leverage. It's a true relationship partnership, we all got to feel good about this. It's like, well, wait a second, why



John Fairbanks 58:23

the fuck would I do that? And say, well, because you just were given the exclusive. And in exchange for that, they're gonna do it on social media, they're gonna talk about it, they're gonna pump it through their email, they're gonna pump it in person. And you essentially just created one of the most badass referral programs you ever could have created? Yeah,



Tyler 58:44

with somebody that has people who need a gym who have a gym that don't have a gym. Like, what the fuck is that? I'm trying to convince people to get off the couch, you're like, oh, all of you that are already going to do fitness. Perfect. You can't have you can't go there anymore. Come here. It's great. So that play I think was really solid. And I think that that is, again, there's factors that go into how do you approach a closing gym situation, whether you're trying to get members property, or equipment, like how the relationship went, how they are, what they're, what they're going to be like, by the way, what if their members are like fucking pissed, and they, you know what I mean, everybody's going out. The reason they're going on is because they suck and everybody hates him and then worn out their welcome and all this stuff, like, maybe you don't want their stamp. Right? There's also value in that if nobody's going to negotiate that deal. It's all yours, kinda. And you don't have to give any money away. And you can flip them to birds as they leave town, do whatever you need to do.



John Fairbanks 59:40

But do you know how you know all these things? Because it goes back to this larger thing we always talked about, which is this concept of the ecosystem, the ecosystem that you've created that's inside of your towns and in your communities. Are you networking? Are you getting out into the community? Are you speaking with these people? Are you being a human being cuz I think we Karma is a big piece of this episode, which is this idea of like, are you trying to do the right thing for the right reasons? And are you being the good guys? Are you the good guys? Are you the bad guys? Yeah, he's if you're been good guy shit even good guy and and all along and you can have guys we know a lot of gyms that we've worked with who have really good relationships with other gym owners in their communities, which I think is awesome. Like, I think that's a goal of coming together and having a community wide goal of trying to help people and people just and it's honoring that idea, again of that client journey, that huge fitness journey that someone takes a lifetime lies of respecting the fact that, hey, they're gonna go over to the CrossFit spot, they're going to do this over here, maybe these people have something over here that's different. And we're going to respect the idea that people will bounce from one thing to the other, and the world is just too small, it's too small and your communities are too small, just start burning fucking bridges every time something goes wrong or you lose somebody or they go to a competitor.



Tyler 1:00:57

You know, I know people currently in a small, not terribly fit market, right? They have multiple gym memberships, and use them both and attend multiple types of fitness CrossFit memberships as well as global gym memberships. Also, at private gyms, we have people that go to like strength strength strength gyms, and then also have global gym memberships. Like, it's, it's totally okay. And I think that that is an evolution of I think there was a kind of like the way streaming services show, I can't always take up all the space, it was great when Netflix seemed to have everything. But now all the studios like Wow, we got our money from Netflix, let's sell this one to HBO. So the same pool of content is now getting split up between five streaming services. And I feel like I'm just getting extorted to have the same amount of things that I can watch. But in regards to fitness, I think people are okay with that. There's a Disney plus that has some different shit, they got the Marvel stuff and whatever else and then want to watch Apple plus Apple TV plus, like they got a much better Original Series than probably any of the other ones combined. And so that's worth it for me to choose to do both. It's people can treat fitness and training. Like, unless you're fucking flat broke, and we're fighting over your last dollars that you could possibly spend on fitness. There's no reason that someone who goes somewhere else can't also participate in some of your services. As long as you have enough as long as you're able to cover more space in their lifetime fitness journey. So yeah, so don't close. That's I guess what we're saying is better. cautionary tale.



John Fairbanks 1:02:35

But yeah, going out of business. Don't fucking call us. Yeah, do not come talk to us.



Tyler 1:02:43

Which we're not realizing oh, it's too late. Dude, I don't know what to tell you. If your heart's not in it, don't call us. I'm not gonna talk you into it. And I don't want to. I'm not gonna talk you out of it either. That's the worst I've set. Talking to gym owners. I'm gonna say my head. I'm like, You should just quit. Just quit. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? What are you, you're not even doing anything? What are you doing? You don't care. You don't want to do this. This is such a burden for you. You hate this. I can see the look in your eye. It wasn't what you hoped it would be. And so maybe that's half of my line of work is just telling people to give up. Give it to someone who cares. That's all these people are for. It's for gym owners, but it's just for the people. This is for the people on the ground. And so like if Yeah, if you're not in it, you're not fucking helping anybody. You're just taking up space. So be one of the good ones. Thanks for listening. Everybody follows all the shit links in the show notes. We'll see you later.



























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