Speaker 1: 0:00

What's up guys? Welcome to the fourth episode of my Long Island Gym Tour. If you're listening to this, all in a row like binging these, get a life no, I'm totally kidding. But if this is your first one, go ahead and listen to all the other ones. But, very briefly, what I'm doing?

Speaker 1: 0:23

I'm taking a full day and visiting as many gyms on Long Island as I possibly can before I do my consulting day with Anthony Bevlogos, a gym owner, the mastermind that hired me for the day, and I came up a day before to visit all the gyms that are in my SPF mastermind that are on Long Island, and so I've visited four gyms. Now I'm on my way to my fifth. I'm actually just left Manny Rodriguez and I'm on my way to see TJ Lopez. It's my final stop for the day before we sit down and have a nice steak dinner, which I'm excited for, and have enough travel for the day. But just visited Manny. He's an interesting story. Manny was a cop and, you know, retired in 2008 and then basically fell into a business where he took over a bootcamp in a gymnastic school and it basically started crushing it and he's done really, really well. He's had some ups and downs through COVID and stuff like that. But we got a great conversation and a couple of highlights from our chat was this the first one was he's still training more sessions than he wants to train, and I know that's the case with a lot of gym owners that are trying to run the business. But you're tired from doing so many sessions and I know what that's like, cause it's like as a gym owner you want to kind of grow the business and when you're training too much on the floor it kind of almost is like you start to get like resentful on the like. I'm doing all this training and I don't have any time to run the business or grow the business or learn and all that stuff, and so I get that. I don't usually advise people to go cold turkey like to go from 40 sessions a week to zero, because one, you get a massive increase in payroll and two, I think that a lot of times people don't know what the hell to do with their time. So I prefer more of a progressive decrease in the amount of sessions.

Speaker 1: 2:21

This is pretty much what I followed and no one ever told me this. I just kind of naturally did it and it tends to work. But in in Manny's case, one of the, he was telling me he would think he was doing around 23 sessions a week and actually, hold on, let me charge my charge, my phone, because I've been on ways all day and my phone is dying. So he was doing 23 sessions a week and he wanted to cut it down. And I was just like, all right, let's do this, let's take 13 sessions away and delegate 13 sessions to either a current trainer that you got or we can hire a part-time trainer to do it. And here's the mindset you got to have when you take hours off your plate, because, because most of the time it's not just oh, I need 13 hours a week to just sit on my ass and do nothing, it's not that you want time and you want to invest the right time. Holy shit, look at all this traffic Long Island, awesome. Anyway, sorry, you want to replace the hours with the right things to do, right, but sometimes we're scared to make the investment. Manny, in this case, wasn't and I'm not speaking just specifically on what we talked about, but I do think there's a lot of people there that are afraid to give up sessions as the owner because we don't want to add more payroll. We don't want to have to pay another person, we don't want our costs to go up and everything like that, and I think that that's going to keep you on the sidelines for a while. So what I like to try to do is look at it. You're making an investment and in Manny's case, if it's 13 sessions, let's call it, I don't know. Let's say it's going to $2,500 a month, right To have this part-time trainer do 13 sessions. So what that investment is giving us, we're making an investment in getting 13 hours back. Sorry, sometimes the traffic makes me lose my train of thought. We're getting an investment of 13 hours back for 2,500. So, for $2,500 investment in part-time trainer, he is getting 26, 50 hours a month.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Now go back to episode one in Long Island gym tours and when I talked about with Joey Olivia, where I talked about the Operation Money Suck activities, what are the things that you're doing to bring in the money? Well, that's what Manny's got to replace this time with. He's got to take these 13 hours a week, 50 hours a month roughly, and he's got to go do money-making activities with that time. So now he's making a $2,500 a month investment for 50 hours of time. What I got to do is make sure I make it count on the things that I do now. So that's the first thing.

Speaker 1: 5:12

The second thing is Manny's gym was in a gymnastic studio and he is at the top floor of a gymnastic studio and sometimes people look at that stuff. It's like, oh, people don't want to come to a gymnastic studio and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, the perfect clients are the parents. I was like watching the people come in and out. So it's some souped up infinity. I was watching the clients come in and out. It's like the exact people that he wants in his gym, just literally coming there. Now I'm not saying that he's going to get them to come like while the kids are there. I think that that's kind of something that's a little bit harder to do. But if they're coming there on a regular basis, there's likely they live in the area, so they're going to be, you know, local and there's a good chance they can become customers.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Now he told me he's like yeah, that's how I started. I got a lot of people in the very beginning and now I don't. I was like well, when's the last time you made an offer to go get these moms in the door from the gym. He said two years ago. I was like, well, it's time, right, and so that's the thing is like going back to episode number three on long island gym tours.

Speaker 1: 6:29

What I talked with johnny sordo is make more offers, make more money. Well, here's the thing where we just need to make more offers. Now the idea I gave him is genius, right, and if you're listening to this, you should do this too with any joint venture that you've got. But what he should do is he should do what I call a mini joint venture sweepstakes, which I created the original sweepstakes, but then Joe Hashi created the joint venture version of this. And then Carly works with us, spf. It was our marketing guru at SPF. She, you know, made a playbook out of this.

Speaker 1: 6:54

But essentially what you do is he would go to the gymnastics studio and say, hey, I want to give you away 10 free one-month memberships to all the moms at the gym and they would fill out a form, apply to win, and then you'd pick 10 people to win and then you would follow up with the rest and get them in with another offer Maybe it's a free week or something like that or get them in the door some way, shape or form, but it's a way for the gymnastics studio to make an offer. And he was telling me so yeah, sometimes I talk to people and they don't want to come up and I was just like, no, we just need to set up consistent plays. And then here's the thing. I think he has a good relationship with the gymnastics studio. Sometimes the best thing you can do is set up some type of a monthly recurring thing where he does something for the gymnastics's you know, free workshops or lectures, whether that's him paying them, whatever it is but for some consistent follow-up and some consistent marketing to that list, because that list is goldmine for him, right, just like the list of a local salon that has a lot of potential appliances is goldmine for you, right? This list of moms in this gymnastics suit is a frigging gold mine. And if he just goes to that list regularly, on a regular basis, then there's a great chance he's going to get a lot more customers, right.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So we talked about that. We also talked about model like and he was asking about, you know, small group. He was another one doing large group and he's like is it time for me to go to small groups. I'm gonna go small group and I was like you know, let's just let's get this thing to a certain amount of members and large group, let's cut it cranking again. So I, I'm this small group guy. A lot of people look at me as the small group person because I've written the book on it, but at the other day I don't think it's like everybody, it's not like I'm like that's the only way to run a business. He's made a lot of money doing large group. So I'm not saying that everyone needs to do small group. And I told him take it hard to the end of the year and and then grow this thing, you know, cause he's at a strong price point for large group. He's done really, it's charging more money on large group than I've ever heard of, which is a good thing, right. So I told him to keep it going. So it's not always about, oh, I got to find this new shiny thing right and pivot to this or go to that. It's not. It's about maximizing what you're currently doing and going to get it cranky. So that was kind of what we talked about and it was some. It was.

Speaker 1: 9:19

He had some really really interesting things going on. He had one good trainer that was there. The kid was really good. The kid was like he was really attentive with his client. He was at the client. He told me that had lost like 40 pounds. I was really impressed with his staff. And one of the questions he asked me was you know how do you pay? You know someone that's been with you, you know you for a long time and stuff like that. And here's kind of like what I told him. I was like here's the deal. It's like if we just make up comp structures for random people at random times, our business is going to be all over the place.

Speaker 1: 9:55

And my advice was is that he's got to look at his business on a pretty much like a map? Yeah, when I say a map, what I mean is you have to look at the roster of your business in terms of the positions you have and lay that out. How many trainers do you have? Do you have a head trainer? Do you have someone in a sales position? And then it's called an organizational chart where you would lay all the positions out on this kind of chart, if you will Hopefully you've seen this before this kind of chart, if you will. Hopefully you've seen this before Right, and I was like, based on where your business is economically, based on how much money the business is, the business can afford to pay certain positions, x amount of dollars.

Speaker 1: 10:39

It all needs to fit within a payroll that's roughly 30 to 40 percent, right, and so if you take all the positions on the team, right, it should equate to around 30 to 40% of the revenue. So, for example, you are doing $10,000 a month in revenue. You have three to four. You have a basic almost think of it like a salary cap. You have a three to $4,000 salary cap for all positions and again, that's not a good example from that, but that's kind of almost like what you have to play with as a whole. And now what you have to do is you have to decide with, again, multiple factors what is the going rate for a position of that size and what's the range? I mean, what's the bottom and the top? It's not only one number. It's not like 60 grand, is it? It's usually a range between 40,000 to 60,000. Like, so, coming up with the bottom number and the top number.

Speaker 1: 11:38

But the big thing, I told them, was create the comp structure for the position, not the person. That's a really, really important piece. And it's not just that, it's also create the job description for the position, not the person. So comp structures, job descriptions made for the position, not the person you create it first, then you put the person in the box, then you put the person in the role. When you do it backwards, you end up having all these random things and then it's very, very hard to be consistent. So his best bet is okay, my business is doing this revenue level. I have this total salary cap to play with. This is the most important position we've got, so it's going to be a higher base salary and then there's a possible bonus structure that could be created. Again, I'm not going to get into this on that podcast. It's a whole separate podcast in general, but that was my big piece of advice to him was to create that comp structure based on the company and what the company can afford to pay and what the company you know is structured around, and that's what I would do with that one. So it was a really great question and the guy that he was asking about it seemed like a great kid and seemed like he's worth every penny. But you just got to be careful with just like randomly throwing money at people and then almost forgetting. You know what you did and what you, what you promised and all things like that. So have it on paper what's the role, what's the job description for the role, what's the comp structure for that role, and then we'll from there a lot of roles in there. So that is my time with Manny Great guy, new member of the SPF mastermind, very excited.

Speaker 1: 13:28

He came to our event as guests and then ended up signing up at the event, which I thought was super cool, and he gave me a nice compliment. He said I've been in other groups before because man, he's older, so he's been around for a while and he's like I've been in other groups before and he's like the community that you've built and how people help each other is like why I joined and so it's like a really cool thing for him to see that and it is a good group I'm really, of all the things that I've built, you know the spf mastermind is one of the things I'm most proud of my entire life super, super awesome group of people. So very excited about that and our next meeting is coming up in November. So if you want to join us I don't know why this idiot's tailgating me. I'm in the slow lane. I'm recording a podcast, bro, don't be tailgating me.

Speaker 1: 14:18

12, 13 W A-hole. I'm in the slow lane and this guy's totally tailgating me. Hold on 13 W. Okay, I'm in the slow lane and this guy is totally tailgating me. Hold on 13W. Okay, I'm exiting at 495. Okay, so I am on my way to my man, tj Lopez.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Tj is such a great guy. I've known TJ for such a long time and I've been working with TJ. Tj is one of my first mastermind members. He's an original founding member of my CEO mastermind and actually is the only one in the group that has never missed a meeting. So we started the meetings in 2019. We meet four times a year. Sometimes the meetings are in California, Sometimes the meetings are in Colorado, sometimes the meetings are in Michigan, sometimes the meetings are in New Jersey. Never once has TJ Lopez missed a meeting four times a year since 2019. Incredible, and it's just a great human being. And he's our SPF gym owner of the year award, so it's very fitting that I'm ending the day with him, super excited to see his gym and his business. He has made some monster gains.

Speaker 1: 15:28

I'll talk about him after I when I record his podcast. Uh, after I talked to him, but so I'll talk about it more. But uh, he's done super, super well in the last several years and just a great human being. So I'm going to TJ, going to amp right now on the way and then going to have some steak dinner with my man, tj and AB Eat good, and then I have my consulting day tomorrow with Anthony Bevilacqua, so fun day.

Speaker 1: 15:59

I'll see if I have an interview to record one more podcast today, but if you're listening to the Long Island Gym Series, all of these have been recorded on the same day in the car. So I apologize. Sometimes it's hard to do my best work in dodging traffic and getting people beeping at me and tailgating me and all of that. So whatever shortcomings that came out of this podcast, please accept my apology in advance, but doing the best I can with the situation, trying to give you everything as fresh as I possibly can. So I'll be. This is awful. I'll see you on the next edition of Long Island Gyms, peace.