Speaker 1: 0:00

What's up guys? It's Vince Gabriel from the road again. I am driving now. I feel like I'm doing all these podcasts in the car, but I am driving to Providenceoff and he's got an unbelievable gym in New York that I stopped at called BornFit and he joined this kid's young, he's 23 years old and he joined the SPF Mastermind literally after. I think he was only in business for a few months and when he showed up to the first event I think he was doing around $8,000 a month and full disclosure. I don't have direct contact with every client in SPF. We have a team of coaches and everything like that.

Speaker 1: 0:57

And I heard this kid Christoph was doing well, but I had no idea what he was going to tell me the numbers that he was doing. And I walked in and he was training a one-on-one client at the time. It was around two o'clock that I popped in and the client he was training left and we got to talking. I was like, so how are things going? And he's like, oh my God, doing great. And I was like and the gym is small, 900 square feet. It's little, little square box. It's got three racks in there, a dumbbell rack, some cardio stuff, but not just the basics, real simple. It looked like a small version of GFP. He had white walls with black quotes on the wall and stuff like that. It's really cool.

Speaker 1: 1:37

I was like, hey, dude, what are you doing in revenue? He was like $45,000 a month. I was like what? Yeah, 45,000 a month. I'm just like, how long have you been in the group? He's like I joined last July and I'm just like, holy shit, like 45,000, how many members do you have? 110 members, how many staff? He's like oh, I just had to hire two people and he's we're exploding, I want to open up another one. And I was just like, oh my God. I was like I didn't even realize like how good some of these guys are doing. I almost felt like a little embarrassed that I didn't know how well he was doing.

Speaker 1: 2:11

But it was super cool and I was like he joined. He was doing it's funny $8,000 a month. It's not like a weird magic number. It's around the same revenue that John Docherty was doing. He joined. It's around this. What G-Man? John Carlo, who I talk about a lot, and there's a few George McGuire, was doing around 8,000 a month. So there's some of our biggest success stories that were all doing under 10K usually around seven, eight was the number and these guys and this guy did 40, he's doing 45K after 12 months. Some of those other guys I mentioned are doing $150,000 a month. It's like incredible. So if you're listening to this and you're doing 8K a month and you're like thinking well, you don't You're like a couple moves away from exploding.

Speaker 1: 2:57

This kid went from 8 to 45K. I can't imagine how much money this kid's sucking. He's young too. He's 23. I was making at 23 years old. I was making no money at 23 years old. I think I was still in college, but even when I was a trainer like the most money I made as a trainer when I was like 25, 26, $37,000 a year he's making 45K a month. This kid, this punk, is making more money in a month than I was making in an entire year and breaking my back to do it Crazy.

Speaker 1: 3:27

A couple of things I want to shine the light on. This kid was a stage one gym owner. If you haven't followed my stuff for a while, you should pick up a copy of my book, the Four Stages of Fitness Business Success, and I talk a lot about the different stages but at the end of the day, all of us myself, christoph Joe Hashi all of us started in stage one. We started doing no money and we had to break through, and so there's a couple of things if you're listening to this in those early stages. Now, also, this is something to pay attention to if you're opening a new location, I'll never forget Devin Gage. So Devin Gage, who was probably doing less than 7,000 months when he first started with me back in the day, but I taught the four stages, retaught it at one of the mastermind events, and Devin at the time was probably doing like over $100,000 a month at his one gym, but he was opening up these small gyms and he was just launching them and he was like, hey, it was really good for my facility leaders to hear what stage one is like. So when you open up a new gym and it's a small gym, understand that your guy that's running that gym is in this stage one mentality. So what happens is like, even if you're like doing big numbers right now 50, 60, 70 K a month and you go to open up another location, you're going to be back in stage one, and so it's really important that you are refreshed and understand and remember what that's like, because it's probably not you living that life, it's probably someone else and what you need to do as the leader of that is to help that person.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Okay Side, that was a little sidebar, but so what are the things that need to get right? The first thing that needs to be right, and if this is not right, people stay under 10 K or hover between 8 to 12K forever, seemingly. And if they don't get this right, they're screwed. And this is the price. You have to be charging enough money to be able to warrant and make some money and get some separation. Okay, otherwise you're just going to be hanging around in stage one. But the classic I got a hundred members and I'm making 10 K a month. It's just, it's too much work, it's too much like things flying around to make that little money.

Speaker 1: 6:00

And so this kid if we do the math, christoff, if we do the math on him he's doing 45K and he's got 110 members. Average member value is $400 a month. Right on the money, he's charging a substantial amount of money. So he Watch out Vehicle on shoulder ahead. Sorry about that. So he's able. He got price right Now, obviously, I think some of us will take credit for that.

Speaker 1: 6:26

We probably got him to raise his prices. We got him to be able to have the courage to charge that kind of money, because at 23 years old, asking an adult for $400 a month is you got some set of cojones to be able to do that. So that's the first thing is, if you're not charging enough money, you're always going to be able to do that. So that's the first thing is, if you're not charging enough money, you're always going to be playing catch up. You're always going to need to be play this game of financially struggling, right. So you got to get that right Now and to give you some kind of a formula at the end of the day, I'll give you a formula for what you should charge right.

Speaker 1: 7:07

And the formula for what you should charge is I don't like to see people make under $200 per hour in their gym, and so what that means is you can reverse engineer it, because you slew together 100. Because most of the people that are paying trainers 20 to 40 dollars an hour, right, and so let's say, the average is 30. If you have a payroll on 30 and you're making and you're charging 200 and you're making, you're getting 200, you're making money, right. You're making money unless your expenses are at the lawsuit, which most people aren't. So you got that, you got the price right and so this 200, kind of this magic number mark we can charge 50 bucks a person and get four people in it. We can charge 40 bucks a person and get six people in it. So it gives you this little bit of a litmus test to be what you charge.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Now the problem is, this is hard to do with one-on-one. It's easier to do with small group. It's a little harder to do with large group because you do need a good amount of people. So if you're charging $20 a session, you're getting what? Would you need? Five? You need 10 people, so they're not too bad. Actually, to do that with large group, you're charging $20 a person, but I'd rather only find four people than find 10.

Speaker 1: 8:23

But the reality is you have to have some kind of semblance around what you want to make per hour and then you could base your prices accordingly. So for a small group it's going to be anywhere from 40 bucks to 60 bucks a session. If you're doing small group and you're charging 25 bucks a session sorry, you're doing it wrong, so you got to get around that and start charging some more money. So that's the first thing. The first thing that needs to be right is the price. If you get price wrong, you're going to stay at stage one for a pretty good amount of time.

Speaker 1: 8:58

So the second thing is really making sure that your product is good enough. I don't think it needs to be the best world. This kid is 23 years old. He probably doesn't have a ton of experience as a trainer. It's going to get better over time. He's doing well enough to make 45K, but at the end of the day, your product needs to be good enough, right and this is hard for me to say this good enough, right, and this is hard for me to say this, but I do believe that the people that are stuck and have been stuck at this seven, eight, nine K a month mark, they really need to look at the product as the possible thing that is causing that.

Speaker 1: 9:42

And a lot of times we want to go to marketing, we want to go to sales and everything like that, but in the very beginning, in this stage one, I think there should be like this excitement about your business, that they're feeling the energy from you and they're feeling the energy from the other clients there that there's this new business in town that's cool and exciting and people want to talk about it and people should talk about it, and if that doesn't happen, you really lose a lot of this momentum. Right, there should be some momentum that's built up from opening a new business. People love new and I think a lot of people that don't provide a good enough service and product they're not getting, they're not growing organically, they're not getting referrals. Christoph told me that before he joined Mastermind, the way he got to the first AK was getting referrals and he did that pretty quickly. And so I think that's one of the biggest things is that you have to look at the service that you're delivering, the product you're delivering.

Speaker 1: 10:43

I often call it the soup. The soup must be good. I have this friend who's an acupuncturist. He was talking about another friend who was an acupuncturist and we were talking about why this guy wasn't successful and he was just like, yeah, his soup sucks and that means he's a shitty acupuncturist, right. And same thing goes for some gyms, right. And this is not to make anyone feel bad or anything like that, but at the end of the day sometimes you got to take a good look at reality and be like, walk through the gym and be like what's the feeling like in here? It's the pulse, what are the other clients happy and smiling and talking about it? And be like this is great, looking forward to it. And if there's this like dull energy and it's like all right, yeah, it's probably not going to work.

Speaker 1: 11:31

And the very the second thing is you need to be referable. You have to have a good enough product that you are referable and you get some of the organic growth. Now we helped Kristoff with a lot of marketing strategies and things like that some of the organic growth. Now we helped Kristoff with a lot of marketing strategies and things like that, but at the end of the day, he he did it right. He did the work of like providing a product and providing the momentum and providing the active activity in the community and everything like that. So I think there's gotta be some energy that that comes with it.

Speaker 1: 12:02

And the second, the third thing is this in stage one and this is really an important one and christoph probably is far away from this because he's young, but is you have to protect yourself from burnout. You, if you get burned out, the business dies. I think stage one. If I use this basketball analogy, it's like you're like in stage one, you're like LeBron playing with a bunch of middle school kids and if all of a sudden, lebron doesn't show up that day, like that team is going to get crushed. And you in stage one, you're LeBron and you have to protect yourself. If you get burned out. It's not going to go well, and so you have to make sure that your fitness is on point, you have to make sure that your food is on point, that you're managing your stress, because it is a lot. He told me, christoph told me he had someone that was away and he told me he was pulling 16-hour days. I imagine he was doing that when he first started and he very quickly went from stage one to. I wouldn't call him in Revenue-wise he's in stage two, but team-wise he's probably not. So he's getting there.

Speaker 1: 13:11

And again, the way the stages work, it's not like you go and get a certificate in the mail when you go from stage one to stage two. It's like there's parts of your business that stay in stage one, no-transcript. You know, the people that move fast in the very beginning tend to do well, because if you're in stage one for a really long time, it gets really tiring and it starts to take a toll on your health. And if you're older like I was saying before, he's 23, so he's probably got a long runway to not get burned out. But if you're older and you start a gym and you're there every day and you're doing 16 hour days and you have kids at home and a family at home and you're still making 7K a month and not able to pay, that's stressful. That's really hard and stressful and you want to get yourself out of there.

Speaker 1: 14:12

You want to get yourself out of that position as fast as you possibly can, and those are a couple of ways to do it. One is you got to make sure that you're charging the right amount of money. Two is you got to make sure that your product is good enough, that you're getting a lot of referrals, you're active in the community and all of that. People are talking about your business. And then the third thing is you're protecting yourself. You're protecting yourself from yourself, really right, but you are the show. You yourself from yourself, really right, but you are the show. You are the most important piece of this business. If LeBron goes down, we're going to have a tough day.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Hopefully that was inspiring for you and to see someone that went from pretty much 8K to 45K in less than 12 months and really proud of him, really proud of our coaches that did the work with him and did a great job. And there's lots of people having success and lots of people doing well. And don't bite into this oh, no one's doing well in the economy and all this. It's like there's a lot of people doing really well and what you want to do is get inspired by that. That's why I tell this story. You want to be inspired by the success of other people. Not feel worse about yourself because other people are doing well. Get curious about it. Get curious about why someone is succeeding, why this 23-year-old kid goes from 8K to 45K in less than 12 months. What's going on there? And get curious about that. Don't beat yourself up.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Hopefully this was helpful, even even if you're not in stage one or if you're in stage two. Hopefully there's some nuggets in there that you can take from this. But yeah, and if you want to get a copy of my book the four stages I don't think we put it on Amazon, so I don't think you can actually get it on Amazon. So what I'll do is I'm just going to have Leo put my email in the show notes and if you want a copy of the book, I'll send you a copy. I can stick it in the mail too. It's like it's a small book. It's really short. It's like a little pamphlet, almost like, but I think it'll shine the light and be a helpful resource for you to read it and you'll be like all right, I'm in stage one, I'm stage two and basically the premise of the book. It's like all right, what do I need to do to get to the next level? What we're all about as a business is helping you get from wherever, whatever stage you're at, to the next stage that you want to be at. Hopefully this was helpful.

Speaker 1: 16:33

I'm really enjoying these. Hopefully there's not a lot of background noise, but I'm enjoying talking on my phone. It makes the time go by really fast, so I appreciate it. But congrats to you, christoph, a wonderful job. Keep up the great work. And again, if you want a copy of my book called the Four Stages of Fitness Business Success, send me an email, vince at gabrielfitnesscom, and I'll send you one. Peace.