What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode. I am just dropped my man Joey off at judo, and I'm in the parking lot recording a podcast for you. So I'm gonna make this one quick so I can go in and watch him. But uh the release of the new book is around the corner, and I've been working really hard to put this together as fast as I possibly can. I pretty much finished the final edits this morning for myself, but one of the things I wanted to share with you as an additional part of the book that I'm putting in there that I think will be very helpful for you is I really wanted so the book is about getting gyms from zero to twenty-five K to 25 to 50K. That's what the purpose of the book. I remember I in the last podcast I talked about the four stages, and this book is pr pretty much the manuscript on helping gyms go from in between that number, the numbers of zero and twenty-five to twenty five to fifty. That's the purpose of the entire thing. So it really has nothing to do with scaling to multiple locations or anything like that. It has everything to do with just making more money at your gym, so you can get past that first stage of you doing everything, right? I'm not gonna get into it too much today, but it's like you're in that stage one, and you're maybe you have a part-time trainer that works for you, but pretty much the business lives and dies with you. And the book is about I get into in the beginning of the book, I get into the tough part about it, right? The tough part about being in that spot where it's totally dependent on you, and it comes with a lot of pressure and stress, and people are there's like an expectation of you for a skill set that you don't have, and things like finance and things like marketing and things like all this stuff, and like you just were a trainer that opened up a gym, and now all of a sudden you have to know these things, and it gets challenging and hard. And then at the end of the day, a lot of people have the financial issues, right? Some people take on debt to open a gym, some people just don't make money in the beginning. So there's the financial stress on top of things, right? And so there it's a lot, right? To go from stage one to stage two is not the easiest thing in the world, and hence that's the premise of the book. And and the that's what the eight profit levers are for that I talked about in the last podcast. If you missed the eight levers, I think I go over them in the last podcast. So what I wanted to do though in the book, in the back of the book, I really had this project, and it's funny, like this is the part of the book that I got most excited about. It's weird. Like writing the book for me was easy, right? It's just like what I do, what I teach and what I help guys do. But this part of the book I got like really excited about. And what I wanted to do is I started thinking about all the people that started with me between the those numbers, between zero and 25k. And because not everyone came to me between zeros, there's some guys that were doing more. I had varsity house, Joe and Dan from Varsity House, they were like doing like just under a million when they started with me. So they weren't, they were a big business already. But a lot of the guys started with me at 5K, 7K, 9K, and some of these guys are doing big numbers now. So I don't look at them as gems that were so small. I look at them, these big guys, like Devin Gage started with me not doing much money. Giancarlo, John Darty, like none of these guys when they started were doing big numbers, and they're doing massive numbers now. And the thing I wanted to start to do was start to think about who in my wheelhouse started at zero, between zero and twenty-five K, and who has now gotten beyond that. And so that's that those are the so I only reached out to those people and I basically asked them to tell their story. So I asked them to send me a screenshot of their story. Now, some of these people I already had testimonials before, but some of the testimonials were from like a long time ago, and I thought it'd be cool to get some of their stories of okay, where am I three, four, five, some of them six years later that they've been working with me. And it's been such a cool project to see these testimonials coming through. And man, I'll tell you what, yes, I get paid to do this, right? This is how I feed my kids, right? But at the end of the day, the amount of joy that I got from reading these testimonials was really amazing, right? I was wow, this is we're making a difference not only in people's businesses, but in people's lives. And I say we, it's just not me, it's the team that I've put together. So when you get the book, you'll be able to read the testimonials and see some of the things that people are saying. Some people were in huge debt, some people were broke, some people were burnt out. So a lot of people, it's funny, a lot of people said ready to quit, which I wasn't like very sure that I was going to read that from some of my top guys. But yes, a lot were ready to quit and throw in the towel. And so, in the last like couple weeks, since I've been getting these testimonials, these have been coming through, and uh it's been just it's been absolutely amazing to read these stories. But my idea so that my idea for you is one, it's hard to fake a screenshot. I can write a testimonial, and there's all kinds of fake crap out there that people make up and with AI and everything like that. And I guess you could make up a screenshot too. Hopefully, people aren't doing that, right? But I like when I screenshot this for people, it it's real, right? Some of these guys are going long and deep. Like some of the text messages are like I have to take five screenshots that the text messages are so long. But it just is going to show people that one, everyone kind of starts out in the crapper, right? Everyone starts out like with not doing well, and that these testimonials I think are going to be a creative big inspiration for people. But my idea for you is that I know that you have members of your gym that probably love you, and maybe they've even given you a testimonial before or something like that. But there's something about these text messages that have been coming through that I think people are like, they're I don't know what it is, but they've really been pouring their hearts out. I told them, and I did tell them. I specifically told them, I was like, hey, I'm doing this book, I'm writing this book, it's for gyms that are doing zero to 25k. That's where you were when you started. I'd love for you to share your story for that. So I think one of the reasons why is people want to share the story to help be inspired by the people. But you can take the same concept at your gym, right? Not just be like, hey, can you give me a testimonial? and they write some kind of crappy thing, but to give them the opportunity to send you either a text message via via your phone number or through Facebook Messenger, as many of the ones that I've gotten have been through Facebook Messenger, and to be able to just reply to your email, reply to your message with a screenshot, and then you can basically take a picture of it, and then you can put this on Instagram, and you can put these in your emails, and you can put these pasted in a book, and these never go away. And what I've been seeing from these stories has just been like man, like crying type stuff. So that's the first thing. So try that exercise where you just hey, just ask them to respond to a test message and then say have them say something great and then screenshot it, and then you can use it all throughout your marketing because it's really real. Like when you screenshot something, it's real. The second thing is, and I did this, and this is really powerful. The second thing I did is I picked three of the top people, and actually, some of them you've heard because they've because I put them out on this podcast as well. But let me give you the kind of the thought process and the strategy behind it. So, what I did is I picked three of the top people that I helped go from zero to twenty-five K to twenty-five to fifty K. And I was like, all right, I want to do long, drawn-out Zoom interviews. So I invited them on Zoom, and I basically had about six questions that I asked, and we they led me through the story. They led me through the pain that they were in, they laid me through the problems that they had, they led me to where they were, and then they painted a picture of where they are now, and then they painted a picture of also what they did to get there, which was of value to you guys when you heard those podcasts to be able to say, all right, how did they do it? What did they do? Which might be useful for some of your clients and in prospects at your gym. They might be useful to say, hey, how did they actually do it? So I did these three Zoom interviews and I just did them on Zoom and we I just transcribed the interviews, the thing on Zoom where you can just push a button and the transcription comes up and you might need to clean it up and use chat to clean it up a little bit. But I literally just took those transcripts and put them in the back of the book. And so now I think most people are gonna read the screenshots and stuff like that, but now if someone wants to go deeper, I they they can go deeper and read these. I call them case studies too, right? And so you can do these case studies where there are basically testimonials on performance-enhancing drugs, right? That's what they are. And the cool part about these case studies is you can use them in entirety, meaning like you could put the whole thing in an email, you could put a whole thing in a book, you put the whole thing wherever on your website. But you also can take little chunks and little pieces of it and pull a piece here and move a piece there. I've started to do that with my emails, is taking little chunks of some of the things that they said and not being able to use the whole entire transcript many times over. It's a concept called unused capacity. And so this is all this stuff I know that if you're listening to this day and you have customers, you probably have customers that really love you, and you probably have customers that would sit down with you and do a deep dive interview. The one thing I'll share that you want to capture is this. This is really important. You do not want them to say how great you are, you do not want to say how awesome the trainers are, the equipment, and all that stuff, and it's a family here, and all thing garbage like that, right? You don't want that. And if you ask the wrong questions, that's what you'll get. And if you ask them to do it, that's probably what you'll get too. So there is gonna be some guidance that you're going to need to give them. And here's the best thing that I can share with you is that what you want to tell them is you're looking for a transformation. That your story of losing 50 pounds or going from being an alcoholic to not whatever their story is, right? Your story is to provide a source of inspiration to the person reading it. They want I want the people to read your story and be inspired to work start working out, to start coming out to my gym, whatever you know you want to tell them, right? And that's really what you got to explain to them is what you're after. You're not after I'm so great. You're after the story, the testimonial, the you almost think like a movie, it started out terrible, and then all of a sudden this happened, and then all of a sudden it's gone, it's gone great. Every movie kind of follows that script. This is what you want for your testimonials. So when you do these interviews, you gotta ask the right questions, right? You gotta do a really good job when you sit down with them in these interviews of pulling out the pain of where they were. Right? One of the one of the one of the testimonials that I had with the gym Jim from Boston, right? They had the pain of just being burnt out and working so much and making no money. It's just like the pain just got really pulled out from what from the questions that I was asking. And so we were able to paint this picture of what life was like before. And then as we go, we start talking about what they did, and there started to be some light at the end of the tunnel, and like things start to happen, and all of a sudden, then there's this boom, this after, which is all right, here's where we are today, and that specific couple in Boston they were talking about going to Spain for West Coast for 19 days and being able to go to Spain and get remarried and like all kinds of crazy after transformational type stuff. That is what you're always after. So even if it's someone giving you a Google review, it's really important for you to explain to your customers and clients what you want. You have to train them, you have to train your customers how to refer you new clients, which I actually talk about in the A Profit Levers book. But you also got to train them how to give you a good testimonial. Do not leave it up to their own devices. Explain to them what a good testimonial is. And personally speaking, I'm gonna give myself a little credit for these testimonials because I have trained my gym gym owners, the guys that are clients of mine. I have trained them how to what a good testimonial looks like, to do that with their members. And they know what it's like. And so when I asked them for a testimonial, what I was reading is exactly what I've been teaching them. So it was really cool to see them actually do it. But I can't wait for you to read some of these stories. This is like legit, some of these guys be in in the tank, right? Really, in the tank. And some of those people struggle for a long time. Some people like we're just starting out and we're at zero. It's been really cool. So I I the so two things, right? One is ask some of your good customers to respond, to text them, and maybe it's a reason. Maybe you're putting together a like, and it doesn't have to be a book. You don't have to be writing a book, but maybe it's just, hey, we're trying to collect some testimonials for our website. Or we're and you and what you can do is you like when I told everyone I'm collecting specific testimonials of people that went from zero to past 25k. You could say to your clients, hey, I know that you lost like over 20 pounds. That's because I'm collecting some I want some specific testimonials of people that have lost that amount of weight or something like that, right? So you can start to give them a little bit of context and tell them why you selected them and ask them to do it, and then ask them literally just to reply to the message and then send it to you, and then you screenshot it, and then you can put it in all these different places. It will be helpful. I did this, and this was another really helpful thing. One guy gave me a really good one, and it was what I did was I used his example, and when I talked to the people, I basically asked them, so hey, here's like an example of one, right? So I'm giving you the behind-the-scenes secrets from that. So I will say, I believe every one of these testimonials are 100% real and from the heart, and no one was bullshitting, and these stories are true and real. But I did ask them to do it. They didn't the most of these screenshots did not come randomly out of the blue. Some did, some did, and some of those I included in there. So I will say some did. But a lot of the ones in the book came from me asking them. And there is nothing wrong with that. It's just like asking for referrals. Like you're going to get more referrals if you ask for it. You will get more testimonials if you ask for it. And I will say this if you follow any Ciaudini's work, the number one law of persuasion is social proof. So, guys, it's like this is big. People are looking for this. They want to see success stories, they want to see people like them having success. Those are two ways to do it. One is get those screenshots, ask them to reply, screenshot it, and then use them all throughout your marketing. That's why I like these screenshots because you can use them everywhere. Your website, your social media, their emails, your Facebook ads. You can even use them in your Facebook ads. And you can even one of the ways I'm going to use it is I'm going to use in my video edits where like I'll be talking, and all of a sudden a screenshot will pop up on the screen over that. So you can use this in so once you have them, you can use them forever too. And then the second one was the interview format, right? And doing a deep dive zoom interview case study type thing that I did and be able to make sure that you're painting the picture of where they were before and where I'm not where they are now. So that is like a little deep dive into what are you looking for out of your customers with in terms of social proof and where to put it and how to use it. And hopefully that gives you a couple different ideas to be able to do it. And then when the book comes out, I yeah, 100% when the book comes out, you should look at this from an instructive point of view, right? Look at listen to this podcast and look at what what I my thought process behind it. Listen to this podcast and then go look at the testimonials. Oh, and I'll be one last thing. This is important. And I'm actually teaching a masterclass on this to my clients uh in the mastermind on in a couple days, and that is no one's going to really read the entire screenshot. You gotta understand that. I don't care if they read the entire screenshot, but in every screenshot and every testimonial you get, there's usually one or two things that stand out that are like boom. And you know, the big one for me, the ones that I pulled out a lot, is I went from X to X, right? And again, most of the people that are gonna read this book are gonna want to make more money, right? And so I want to paint the picture of like where they were from a revenue standpoint. So it's like I was at 5k a month and burnt out and stressed and frustrated, so I added the emotion to it. Today I'm at 60K a month and have more freedom and more cash in my bank account than I never ever had before, right? And out of a big lump paragraph of a testimonial, what you want to do is what I call find the gold. What's the gold that somebody can read? It's like a headline in a newspaper or a headline in a subject line in an email. It's like does it capture their attention? And does that line tell a story right away? Then they do they really not even have to read the thing to get it. Right? That's why before-after pictures are so powerful, right? Because you don't have to read anything, you get it. You see the picture before, you see the picture after, and it's like, yeah, I get it. That person produced helped produce a result for that person, and it was a transformation. Right. And so that's kind of what you want to think about. So that's the last thing is understanding and how to pull the most powerful thing said. That comes with a little bit of a marketing eye, right? You want to think about the problems that people have and things like that. So there's a little bit of skill to that one. But just think about the most game-changing thing they say. You're not gonna pull out the trainers are really nice and put that as a headline at the top. You're not gonna do that. You're gonna find the thing that's gonna be like, oh yeah, I want that. So that is the last piece of it, little bonus piece of advice for you. But every big lump paragraph that you get as a testimonial, there should be one line that you pull out that you bold it and make it in big letters, and you quote it, and you put it at the top of that thing, and you're like, BAM, it stands out, and that's like exactly what you want someone to read. And the goal is that they read that headline, and it's that enticing to them that they read the rest of the story. So that's it. So those are my little mini testimonial, social proof, case study, deep dive masterclass. I didn't think I was gonna go this long today, but I gotta go and see my man Joey throws some people around and do ju judo, not jujitsu. He's doing judo on Mondays. But this book has been an unbelievable project. As I said, the coolest part of the project has been reading these testimonials and doing these things. It's just an absolute, oh man. I it's really it's very humbling to see the lives of people that have changed, and it's not just like more money, right? It's it is more money, but it's like people telling me they've become better fathers, people telling me they've become better husbands, it's like better wives, like it people becoming better human beings. And you know, that that means the most to me, right? I want you guys to make money, I want people to make money, but if my myself and my team can help people become better human beings and they have a happier, better life, shoot. I'll go down easy knowing that that we did a bunch of that in our lifetime. Thank you to all the people that shared their stories. Super grateful to you guys for doing that. It means the world to me to be able to read that stuff, and it is the ultimate currency that I can get from the work that I do. So super grateful, thank you. And if you're listening to this and you want to read the book, it should be coming out soon. I know it's a little teaser and it's not out yet, but it will, you'll know. Trust me, you'll know when it's out, and uh it's it's gonna be out sooner than later. Super excited for the release of the eight profit levers. Stay tuned for that, and I hope you enjoyed and got some insights on how you can get more customers in your gym with social proof. Have an awesome day. Appreciate you. Hey guys, thanks for listening. Don't worry, you don't have to wait for the book to get help. We just launched a new program called Gym Business Accelerator. And this is the program that helps gyms go from zero to 25K to 25 to 50K. And if you are interested, if you got inspired by some of the stories you've heard, by the some of the things I've been saying lately on the podcast, you're in that revenue range of zero to 25k. You want to take it to the next level. Just go ahead and click the link in the show notes because there's some info about our new program, Gym Business Accelerator. We are currently working with about 18 gyms in the program. It is going swimmingly well, and we are seeing some big moves and big changes made. So you don't need to wait for the book to come out. We can start helping you and working with you right away. The program goes for 60 days, and I've really seen some great results from people already. Click that link in the show notes, and we'll see you in there. Peace.