SPEAKER_01: 0:00

What's up, guys? You're about to listen to a recording that I did in partnership with Perform Better, the wonderful people at Perform Better. And I teamed up with Mark Fisher and Rachel Cosgrove, two of my buddies that I speak with on the Perform Better tour. And they had us answer questions based around a recent data report that was put out by a company called Boutique Fitness Solutions. And we talk lead follow-up, we talk retention, we talk conversions, all kinds of cool ideas that that Mark, Rachel, and I gave based on what the data was saying. So a little different flow from the typical podcast that I put out, but I think this will be helpful for you. So enjoy this uh data report conversation with myself, Mark and Rachel. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02: 0:50

Good afternoon, everyone, and and and welcome to the Perform Better webinar series. We're here today with the four great business minds. We got Julian Barnes, who's gonna lead this. Uh, Julian is the uh founder of BFS. The topic today is the path to profitable strength studios, what the data and top coaches reveal. Along with Julian on the panel, we got Mark Fisher from Business for Unicorns. We got Vince Gabriel from uh Gabriel Fitness, and we got Rachel Cosgrove from Results Fitness. Obviously, we got some great minds in here in the fitness business industry. I'm gonna turn it over to Julian and let these let these four four business minds take over from here. Have a good one, guys. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris.

SPEAKER_04: 1:33

And uh thanks to all of you who are listening live and who may be listening to this uh on the recording in the future. As Chris said, my name is Julian Barnes, co-founder and CEO of the BFS Network that is beauty, fitness, and self-care. One of the things that we do is publish annual reports on the state of the industry. And we recently released the BFS Strength Report, which is what we're gonna talk about today. I've asked three of my friends, Mark Fisher, Vince Gabriel, and Rachel Cosgrove, to join us today and talk about the path to profitability for gyms and studios. The way this is gonna work is I'm gonna show a couple of slides between each question, show what the data says from our recent report, and I'm gonna ask Mark, Vince, and Rachel to opine and share their insights on whether they believe the data, and if so, their recommendations for how each of you can achieve the metrics that are shown in the data. Just a little context. First of all, this survey was conducted in the last 12 months of gym and studio owners worldwide, mostly US and Canada, but there are a few offshore. They are overwhelmingly independently owned businesses that are not financed by private equity. So there's no barriers in here, no Soul Cycle, no Solid Core. There may be one or two large groups of uh PE-backed Orange Theory franchises. I think there's one or two. But for the most part, the data reflects individually owned gyms and studios. 71% of the respondents have one location, another 19% have two or three locations. So they're just like most of you who are listening. They started their own gym, maybe they opened a second one, maybe they got friends and family or an SBA loan, but it's not, we're not talking about the big national companies. So, with that context, let's get started. The first question I have for all of you, and let me share my screen, is the beginning of the client journey is of course number of leads per month, and our data revealed that profitable gyms generate more than 50 leads per month. So let me say that again. Profitable gyms generate more than 50 leads per month, and you can see the distinction here between city and suburbs are pretty close, 29 and 33 percent. So, Mark, let's start with you. Is this consistent with your experience from business for unicorns?

SPEAKER_03: 4:14

Generally, I think so. I guess if I can ask one clarifying question, Julian, is this only profitable gyms or are these all the gyms that fill this out?

SPEAKER_04: 4:22

Only profitable. All the data question. Thanks for reminding me. All the data is only for the profitable gyms.

SPEAKER_03: 4:30

Yeah, I mean, I think within reason, obviously the number of leads you need in a given month is going to be a function of how many clients you have. And and one thing I think at some point I'll speak to a little bit, probably your coach to client ratio, because that is going to determine the actual capacity of a given studio. But within reason, yeah, if you say like, you know, 50 leads per month, that's like 12 leads per week. That feels like it's it's hard to grow, I think, if you're doing less than that, once you have tipping point of clients. So, you know, if you have a six-on-one gym, you're gonna max out at, you know, probably 120, 150, maybe. If you have a more large group class boutique concept, obviously back in the heyday, you know, there were orange theories that at times had over a thousand clients. So the amount of lead flow you're gonna need, again, is gonna vary. But I think within reason, yeah, you know, even like a modest small group gym, if you are getting, you know, five leads per week, even if you're converting in a very high percentage, oftentimes it gets hard to outsell attrition, certainly once you're approaching 100, 100 clients.

SPEAKER_04: 5:33

Excellent. Thank you. Rachel, what's you what are your thoughts about this metric?

SPEAKER_00: 5:38

Yes, I think it's definitely on point. I want to clarify that a lead is somebody who has raised their hand and said they're interested in your business. So it doesn't necessarily mean they've walked through the door and they're sitting down with you. They've given you their information, maybe their email, maybe their phone number. And so, you know, I think for a lot of gym owners, sometimes they expect, you know, a lead is somebody who comes walking through their door magically. And so there's a process. And a lead is basically somebody who has given us their information, they've raised their hand and said, hmm, I'm interested in what you do. I want to know more. Doesn't mean they're ready to sign up, doesn't mean they're ready to come through your door. So I think shooting for 50 leads a month, that's gonna be a good number for most, you know, small gyms to be on track to end up with, you know, 10 to 12 new members. So that's, you know, with a whole nurture campaign in effect and taking those 50 leads and eventually getting them through the door and eventually getting them to sit down, eventually converting them, and then making them your member.

SPEAKER_04: 6:32

Okay, great. So then, Vince, we learned from our research that the most effective intro offer was referrals. Is that consistent with your experience and what what you trade what you teach your clients?

SPEAKER_01: 6:48

So we definitely teach our clients to generate referrals. I think an intro offer, I don't know if like the verbiage might be a little skewed, because in my experience, an intro offer could be something, you know, that you put out on Facebook that was, you know, two weeks free or a free trial session or a consultation or something like that.

SPEAKER_04: 7:10

My bad. Let me rephrase the referrals was the most effective lead gen tactic. The question should be what is the most successful intro offer? And so that's what I'm showing here on the slide. So my bad for the question. So these are the various intro offers, and you can see here, surprisingly to me, the first place the first the response with the most the answer with the most responses was other, which means, in my opinion, that there's no one dominant or prevailing responsibility.

SPEAKER_01: 7:49

No, I and I have some thoughts on that. I think that probably the reason is nothing works forever. And I think that their one intro offer that could work for a few months or a few weeks eventually will kind of run its course, and then there needs to be a new intro offer that's created because people people get things get saturated, people get used to things, they see things over and over again. And so I I think the thing, the biggest insight that people can make from from what I saw here is that you need multiple intro offers. And I think that one of the things that people get really confused on is oh, if I have multiple intro offers, I have to change my sales process and change my pricing and change the way I do it. And the reality is you the skill is changing the intro offer, right? Whether that's two weeks free, a free consultation, and it all goes into the same vacuum. It all goes into the same place. So you're not redirecting and recreating your sales process. So I think the best piece of advice here is that people are gonna need to put different wrappers on things. They're gonna need to know, you know, that a two-week free trial will work, a free consultation will work. It's just not gonna probably work forever, and you need to get used to being able to change that wrapper, but keep your sales process consistent so it doesn't mess up your whole operations internally.

SPEAKER_04: 9:12

Great points there. Rachel, as you can see here, the most effective intro offer price was$21 to$50. Is that in line with what you see across your purview?

SPEAKER_00: 9:27

This is gonna depend on what you charge. So, you know, for us, our least expensive membership is$125 bi-weekly. So we our lowest intro offer is$197, like$197. We want to get people to convert. So offering a$21 to$50 intro offer is not gonna get as high of a conversion and it's not gonna get as qualified as a a lead as if you do go with a higher price point. So I think you do have to, you know, one, you can give it a try, the$21 to$50 to see who shows up. And if you're really good at sales, you know, you might be able to get them converted, but you might end up with a lot of people that aren't gonna be qualified or able to, you know, convert to become a part of your gym. And so it's really you got to look at, you know, charging enough that you're gonna get qualified leads that are gonna be able to convert and become a long-term member. And I want to back up on the referrals. I do think it's important that you have some kind of a trial offer for those referrals. I think a lot of people think referrals just happen and you know that it's just part of, you know, people are gonna send me people, but really getting systemized with it and figuring out like a VIP trial offer. So it's still, you know, an intro offer that's a VIP offer that your clients we listen for people to mention somebody, and then our, you know, our trainers know they give them a nice VIP card that, you know, here's a VIP intro for your friend who you mentioned. And then if they if we can get their information, we can reach out. And that way you have that referral engine going because it is going to be one of your most qualified leads as well.

SPEAKER_04: 10:55

So, what's the most effective referral tactic that you've seen?

SPEAKER_00: 11:02

Well, like I mentioned, so listening for your clients to mention somebody. So have you know, giving when your coaches are on the floor, making sure they're listening, because they're the ones who are face to face with the clients. So if your client mentions, oh, I was telling my sister all about this place, and you know, oh, what's her sister's name? Her name's Jenny. Oh, you know, tell me all about what Jenny does. Oh, well, Jenny's been training at this other gym, she's really not happy. Well, we would love to invite Jenny to come join us for a couple of weeks as a VIP member. Since you're a member here, um, we will go ahead and extend her a VIP. So we usually do a free two weeks so they can come in, they can try it out for free. We we only give this to VIP members, you know, we only give out a few, that's very exclusive. It's not just everybody gets one. And then, you know, then if you want to go ahead and give me Jenny's contact information, I can reach out. So someone specific, listening for that specific person, and then really making the client feel special that you're taking care of the client, right? Now we're gifting that client this VIP membership, that then when they leave the gym that day, they're gonna call their sister Jenny and go, hey, guess what? You get to come to the gym with me. I've been wanting you to come. I have a two-week pass ready to go for you. So let's go. You know, so that ends up getting a little more specific than you know, just like, hey, we want referrals.

SPEAKER_04: 12:12

And do in that in that scenario, do you provide any type of incentive to your VIP member?

SPEAKER_00: 12:18

If you it's funny, whenever we've like dangled a carrot for referrals, our clients don't seem to, it doesn't seem to motivate them more. We actually, you know, they like recognition. They let you know, we do put some extra money on their shake account. They we put their name up on a board, like, you know, as long as we're recognizing them, yes, we say thank you. And then if we do have a big referrer, we usually unannounced, we'll get them a gift that's something you know that surprises them to say thank you. So we've done different like referral challenges, like, hey, you were giving away an iPad, or you know, and like our clients can afford their iPad. So they I just feel like they're kind of like, you don't need to give me stuff to bring people in here. Like, if you guys want me to bring people in here, so that's a our own, you know. I don't know, have you guys had that experience? What have you guys seen with referrals? Have you tried different giveaways and had good ex I mean, I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01: 13:08

We I'll go, Mark. We we found stumbled onto something that really worked well. Didn't work very good during COVID, but we I got some guy that gave me a business card once, and the business card was black and metal, and it was like heavy, and I like dropped it on the ground and it like made this clanking noise. And I was like, oh my god, this thing is amazing. And so what we started to do is we got cards made for a free one-month membership. And every time we signed up a new member, we gave them the card. And that we got the cards made with these like little numbers on them. So it's like 001, 002, and they're like, and they're like six or seven bucks a pop. And basically, we kind of had this like conversation with them. We're like, hey, you know, you know, we only give these out to people that are current members, your number 001. We're gonna give this to you. And we we also would ask kind of leading the question with instead of saying, you know, give this to somebody, we say who who's the first person that comes to your mind that would benefit from getting a free month with us. And so I think sometimes the language that you use is is really important, and that question prompts them to actually think about something. And then sometimes you need to take it a step further and be like, oh, well, is it do you have a spouse? Do you have a friend? Do you have a neighbor? I think one of the things about referrals is that this concept I learned from a guy named Dean Jackson is make it easy for your customers to refer. Right. And so when you make it easy, so for the first part, easy is I'm giving them something for free. So now it's like, like Rachel said, like you're giving them a gift. That's not hard to do, right? That's a good thing to do. And you, they, your clients actually look like a cool, fun, nice person for giving them a gift. And the second thing is there's like a thing that they have that they give it to. So it's the whole concept is make it easy for your customers to refer and don't feel like they're like having to sell your business. Almost make them show up like the hero for the referral. So the black metal card at the point of sale, except during COVID, it didn't work during COVID. Um, but the black metal card was and and it's funny because all my uh mastermind clients, like I taught them this, and they all bought metal cards. Like every one of my clients, so they're like, Where do you get those metal cards? Where do you get those metal cards? And they all bought the metal cards, and now they they have there's like a hundred because they bring them back, so you're gonna get it, even if it's expensive, you're gonna get it. I'll tell you one more, I'll tell you one more thing we do do is like if we send it out and they haven't sent it back in, we will send them an email say, Hey, uh, if you didn't find anyone, uh yes, please bring your card back. So a little bit of shaming.

SPEAKER_00: 15:48

Yeah, but and I think you're right, like that at the start of their membership is when they're gonna be most likely to refer. So, you know, we've seen that too, is we have scripts in place so that you know, right away, because that's when they're excited, that's when you know you're brand new, that's when they're telling all their friends about you. So really making it easy at that point.

SPEAKER_04: 16:05

So let's let's go a little further in this because we know that referrals is the most popular legion tactic, and it doesn't require hiring an agency and spending thousands of dollars if you have the right systems in place. So let's go a step further. Rachel just mentioned that it's great to give out that black card at the beginning for a new client, but let's flip it to the person who's your three times a week for the last three or four years person. And that person, everyone in her life knows she goes to your gym three times a week for the last five years. And she knows that you're looking for new clients, but it's not top of mind for her. What can you do, Mark, or anyone else, to take the people who who've been paying you, who've been committed to you for years, who are most likely the health and wellness expert in their chat group? Like everyone goes to them for health and wellness advice. How can you incentivize that person to bring her friends to your clubs?

SPEAKER_03: 17:14

Yeah, I I I kind of think about the the when I think about referral offers, part of what I think makes them impactful is I think in marketing, you have inbound approaches and outbound approaches, right? So, like, like very briefly, they're the things that the prospect does when they want a gym, right? And it's gonna be two things. They're gonna search online, Google, Google Maps, or a chat bot, or they're gonna ask a friend. So a referral can be useful. And I often call that that's like the phishing net, right? So a phishing net is some sort of evergreen, always available, obvious first thing to make it easy for the client to refer, right? That may or may not include an incentive for the client's friend. Usually does. Maybe it includes an incentive for the client, but I think to Rachel's like very good point, you know, like people like they can probably afford it. It's more about just like acknowledging and giving them a thank you, maybe, than about like incentivizing new behavior because of the action. On the other hand, we're thinking about this like long-term client, right? Because ideally, we're talking about the evergreen referral offer, we're training our clients on that, right? We're talking, and you can decide. Maybe it's like typically it might be point of sale, it might be, you know, every six months you just do a blast to all clients who they remember it exists. Potentially, you build this in if you have any sort of goal review session. But if we really want to like shake the lead fruit from the lead tree, so we have this typical client that's been around for three years. I think when I think about marketing outbound stuff, I think of that as like fishing polls, right? And there's a number of things you could do there. You could run paid ads, you could do business partnerships, you could just go talk to people one-on-one on the street. But the referrals are interesting because you have a referral-inbound approach where the trunk the clients know what to say. If a friend is like, oh, I'm I'm thinking about a gym. Do you like that gym? Oh, yeah, it's this thing. But the phishing pole version would be some sort of time-sensitive offer that is leveraging some kind of urgency and or scarcity. That can look like different things in different models, but in general, that might be something like a bring-ab-buddy week, right? Which is like usually not available all the time. It might be like for next week only. Your friends can come train unlimited times for free. Perhaps it is a, you know, the holiday one. Vince, I think I heard this one from you for some sort of like holiday thing where maybe you do like, because we do the black card version, the black card in our gym, New Jersey. And usually it's like you have to claim by the end of December and you have to start by whatever, January 19th, right? So ideally we're driving some action by something that's not usually available, which gives it an element of time sensitivity. I think if you have a bigger gym, again, I might not do this in a smaller gym, but if you have a very large class-based concept and you got a lot of bandwidth, you could do a more robust give to get. So that might be like for the month of whatever, we're, you know, we're gonna award points for reviews and for bringing in leads and for posting on Instagram end to end to end. And then you do a raffle and you give away like a Yeti cooler or whatever. Because if you do the math of it, that actually can make sense. The cost per acquisition can make it worth your while. I think the only thing about the give to get I caution to people listening, is like I don't usually like that for smaller gyms, just because it's like a lot of work and it'd just be easier, just like run a big bring a money once in a while, do like some sort of once-in-a-while free month for a friend thing. That's that tends to be like how I think about it. So I'll pull up there. But yeah, that's how I think about how you could drive somebody that's been a member for a long time and take action if the regular appeals have not proved to have them do something.

SPEAKER_04: 20:29

Yeah. What do you think? What do you think, Rachel?

SPEAKER_00: 20:33

I would our biggest influx of referrals from longtime members is when we do we call it S T I P T, something to invite people to. So twice a year, drop two sizes, kickoff, you know, throw a big event and invite. We're, you know, we're gonna be doing this seminar all about how to drop two sizes in eight weeks. Bring your friends, it's free. And so then clients are like, hey, I've been telling you about my gym for the last three years. This is where I go, come with me to this seminar on Thursday night. And then they bring their friends. So that's where we've found the biggest influx of referrals from longtime members and also past members show up, you know, like if they haven't been in in a while and they're like, it's just an easy way for them to show up, hang out, hear, you know, the latest updates of what we're teaching and what we're doing. And then, of course, you know, there's a sales pitch at the end of the seminar, and uh, we get everybody signed up, and it tends to be a big success. So definitely if you haven't, you know, done some kind of a seminar or kickoff or live event, I think that's one of the easiest ways to get people to bring people to you.

SPEAKER_04: 21:33

And what were those initials again? The acronym?

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

S S-T-I-P-T, something to invite people to.

SPEAKER_04: 21:42

Vince, you want to add something?

SPEAKER_01: 21:44

Yeah, that's great, Rachel. I always learn something from you, so thank you. I I think that uh I'll go with more of a quick mindset tactic and then a one tactical thing. Most people get referrals by accident. And I think that's the thing that kind of people sit and wait for referrals, and they happen, and they will happen. If you do a good job, they will happen. But since we all know that referrals are the best customers, right? Like, you know, by far, like it's like we're all take a referral over a paid ad client like any day of the week. And so recognizing that this is a very good way to grow your gym. Now, how do we strategically think about how to make this happen more often? Right. That's the mindset shift of how do we go from accidental, right? It happened by accident, to orchestrating the process. And Mark talked, said some great things. Rachel also said some great things. I'll share one that was, I thought, the stupidest idea that we've ever had. We had created this thing called March Madness, and it's based on the March basketball tournament, like of all things. And I had nothing to do with coming up with this idea. It was all my staff, and they were like, we're gonna do something march madness, and it was all about an internal driving challenge. We have there was zero external marketing to get people in, and our customer and our current clients they got involved. But what we made is that it was like based on a point system thing. So they got points for certain things, and then there was prizes at the end. And one of the things they got a ton of points for was sending referrals, and this was the most referrals we got in a 30-day period than we've ever gotten before. And it was because people are competing and they got points for certain things. They don't care, like Rachel said, they don't care if like you know, give them an iPad or stuff like that. But when you gamify something and they can win and they can get points for it, and they didn't even win like cash or like I think I don't remember what the prizes were. But creating these, what is it, S T I P T, like S T I P T, but creating these these events, these very orchestrated systems within your business on a regular basis. And here's the last thing I'll say if it works, do it again. Don't not do it again. If it works, you put it on your calendar and you rinse and repeat. And that's the thing of like what you're building is a system. You're building these systems and processes inside of your business so you don't have to create the new thing every month. It's just like if it worked on Valentine's Day, do it bring a friend week on Valentine's Day, and every Valentine's Day, you do a bring a friend week.

SPEAKER_04: 24:26

And do it for Mother's Day and do it for the holidays and continue until it stops working. All right. So, with all those great ideas, now you guys, your gyms are flooded with first-time visits. We asked in the survey the average number of first-time visits per month. And again, as a reminder, these are profitable studios divided by city and suburbs. Dark blue is city and the peach is suburbs. Our data reveal that the studios and gyms in in cities, about 29% of them have 11 to 30 first-time visits per month, and about 31% in the suburbs. So let's just call it 30% each. 11 to 30 first-time visits per month at a profitable gym or strength studio. Mark, is this consistent with your experience? Number of first-time visits per month for a profitable gym.

SPEAKER_03: 25:27

Uh, I think so. Yeah, I think so. And again, it's hard because at the risk of being a broken record, you have to just keep zooming out to what is the coach-de-client ratio, what is the max capacity for that gym, how many clients do we have now, and then how many clients do we want. But yeah, within reason, you know, it it I would also note the first-time visit for many strength training gyms, probably a lot of the gyms that Rachel and Vince and I work with, oftentimes that's gonna be some sort of sales conversation, right? It's gonna be a strategy session or a starting point or a no-sweat intro, or choose the euphemism of your choice for some sort of sales conversation, which could be after they bought a maybe low-priced trial, or it could be we're gonna either sell a trial or potentially straight to membership. Having said that, I think if there are larger class-based strength studios, uh, you know, I think again of like the Orange Theories of the world, oftentimes in the boutique class world, the first visit is a class. So rather than even having like a quick phone call to set up a proper sit-down sales conversation, they will often, not always, but they will often book a free class or maybe a buy one, get one free, or a three-pack is is very common in the boutique fitness space. They will then book the class on their own. So the first visit is gonna vary differently. And of course, again, if you are trying to go from 80 clients to 90 clients, that's gonna be very different volume you need than if you're trying to go from say 600 clients to 700 clients.

SPEAKER_04: 26:57

Makes a lot of sense, Rachel. Are those?

SPEAKER_00: 27:00

Yeah, so we Yeah. So looking at data, like we were talking earlier about the 50 leads. So say you're shooting for that 40 to 50 lead number, we want to see about half those people show up in your door. So if you're not getting half those people to show up in your door, then you do want to work on your phone script, work on you know, your nurture campaign, work on why aren't we getting these people to show up in our door? So I think if we're getting 50 leads, people who give us their name, their phone number, email, hopefully, then if we can get 25 of those people to show up in our door, that's gonna be a good number to shoot for.

SPEAKER_04: 27:33

Then less convenient.

SPEAKER_00: 27:34

And it is a free strategy session too. Yeah, same as like Mark said, it's not they're not joining right away. So, you know, these are 25 people who make an appointment to come in and talk about what we do.

SPEAKER_04: 27:44

Okay, and so once they walk in the door, then the question becomes what percentage are those? Well, this is what you were just talking about. So more than 30 profitable gyms and studios are converting more than 30% of those leads to show. And you can see here in the city it's 46%, in the suburbs, it's 56%. So as you just said, 25 to 50, suburbs are doing that at a higher rate. Gyms in the suburbs are doing that at a higher rate.

SPEAKER_00: 28:19

And we define Yeah, I'd say 60% is low for a gym of like a gym like ours. Like if you have your sales process in place, you should be converting. So of those 25 people that show up, 60 to 70 percent should definitely be happening to get converted to become a member.

SPEAKER_04: 28:37

So clarification, we didn't ask another option above 30% in the first survey, but we have added that in the current survey. So it doesn't mean that they're not doing full the highest, the highest possible response was more than 30%.

SPEAKER_03: 28:51

But next can I ask just one clear clarification, Julian? So this I'm reading this as conversion rate of leads to first-time visitors, right? So this is for top of funnel leads to who comes into either first class or uh okay. Is that I just want to show I'm reading this properly. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 29:07

So this is like the 50% number I was throwing out.

SPEAKER_01: 29:10

So it's not a part, it's just who showed up. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 29:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:14

There are two I get what you're saying, Rachel.

SPEAKER_04: 29:17

Yeah, we have two conversions. We actually think that there are three conversions that happen. Right. My question is what which conversion rate are you referring to?

SPEAKER_00: 29:29

Yeah, because you even want to track like people that book an appointment and then people who show up. Because you might get, you know, a large percentage booking appointments, but then if you're not following up and making sure they're gonna be there, or if they're not qualified, which we want to back up and go, where'd we get these people from? You know, then you know they're not gonna show up in in your door.

SPEAKER_04: 29:48

So let me ask a broader question and then you guys can run with it. We think of conversion, or in this survey, we reported conversion in two ways. Conversion number one was lead. From lead to they walk in the door, whatever you want to call it. From lead to walk in the door is conversion number one. Conversion number two, they walked in the door, they took a class or they had a consult and they pulled out their credit card and made a second purchase. We say second purchase, not necessarily a membership. Somebody may go from the intro offer to a class pack, not necessarily a membership. And let me back up. We actually didn't ask about membership. We use the phrase recurring payment because we don't really care if it's a class pack or a membership. I think what's important for the gym owner is the recurring payment. And so somebody could come in, walk in your gym, purchase an intro offer, the two for 30, they go through those two classes, they could come back and make a second purchase. Maybe they buy a five-pack or a 10-pack, but it's not recurring. It's still a second purchase. Our report said that the conversion rate from lead to show is 30% at profitable gems. The conversion rate from show to next purchase, whatever that is, was also 30%. That's what our data says. What does your experience say, Vince?

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

The original 30% is accurate from what we see. They show up to the door for whatever. So that is consistent. Our it the second piece seems low. For example, when someone, you know, most of our guys are doing a you know a one-on-one consultation, selling them into a high-level small group membership, we're seeing much higher conversion rates than 30%. You kind of what Rachel was saying, 70 to 80 percent is what we're seeing. A lot of to a lot of people have gone from, and this is kind of an important thing, there was a while there where everyone was going to 12-month memberships, right? And then there was this process where everyone was doing a 30-day trial, and it was, and I did this too, it was consultation to 30-day trial, and then after the 30-day trial, you sell a 12-month membership. Where the seems to be most people are going is a month-to-month, not most people, but a lot, a month-to-month membership where they show up to a consultation and now we're just selling them direct to a month-to-month membership. And that's making conversion rates go higher because it is less of a commitment. It's kind of hard for someone to commit to a 12-month thing right off the bat, those conversion rates were lower. So uh to answer your question, 30% on point, the next 30% seems very low from what I'm seeing. We're seeing closer to 80% committing to a membership, a month-to-month membership right from consult free.

SPEAKER_00: 33:02

And so are you paying are you charging for the initial consult?

SPEAKER_01: 33:06

No, no, it's a free consultation.

SPEAKER_00: 33:08

Okay, yeah, us either. I was just curious.

SPEAKER_04: 33:10

Yeah. So this might be one of the more important questions we asked today. What do you what do you recommend to your clients that they do to get that 30% conversion rate from show from lead to show? And to get the 80%, like what are the specific tactics that you recommend in their sales funnel to actually get the first 30 and the second 80 that you recommend? Anyone? How do how do we actually what's in the sales funnel to get the conversion rate?

SPEAKER_01: 33:45

Yeah, so I I have a small group mastermind called the CEO mastermind, and they show up every quarter, and we have every ounce of data they could possibly have, they bring it to the meeting. And this is one of the numbers that's off the most. And every person that I have seen that has a garbage conversion rate from lead to show, we do what what ruthless thing I'm about to tell you is we sh put them on the phone in the middle of a group, you know, with their gym with their colleagues and gym owners. It's like, you know, getting in there naked and we have them do a trial, right? And we're we're listening to how they're closing on the phone. And every time someone with a low conversion rate is absolutely awful on the phone. And I think that we can talk about, you know, all the different tactics and text message reminders and and and and we can show up like the hospital and make sure everyone knows and they get a thousand texts. If the conversation is crap, they're not it's really not gonna show up. So that's like I I think we tend to put the cart before the horse with lead with lead conversion. It's not it's not about the automations and the thing, it's about the quality of the conversation that people are having. And here's the biggest tip I'll give it's just it's it's gotta be about them. It's it's gotta be about the person and asking questions and having a not a script that you read word for word, but a process that you follow and you know what you're gonna ask and you're gonna listen more than you talk. That is really what we see is the the the improvement of the conversation is what will drive the conversion the most secondary is speed to lead, and I'll let you guys continue on that one. Who wants to talk about speed to lead?

SPEAKER_04: 35:34

Yeah, I mean before you do. Let me let me in interject. Uh last week I was on a flight to Chicago and I sat next to a pilot who was 20 years in the army, and he mentioned that the army trains their pilots on this very simple philosophy speed is life. That's what the army teaches their pilots. Whatever scenario they encounter, turbulence, takeoff, they need they're trained to make a decision immediately. Speed is life. So we say speed to lead, and the army's teaching speed is life. So, Mark, what is your speed to life recommendation for gym owners?

SPEAKER_03: 36:14

Yeah, I mean, listen, within reason, you know, everybody says that maybe Apocryphall possibly made up stat that it's something like it's like 85 times less likely if you don't call than the first five minutes. And of course, every gym owner in the world is like, but I don't have time. And also they opt in at two in the morning. So what do I do? So, you know, it's not a perfect world, but yeah, within reason, we want to call people immediately. I think this is always a best practice, but I think two other points. First of all, if you're doing any kind of paid ad, it gets all the more important because a lot of times they're literally just gonna forget, right? If they're just scrolling through the phone, a lot of times people opt in. A lot of owners get very frustrated with a lot of digital ad agencies because they'll say, Yeah, I'm calling the people, but they never opted in. They never heard of us. Listen, I I think I understand that that is like a frustrating thing, but in practice, a lot of times we just didn't get back to them fast enough, right? Now, that's not to say that that's a bad thing to do, regardless. If you have a very hot referred lead, still good idea, call them as soon as you can. But you could make the argument that particularly the better you are at marketing and just the sheer volume of colder leads you're getting, the more important is to try to get them right away. I think the other thing that is interesting is this whole, you know, some people are kind of reluctant to pick up phones these days, right? So like I think that's another thing, too, that makes this like a little bit complicated is now the world I move in, Vince, I know you move in this world too, and Rachel, I suspect too. It's interesting because people are older, if they're older than 40, older than 50, they're they're almost going to want to talk on the phone first, right? Uh, I'd make like a little space. Again, if you have boutique studios listening, you might have a different funnel, which might work, right? It might be you're just driving them right to the class. You could even, you could even try to have them book a strategy session without talking to someone. I think what what I have seen, and I'm pretty sure Vince and Rachel backed me up on this, I think to Vince's point, the challenge is if we just can't take a minute to help them get clear on why this matters and sort of mine around until we get them to acknowledge there's like an emotional reason they reached out, the show rates are just not going to be as great. So, again, it's not a bad game to play, right? You can play a, I think, a higher volume game where not in a negative way, but maybe it's like a little bit more like transactional, and we're just volume and we're just trying to get them to take some workouts. Again, that again, depending on the the model you have, I think that can work. Uh, at this point in my career, I tend to prefer more of like a small group, slightly more premium priced, slightly older, slightly more high-touch model. Because yeah, I would just like double-click on on Vince's point that unless we get to some underlying reason about why this matters to them, you'll find everything else, right down to retention, is not going to be as successful, right? Because they're not as bought into how this is going to impact their life.

SPEAKER_04: 38:57

So I want to dig into what you and Vince both said. Vince, are you are you recommending to your clients that they have these closing conversations on the phone or on site at their gym? Because you said you would have your if somebody at your mastermind was a low performer, you'd have them get the call and you'd listen to their their phone game, and their phone game was pretty weak, is what I thought I heard you say. Yeah. Do most of your of your clients have these sales calls on the phone or in person at their gym?

SPEAKER_01: 39:40

So usually the setting is done on the phone. Okay. That's kind of that 30% that we were talking about. Okay, I kind of consider that almost a set, right? That they are either through text message, I prefer on the phone, and Mark made a good point of like pick up the phone and call. And I really don't think enough people do that. But that 30% that we were talking about earlier, I consider that a set. And that's typically done either through text message or on the phone. The 80%, the knee-to-knee selling that I know Rachel does, or the one-on-one consultation to sell them a membership, that would be in person. When I was talking about the guys in the group, we I just want to be clear, we we created like a mock thing where they would go in the other room and we would listen to the phone call, and it was it's brutal, it's absolutely brutal. But if they can do it in that environment, they can do it in any environment, right?

SPEAKER_04: 40:34

That phone call was to set the appointment, right?

SPEAKER_01: 40:37

That yes, exactly. That the phone call was to set the appointment. Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 40:41

So we have our first question is what is a great question to ask and drive the conversation with the lead?

SPEAKER_01: 40:51

Oh, I yeah, I'll I'll give my absolute favorite question, and I want to give credit to where creditors do, the great Dan Sullivan. I know you guys have followed him, but it's it's called, and I think it can be asked in the set, I think it can be asked in the consultation. I actually asked the same question both times, and the number one response you'll get from this question is wow, that's a really great question. So here's the question. If we were having this conversation one year from today, and you were looking back on that year, what has to have happened with your health and fitness for you to feel happy with your progress? Like, that's the question. Like, memorize that question. I learned that question a decade ago. I have it baked into my mind, I have it word for word memorized. I believe every salesperson should have it memorized. Because the most important thing about a sale is we're trying to get people to from a current situation to where they want to be. If we don't know where they want to be, it's really, really hard to paint the picture for how they're gonna get there. Right. And so that question gets us to help them describe, and we're guiding them to help them describe where they want to be. And we're not just gonna say in one month, right? Because we want this to be a long-term thing. We want health and we want to educate them on this is a process, this is not this. Oh, we're gonna help you drop, you know, 10 pounds. So that's why I like 12 months. So that's the my favorite question to ask in either a set or close.

SPEAKER_04: 42:30

Excellent. Rachel, same question to you. Something that you recommend a gym owner say to convert the lead to show.

SPEAKER_00: 42:41

So I think I think we're all on the same page with taking our time. One-on-one appointment, we do spend a full hour with a potential client. So when they come in to sit down with us, really listening to them, like Vince already said. Part of that listening to them is digging deeper. So asking why. Ask, you know, they say, I want to drop 10 pounds. Don't just let that be the end of the conversation. Instead, ask, why do you want to drop 10 pounds? I want to, you know, well, I have a trip planned for Europe this year with my family. Okay, now let's talk about that trip to Europe. So now we can start to get really into the deeper conversation that I really care about and, you know, really want to hear what's going to motivate this person to join the gym, come to the gym, be consistent. So asking why, like three times. So, you know, just keep asking why. And why do you want to, you know, why do you want to feel that way when you go to Europe with your family? Why would that be important? Well, I don't want to not be able to experience all the things with my family that I could experience, right? I mean, that's where we get into these deep conversations where they're like, you know, they really feel like, you know what, this is gonna change my life. And that's what we're doing, we're changing their life. And I think if people walk away from your sales table, we didn't show them enough value, right? We didn't, and so we have to figure out what's valuable to them. Like if we don't know what's valuable to them, how do we show them that we can provide that value, right? So take your time. I think that's like my biggest. I think a lot of us are in a rush, we're hurt, we don't have time. Uh, we want to do a quick phone call. I want to do, you know, like just like take a breath for a minute, sit down. Because if you start that client on the right foot, like Mark was saying, like we're we're big on, I would rather have less clients sign up each month that are highly qualified, that are really good fits for our culture and our community, that are gonna refer us a ton of people and that are gonna be with us for 20 to 25 years, like a lot of our clients have. And that's how you build a long-term sustainable company is by starting it off with really taking your time and listening to that person and then showing them you understand what's valuable to them and that that's what you're gonna help them with.

SPEAKER_04: 44:41

Excellent. Uh Vince, we have two people who have asked you to repeat the question that you learned from Dan Sullivan slowly.

SPEAKER_01: 44:50

If we were having if we were having this conversation one year from today and you were looking back on that year, what has to have happened with your health and fitness for you to feel happy with your progress?

SPEAKER_04: 45:08

Excellent, thank you. Mark, did you want to go back and answer the question of what do you recommend a gym owner says to the lead in that setting conversation to get them to show up? Do you have anything different you want to add?

SPEAKER_03: 45:23

No. No, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's that's uh well covered. I would yeah. Yes, yes, Ann, I agree. Strongly agree.

SPEAKER_04: 45:30

Yes, Anne. We're gonna go back to the uh conversion question for a second because we have a question from the audience. If 60 to 70 percent is the conversion rate, and Vince was saying 80 is what he's expecting. What is the typical attrition rate at some facilities that have limited capacity? Just curious, how would you manage all the new clients without hiring more staff? Mark?

SPEAKER_03: 46:02

Yeah, I mean, again, it depends on the the volume you're doing here, but for contacts, the gym I have in New Jersey is you know, two and a half people. And yeah, I mean, it's I I think you might we be so lucky to have like so many millions of clients that that's presenting an issue. I guess maybe you can ask the question for me one more time, Julian, just to make sure I'm answering it.

unknown: 46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 46:22

There's concerns about capacity, perhaps.

SPEAKER_04: 46:24

Essentially, the qu the question is what's the attrition rate? The assumption is if you're converting a lot of people at a 60 to 70 percent rate, you're gonna have more people than you have space for.

SPEAKER_00: 46:35

But I think you're already like if you're keeping people, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 46:38

Yeah. Uh yeah, that's a uh I I think uh I'll be happy. We'll we'll all be happy to help you when that becomes a problem. Yeah, the good news, bad news is at a certain point, it's going to be hard to outsell attrition uh for two reasons. Number one, you know, again, even in your massive, larger model within reason at a certain point, you just do start to run out of capacity. You begin to hit these invisible bounds during which people are terminating because they can't get in. The other way you can reach capacity is depending on how many top funnel leads you can get and your throughput to new members, you will not be able to outsell attrition, right? Because if you have uh, you know, 100 clients and you're retaining it, let's call it 5%, you need five clients just to stand still. If you have, and I know this isn't typical, but just to you know, follow us out, if you have a thousand clients, even at 5%, you're gonna need 50 clients just to stand still. Not only that, there will tend to be a little bit of law of gravity all the way down, right? So what do I mean by that? Well, if you have 50 clients and your goal is to grow by five clients in a month, and let's say at current, you're converting at, let's say, a 25% throughput, right? Okay, so let's say lead to new member. That's I think we've been, you know, I think Julian, you're 30 and 30 is 9%. Uh, I agree, it's maybe a little bit low, though. Again, in the boutique fitness space, that you know, that could happen if you're playing more volume game. You know, typically I see 10 to 25% throughput. You can go on the higher side if you're very good at marketing, if your market is unsophisticated, and if you're not relying heavily on paid ads. Uh, if you're not as good, if you're if you have a massive paid ad strategy, you're very good at marketing, you're driving a lot of cold leads. And if you're in a sophisticated market, you're gonna see that that number is a little bit lower, right? There are certain markets in in America, some of you listening might be lucky, where right now it's, you know, you still it still feels like people are like, whoa, somebody they called me right away, right? I've lived in New York and New Jersey. I always say it's like trying to pet a deer when you're trying to contact a paid ad. It's like they're they're willing to do it, but you know, they're just getting marketed so hard all the time. So to go back to this question, okay, well, let's just say at 50 clients to add five clients per month, right now you need 20 leads and you're at 5% retention, okay, or 5% attrition. Well, if you go up to say 150 clients, first of all, it's gonna be hard to keep the exact same retention all the way up. You want to, but invariably there's gonna be a little bit of gravity drag. Not only that, but you are often gonna be less efficient with the leads, right? Because now if you're looking to add five clients, at a certain point, or I should say rather, if you need to keep selling more and more members to outsell attrition, not only you might not need four times as many leads as you need members. I just told you, sometimes you need like eight to ten times as many leads as you need members, right? And again, the the there's these strange scaling laws in gyms that are non-intuitive. I'm sure Vince and Rachel can empathize with me. You know, a lot of gym owners, and I love you so much. This might be some of you listening. You're like, I sell 100%. All I need is more leads. I get three leads every month, and you know, two out of three of them, almost three, they almost always sign up. Just get them in front of me. Well, that's true, but if if you're only getting two to three leads per month, this means this is an individual that has navigated a digital gauntlet to find you in the first place, and they're coming in, throwing their credit card at you, begging to start. The the rules will start to change if you have a very sophisticated marketing strategy, because at a certain point, there will be some uh change of the quality will denature a little bit as your quantity scales up. I think that's to be expected and is okay. But I say all that to say that that's why in practice, you usually don't have to worry about running out of capacity. And again, by the way, there are people that that do, right? There are gyms in America that hit capacity. And at that point, then you just start to have this interesting lifestyle conversation around, okay, well, what's next? You know, I've been sniffing the house for what do you want now, right? Do we want more locations? Do you want to like let this rip and scale down your hours a little bit and hang out with your family? So in practice, yeah, I appreciate this question. And I'm sad to say, usually that's not like a real issue.

SPEAKER_04: 50:47

But it is a perfect segue for the the monthly churn data that we see here. And our report indicated that the majority of profitable studios and gyms, regardless of whether they're in the city or the suburb, the majority of them are maintaining less than 5% churn rate. Rachel, is that what you see at at the gyms that you coach and advise?

SPEAKER_00: 51:10

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's hard to keep up with anything over 5%. So we try to shoot for under 3%. So, like Mark was saying, you know, depending on how big your gym is and how many, like we have 240 members, so shooting for under 3% means we need seven new clients to keep up, right? To to keep our 240, right? So I think depending on where you're at, right, that this is going to be harder or easier. But I think shooting for under that 5% to to remain profitable and not feel like, I mean, a lot of times what we've had is gyms who have done different programs where they get an influx of all these new members because it was really low priced, you know, huge promotion that they brought in all these people, but they're not keeping people. And so everybody's just coming in and then they're leaving, coming in and then they're leaving. And that's so much more work to constantly have to get new people in the door than it is to, you know, work on your services, work on keeping people. So if you are losing more than 5%, I would fix that before I would worry about you know the marketing piece of it. Because, you know, if you work on just the marketing and the people are, you know, going out the door, it's gonna, you're never gonna be able to catch up.

SPEAKER_04: 52:20

Vince, you want to add anything to the churn conversation?

SPEAKER_01: 52:24

I'll I'll just say that uh I totally agree with what Rachel and Mark just said. And the the only guarantee in business is you won't keep all your customers. Like you can make all your your gym free and you could pay people to come to your gym, and you're still gonna have a churn rate. So some of this is a lot of this is out of your hands. And I think a lot of people beat their head against the wall of, oh my God, I lost a client last month, and you know, they're taking it very, very emotionally. So I think some of this is managing the expectations of like you are going to lose people every month, guaranteed, like almost guaranteed. There probably have been months where you've lost zero people, but for the most of us, we've lost, you know, a small number. So I think it's managing the expectations, but I agree with Rachel, like it's really well over 5%, it gets tough. Like none of us are as good at marketing and sales as we need to be to be able to outpace a 10% attrition rate. And we don't want to. We like we don't want to. Everyone on this call probably doesn't want to play that game because one of the differentiators between our company, because what are what we you said in the very beginning of this call, privately owned companies, right? That mom and there were mom and pop shops. All of us here are mom and pop shops, and we survive on good culture, on good community. Like that is what makes our business different than a lot of these, you know, you know, turn and burn type of facilities. So you have to protect that. That's one of your most important assets. So if your insurance is above 5%, that that is something to fix immediately.

SPEAKER_04: 54:04

So, Vince, you just gave me the opportunity for my first question off the board that you guys are not prepared for, but I know Mark is prepared for this. You just talked about your audience, your clients, the people listening are owners of mom and pop businesses. They started because they loved movement and working with people and training people. You can go to Perform Better seminars and listen to the Mike Boyles of the world talk about the mechanics of your craft, or you could go listen to the three of you talk about the business of running a business. How does the individual gym owner manage both? Becoming proficient expert in delivering your personal training services and becoming proficient at the business of running a gym in 24 hours. How do you guys manage that? What do you recommend for the gym owner struggling to be proficient in both?

SPEAKER_00: 55:08

I would recommend becoming a really good coach first before you open your business. I think it is very hard to become very become the best at both at the same time. I think if you if you are not a great coach, if you you know don't have those sket that skill set yet, it's probably not a good idea to jump and open your own gym right away. Find a place that you you know that you can work, that you can you know hone that skill. You can learn all the things about being a good coach. If that's what you're passionate about. If you want to be, you know, if if you want to coach and that wants you want that to be a part of your like like us, we're coaches, Alan, you know, we're still on the floor coaching. We love it. It's why we own a gym. And so I we wouldn't give that up. You know, I'm still running the drop two sizes meetings, like I it's because I want to, because I love it. So if that's who you are, if that's you know, you want to coach where, you know, I know you know other people want to be the business owner. And if you want to be the business owner, find yourself a good coach to be your partner so that they can be the one that's you know that's honing that skill while you're honing your business owner skills. I think it would be hard to try to do both at the same time.

SPEAKER_04: 56:14

There's a key word you just said there, find a partner. Mark?

SPEAKER_00: 56:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 56:20

You want to weigh in on this? I this topic generally. I know you well enough to know you have an answer to this question.

SPEAKER_03: 56:27

Yeah, I mean, well, I I don't actually know that mine's much different than Rachel's, I don't say. I think it's hard to do both of them. I have kind of this theory of my my observation of the displaced nutrients, which I must qualify as potentially me getting in my rock and chair and the old gym owners, old folks home here and be like, you kids gotta go read starting strength again, right? There are a lot of people now rushing to the business stuff, which I get, and all three of us are you know arguably voices for that. And we want people to have business processes that are well run. But at the end of the day, the the product really is the thing that matters. And Rachel's point, it it kind of is. I mean, it's hard enough to just learn all the business things you need, right? Like even just like marketing, sales, finance, like that alone is there's a bunch of different subbuckets of running a business. So yeah, ideally, this is something you've really developed some competence or some mastery in up front. Certainly, you know, that's what a lot of in theory franchise brands do, is it's not impossible to outsource it. I guess you could work with someone at some point, but you there's probably gonna have a bigger conversation on the pros and cons of partners. Because when I think about that, and I think this tracks to the retention conversation, right? People are looking for three things, right? We want results, we want an experience, and we want positive relationships. And depending on that consumer and depending on that model, people are gonna put different priorities on each of them. But, you know, it's really funny. I was like talking to uh a buddy of mine, I think some of you guys know my buddy Joe Megwell, and we're having a conversation, we're talking about retention stuff, and like we're like, oh, these retention things and these this stuff. And by the way, we can talk about some of that too. There's a lot of cool things now in 2025 that you can and you probably should do to run the business. And, you know, he didn't say quite this flippantly, but it's a funnier story when I tell it this way. But he was like, it's all stupid. It just is the session good? Is the product good? Like, do people love the product? Are they excited to be there? Do they like the time of the coach? Because yeah, you do have to have competence at, I think, the program design, the technical coaching. But then that also has to be married with the business process of how do I do it in a way that is operationally efficient, that is consistent. And that's usually through some combination of creating standards, having audits and a lot of other stuff we can we can pull up there. But yeah, I mean, yeah, so I think, yeah, I think Rachel, Rachel nailed that ideally do the training stuff first and then open the gym because there's only so many hours in the day and that gets hard afterwards. Failing that, you know, maybe, maybe you want to take a quarterly focus at a time. That's sort of my own approach to education. I'm not saying that's correct, but I tend to have a focus on stuff on a quarterly basis. And I will also give a shout out to our our pal Mike Boyle and Kevin Carrant, Brendan Ririx. Certified functional strength coach is a great company to look into if you're looking for support in that.

SPEAKER_00: 59:06

We've we've actually had two, so multiple coaches work for us, get to a point where in our business, they're at the top, doing everything they can as a coach. They're kicking butt. And then they've joined Results University and opened their own gym, and we've been able to coach them on their business and help them open their business. And that's been, I think, the best path is you know, become the great coach. And then, you know, now we can go ahead and open the business. And one of the hardest shifts for trainers to do, though, is shifting from trainer to business owner. And the the gyms that we work with that we have the hardest, I'm sure you guys are the same, the hardest time getting their business where we need it is the people who want to coach 60 hours a week and can't pull themselves off that coaching floor. You have to be ready when you open a business to give up some of the. I mean, you can 20 hours a week is max. That's what we say. Like 20 hours a week coaching is max. So we've got to get that schedule down because there's no way. You're going to run your business if you're planning to coach 40 to 60 hours a week. It's just not going to happen.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:05

So I'll give you an exception to that, which goes back to your your previous comment about having a partner. Mark and I have a good friend in this in New York City who coaches 50 hours a week and he loves it. And he's charges one of the highest rates in the city, but he has two business partners and his wife is the office manager. Right. So he put himself in a place where he's just coaching and there's a system around him doing all the other stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:32

Yeah. I often yeah. And that's a very robust version that is, you know, unique to I think a very talented operator. I sometimes refer to that for people listening. You can maybe locate yourself for this. I sometimes refer to that as the independent trainer plus model. Because uh, you know, Vince, Rachel, I'm sure you've sometimes had conversations with like like wonderful people that we're happy to help. And they're like, oh, I have this gym. And you're like, tell me about your gym. It's like I trained three clients in 75 square foot in my garage. And by the way, if you're if that's you listening, like that's amazing. That's a great place to start. That is just the mechanics of that is a little bit different, right? And and by the way, your next step might be now I'm gonna rent 200 square feet and I'm gonna have a super part-time VA admin help. And then some of you might go on to the types of businesses that the the three of us help people run. Some of you, it might be the better move to be like, you know, just yeah, scale up to 50 hours per week, charge$300 per hour, have everyone else do everything for you. And, you know, that can be a great way to go based on your interest there. I think the only thing that, you know, I would add to that is, you know, we've we've been around a minute here, you know, I'm not as young as I used to be. My experience is it's a very special kind of person that's happy to do that into their late 40s and into their 50s. So, you know, oftentimes you have the coach that loves that when they're like 33 and they're like, this is amazing. I'm making 150k per year, I wear sweatpants, let's go. You know, and then you're like 42 and you got a mortgage and got three kids. Uh, and and not always, again, I really want to see you, independent trainer, if you're listening. I think that's another great way to go. I just want to support you in being intentional. And just I just want to acknowledge that my in my observations, sometimes what we prioritize changes.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:09

All right, guys. We have about 10 minutes left and several questions in the QA. So let's go rapid fire answers. One person per question.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:18

Which we're really good at.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:20

Yeah, yeah. 17 minutes only. What's the best way to figure out your gym's max capacity? Is there a standard formula to determine your gym's max capacity? Mark, since you mentioned this twice today. Your recommendation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:37

Yeah, I mean, the the way you can back it out is there's a few different ways to do it, okay? But what you could do is you could say, okay, if you have one pod, you're gonna have, let's call it 50 to 60 primetime hours per week, right? 50, 55, 60 somewhere in there. The reason being you usually can't do, yeah, it depends on the market, but we're not gonna assume that we can really max out a session like at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. So if you assume, for sake of argument, you're open six days per week, that often is gonna be, let's call it 50 to 55 hours. So from there, you just kind of do the math based on your coach to client ratio. So again, in the six-on-one world, which the three of us know pretty well, typically you're at like 120, 130, maybe 150. And of course, it's gonna depend a little bit on the average frequency per client per month, but you can at least do the math to understand based on how many sessions you can reasonably offer, based on how many clients can fit in a session. You can back that out to understand a hypothetical total visit max. You can then further back that out based on frequency. Yeah, I'd be curious to hear if Vince and Rachel have math around this because you know, you could just kind of do it one-to-one-ish and assume there's gonna be breakage of underutilization, which will allow for flexibility. You could, I think if you get bigger, you might have to say, okay, I'm on the hook, so to speak, for I'm just gonna keep the math simple. I'm on the hook for 500 sessions per week. So maybe I need to offer 550. So there's a little bit of a wiggle room. And then I divide that by how many hours I have and how many people I can fit in the session. But I I think that's how I would think about that. Although again, there's there's sort of a hypothetical invisible ceiling you'll get to if you really do reach true capacity. That will just show up in increased churn because people just can't get in.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:21

So let me define what rapid response means for sorry, sorry. That would not be it. So mark at unicorns.com.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:35

Yeah, I tried. I tried everybody, sorry.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:37

If you have a question about being max capacity, Mark at businessforunicorns.com. Rachel or are there training resources that you would you can recommend to train your staff on delving deeper into the why of the client or the training resources? I will go first with a non-training resource, start with why. Simon Senec. I mean, everyone here listening, if you haven't listened, if you haven't read that, start with a YouTube version of that and then the book. That is a non-training resource. Rachel, do you have a training specific resource?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:15

So we actually, you know, in our sales process, we have it laid out pretty good. So if you want to check out Results Fitness University, we have our on-demand success club where we have courses on you know how to lay out those questions. There are a number of coaching books, I think, or coaching and I can't even, I'm trying to think of some of the ones where they do go over some of those. But I think if you've done like precision nutrition, I know he covers that quite a bit in his precision nutrition certification. So, you know, looking into some of the other certifications, you might find that. But yeah, I think it's something that you want to learn how to coach. You want to learn how to, you know, it's a part of coaching, I think, is learning how to ask questions and keep asking the right questions.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:56

Excellent. Vince got a really tough question here specifically for you. What is on the front and the back of your black metal VIP card?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:07

Uh I think I have one or do you have one to show? I know. I usually have one around here, but I believe it's the front of it says, and I actually, while we're plugging, I have a new book coming out, and I put a screenshot of the card in the book. The book's coming out soon called The Eight Profit Levers. But I believe it's just free.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:27

Say it slowly. What's the name of the book?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:29

The Eight Profit Levers.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:30

And where can they find it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:31

No, it's not I it, you know, they'll know. But the uh I believe it says free 30-day jump start. Free 30-day fitness jump start. That's what it says on the front. And then uh, this is very important. It also says$500 value on the bottom. That's a really important piece. So you're kind of putting a value on the card. And then the back is how they what to do, which I believe sends them to a landing page.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:02

Got it. Last three questions, one each. Vince, since you're up, let's go with the last question for you. Vince, I know you are great at helping gym owners scale responsibly to multiple gyms. We just opened our fourth gym, and I'm struggling to know how I should measure success in our biggest initial location. Revenues in the initial location are down 30%, but the other locations are doing well. How should I think about this?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:33

Someone has to be in charge. It usually the case is no one has taken ownership. And I and I've gone through this with many of my guys because I have a lot of guys that opened up big, they opened up a big gym and then they opened up a lot of little gyms. And the guys that were the big gym, the main mothership, has gone down. Is they took themselves out of the gym and they're running all these many gyms and they're leading all these other people, and they didn't put someone in charge of the main gym. So they have to get clarity on the role and who owns the results, who owns the PL of that one location. And just like all the other locations, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, the driver of this, kind of like what Mark said about it, it's all based on the person, all based on the person that is in charge. So if they want that mothership to get back on track, you need to put someone in charge that owns the sales, that owns the community, that owns the retention, and they have to protect that. That's called I call it the center of the accountability chart, the sales and the retention. The rest of the finance and the and the marketing can be driven by what we call corporate or like how they're fueling all the other locations and stuff like that. But what's going to protect the business is someone owning the middle of the the org chart, which is the sales and and and the product delivery. And they got to protect that at all costs.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:56

Fantastic. Last two questions. If your goal is to have premium pricing, meaning$250 or more per month, can your trial offer be too low? Should you keep the trial offer as high as possible if you're trying to attract premium pricing? Rachel, I think that's for you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:15

Yeah, I think I already mentioned this that you do want to be careful that you don't go too low with your trial. I would, you know, definitely do a price point with your trial that is closer to your membership. I think if you go too low, you will get people that can't afford your membership. So with a 250 amount, I'd probably stick with like a 197 or 150 even.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:35

Okay, excellent. I haven't heard anything about utilizing social media channels, not paid, to bring in more referrals, leads, appointments, etc. Do any of you have a strategy for leveraging organic social media to drive top of funnel? All three of you are nodding. So how about this is the other question? So we're all like each of you give one tactic that you use, one tactic of how you use organic social media. We'll go Vince, Rachel.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:06

I'll go, yeah. So I I I think that these days, with all of how AI has made everything so easy and content so accessible, I think the the personal success story is what is going to win on social. It's also if you look at Cialdini's work from Persuasion, it's like the number one most persuasive thing is social proof. And so you kind of have that. So I would say clients getting really, really, really good at collecting success stories, at collecting that, and then getting a consistent pulse of heaping on social proof so that all of a sudden someone can see, wow, like that place down the street, like they get results with their people. People are having success over there. And so I think like finding a lot of different ways to collect social proof. I'll give you two. Give us one one being screenshot testimonials where basically you ask your client to send you back a text message, and then you screenshot it, and then you can post it. So it's much more believable because it's a real screenshot. And the second one being case study interviews, where you take a customer, you have them on Zoom, and you interview them, and then you can transcribe the interview, take the video, and now you have all this different content that you can use and take that customer showcase and put it all these different places. Excellent. Rachel.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:37

Yeah, on that note, so set up a camera in your gym once a month and stand there and grab clients and say, Hey, I'm gonna interview you real quick. They don't have to be long. Just, you know, pull them in and give them a quick interview. So I do that once a month, and then that way you have tons of content. One more thing. My favorite is we do challenges where we get our clients to post. So put it on your clients. So we have our mom's gone strong challenge. Post your PR and you get a t-shirt. So then they're all posting videos of their PRs in the gym. We grab those videos, we have all kinds of people posting, tagging us, collaborating with us, 100 workout challenge, end of the year, 100 workout challenge. They basically have to post every time they work out. Again, grab those, screenshot those, repost those, collaborate with your clients. Get your clients to do a lot of the work. They're the ones who are in front of the audience that you want to get in front of. So put them to work.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:29

And by camera, let's clarify. You mean iPhone with the tripod?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:33

A good we we now have a professional photographer or videographer come in, but I that works great. Just don't make any excuses. Just set your phone up and get started.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:42

Mark, bring us home.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:44

Uh yeah. Um I would say an important thing about Instagram is the profile is an alternative website, first of all. So when people go to the website, it has to be clear who you help, the kind of outcomes you create, and what you want them to do next. Ideally, this is essentially mirroring what's on the website itself. And then finally, and related to that, once people are following you, starting a conversation is a smart idea for local small business, right? It's often called sell by chat. I personally prefer the term nurture by chat, but you know, starting a conversation with an easy this or that yes or no style of question to get people to engage. Because presumably, if it's somebody following your locally branded, locally owned small business gym, they might have some interest in maybe doing something. So those are two things I would suggest. There's, I think, a lot more about what you do after that, but then you try to have a conversation and try to get them on the phone at some point is the brief version.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:38

So, Mark, your name, your company name, your email, and you go.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:43

Yes, my name is Mark Fisher, Business Funicorns, Business Funicorns.com, Mark at Businessunicorns.com.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:50

See how simple that is.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:53

Vince Gabriel Smallgroup Personal Training.com is where you can get a copy of my free book.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:02

Email or Instagram handle?

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:05

Email is Vince at GabrielFitness.com, Instagram. They changed it, I don't remember it. Rachel.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:13

Uh Rachel Cosgrove, Results Fitness University, ResultsFitnessUniversity.com. And I am very active on Instagram, so rachelcosgrove.co. And my email is rachel at results dash fitness.com.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:25

And my name is Julian Barnes, the BFS network, bfsnetwork.com. The strength report can be found at BFSStrengthreport.com, Julian at BFSnetwork.com. My thanks to our panelists, Mark, Rachel, and Vince, and our special thanks to Chris from Perform Better for organizing the webinar today and inviting us to participate. Good luck, everyone. Happy sprint to the end of the year, and happy January to the beginning of next year. Thanks, everyone.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:59

Thank you.