SPEAKER_00: 0:00

All right, guys, welcome to a very special episode. I'm doing these series of interviews with members that have had success with myself and my team in the SPF mastermind. And what we're doing is we're doing this twofold. Obviously, this interview will be as a podcast, but it will also be going into a new book we're creating. And that new book is called our SPF Member Success Guide, where it tells the stories of gyms that have gone from struggling from single-digit revenue to big money. And uh so I've been taking the time to sit down with a bunch of different gym owners over the last several months and to pull out these very inspiring stories. And I have a very guy that's special to me today. His name is I just figured out what his last name was after about 11 years of knowing him. But this is Marty Musicant. And your wife Kim did a wonderful job of teaching me how to say it. I just think of music, musicant, and I put an ant next to it. Marty, thank you very much for being here today. I really appreciate it. Okay. So what we're gonna do is I want to start at the very beginning and tell us when you joined SPF back in, I believe, 2018. I want you to tell me where you were in your business, where you were personally, what life was like. Take us back to that kind of moment, your pre-SPF mastermind life.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38

We learned ST worked in November of 2018. Yeah, we had been open for two years. He had about 75 memories, and I would work like our trainer he saw it in the weekend. And the first couple of years of our business from actually we had a fire in 2015, but we only opened three and a half months. We didn't reopen in our current location until September of 2016. We kept the struggle the first couple of years of that business.

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

Marty and Kim run the business together, their husband and wife team, who joined the gym not that long ago, about a year ago. Hannah's done a great job with it. So, Marty, go ahead and continue with your story.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

So 2016, we reopened in our current location. And it was a struggle for the first couple of years, on mainly because we didn't know we were down. And uh by the time we joined the mastermind in 2018, we're only at 75 members. And we were sh we were struggling to get above$18,000 a month. We did have one part-time train, but it was mostly mere care. Doing the training. Yeah, one part-timer. And then I was getting up at 6 a.m. every morning. Actually opening the gym at 6 a.m. So I was getting up more at 4:30. Five days a week, and then came in to open at seven on Saturdays. I was doing most of the training, coming back at nine, foot shifts. It just left me very little time to work on the business. I was so involved in the business. Despite that, we kept growing albeit forward, and by the time October 2018 rolled around, you I don't remember how I found out about you. I don't know if I saw you on Facebook or whatever. But somehow I I ended up on your email list. And he decided to do your two-day membership up at GFP.

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

Yep. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_01: 3:44

And that's when I decided to join the Masterline. Of course, I needed that Kim meet with you first to make sure that you know you were on the up in that song.

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

Yeah, I want to tell that story. I want to tell the story. But before we do that, tell me when you saw the event, what was the pain that you were experiencing that made you be like, I gotta do this event, I need help. What were the things was it were you feeling burnout? Were you feeling stressed financially? What was the challenges that made you be like, I gotta call this guy and this event looks good? Let me try this out. What was it?

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

I think all of the above. I mean, Kim and I have been in another mastermind prior to meeting here.

SPEAKER_00: 4:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

The mastermind was a really dead one, but we still struggled, and it had nothing to do with the people that ran the mastermind. It was really awesome where we were at in our evolution. And you're always talking about the psychology of the business owner. And back in those days, our psychology wasn't the greatest. We had a fire in 2015. Um then in 2017, you know, things were so bad that uh we were still paying off a loan for one of our members. We were still paying for our original equipment lease for about a thousand dollars a month. And I had to take out a personal law with a company called Cavage just to keep things going. Late in 2017, we ended up having to sell our house because we just we were paying our bills of a business. We were having a hard time paying our personal bills. So we stone our house that we rented for the next few years, and that really helped a lot. So that was a like a true decision we made prior to meeting her. And uh it paid off as we things started getting better in 2018. But by the time October rolled around, we realized that we wanted a lot more. And we just weren't getting it. We wanted more freedom, we wanted more money, and we decided no doubt we were gonna reach out for help. And that's when I found out about your mentorship when I decided to grow.

SPEAKER_00: 5:57

And yeah, and so you joined the mastermind, but it was contingent upon something. It was contingent upon Kim Meeting Me, which was a first for me. And this was funny because this is back when I had just started this mastermind. So I had never run a mastermind before, and most of the guys that were coming in, they were like younger gym owners that were coming in. And here comes Marty, and then he brings his wife, Kim, into the office at my gym with me, and she's before he signs up for this mastermind, I want to make sure that you're not some crazy charlatan. And so we had a really fun conversation, you, me, and Kim. And I don't know what was said in that meeting to make Kim give you the green light to join the mastermind, but uh maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 6:45

I think it was just the report straight or telephone that was established pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_00: 6:52

Yes, she is a big ball of fun. I really enjoy her. Awesome. Okay, so that that is the time you started to join and obviously came into our world. When were the things what were the things that you started to do? This was a really helpful thing for some other people that heard some of the other interviews. What were some of the things that you started to do to give you the sign and the feeling that all right things are starting to get a little better?

SPEAKER_01: 7:28

It was really learning to become a better marketer.

SPEAKER_02: 7:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:33

And some of the tools that you had given us right from the start with the concept of the marketing book. So make sure that you're everywhere basically. Five or more fingers on that bar. And also the uh the idea of a marketing calendar by our Chibote, because prior to that, we were just we were scattering all over the place. And despite the fact that we were in another mastermind, we had learned some of the stuff for whatever reason where we were at mentally, and it just didn't secate at the time. So I think the way you presented it just really simplified it and uh really helped a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 8:15

Okay, and then so what were so you got your head around the marketing stuff, and again, for those listening, the marketing glove is basically this symbolic thing that I invented to have multiple ways that you're gonna get new customers. A lot of people were relying on just one way to get new customers, and really what you need to de-risk your business is to have multiple ways to generate new business. So, what were some of those things that you did? What were some of the fingers on your glove? What were some of the things that went into your calendar that got you to start having some success?

SPEAKER_01: 8:51

Yeah, as far as the glum goes up, we had our we get our quite a few things in the glove, but we weren't doing any of that well. So what we did, we stepped up our email then. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 9:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:18

Prior to that it was very sporadic. The images that we were using were much better, and the copy that we would put in there, as well as these organic posts always have a poll to action. They always have our web address on to drop people to our website.

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

So I'm hearing two things that you did well. One is consistency. Right. I think a lot of people don't do consistency really well. Right? They they do what I call squirrel marketing, where they do one thing here, and then they try things over there, and it sounds like you were consistent with email, you were consistent with social posting. And then the second piece I heard is that you applied the principles that I learned, I didn't make this up. You applied the principles that I learned from the great Dan Kennedy of what's called direct response marketing, right? Where you always put something out there with an intent to get a response. And I think that's like a big piece of where people screw up marketing, is they just they do branding, right? They just throw stuff against the wall, they put their logo out, and they spread the logo out. And instead of that, you go with the intent to generate a lead. And then there's a system behind that we can get into, but at the end of the day, it sounds like you did consistency and direct response. What else? What were the other things that happened?

SPEAKER_01: 10:41

So if you email, it was organic Facebook publishing. We started wrote Facebook ads around that pun.

SPEAKER_02: 10:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 10:49

That might have been prior, it was probably prior to KISS when we were using somebody else that you have recommended. But that went very well for a while. We had some decent success with some local street fairs.

SPEAKER_02: 11:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 11:03

And our website was upgraded. Just just marketing took over our website, and they upgraded our marketing, and that's that kind of ties in when we were more about uh SEO, search engine optimization, and try to rank higher on Google. So I think all those things came together to help us get more and better ways.

SPEAKER_00: 11:24

Well, there's something different about your website that typically I see this a lot where people they have a website and they never look at their website as a client-generating tool. It's like just something they have that exists. But since we started building websites for people, the website has become what I call like a client-producing asset, meaning you can depend on your website to give you generate leads that deliver good quality clients that are interested in personal training. What were some of the di changes that they made for your website that made it all of a sudden start to work? Like I imagine you went from getting zero clients from your website to getting clients from your website.

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

Well, we first opened, we hired a local web designer, someone from town, really nice guy, and he did our website for a couple years. He did not specialize in the fitness business. He was a general website designer. And when we looked up with KISS, the website was more geared toward towards fitness and they knew how to do it better than this guy. And I think we learned how better to tell stories because we gave them a lot of the content for a website. So we had more stories on there, we had more testimonials on there, social proof, obviously, and a way to contact us. I think we we had a lead magnet on there where we could capture their email address. And we also had another have another form on there where they could contact us directly to get more of the information on the setup of a consultation. But the combination of all that stuff made it take offer. And plus, like I said, it was learning how to get people to our Ratson through search engine was a was a very big boost to us.

SPEAKER_00: 13:20

Awesome. Let's so like we've gotten into the marketing, and then what we're working through right now is the starting point of Marty being being in$18,000 a month business that is fully dependent on him, that's fully dependent on him doing everything and doing the majority of the sessions with a part-time trainer, till fast forward to today, where we'll tell you where he's at in a second, which is super impressive. But Marty, tell us now the second level of starting to build a team, right? You went from a one part-time trainer with you doing everything to now you have a full team. Talk us talk tell us about that process of you going from almost no employees to having a full team that what you've got now.

SPEAKER_01: 14:08

I think the terrible part for us, the breakthrough moment, if you will, was when we hired our first full-time coach. It was 2021. He's still with us, by the way. And right about the same time, he hired our first part-time admiral with the those two things really helped help us to work more on the business. He went to another level of working on the business. I saw what else to do now. So that really fueled our growth. And by December of 2022, we had grown 41% year over year.

SPEAKER_00: 14:59

So you're starting to see, if those listening to this, you're starting to see a progression. Like the first progression was marketing skills, was learning how to acquire new customers and learning how to make some money. And then the second progression is people. If you don't have any money, at$18,000 a month, you guys weren't making enough money to be able to afford to hire a full-time trainer. Right? And so we ring the register first, we teach marketing, we ring the register first, then all of a sudden we start to build as a form of stability and a freedom of some money to be able to hire these people. And then there's all new challenges, right? Learning how to lead those people. What were some of the maybe challenges you faced with leadership and having a team and payroll and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 15:51

Yeah, I'll address payroll first. So the first payroll was a little out of whack. So it was an it was an investment like during the onboarding of the trainers. And it's not just we were full-time training, but we had since added four of the part panels. So the onboarding is a per time and so we're no well worth it. So I had to get better at that. Just reading on my humanity-year experience of the coach myself, I didn't always have to teach it to somebody. So I had to get it out of my brain. It's a documentation. And if it was the first time I didn't have how to do that, this basically was just watch what I do and talk religion.

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

Yeah, my favorite form of teaching delegation. My favorite form of teaching delegation is you do, they what is it? You do, you probably know this better than I do. You do, you do, they watch, they do, you watch, and then they do. Right. That's the form I learned that many years ago. It's a real simplified way to teach delegations. So the next phase was building a team and getting some full-time team members, not just from trainers, but some admin help, and that continued to grow the business and you continued to work on the marketing. Now, I would imagine when you first hired those few people, you were still doing a lot of sessions, right?

SPEAKER_01: 17:23

I definitely was doing a lot of sessions. I was doing all the most of the one-on-one sessions, but we did percentage on small groups. We were growers seller, we started off with a four-to-one ratio. One bunch of rebuilding six to a lot of money. As we kept growing, we decided that we would we have space to take more people. But we need another coach in the group. So any group over search will start to have two people. So for a while, I wasn't coaching almost, but then I got pulled back here as a good shop, baby, until I started hiring some other quartiles. I age just now our max in a root there is tiny weather people. One that will sold a lot of roots, so that was quite the evolution we have. Besides me and Kira, we have some thick employees. You're helping us.

unknown: 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:22

That's amazing. And so basically it's you get you find the skills to get new customers, you hire the squad, but you're still doing a lot of the work in the very beginning when you hire those first few people, and now you're at a point where you have six team members, and you're not doing nearly as many training sessions. You're in that classic stage three, where you got a squad, you got a team, your business isn't dependent on you doing all the sessions, and you are able to spend time working on the business, doing the marketing, doing the sales, growing and leading the team. And so you've evolved, and now you're starting to do cool stuff. It just had a big price increase, right? You started to think strategically, so why don't you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01: 19:10

We are checked out prices for for the original manage. Well, there's about 40 people. We had kept those prices also walkers found when you were we want you to raise prices on they were ordering a price increase that we had back in April. And to my surprise, all the short people left because of it. We did raise prices on all of the other memories at the planet that he probably had about 150 members toll, although we had what amounted to a 10% increase the cost of order or three thousand dollars on my BFT. We were nervous about doing it, and we had a weed on you and some other members as a mastermind to get the courage to do it. We realized that in retrospect we much worry about nothing. Because it was the right decision, and now we're up to 170 miles. Anyone anyone who's unsure about raising our quality with my advice, don't wait. Do it as soon as you said you sure don't look back.

SPEAKER_00: 20:28

Yeah, you handled it masterfully, and there's been a few people that have been hesitant to do it after I've been coaching with them, and I just call Marty and you just tell the story about what you did. But it was and we talk about this in in increasing profit. It's the it's the fastest way to do it. And the reality is that every business is doing it, every business is raising prices, and I don't see why a gym is different than any other business. We still have things we need to invest in. We have staff members that need and here's the thing too like staff members that have been this for a long time, they need more. You know, that when we hired someone at 23 years old, and now they're 30 years old, their lives are different. And if we want to keep those people around, they need to be paid and they need benefits and they need all these different things, and the clients have an invested interest in that. They right they and again, they don't want to pay more, but I think in most cases people understand and people get it. All right, so let's talk about today. I think you we've led people through the stages, right? You're almost like a classic stage one going to stage three gym, right? Struggling at 18k, doing everything yourself, hiring a couple team members, still doing almost everything yourself, and now you have a team of six, your business is running independently of you doing the sessions. Tell us where the business is today, and I can verify all of this because you are now a member of the CEO Mastermind that comes to my domain quarterly with your profit and loss statement in hand. I've seen your revenue, I've seen your margins, I know how well things are going, but I want to hear it from you. Give us the data and the numbers of where the business is now.

SPEAKER_01: 22:17

We're sitting at about 170 members. Five percent of that business is from the one-on-one training, the rest is small group, staff of six. We hit our highest revenue month in September at 60,000. We're probably gonna get pretty close to 700,000 should be a year on December 31st. Things are growing well. We're gonna grow about 21% this year, and we're hoping that it continues next year. We've decided to stay where we are and maximize our space rather than look at other locations. Our finish room for growth at this location. Personally, it's allowed us a lot more financial freedom and success. And uh Kid and I are taking our first trip to New York together next week. We haven't we have not been together. We hardly went anywhere during the first few years of our business, and now we're international travelers. We bought our house, we became homeowners again three years ago. Yeah, to have it sold our house in 2017. So business has grown and it's gonna get even better. We have bigger things planned for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00: 23:39

That's amazing. I want to dig into a little bit more. So obviously the business started below$20,000, it's doing$60,000 at very you didn't mention the margins, you don't have to, but the it's a very solid financial sound business. There's a lot of business that's earned sixty thousand dollars a month and they got fifty-eight thousand dollars of expenses. Like that is not you. You have a very healthy business from a profit standpoint, so from a financial standpoint, I know things are going. We obviously had the funds to buy a home and travel to Europe and things like that. What about you, Marty, as a person? Right, you mentioned your shifts and changes from a mindset perspective. There's a couple stories that you know really hold true for me that I can get into, but I I think from your perspective, but what are the things that have you've been impacted by from this education that you've been on with us for the last several years? How's it impacted you from a personal level?

SPEAKER_01: 24:49

Think I'd certainly come a long way as a novice business owner to where I am now. One of the one of the things that has helped is or the lessons that we learned in the SPF mastermind with that mindset and the psychology of reonerance. So it's not just about the X's and the O's of marketing, sales, and fact it and things like that. So just in order to be a bad person, where to think better, where to live more through gratitude. And trust me, I struggle with this every day. It's not like I'm perfect, but I'm definitely so much better at handling the day-to-day stress of running a business. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I think could vouch for the fact that I'm not as negative as I used to be, and I'm much happier than I was, and I I'm a better leader than I used to be. And all of those things just make a better life because coming home and being stressed and being miserable and just having all the negative feelings associated with a struggle in business. That's all all behind me now. And you know, although we're doing better, as there's the bigger the business, the bigger the problems. When I work to handle those problems much better, and I try not to let things get out of the way, and I try to stay as grounded as possible and try to avoid those highs and lows that you see a lot when you don't have that the experience and you don't have the guidance from you know from people like you or the people I entertain, and the other people in the mastermind and the other guys and rising gas and CEO, all of those people like in my life, just has made me a better person. And as my relationship grows with the SPF people, my relationship gets better with my team, and my relationship gets better with my partner and my wife care. So I just think there's way too many lessons for me to mention that I've learned in the SPF and the personal development side of being a business owner can't be discounted. In fact, it's essential. If you're uh if you're a coach and you're still digging into all the X's and O's of training, the sets and the reps and all that stuff, that's all well and good, but until you really dig deep into your own psychology, that's what really is gonna have to visit all. And that's what did it for us. And when I say these days, I'm not just talking about the impact it's had on me, but I can see the changes and the impact that it's had on Kim as well. All those all those lessons have really helped the two of us to become better designers and better people.

SPEAKER_00: 27:59

Yeah, one of the things that comes to mind when I think of you is more of an abundance mindset. I you mentioned this and I didn't think you were a negative person when I first met you. But you were not nearly as upbeat and optimistic and positive, and not in a blind type of way. You definitely tread carefully like you should, right? As I do. But there's one story that it I look at it almost like as the crossroads of your success. And that story was there was a guy that was local to you that had a gym that was nearby. And there was I'm guessing some like we had do, we don't want competitors and stuff like that. And it was during COVID where you came to me, you had come to me before and basically said, I don't want that guy in the mastermind, he's too close. And then you came to me in COVID and you said, Hey, I want you to work with that guy and let him into the mastermind. And since that moment, that was like a moment for me that showed me that you had a massive abundance mindset over a scarcity mindset. And so it was a big growth moment. And the cool thing is like I I think from that moment that's like when your business started to explode. It was like right when you started really hitting some bigger numbers, is right when you made that call. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01: 29:39

Or was they competing? So get in on Dr. Greg that I had already found for us. And I actually reached out to him when we went out to lunch and we were talking and got to know each other. And uh that just made my mind a whole lot to stay. And then someone else said, well, when they're a guy just like meeting the family and just how to do better. Yeah, I felt like a real like a real shithead. He might have dated that out, I'm not sure, but I felt like a real shithead for doubt. One in the sky in the same room. And it really bothered me for a part. So that's when I reached out and decided to change it.

SPEAKER_00: 30:24

Yeah, and it told me a lot about the man that you were, but also the man that you had become. And it was a cool It was a cool thing because they also think it came out of the spirit of generosity, which our friend Ari Weinswick talks about a lot, right? Of it being during COVID, it being during a tough time where everyone needed help. And it was a period of time where you were like, all right, everybody needs help right now. And you didn't want to take that away from him, which I really respected and appreciated. And the cool thing is you're both doing great. And you're both where you're in different, you're in different towns now, but I think you're in the same town at this at this at that moment, you're in different towns now, and I think it's farther away, so it's better, it's even better now. But it's I've seen both of you in such a short distance apart have massive success at the same time. So it the abundance mindset is a real thing, and you have it. Marty, if someone was on the fence about joining SPF, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01: 31:38

I would I don't know what I tell them, but I would certainly ask them what's holding you back. Or things so good for you that you know we'd help. Because honestly, even things are going very well for us right now, but I would never think about going it alone no matter what stage of my business I'm in. We've learned that challenges these surpass are just a natural part of business. But if you have someone in your corner, someone who's been through lows and highs before, and someone who's made mistakes before, and someone who's weathered a storm of the fire and COVID and all the other things, I would say there's no reason to go it alone. The investment that you make in yourself and in your business, you'll get that back exponential. And that's how I've known some people who people have been in business for years and never got the help and they continue to struggle. And there's no reason for help. Like there's help. And someone who's been in another mastermind, you fought. I could tell that person that I've only been in two, and this one is far superior to the one I was in before. I'll end it for the lower ball.

SPEAKER_00: 33:00

Marty, what you're one of our biggest successes, and there's a lot of people that have joined SPF. I can't say a lot, but there are people that have joined SPF that didn't have success. What are the things that you did as a member of the group? Because it's it's not you weren't successful only because of us. You were successful because of you. What were the things that you did that made this investment where you got a return on the investment?

SPEAKER_01: 33:35

Number one, I try to make sure that my mind is right. That's number one. Number two is to take action on things. Because for many years I was sold, I would just idle the word everything. I would read stuff, I would listen to podcasts and watch videos. Well, I was real sort of take action. So I think sometimes the information comes out at us like a fire, like the water out of a fire host. And there's just so much. So I've learned to take the things that are applicable to where I'm at in the business at the time and solely work those things in. And develop systems over the years where the steps are easily repeated. Particular, we've talked about the marketing calendar before, it's just knowing that every year we're doing X amount of challenges. Every year we're doing a Black Friday special, or every year we're doing the same once every month. So consistency, which we talked about before, that's real or so being consistent with the action sets that we take. And something else I learned from you is to try to spend most of my time working on getting clients who keeping clients. That's really the big takeaway from this.

SPEAKER_00: 35:02

Yeah, I think that's a big point right there. I think a lot of people spend time on stuff that doesn't matter. I call it this thing called fake work. Right. And if you just looked at your time that you're spending and asked yourself, is this thing that I'm doing right now helping me get a new customer or keep a customer that I've got? You're probably in the right place. That's a really well said. Marty, I want to thank you for getting on here with me. This was a great interview. I'm so proud of how far that you've come. And with Kim and the rest of your squad, I got the opportunity to see your business in action not that long ago. Or walked into a bustling session with Marty not training the session, but back in the office, do you know I don't know what you're working on, you're working on something, and had a cut uh he can only meet with me for a few minutes because he had a client coming in to do a consultation and get a new customer. And so there was things happening and things bustling. So this is real people with real success. And man, really uh really happy that you did this, and thank you for sharing your story.

SPEAKER_01: 36:12

A lot of fun, Rats and Shaq on your team for helping us get to where we are.

SPEAKER_00: 36:19

Awesome, brother.