(1) Sherman Merricks - Your Clients Differentiate You

Hey everybody, this is Eric with the Future of Fitness Podcast and the Fitness Marketing Alliance. And during this interview, I talked to Sherman Merrick. He is from Dynasty CrossFit in Gainesville, Florida. He is the owner of that facility out there, and he's been the owner for about five years or so now. And I've had the pleasure of talking to Sherman many times over the past few years, and I can tell you that he is an extremely driven individual, and he uh is extremely passionate about what he does. His goals that he has are are bigger than business, and I think that's a big part of what drives him. And uh when you listen to the interview, there's a couple things that you should pick up on is how he's uh uses his clients to differentiate his business and how his marketing really is his passion. And it's it's crazy cool to listen to, and I have nothing but respect for this guy, and there's a lot of lessons, and I think you're gonna be hearing from him quite a bit in the fitness industry as he's now um just about to be a mentor at two brainbusiness.com. And uh so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Sherman Merricks. Hi everybody, this is Eric with the Fitness Marketing Alliance, and I have the pleasure of sitting here with colleague Sherman Merricks. He's at uh Dynasty CrossFit out in Gainesville, Florida. Is that correct? Gainesville?

Yes, that is correct.

Um Sherman is a uh owns quite a successful CrossFit gym out in Florida, and uh I have some some questions for for him, but I thought first of all, um maybe Sherman, you could tell us your fitness story. Every fit pro has a fitness story. I'd like to hear yours.

Yeah, so um I've been in, you know, I've been active in sports my entire life. Uh played basketball through high school and college, not college, got out, you know, typical, going to the gym. I actually ran a marathon. Uh like I'm never doing that again. You know, once I really got into working out, one of my buddies invited me over. He was like, hey, you want to work out? I was like, Yeah, hey, you know, work out. So I went to this guy's garage. I mean, this is this is 10 years ago, you know. So I go to his garage and he was like, I want to say we did like the lumberjack or something, something crazy. Back then, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't even pick up a two-poo. Lumberjack 20? Yeah, yeah. So he was doing prescribed, and I'm like, I can't swing that. And like I remember when I finished that workout, I was like, like, what was that? So then we finished, he was like, Yeah, it's a thing called CrossFit, but I didn't think anything of it. And then he invited me over a few more times, and then just you know, just sort of fell in love with it. And um, from there he was like, you know, you could open up a gym. Actually, like, we could open up a gym. And then um, you know, I sort of thought about it and went on the back shelf, and the more I was at my job, I was like, Man, I need to do something I really enjoy. You know, I've always liked sports, always enjoy working out. And from there I started uh training people out in a park, and then from there it sort of grew to my garage and then to a smaller space and then to another space and to where we currently are today. So, you know, that typical sort of get punched in the face by CrossFit and then fall in love with it, and the rest is history.

Yeah, yeah, I I I know that story really well, ma'am. Um, and I love that you started in a garage at a park, right? That's like that's like the classic CrossFit story. Um Sherman, one of the things I I know about you is you're a hustler, right? You hustle, you work hard, um, you have a bring a ton of energy to what you do on a day-to-day basis. Um that being said, I don't want to spoil this question, but how do you differentiate yourself from other fitness businesses or other fitness professionals, especially in your area?

Yeah, so like that's a good question. I think that, you know, there's a lot of guys that hustle and work hard and that type of thing. I think that really knowing, like really knowing the type of um individual that you're trying to get into your gym, right? My um, you know, I have a client avatar that I know that I want in the gym, so that's who I speak to when I'm creating videos, posting stuff, right? There's like there's certain people that I don't want in the gym. You know, everyone talks about having you know 300, 400, 500 members. I mean, that's cool if you want to do that type of thing, but I don't see that for my gym, you know. I want 200, 250 solid people that want to be part of a community, that want to work hard, that want to support each other. So those are the pipe, the type of people that I speak to when I'm doing anything, you know. And uh, you know, that's what I really focus on, the type of people that I want, and I try to get them in. I'm not trying to get everyone, you know. I only need 200 people out of hundreds of thousands of people in my town, you know.

Yeah, that's that's such a great answer, too. And and I know that you come from the two-brain business family as well, which means that your your fundamentals are strong. But I think you know what um what's really impressive about that answer is that when I asked you what differentiate you, you basically said my clients differentiate my business, right? Yeah, and I think that's a really cool lesson. Um, you touched on this a little bit. So how do you go about generating leads? Do you have a conscious plan or effort that you put into it? Or you know, how how does that how do new people find your gym?

Yeah, so we do, I really, really try to focus on taking care of our members that are in the gym, right? Um, I do personally have a plan where there's three months out of the 12 months in the year that I'm specifically trying to recruit people inside the gym. But the rest of the time, the other nine months, I'm just taking care of my clients because I know if we really service the heck out of them, they're gonna talk about it, you know. Yeah, hopefully to the point where it's annoying to their friends when they finally come in, you know. Like I know they're gonna talk about it. So that's what we really do. We really try to, for the for the most part, 75-80% of the time, we're just focusing on our clients, trying to get them in, um, trying to make sure they have a great time so they can basically go out and talk about that. Because I could talk about it until I'm blown in the face, but I'm only one person and I only have so much reach, you know. But if I can leverage, you know, all the people in my gym to have them talk about it, of course, not the same way I would, but if they're just talking about it, getting them results, so then when their friends see them getting fitter and better, you know, they can have that conversation with them and let them see that it's not you know this scary thing that you know surprisingly a lot of people still think that about CrossFit.

Yeah, yeah, people do. And it's unfortunate. I a curious question for you is you know, you mentioned there's about three months that you really push. Do you have a set three months out of the year that you you drive marketing or that you really work on getting new clients?

Yeah, so for us, the uh the summer is normally a slow time, right? The summer is normally a slow time for us in the gym business. So that's when we're really out there pounding the pavement, trying to have uh specific challenges and stuff like that going on to get people in. You know, the summer's just a tough time just because people are traveling. Um, yes, kids are out of school, but also, you know, everyone always wants to be in shape, everyone always wants to look good. So you just have to find, again, those right people that are gonna make that sacrifice for that for those summer months. You know, most people aren't though, because you know, maybe they're gone for two weeks, so they aren't gonna pay for the six-week challenge, they're gonna miss a third of it, you know. But there are a lot of people that are willing to make that um, you know, sort of make that sacrifice and make it work, and that's what we're really going at, you know, during the summer. We're trying to um get more members in because a lot of our members are in and out of the gym during the summer, they're traveling too, sure. So the gym gets a little bit slow, so we can sort of readjust, um, do some fun stuff in-house, but then sort of leverage some of that extra energy and trying to get people in the gym, or or at least being an awareness, you know, trying to have a lot of awareness. So after the summer, they know where they want to come after, you know, they've blown the summer away.

Right, right. I've always found that when I fall off a fitness wagon, as long as I know there's a plan in place for like a month from now, that I'll enjoy my time off a lot more. Uh that's an interesting point. So give me some creative ways, uh, Sherman, that that you've marketed your gym and your services, some some kind of out-of-the-box thinking that you've done before. Because I know you you I've seen it. I've seen some of the ones you've done. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, so I I don't know if I have stuff that's out of the box really, but um, I really believe that video, video is the way of the future, you know, as far as um, you know, marketing to people, getting in front of them. Um, I think really learning how to um turn those captions on on your Facebook uh videos and stuff like that, because you know, people don't think, yes, they may be on Facebook at work when they really shouldn't be, but they can't turn the sound on if their boss is sending a couple cubicles over. So if you have the captions on, they can read it, you know, and that may be able to get them, but you know, I really, with all the videos that I try to make, I try to have a good time. I try to put my personality, my personality across so that they know, you know, like we're gonna take care of you, we're gonna have a lot of fun, but you're definitely gonna get better, you know, and you're gonna look better, you're gonna feel better. So we just really try to have fun with all the videos that we do. Like that's that's my main thing. Anytime I'm in front of the camera, we're trying to have fun with it.

Yeah, and I'll vouch for it. It is fun. I watch them. Um let me ask you this. So, what are what are some key metrics, right? You know, I I I I write uh there's always parallels between fitness and business, right? We always want to be tracking some numbers in our fitness. What are some numbers that you know for sure that you if you focus on maybe you know three to five metrics that you focus on in your business that that help you run your business at a successful level?

Um some metrics that I use inside the business that basically help us just be more successful. Um, you know, for us, we want to look at the um what we call in our two-brain family, we want to look at the length of engagement, right? We want to make sure that we don't get people that are coming in for a month or two and then leaving, right? Um and that's not so that we could get more money from them or anything, like that's just a byproduct of having a great service. But if someone comes in for one, two, three months, like we both know, all fitness pros know, they're not gonna see huge lasting change in three months. You know, most of the time, most of the clients that we get, they haven't been working out in a long time. So three months is like that's like, yes, they may lose 10, 12, 15 pounds in three months, but that's not enough, right? So we're looking at length of engagement because we want people to stick around so they can have those really good, lasting results. You know, we're not trying to, you know, we're not thinking people are gonna stay in our gym for 20 years, you know, like they do at the big global gym. They just let them run and run and run and they'll never go. Like that's really not what we're after. Um, and then also as far as business goes, we look at um average revenue per member, right? Um, I think that there's a lot of gym owners really starting to understand that yes, we want to help people, you know, yes, we want to um see people get off their meds and PR, you know, hit personal records and all that stuff. But if you have 300 members in your gym, you know, and they're spending on average 100 bucks per month, yes, that's 30 grand just looking at the face value like that. You know, me personally, I would much rather be that guy that has a hundred members and they're spending $300 a month, right? Just giving them that extra value so that I can A, in turn, turn it back on the members and again service the heck out of them so they have a great time. Um and then that also makes it better so you can pay your coaches so the owners can have a better lifestyle. As opposed to having 300 members, now you're stretched out, um, you still got 30 grand, but now you need three or four coaches. Yeah, you know, and then that money starts to run short, and it's super, you know, the gym business. I'm figuring out more and more, sort of with the more success I've had, the more success that I have with it. Like this is a tough business. Um, I think, especially CrossFit, I think with it being so easy to sort of get involved, guys just think like, all right, hey, like I'm a decent coach, I'm a decent athlete, I'm gonna flip over and just open me a business, right? So basically, I would like we've heard it a million times, now they're buying themselves a job, which I think most entrepreneurs, when they're starting off, they're buying themselves a job. I I can say that. That's what I did in the beginning. Yeah, but if you don't have that mindset coming in from day one, like I've had a mentor even from when I was in my garage because I knew long term I didn't want to be, you know, tied to this thing, you know, 24-7, 365, not able to enjoy anything. So we definitely look at that. So length of engagement, average revenue per member, and then um inside the gym with our coaching, I really try to focus on keeping my staff um super happy, super engaged. All right. Now, to me, this is one of the hardest things as you begin to grow because you know you can grow your gym to a certain level by yourself, right? When I say by yourself, you may have one or two coaches, but you know, you can do most of the work by yourself. You can get you 125, 150 members, you know, 150 may be pushing it, but you know, 120, 125 members, you can probably get there and everything's gonna be all right. Now you're gonna be working like crazy, you know, a lot, but you can sort of do that. But if you want to get, you know, 200 members, 250 members, you're going to have to delegate some of those roles that you think are very important or you think, you know, I emphasize think that no one can do better than you. You have to find the people that can do it better than you because eventually, like I'm at a different point in my gym career now where I don't coach any classes. Um, I do some personal training just because I want to. Um, but it's a totally different ball game now. You know, it's a totally different ball game from five years ago when I was coaching every class and scraping to get by. Now I'm not coaching at all. Finances are good, you know, but we have to make sure that the community is really staying, like everyone's staying happy, everyone's staying engaged, and obviously I can't keep up with 150, 200 people, but I can make sure my staff is taken care of. And if they're taken care of, they're gonna deliver the product exactly the way we want it. So, you know, I've definitely learned a lot of stuff, you know, made some mistakes, but that's the beauty of this, you know, whole entrepreneur life.

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful, man. That's a beautiful answer. You kind of touched on this, so this segues nicely. Um who were who were your mentors and influencers when you first started out? And then who are they now?

Yeah, good question. So when I first started out, as far as uh business goes, um, I was with um I was with a business group um called the Biz with John Birch. Um I was with old John Birch way back in the day. Um and I got hooked up with him. Actually, a cool story here. When I first opened up my gym, there was another gym in town, dude named Chris Thorndike. He owns uh Live Athletic, formerly Crossbit Gamesville. And I went to him and you know, he was super helpful, and he told me that's who who he was getting mentoring from. So I was like, well, you know, if this guy back then, you know, if this gym, it was big and he had all these members, and I was like, well, if he's doing it, I need to do it, you know. So I was with, you know, uh John Burke for a little while. And as far as personally goes, you know, um, it's a guy that I um, you know, he's still sort of my mentor, big brother, best friend today. You know, he's you know, he's a little bit older. I'm still with him personally today. He helps me out a ton. His is definitely more informal. And then as far as business goes today, like you, you know, you touched on earlier, I've been with uh Chris Cooper with Two Brain for a few years now, and you know, that's you know, that's changed the game tremendously for me on you know on a lot of fronts, you know. Yes, the business, but really seeing how um other successful gyms um do things, you know. It's not always easy, you know, but it's quite simple, like we like to say. Um, but I'm I wouldn't change it for the world. Like obviously I'm biased, you know. Um I love Two Brain and Coop and everyone else, but um regardless of who people are with, I would say that you have to have a mentor. You have you you need someone to help you before you need that extra GHD machine, you know, one or two extra over fun. Put that money for the mentor because if you get it right, there'll be a point where you can pull out your card and you can go go to rogue, you know, you can go to rogue and buy your five rowers anytime you feel like it. Yeah, just for fun. Yeah, you know, just for fun. But if you don't get that business side now, you always sort of stuck in that stuck on that hamster wheel of I need more, you know, is not worth it, you know, am I cut out for this, that type of thing right there.

Yeah, great. Um, where where do you see yourself in two years? Oh man. And and let me follow that. Do you have a roadmap to get there, or are you kind of just gunslinging it right now?

Yeah, so in two years, I see myself still owning my gym, um, sort of in the same role now. You know, we'll be a little bit bigger, but I also um I'll be doing because I'm finishing up some mentoring training now with Two Brain. So I'll be more actively involved in that. Um so I'll be able to help other gym owners, you know, hopefully not make that same, you know, some of the same mistakes that we made, are just helping them just become better and better. So I'll still be owning the gym. I see myself in two years. Um we'll be running a, you know, we'll be running a more successful gym, that type of thing right there. And then I'll also be doing some mentoring with Two Brain. That's why I see myself in a couple years.

Oh, that's exciting, man. You're gonna be really, really good at that. Um we'd like to we'd like to discuss you know not only where where things are now, right? Um, and I'm a closet futurist too, so you can see where this direction's going. Um I want to see like six to twelve months from now, you know, what is the industry gonna look at? How do you how do you see the digital age and and the speed at which technology is changing? How do you see it affecting the fitness industry and and possibly even your business?

That's a good question. I believe that in the next six to twelve months, either you're going to have to really understand digital marketing, or you're gonna have to outsource it to someone. Now I see a lot of business owners, not only gym owners, really focusing on like marketing and that type of stuff, which I think is vitally important. I take huge advantage of it. But if you don't have the basic, if you don't have a strong foundation and you were to get an extra 25 members in one month, somehow, you know, you ran something right, you got a, you know, you got one of your Facebook ads right, you ran 20, you know, you you brought you brought in 25 people. If you don't have systems ready for that, well, less than 30% of those 25 are gonna stay. And then you're gonna lose some of your good members who've been there for a while because now you're so distracted and so stressed out with these 25 people. Um, so I sort of see us having to, I sort of see it sort of like Glassman, Greg Glassman says, the cream's gonna be rising to the top even faster now. Yeah, right? Because I think there will be some guys that will outsource their marketing and keep a lot of people inside the gym, coming in fresh faces, but at the same time, like you know, you know, you have a revolving door in, but then you have three or four people going out the back when you're bringing in six or seven. You know, um, so you you know, you have a plus three or four each month, but you're losing people, you're gaining some. I would much rather have a positive three every month and not lose, you know, more than one or two people each month. You know, that's just part of our business. We're we're going to lose people for various reasons. Sure. Um but if you're not losing more than you can keep most months, you know, of course there are gonna be some months where you may lose more, but um, you know, that's really the thing right there. I I really like to keep members that we have in the gym, then slowly but surely bring members in, you know. We've had some huge success with some of our, you know, some of our Facebook campaigns and stuff like that, like you know, but you know, that's only for a little, you know, that's only for a little while. We don't, you know, we don't do that all the time because we could have too many people in here, then that product, that service is gonna go down, and then that's definitely not what we want long term.

Yeah, man, I totally agree with you. And we call it um, we have a term for it, we call it binge marketing, where essentially people just throw you know a ton of time and effort into the sprint. And I did it, you know. I own a gym for a CrossFit gym for the better part of nine years, and I did it. Um ticked off a lot of my current members, right? Had a lot of issues with that, and ended up, you know, six months later retaining 10. You know, 10%. Um yeah, so this. So as fitness professionals, you know, except for maybe you know you and and people. In a similar situation, you know, imagine the average the average fit pro, right? Always seems to focus on, you know, the kinesiology, the physiology, rep set schemes, right? All those things that that work. Where do you think the fitness industry overall has its biggest blind spots as far as business and marketing and kind of what everybody else in the business world knows that the fitness pro the fitness industry is missing?

Yeah. For me, I think that's sort of a, you know, it may be, I may have one or two, but I'm gonna say systems, right? Systems that really work, right? Um, I think that if you can turn this gym, these gyms, you know, these fit, you know, these fitness empires into a turnkey business, you've done something special. Because basically you can remove yourself and then put someone in, and then it is going to run just the same. People aren't gonna freak out, you know. But when you don't have a turnkey business, what happens when you sort of take the icon out of there? You know, what happens when the guy that coaches most of the class, he's there all the time, he deals with all the people. When you up and remove him for various reasons, maybe he's burnt out because he's built this thing to something great. He's burnt out, he's tired of it. Now he just wants to give it up. But, you know, for me, one of the toughest things that I see personally, even though it doesn't affect me per se, is when gyms sh um close down, right? It really hurts me when I see especially CrossFit gyms, right? Because we all know the community, man, like it's powerful. You know, if you're not in it, you really don't get it. But a lot of times when a gym closes down, those members, some of them get dispersed, but a lot of them don't join another gym because they've liked that group of people so much they don't feel like they're gonna get the same level of service anywhere else, which is quite possible they can go down the road and get even better service, but that's not the point. You know, the point is there's a group of people that are going to be displaced probably for a long time now, you know, and I think having systems in place really, really is vital, man. And I um and then I also believe another thing that we as fit pros have to see, just because we're so involved in our members' lives, because we care and we should be, I think that we have to definitely learn how to remove our emotions from our day-to-day activities, right? Because when someone cancels, right? Me personally, I don't deal with the the finances or the cancellation or anything anymore. Like I don't even know when someone's canceling except, you know, I'll get a report from my operation manager every so forth. Not that I don't want to know, but it hurts though, you know. Even if even though, you know, even though money's fine, members of uh life is good, you know, exactly. Susie that hasn't been to the gym in two months, now she's leaving, even though you already knew she was leaving because she hasn't come in two months. You called her, followed up with her. Then when she finally puts in a cancellation notice, like it hurts. Yeah. And then like I could see how we need to learn how to sort of step back, look at the situation, either A, figure out how we can make it better, or B, just let it be, right? You don't see, you know, big time, super professional business owners getting involved with a lot of the stuff that CrossFit gym owners deal with. You know, I think we have to raise our level of professionalism. Now, I'm gonna step on a few toes here, but this is just an example, right? Really, you know, but you know, outside of the CrossFit community, you know, when we talk about stuff that we do, you know, like bringing dogs to the gym and you know, just other little stuff like that. I just use that as an example. I I like dogs, I don't have a dog, but you know, stuff like that, you know, that's a lot of stuff that we focus on that we worry about. Then in the grand scheme of things, you know, bringing dogs to the gym, having kids in the gym with no daycare, no childcare, that type of stuff, you know. Like, if you're gonna have it set up correctly, there are certain things that you just can't deal with. Of course, there are gonna be some members that cannot be members of your gym because you don't have child care, or maybe you don't allow dogs to come in, or maybe you require people to work out with their shirts on, you know. But like that's a policy that we've had a long time, and now it's just part of our culture. But in the beginning, it was a little scary for me. But me and my wife, we decided that's what we're gonna do. Like, you know, what professional establishment do you go into? Even the global gym, what professional establishment do you go into where guys and girls can work out with their shirts and just like off around in a sports problem, no turn at all?

Yeah, it's nowhere.

Yeah, exactly. Super rare, you know. So, but again, I'm just pointing out you know, different areas, not really picking on anyone, but I think that we have to raise our level of professionalism because we're charging professional rates for our training, our group training, which we should because you know most CrossFit coaches are very, very talented and good coaches, but at the same time, I think it has to be sort of like a total package. You just can't be a great coach, but then the professionalism isn't there, you know?

Yep. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. And you know, I was talking to my business partner about this the other day. Community is a double-edged sword, man. It's incredibly powerful, right? It's incredibly powerful and it brings people in and keeps them together. The other side, it's a very difficult thing to manage. And if you try to manage it, you know, sometimes it comes, it bites you. You know, it'll bite you personally, professionally, um, financially. And uh yeah, I think it's an interesting point. I never thought about the shirts off thing. Um, but this these are all really great points. So, Sherman, I'm gonna wrap it up here. I I want to know um, you know, if people want to reach you, if they want to follow you and kind of see what you're doing um in the digital space, or even just seeing what you're doing at the gym, where they find you, and then if someone's interested in getting business mentoring from you, um, when can that happen and and how would they get a hold of you for that?

Yeah, so like if they want to follow, um it'll be fine, it'll be better to follow the business page, dynastycrossfit.com, because all of our stuff is, you know, we push it out on that and then I'll share it from my personal page and stuff. They can definitely find me on Facebook just by my name, but dynastycrossfit.com. And then if they want, you know, more mentoring and stuff like that, um, obviously they just need to go to two brainbusiness.com. When they sign up, you know, uh they'll have some options, but if they let them know that they're looking for Sherman, that'll be an easy fix right there. So, but yeah, so dynastycrossfit.com. If they want to follow us personally, see the type of stuff we're doing, how we're standing in front of people, then if they want some more business mentoring, two brainbusiness.com. Awesome.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Sherman. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, man. And uh I know you and I will be talking soon.

Oh, for sure, definitely.

All right, but see ya. See ya. Hey everybody, this is Eric with the Fitness Marketing Alliance, and I want to say thank you for listening to this episode of the Future of Fitness podcast and webinar series. Uh, we're working really hard here to keep great content coming out, and we like to express our gratitude by offering you a free seven-day marketing crash course. So here's how you can claim it. If you go to fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash free gift, F-R-E-E-G-I-F-T, and you enter the promo code FitMARK F I T M A R K, you can claim it that way. The other way is you can text us. So you can text the phone number 805-619-5550, and you text the word FitMARK F-I-T-M-A-R-K. So again, that phone number is 805-619-5550. So thank you. Keep listening, go claim that offer. It's a ton of value. And if you ever want to get a hold of me, or if you have suggestions for guests, topics, or anything else, or if you just want to ask me questions, uh, I always respond. You can reach me at Eric E R I C at Fitness MarketingAliance.com and keep listening. We have a lot more coming down the pipe, and uh, we'll make sure that we're keeping the value great for you guys. And farewell till next time.