Adam Menner - The Business Of Strength

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[00:00:42] Thanks for listening and onto the show.

[00:00:50] Hey friends, Eric Malzone here.

[00:00:53] I've had the honor of interviewing over 750 professionals across the fitness, health

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[00:02:23] All right, we're live.

[00:02:24] Adam Menner, welcome to the future of fitness.

[00:02:26] Awesome.

[00:02:27] Yeah, I'm super pumped to be here.

[00:02:28] It's been a long time coming.

[00:02:29] It has. It has.

[00:02:30] I feel like this has been on the calendar for a very long time.

[00:02:33] So I've finally got you here and I've enjoyed every conversation we've always had.

[00:02:39] You guys are doing really good work over there, so I'm excited to highlight that.

[00:02:44] If people don't know who you are, they soon will.

[00:02:46] And yeah, so thanks for making the time.

[00:02:48] I know you have a lot going on, opening up a new gym, hosting a podcast,

[00:02:52] consulting for a ton of gyms.

[00:02:54] So there's lots on pack here and I really, really like the topic that we are just

[00:02:59] discussing that we're going to highlight here, which is servant leadership at scale.

[00:03:04] I think anybody who's tried to scale a business from one to two to three

[00:03:07] locations can understand that the first location going to the second location

[00:03:11] is very different and how do you do that for gym ownership or just business at large?

[00:03:16] So without further ado, let's talk about you, Adam.

[00:03:18] Give us a little bit of information about you, what you guys do at Business of Strength,

[00:03:22] your background, and then we'll go from there.

[00:03:25] Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I appreciate you reaching out and I know we've

[00:03:28] connected via text, calling some emails.

[00:03:30] So I'm super excited to be here.

[00:03:32] Hopefully provide a lot of value.

[00:03:33] But yeah, so my name is Adam Menner.

[00:03:35] I own a bunch of gyms here in the Northeast.

[00:03:37] I have two partners and we also have a consulting company called the Business of Strength

[00:03:42] where we help other gym owners and trainers build their businesses.

[00:03:45] Whether you know what stage it is doesn't really matter because we've been through it all.

[00:03:50] But one thing that's really funny is I was actually an intern for people who don't know

[00:03:53] at DeFranco's Training Systems.

[00:03:56] So I was at with Joe DeFranco.

[00:03:57] My first experience of fitness was walking in the door.

[00:04:00] I don't know my butt from my elbow.

[00:04:02] I get into the gym and it's just Triple H, just doing band colaparts with Brian

[00:04:08] pushing.

[00:04:09] And I'm like, oh my gosh, like I love this place, right?

[00:04:12] I need head and heart.

[00:04:13] And so get in there, do my internship with him.

[00:04:16] And then he moved down to Texas when he did his whole stint with Onnit.

[00:04:20] And I came here to Varsity House as an intern.

[00:04:22] And so Joe and Dan, who are now my partners, they put me through the wringer when I was

[00:04:28] here.

[00:04:29] And so just testing, I think we like to joke, but testing my mental fortitude more

[00:04:32] than you know, the actual X's and O's if you will of training.

[00:04:35] So I survived.

[00:04:37] And ever since then, I've gone from intern to a coach to manager, now partner across

[00:04:41] all of our businesses.

[00:04:42] And so I kind of had this unique experience where it's not like I'm this founder

[00:04:47] and I started all these gyms.

[00:04:48] I was internal at the beginning and then I kind of made my way up and I ascended

[00:04:52] with the company. So I like that unique insight when I try to give advice to people

[00:04:56] because I can I can feel it on both ends if you will.

[00:04:59] Yeah, yeah. A great background.

[00:05:01] Triple H. That kind of takes me back to the let's start with the gym.

[00:05:06] So you have the gyms, the consulting, the podcast, a lot of different things.

[00:05:10] Let's start the gyms. Tell us about those specifically, you know, how you

[00:05:13] guys go about like who who the gyms are for, how you started them.

[00:05:17] Yeah, give us some details on those.

[00:05:18] Yeah, great question.

[00:05:19] So essentially, Joe Riggio, my partner, he's the oldest of the gang here.

[00:05:24] He started in 2006.

[00:05:25] He started literally a small storage closet training athletes and then quickly

[00:05:30] realized, hey, athletes don't bring in revenue all the time.

[00:05:33] So he started running or start training adults that quickly grew and scaled.

[00:05:37] And Dan Goodman and him became partners and they kind of made their way up.

[00:05:40] And then from there, they came to the third rendition, which is what I'm in

[00:05:44] right now. This is kind of our headquarters, our big facility.

[00:05:47] And this is where I started in 2014.

[00:05:49] So I was here, did my internship, like I just said.

[00:05:53] And then from there, what ended up happening is, you know, we quickly

[00:05:57] learned about the side of business like all gym owners go through.

[00:06:00] Right. You think that training become the smartest person in the room is

[00:06:03] going to get you all the clients, all the fame, all the money in the gym

[00:06:06] industry. But what you don't realize is the economics, the schedule

[00:06:10] and the financial literacy of running a healthy gym business.

[00:06:13] And so we've took many courses, joined many masterminds to take that

[00:06:17] information. And we did a lot of revamping here, especially out of COVID,

[00:06:22] which was a big point of contention for everybody.

[00:06:24] And we really had to look at our business and get rid of dead weight,

[00:06:27] get rid of dead people, streamline, simplify, increase our service

[00:06:31] offerings, which led us to Barca's personal training, which is a holding

[00:06:35] company where we're going to open up a bunch of gyms.

[00:06:38] What we did, though, is we took our most profitable service offering,

[00:06:41] which is small group personal training in the gym.

[00:06:45] And we just do that in each of our smaller training studios.

[00:06:48] The economics for that just work out way better in terms of price per client

[00:06:54] schedule, staffing. You'll need one to two coaches per that location.

[00:06:58] Profit margins and just ease of business.

[00:07:01] You know, it's like if you're an entrepreneur and you like

[00:07:04] do a little bit of real estate and you have a lawn mowing business,

[00:07:07] then you do all this. It's like those are so different in themselves

[00:07:10] that it's hard to stay focused.

[00:07:11] And so we wanted to stay focused, get lean, take our main thing.

[00:07:15] And therefore, it's easier to scale.

[00:07:17] And so we did that.

[00:07:19] And then we have a consulting company called the Business Strength,

[00:07:21] as I alluded to before, you know, where we teach other gym owners

[00:07:24] not just that, but just how to run a successful gym,

[00:07:27] whether you want to do one or you want to do many.

[00:07:29] And so that's kind of what we have going on right now.

[00:07:31] Awesome. And for your gym locations, as you guys expand,

[00:07:36] are you starting new with each location?

[00:07:39] Are you acquiring?

[00:07:40] Like, what's what's the plan as a mixture of both?

[00:07:42] Like, what's what's that plan?

[00:07:44] For sure. Good question.

[00:07:45] So no, we we have our own brand.

[00:07:47] We are Varsity as a gym privately owned.

[00:07:49] We didn't accept any outside money.

[00:07:51] And we start brand new right from the ground up.

[00:07:53] We pick our location, the lease, we go through what it's going to look

[00:07:56] like, the equipment, hire the right person.

[00:07:59] We have all the systems to do so.

[00:08:01] And we like that because something that's super important,

[00:08:04] as we kind of talked about before, is we have so much goodwill

[00:08:08] and brand recognition in the New Jersey area.

[00:08:11] So a lot of people, even from these neighboring towns, who might think like,

[00:08:15] they're just a little too far.

[00:08:16] Oh, I just don't have time.

[00:08:17] We have a lot of pull in those communities.

[00:08:20] So it allows us to open these gyms up.

[00:08:22] There's so many people in such a great community of people who want to help us

[00:08:26] that it allows these launches, if you will,

[00:08:28] to go a little bit more smoothly because of that.

[00:08:30] It's not like we're moving to the Midwest and we're just trying to open up.

[00:08:34] And now it's like, oh, my goodness, we don't have any of these resources.

[00:08:36] We really don't know these people.

[00:08:37] So we try to be very strategic in how we do that.

[00:08:41] And that's really why we wanted to do it.

[00:08:43] You know, when you go, when you start a business from the ground up,

[00:08:46] this is a tangent. I'm always good for one of these, Eric.

[00:08:48] So let me go ahead.

[00:08:49] Yeah, yeah. Great.

[00:08:50] When you start a business from the ground up,

[00:08:53] there's two things that happen.

[00:08:55] One, I think as coaches in the industry or fitness professionals

[00:08:59] is a lot of people want to be known as the founder.

[00:09:02] You know, and as I alluded to you off camera, where it's like,

[00:09:04] I want to be the founder. I want my name on the door.

[00:09:06] This is my company.

[00:09:07] I did X, Y and Z. So it's very ego and pride driven.

[00:09:10] And because of that, you think that you can go out on your own

[00:09:13] and you can create this amazing business, which led me to what I said before

[00:09:17] is from the ground up.

[00:09:18] What you might not have from the ground up is you don't have experience.

[00:09:23] You don't have brand recognition.

[00:09:25] You don't have financial literacy.

[00:09:27] You don't have compounding goodwill,

[00:09:29] which a lot of people don't talk about, which is just serving

[00:09:31] your community a lot and doing all the little things where it's like,

[00:09:34] oh, my goodness, I know Eric.

[00:09:35] He's a great guy.

[00:09:36] He helped my kid for three years.

[00:09:38] You have zero of that.

[00:09:39] So you are literally not begging,

[00:09:41] but you are literally trying to get people to come in and train

[00:09:44] and you're doing everything, the marketing, the coaching,

[00:09:47] the selling, the billing counts receivable,

[00:09:50] all the little things that you don't want to do versus

[00:09:52] if you are part of a company that has a true growth mindset,

[00:09:56] one clear mission, one true purpose.

[00:09:58] I use myself as examples.

[00:09:59] You could go from an intern to a partner in that position

[00:10:02] where now you have all the resources, all the brand recognition,

[00:10:05] everything you need, and now you can move much faster.

[00:10:08] And so that is why we wanted to be strategic about the places

[00:10:11] that we pick, the people who we do business with.

[00:10:14] And so far, it's worked in our favor.

[00:10:16] So, yeah, love it.

[00:10:18] What are how big are they?

[00:10:19] What's the general footprint that you guys are looking for? Sure.

[00:10:21] So they range between 12 and 1500 square feet.

[00:10:24] OK, so 12 and 1500 square feet.

[00:10:27] Our price per client is about 400 bucks.

[00:10:29] We average between 120 and 130 members with one and a half coaches

[00:10:34] operating at about 30 to 35 percent margin per facility.

[00:10:39] Wow, that's really good.

[00:10:41] Yeah, small.

[00:10:42] I thought for some reason I was expecting like five, six thousand square feet.

[00:10:45] No, no, no.

[00:10:46] So that's where you could get lost, though, is because from a financial

[00:10:49] standpoint, we want to make sure that we are always right side up

[00:10:52] and we try to recoup our money is in little as two to three months

[00:10:56] after launch. And so you can't do that when you have these,

[00:10:58] you know, these big facilities, there's too many insular costs

[00:11:01] overhead and what have you.

[00:11:03] Yeah, I think if I was going to go back on my gym operating career,

[00:11:06] I would look at one of the things that was a mistake.

[00:11:09] It was ego driven.

[00:11:10] One hundred percent was going from, you know, 2500 square feet

[00:11:15] to five thousand square feet. Right.

[00:11:17] So trying to add like personal training, a bunch of things that,

[00:11:21] you know, were in my core.

[00:11:22] Meanwhile, if I had just not done that, stuck to the very core thing

[00:11:26] of, you know, that the 80 percent of where our revenue came from. Right.

[00:11:29] Which was group classes.

[00:11:32] Crossfade group classes, basically.

[00:11:34] If I had just kept to that, really reinvested in that

[00:11:37] in experience and the coaching and the retention and all that,

[00:11:41] that I probably would have been far more profitable

[00:11:43] than I was. It was still a good gym.

[00:11:45] But I look at that like the discipline, right?

[00:11:47] Like you have to see discipline so easy to see shiny things and chase them.

[00:11:51] So, yeah, that's that was that's that's surprising

[00:11:53] that you guys are that small.

[00:11:55] It must be very, very efficient.

[00:11:56] That's a great point, though.

[00:11:58] You know, it's a great point is in fitness.

[00:12:00] You try to align your business sometimes with your personal interests.

[00:12:05] Yeah. And you romanticize your business

[00:12:08] because you're like, I'm really good at cross.

[00:12:10] I'm really good at PR.

[00:12:12] I'm really good at Westside Barbell.

[00:12:15] And the list goes on and on and on.

[00:12:16] But something there's a good book by Dan Kennedy called Marketing to the Affluent.

[00:12:21] Something that a lot of people don't do is they don't think about

[00:12:23] picking their ideal avatar and then reversing a business around it.

[00:12:27] So, you know, what I'll say is, is we go into very wealthy towns

[00:12:32] where we know we can charge four or five, six hundred bucks a month.

[00:12:35] Nobody bats an eye.

[00:12:36] So just do the math on that.

[00:12:38] One hundred twenty members, four or five hundred, six hundred bucks a month.

[00:12:41] Twelve to fifteen hundred square feet operating at those margins

[00:12:44] because we know that that our bread and butter is customized

[00:12:48] personal strength training in a small group setting.

[00:12:51] So take any of your principles. Sure, we have ours.

[00:12:54] You know, we have the Varsity House training model.

[00:12:56] But take any of your principles and just create a system that serves those people.

[00:13:02] So we serve parents, you know, adults between the ages of 40 and 60 and their kids.

[00:13:07] We don't want superstars.

[00:13:08] I want the kid that wants to train three times a week year round

[00:13:10] because he loves being in shape and listening to music and hanging out there.

[00:13:14] Coaches and those people are very easy to service

[00:13:17] because their expectation is not like you just alluded to,

[00:13:21] which was a great point of like CrossFit.

[00:13:23] Is this gym hardcore?

[00:13:24] You know what I mean?

[00:13:25] And then what ends up happening is is you're spending like hours and hours

[00:13:29] a week writing the best program to serve those people based upon the needs

[00:13:32] that they told you that they wanted.

[00:13:34] And now you're like, OK, this person said they needed this.

[00:13:36] They want to go for a PR in the snatch.

[00:13:38] OK, like this is a good progression.

[00:13:40] It's like that's wasted energy when you could have said, like, no,

[00:13:43] who fits into this training model that we know we could serve,

[00:13:47] deliver and great, you know, get great results.

[00:13:49] Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:50] I mean, no offense to anybody who is an athlete

[00:13:53] that trained in my gym back in the day, but you were a pain in the ass.

[00:13:56] Like you like it was as you took up a lot of time, a lot of space.

[00:14:01] You needed it.

[00:14:02] Like if you want to train to hit your goals, right?

[00:14:04] You needed that extra time in the gym and that freedom and all that.

[00:14:07] But it was not good for the core, the core people within my gym.

[00:14:12] Walk me through the client experience.

[00:14:14] Like what does that look like?

[00:14:16] For sure. Yeah, great question.

[00:14:17] So, you know, in the gym industry, there's a couple of statistics

[00:14:21] that you have to be aware of if you want to start a gym.

[00:14:24] That is number one, somebody won't buy from you in the first two weeks.

[00:14:28] But, you know, the 85 percent of people buy in the next 100.

[00:14:31] So your points of contact have to be very high

[00:14:33] via marketing, servicing people, reaching out and follow up.

[00:14:37] Number two is that in the onboarding experience,

[00:14:40] people who have a great onboard experience, meaning

[00:14:43] which I'll talk about in a little bit, the retention is much higher

[00:14:46] and their client lifetime value is much higher.

[00:14:48] And we found that if they can get to the six month more,

[00:14:52] that they're going to stay for about three years.

[00:14:54] So we have to make sure that they're coddled, if you will,

[00:14:56] to that six month point.

[00:14:57] And then we know that we're going to serve some of the back end.

[00:14:59] We call that defensive marketing.

[00:15:01] But we know that we're going to serve some of the back end

[00:15:03] and that they should be a member for a very long time.

[00:15:06] But our onboard is pretty detailed.

[00:15:08] And this is what separates us a little bit, not detailed in the sense of like,

[00:15:12] I'm going to put you through this whole complicated assessment.

[00:15:14] I'm going to see your internal external rotation.

[00:15:16] I'm going to see your respiration strategies.

[00:15:18] Not that it's detailed in experience.

[00:15:21] So I'll just use you, Eric, as you know, I'll walk you through it.

[00:15:24] It's like you inquired about training at the gym.

[00:15:27] We make you fill out a waiver, a part Q and an intake form.

[00:15:29] When you get there on the TV, we have your name.

[00:15:32] Welcome, Eric. We sit you down.

[00:15:33] We do a goal setting session.

[00:15:35] Hey, tell me about this.

[00:15:36] Let's review some of these things.

[00:15:37] How do you feel? Why?

[00:15:38] You know, where do you experience your best results in its sales and goal

[00:15:42] setting? Then we do a physical assessment

[00:15:44] where we categorize our members into novices or advanced.

[00:15:48] Not true advanced like, oh, my gosh, like you can dead of 600

[00:15:51] pounds advanced, just like he could do 20 strict push ups.

[00:15:54] He can do inverted rows.

[00:15:55] He could squat like he's pretty good here.

[00:15:57] She and a novice is like I haven't seen the gym inside the gym.

[00:16:01] Ten, 15 years, my work capacity is low.

[00:16:04] So then you get categorized.

[00:16:05] Then once we do that, we bring you back up and we talk about, hey,

[00:16:08] here's our different options.

[00:16:10] And this is just a little sales secret.

[00:16:12] Always go with the highest priced option and only show two of them.

[00:16:15] Right. And so it's like, hey, you have two options of training.

[00:16:17] You don't want your menu to look like, you know, a giant restaurant

[00:16:20] menu of all different options.

[00:16:22] It's just like, hey, we do this in this.

[00:16:24] That's it. Once we do that, we onboard them to all of our platforms.

[00:16:28] So our training tech platform, our community management platform

[00:16:32] into Facebook, and then we get them a little gift when they sign up.

[00:16:36] So it has like a sticker and envelope, a handwritten card

[00:16:38] with their name, a T-shirt.

[00:16:39] And we give that to them so that we're in their home

[00:16:41] so that they remember us.

[00:16:43] They go through a 30 day lifecycle, just reminders like, hey, good morning.

[00:16:46] It's Monday. Can't wait to see at the gym later.

[00:16:48] And that's an automation.

[00:16:50] Then once they go through that process, right?

[00:16:53] Like we said, if we could get them the six month mark,

[00:16:55] which is just about great training, we know that they'll stay for a while.

[00:16:57] So that's what we do.

[00:16:58] Every single person inquires about coming to train with us.

[00:17:00] They get a one on one goal setting session.

[00:17:02] So it's a lot, but it definitely is shown to work.

[00:17:05] Yeah. Well, your margins speak for themselves and,

[00:17:08] you know, strength as a category for training is having a moment.

[00:17:12] You know, it's very popular, especially in the female demographic,

[00:17:15] at least with people I talk to and conversations I've had.

[00:17:18] So are you seeing that as well?

[00:17:20] Like, is that is that something you're seeing?

[00:17:21] And why do you think that is?

[00:17:23] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, global trends just in the private sector industry

[00:17:26] as like a whole is that strength training is like the most researched

[00:17:30] backed modality of fitness because it delivers the best results

[00:17:34] just because of obviously all the adaptations

[00:17:38] versus, you know, a lot of these fads that are coming in

[00:17:41] and now that they're trying to make classes around or their brands of fitness.

[00:17:45] Those are great, but those complement your strength sessions.

[00:17:48] So I look at it the same as like they shouldn't be the base of the pyramid.

[00:17:53] That is strength.

[00:17:54] We know that any adaptation that you want, cardiovascular, your fitness,

[00:17:57] your work capacity, your power, your speed is a byproduct of developing great strength.

[00:18:02] But strength is also something that can be qualified

[00:18:05] or quantified, if you will, on a weekly, monthly basis.

[00:18:09] I know that if you come in and that you do three rounds of 10

[00:18:12] at bodyweight week one next week, we can add load and then we can go

[00:18:15] from the goblet squat to a dumbbell squat to a box squat.

[00:18:18] That's a year of training right there.

[00:18:20] And so it's the easiest to progress and regress.

[00:18:23] And it has the most long term benefits.

[00:18:24] And if you want to do some of your other style of fitness,

[00:18:27] that complements that.

[00:18:28] And that's what's worked tremendously for us.

[00:18:30] So I'm not trying to compete with Barry's boot camp or Orange Theory.

[00:18:33] I'm like, oh, you like Orange Theory?

[00:18:34] That's no problem.

[00:18:35] You could do Orange Theory on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

[00:18:37] And then you could come to us on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

[00:18:39] You will get in the best shape of your life if you do that.

[00:18:41] And it's like, oh, OK, I see it as a compliment.

[00:18:44] Not like don't do that and pick ours over that.

[00:18:47] You know, and we try to have goodwill too, just in terms of like,

[00:18:50] I don't want to talk badly ever about any medallion fitness

[00:18:53] because fitness is great.

[00:18:54] But what we've seen in the industry is that a lot of things are reverting

[00:18:57] back to strength training because it has the best long term adaptation.

[00:19:02] And research has shown that it has the best effect on you,

[00:19:05] especially as you get older.

[00:19:06] I mean, we have people that are doing strength training,

[00:19:08] like dumbbell squatting, 100 pounds at 80 years old.

[00:19:11] So it's pretty cool to see the longevity of that, where it's like,

[00:19:14] I don't know if I would have an 80 year old get on a treadmill for 30 minutes.

[00:19:19] Yeah, it's you know, longevity is is

[00:19:22] is so now closely tied to strength as well.

[00:19:24] I mean, I don't know if you read a Tia's book.

[00:19:27] Yeah, of course.

[00:19:28] Yeah, yeah, I kind of it took me a while to get through it.

[00:19:31] It's dense. Super dense.

[00:19:33] Yeah. But then if you look at like,

[00:19:34] I was starting to break down his overall training,

[00:19:37] like between the strength and the VO2, like all the special like, too.

[00:19:41] You got to have like 20 hours a week to do a training.

[00:19:45] And but my mind is like, well, if it could distill down

[00:19:47] to the real person in a real life, right?

[00:19:50] Like the thing that's core that should be done

[00:19:54] you can basically through the rest of your life is strength.

[00:19:57] Like if I was going to break down one modality,

[00:19:59] I think that's got to be it.

[00:20:00] So, yeah, I mean, it's a great place to be.

[00:20:02] And especially with women.

[00:20:03] I mean, that's something you guys have got to see.

[00:20:05] Those women are hit on the weight room and not just like,

[00:20:08] you know, machines, but we're talking like legitimate training.

[00:20:12] Yeah. Yeah. And that's another good point.

[00:20:13] You know, where if I want somebody to be consistent,

[00:20:17] I have to break it down in a way that's digestible.

[00:20:20] And I build confidence and I'm persuading them to,

[00:20:23] hey, I know you're only using a five pound dumbbell right now.

[00:20:26] But I'm telling you, if you come three times a week,

[00:20:28] like in three months, this dumbbells going to be 30 pounds.

[00:20:31] And you see them and they're like, oh, my goodness.

[00:20:33] Like, that's incredible.

[00:20:35] But it's very hard for me to sell somebody, you know, air quotes

[00:20:39] to be like, hey, I know you're running 18 miles an hour on the treadmill right now.

[00:20:43] In 10 years, you're going to be right 25 miles per hour on the treadmill.

[00:20:47] It's like that's not I'm lying to you one.

[00:20:51] But two, it's also just like, what does this look like as I go on here?

[00:20:54] You know, whereas you're still training, I'm still training.

[00:20:57] I've been doing this for 15 years.

[00:20:59] It's like because it's endless.

[00:21:01] I can keep progressing those modalities.

[00:21:03] And if I was to tell somebody like, hey,

[00:21:05] you're going to get three strength training sessions a week

[00:21:07] and you're going to go for two long walks, it's like, oh, I could do that.

[00:21:12] And now you build confidence in their ability to do that.

[00:21:14] And to answer your question, especially women,

[00:21:17] women are very intimidated by the gym.

[00:21:18] They think they get bulky and bigger.

[00:21:20] And now we have the evidence to show, you know, through all

[00:21:24] of our transformations and pictures, but we have the evidence to show it.

[00:21:26] No, that's not the case.

[00:21:27] Here's actually what would happen.

[00:21:29] And if you really want to get into it, if you don't do any strength

[00:21:32] training and you only do cardiovascular work, actually your muscle

[00:21:35] will be into atrophy and your body weight or your body fat could go up.

[00:21:38] So you're actually going to look worse if you don't implement,

[00:21:41] you know, strength training.

[00:21:42] And so there's many ways that we frame that for people.

[00:21:46] And that helps build confidence.

[00:21:47] And, you know, once you get them in the gym, they feel confident.

[00:21:51] Do you guys touch on nutrition for the clients as well?

[00:21:54] Or is that considered a distraction from your core principle?

[00:21:58] So that's a great, great question.

[00:22:00] So before we created the expansion plan, we did, we had an in-house

[00:22:04] nutritionist, a registered dietitian.

[00:22:07] And we did a lot of nutrition consults.

[00:22:09] We made it a big point of contention of training here.

[00:22:12] And it was great and people loved it.

[00:22:15] But when looking at the business and the P&L and you just go line

[00:22:18] item by different service offering, it was always on the bottom.

[00:22:21] You know, but of course we would say like, no, but they need it.

[00:22:24] No, but they need it.

[00:22:25] And it counted for like 5% of revenue.

[00:22:28] But if you were to look at usage and capacity for a registered

[00:22:32] dietitian, they were spending like 10 hours a week doing it.

[00:22:36] So it's like 10 hours a week compounded over a year.

[00:22:39] You're talking about almost like a thousand hours.

[00:22:41] And it was just like our hundreds of hours, but it was just like for 5%.

[00:22:45] So from a business standpoint, it didn't make sense.

[00:22:47] So what we ended up doing is, is we basically digitized

[00:22:51] all of the nutrition stuff.

[00:22:52] So we create like macro calculators, meal templates, and we package that up

[00:22:56] into digital assets that we can say like, Hey, if you're interested in nutrition,

[00:23:01] I have these resource.

[00:23:02] Can I share that with you?

[00:23:03] And you can go through that.

[00:23:04] If you have any questions, let me know.

[00:23:06] And it's just a great way to not waste energy on that, but still have it as

[00:23:10] a resource, add value to our core service.

[00:23:14] Yeah.

[00:23:15] Yeah.

[00:23:15] Fantastic.

[00:23:16] That's a really good idea.

[00:23:17] And you know, it's funny, like some of the gym owner, consultants and

[00:23:22] mentors I work with over the years, a lot of it was like adding, it was

[00:23:27] always adding, okay, add this program, add that, add this.

[00:23:30] Try this, do that.

[00:23:32] But very few were like, no, cut it, cut it, cut it, cut it, simplify.

[00:23:37] Right.

[00:23:37] And I think that's, you know, what I've noticed about the difference

[00:23:40] about you guys in our conversations is that you're very much about

[00:23:42] like, no, get to the core, simplify.

[00:23:45] You know, don't waste time on anything else and energy and assets to do it.

[00:23:48] And that I imagine that's, that's very cognizant in the way that you

[00:23:51] guys approach things, especially with your scale, your scaling up plan.

[00:23:54] Definitely.

[00:23:55] And in trainer burnout is real and the private sector industry,

[00:23:58] the turnover rate is 90%, meaning one every year.

[00:24:01] So you last a year and then you go on to your next thing in burnout happens

[00:24:05] of one, it could be scheduling capacity.

[00:24:06] If you're just doing 40 training hours and your schedule is all over

[00:24:09] the place, like, of course, like anybody's going to get burned out.

[00:24:12] But the second thing is, is we like to use a word as cost

[00:24:15] of fulfillment or phrase.

[00:24:17] Cost of fulfillment is if I offer too much, like you just said,

[00:24:20] Hey, we're going to do this VIP package and nutrition package.

[00:24:23] We also offer classes and stretch and sauna in this.

[00:24:27] That means that as a business owner, you have to manage all

[00:24:31] those different service offerings.

[00:24:33] Okay.

[00:24:33] Accounts receivable for each of them.

[00:24:35] Okay.

[00:24:35] I need multiple people to be able to service multiple things.

[00:24:38] And you're burning bandwidth and you're burning energy,

[00:24:41] which is not sustainable long-term.

[00:24:44] And so that's why when we just focus on training, I think we have

[00:24:47] some of the best coaches in the industry because all I have to do

[00:24:49] is coach them on how to train people, deal with people, create

[00:24:51] great experience, celebrate our clients.

[00:24:54] They don't, you don't have to worry about any of that stuff.

[00:24:56] And so that's why we want to create real long-term careers for

[00:25:01] people in the industry.

[00:25:02] And we know by doing that, if I try to give them more than they

[00:25:05] can handle, they're going to get overwhelmed.

[00:25:07] They might not communicate with us.

[00:25:08] You might start to resent us.

[00:25:10] I know I'm going on a different path, but it's the truth.

[00:25:12] And so the more simple your business can be, that's also just

[00:25:15] being in tune with the economics of the business, but the more

[00:25:17] simple your business can be the better your coaches can service

[00:25:20] that product.

[00:25:21] Right?

[00:25:21] You don't go to a Michelin star restaurant and get a hundred

[00:25:24] different options.

[00:25:24] You go to a Michelin star restaurant, they hand you a

[00:25:26] menu that has like five options.

[00:25:29] Yeah.

[00:25:30] And so.

[00:25:31] Well said.

[00:25:32] I want to get into the core kind of piece that we're going

[00:25:35] to cover and I want to reference like you and I talked about

[00:25:38] this pre-recording.

[00:25:39] I was on Brandon Cullen from Atabolic, his podcast, Playing

[00:25:44] Guilty and we kind of did an interview swap with him.

[00:25:47] And one of the things that I asked him about was can you

[00:25:49] scale quality, right?

[00:25:51] Like here's, you know, Matabolic started with a couple

[00:25:53] core, like their initial corporal Lyon locations.

[00:25:57] It was just Brandon and his partner.

[00:25:58] They knew what they were doing.

[00:26:00] They passionate, right?

[00:26:02] Put in all the work.

[00:26:03] And then, you know, the challenges as you start to scale, right?

[00:26:06] And the way you phrased it was, uh, you know, servant

[00:26:09] leadership at scale.

[00:26:10] So tell me what does that mean to you?

[00:26:12] And obviously there's a lot of challenging, a lot of

[00:26:14] challenges as you scale to the quality of what you're doing.

[00:26:17] But specifically leadership, how do you start to approach that?

[00:26:20] What are your inputs on that?

[00:26:21] Yeah, no, great question.

[00:26:23] It, you know, as any gym business, like we said before, if

[00:26:28] you are the owner or the founder, you want to become the

[00:26:31] smartest in the room, deliver the best product.

[00:26:34] There's so many little nuances and you could attest this

[00:26:36] too, that it just hard to teach like how I interact with

[00:26:39] people, how I deal with client issues, how I instigate

[00:26:41] success on the training floor.

[00:26:43] It's like, are we got to push here?

[00:26:44] If we got to push your, Hey man, you should, okay, why

[00:26:46] don't you go get, why don't you go get a water?

[00:26:47] It's like, how do I teach that to somebody?

[00:26:51] And so we think that we can just do it ourselves.

[00:26:53] And that's why we just, you know, everybody did this.

[00:26:56] They wear it as a badge of honor, like 50, 60 hours.

[00:26:59] Nobody coaches more than me.

[00:27:00] Nobody does this more than me.

[00:27:02] But then your business begins to do this because then your

[00:27:04] own quality begins to go down.

[00:27:07] So something that we put a tremendous amount of thought and

[00:27:11] effort into is quality control.

[00:27:13] And we do that by elevating coaches to be able to serve our

[00:27:17] community, so servant leadership at skip.

[00:27:21] And what we really do is that's why it's, it happens in three phases.

[00:27:25] Phase one is simplifying.

[00:27:27] Like we just talked about our product.

[00:27:29] You can't serve if you're all over the place and you have to worry

[00:27:32] about so many different options.

[00:27:35] So that's number one.

[00:27:36] Number two is you have to create a standard for what great quality looks like.

[00:27:42] And that happens in twofold.

[00:27:43] That happens in the actual training session.

[00:27:46] So we have like a training play sheet and a coaching eval sheet where it's like,

[00:27:50] Hey, did you dress their name five times?

[00:27:52] Hey, did you set up their mats?

[00:27:53] Did you set up the weights before they got there?

[00:27:56] Did you make sure, did you instigate success?

[00:27:59] Did we have a thing called Swift?

[00:28:00] Swift is an acronym we use smile, work the room, instigate success,

[00:28:04] find a friend, be thankful.

[00:28:05] Were you Swift?

[00:28:07] And so that's how a great session looks.

[00:28:09] And we have coaches grade other coaches in the session.

[00:28:13] And if you fall below an eight, you need some work to do.

[00:28:16] We need to make sure that you're in the core.

[00:28:18] And so that's quality control.

[00:28:20] The second part of quality control is also the type of people that we hire.

[00:28:25] Our hiring process is unbelievably extensive from our recruiting to our

[00:28:29] hiring, to our on the job training, to actually becoming a full-time

[00:28:32] member here, full-time team member here, because I want people that are

[00:28:36] adhere to our core values, which is just hungry, humble, committed

[00:28:40] to excellence and socially smart.

[00:28:42] Meaning if you come in and you think you're the man or the other woman

[00:28:45] and you're just super smart and you come in and you're like, Hey, I

[00:28:48] know more than everybody else.

[00:28:49] I could do this.

[00:28:50] I could do that.

[00:28:52] Not only get a rub the members the wrong way, you're going to rub our

[00:28:55] team the wrong way, and that's going to affect how we all serve together.

[00:28:59] The third part of that is consistency from all of our coaches, meaning

[00:29:05] Eric, you probably delivered the best training session in your general

[00:29:09] branding coach a hundred percent.

[00:29:10] But the drop off from you to me, if I'm a new coach coming in can't be so

[00:29:15] significant that there's a discrepancy in service where it's like now all

[00:29:19] I want to do is just train with Eric.

[00:29:21] Eric keeps getting busy.

[00:29:22] I just want to train with Eric.

[00:29:23] It's like, I don't really want to train with Adam.

[00:29:24] He's weird.

[00:29:25] He doesn't know how to, he doesn't know how to demonstrate

[00:29:27] the exercises properly.

[00:29:29] And so we make sure that we have the same training system that we

[00:29:33] all know inside and out, and that our cueing, our coaching, our

[00:29:37] language is all the same.

[00:29:39] So simplify your service offering quality control on both the actual

[00:29:44] service sign and the hiring process.

[00:29:46] And then thirdly is all about making sure that the training system is the

[00:29:50] same so there's no discrepancy in delivery.

[00:29:53] This episode of the future of fitness is brought to you by our friends at

[00:29:55] Wadify.

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[00:30:58] That's W O D I F Y dot com forward slash future of fitness.

[00:31:05] Now onto the show.

[00:31:08] Yeah, beautiful.

[00:31:09] And you know, consistency.

[00:31:11] I have this term has come up and I just wrote about in my newsletter

[00:31:15] too, like hospitality has come up quite a bit in conversations I've had

[00:31:20] on this podcast or within the industry.

[00:31:21] It was seemingly just about over the last year.

[00:31:24] I'm sure it's been around forever, but in one of the keys to good

[00:31:27] hospitality, like, you know, we're in someone who pointed out, I want

[00:31:31] to give him a credit, but it was like, we're not in the service

[00:31:33] industry, we're in the hospitality industry.

[00:31:36] And one of the keys to great hospitality is consistency, right?

[00:31:39] If you go to a four seasons, you know, in New York or, you know,

[00:31:43] in central Asia, wherever you are, you know that it's going to be

[00:31:47] consistent, right?

[00:31:48] The experience is going to be consistent.

[00:31:50] And that's probably one of the hardest things to do at scale is

[00:31:53] getting consistency.

[00:31:54] So, I mean, it sounds like that's kind of what you guys are going after.

[00:31:57] I mean, is that a conversation you deliberately have with your staff?

[00:32:00] It's like we need to be consistent.

[00:32:02] Of course.

[00:32:02] Yeah.

[00:32:03] I mean, that is so top of mind for me is just coaching

[00:32:06] delivery has to be consistent, which just goes back to point

[00:32:08] number two of quality control and like just having a trainer

[00:32:11] checklist and a coaching evaluation sheet.

[00:32:14] Cause I know you get an eight out of 10 in one of our locations.

[00:32:17] You come to another location, get an eight out of 10, you're consistent.

[00:32:20] And so that's how we make sure that we're doing those things.

[00:32:23] And the second part of consistency, I think as an leadership standpoint,

[00:32:27] you know, this could probably lead us into the second point of service

[00:32:30] based leadership from the owner side is, you know, you have to spend

[00:32:34] a significant amount of time with your staff.

[00:32:36] I think a lot of people try to, once they get to a certain level,

[00:32:39] they try to buy back your time, the entrepreneurial dream, freedom,

[00:32:43] time, money, that's all true 100%.

[00:32:46] But in the service based business, you're one of your fundamental four

[00:32:50] values as a human has to be service because these people are the ones

[00:32:55] who pay your bills.

[00:32:56] These people are the ones who give you life for you and your family.

[00:33:00] So if I am just denying that fact and I'm like, Oh, it doesn't matter.

[00:33:03] They're leaving.

[00:33:04] Oh, it doesn't matter.

[00:33:04] But what it's not going to pan out well, and it's going to then

[00:33:08] your reputation will begin to spew and you do not want that in a

[00:33:12] brick and mortar service based business.

[00:33:13] So spending time with your staff, we do a lot of home fire drills.

[00:33:18] So I literally do mock training sessions where one of our coaches

[00:33:21] has to train five, six of our other coaches right there.

[00:33:24] And it's like, Oh my goodness.

[00:33:25] Talk about getting nervous.

[00:33:26] It's like, Hey, Eric, right now stand up.

[00:33:28] You have to coach me and these five other coaches.

[00:33:31] It's like, okay.

[00:33:33] And so we constantly take, we like to say, taste our food.

[00:33:35] I take classes regularly.

[00:33:37] I'm tasting the food regularly.

[00:33:38] Hey, how did that go?

[00:33:39] We should have done this.

[00:33:40] No one could pull back from this.

[00:33:42] Don't do that.

[00:33:43] And just constantly evaluating it.

[00:33:45] So spending a lot of time in the trenches, taking classes,

[00:33:49] tasting your food goes a very long way to make sure that there's

[00:33:53] consistency across the board.

[00:33:54] And now once you start to scale beyond 10 locations, 15 and 20,

[00:33:59] it becomes a different story.

[00:34:00] You have to really double triple down on those systems, but

[00:34:03] that's a different conversation.

[00:34:04] Yeah.

[00:34:05] Let's let's touch on recruitment.

[00:34:08] That's been challenging for a lot of fitness businesses over the

[00:34:13] past few years.

[00:34:14] And, you know, I have theories about it, like, you know, as

[00:34:16] personal training kind of falling into the gig economy.

[00:34:20] You know, are people looking at this as an actual career that

[00:34:23] they can do for 10, 20 plus years?

[00:34:26] Right.

[00:34:27] So what are some of the challenges and maybe advantages

[00:34:29] that you guys have when it comes to recruiting, you know,

[00:34:32] eight players in your gyms?

[00:34:33] Yeah, for sure.

[00:34:35] You know, this is something I'm super passionate about, just

[00:34:38] doing it so much and sitting in on so many job interviews,

[00:34:41] doing so many on the job trainings.

[00:34:43] You know, I have a fundamental belief in three parts.

[00:34:47] I try to break everything that's right.

[00:34:49] You can tell.

[00:34:49] Oh my.

[00:34:50] Pretty true.

[00:34:50] Me too.

[00:34:52] Number one is recruiting starts with you.

[00:34:54] Recruiting starts with you.

[00:34:56] How do you carry yourself?

[00:34:57] How do you speak?

[00:34:58] How do you conduct yourself?

[00:34:59] How do you have a family?

[00:35:00] How do you treat your family?

[00:35:01] Do you party all the time?

[00:35:03] You treat your body like a carnival.

[00:35:05] How do you conduct yourself?

[00:35:07] And because people want to be around other like-minded people.

[00:35:10] I want to be around somebody who is either ahead of where I am, has

[00:35:13] a character trait I don't have.

[00:35:15] They have something physically that I don't have because I'm going

[00:35:17] to learn and I want to develop because I want to grow.

[00:35:20] And so a lot of times people are like, you know, why doesn't

[00:35:22] anybody want to come here and work for me?

[00:35:24] It's like, it may be you.

[00:35:26] You and yourself as the owner of your company may be the issue.

[00:35:29] Nobody wants to work for a boss who micromanages.

[00:35:32] Nobody wants to work for a boss who is demeaning.

[00:35:34] Nobody wants to work for somebody who, you know, look at in other industries.

[00:35:38] I wouldn't take nutrition advice from somebody who's overweight.

[00:35:42] I wouldn't take financial advice from somebody who's broke.

[00:35:45] I wouldn't go work for a gym owner who is emotionally unstable,

[00:35:48] out of shape and doesn't have a good grasp on his business.

[00:35:52] So fundamental pillar number one is it starts with you because

[00:35:56] you will attract those types of people.

[00:35:58] So what you're posting on social, how you speak your reputation, that it's

[00:36:04] going to echo into the ether sphere and you are going to get that back tenfold.

[00:36:08] The second part is, is what's your actual process look like in terms of getting

[00:36:14] somebody to inside your doors and getting them to become a full-time number?

[00:36:18] And so what we do is we have a three step process.

[00:36:20] One, we have paid ads for coaches coming into our business.

[00:36:25] So that's just LinkedIn.

[00:36:27] Sometimes it's Instagram, Facebook, whatever the case may be.

[00:36:29] We're trying to stockpile resumes and we go through that.

[00:36:33] One, they do a pre-screening questionnaire with the founder, which is Joe.

[00:36:36] So it's like a 15, 20 minute conversation.

[00:36:38] Sometimes it doesn't even get through there.

[00:36:39] It's like this person's terrible next.

[00:36:42] But if it does, they do an in-person meeting with our

[00:36:45] advisory board, which is four of us.

[00:36:48] They sit down an hour, get braided, not literally, but it's just like, well,

[00:36:52] you know, expectation is very important.

[00:36:54] So, hey, you may be working these hours.

[00:36:56] Have you ever worked those hours before?

[00:36:57] Hey, this is the people you're going to be dealing with.

[00:36:58] Have you ever done that before?

[00:37:00] Tell me a time of where you got really overwhelmed and how you overcame it.

[00:37:03] So we're very thorough on that process because I'm trying to

[00:37:06] extrapolate so much information.

[00:37:08] If they pass that, then they do what's called a shadow day.

[00:37:11] The shadow days where they come in with me, there's three hours unpaid.

[00:37:15] I want to test their, we like to say our GSF, their give a crap factor,

[00:37:20] if you will, where it's like, if I'm sitting in the interview and you're here

[00:37:23] and you want the job and I say, Hey, we're going to do a three hour shadow tomorrow.

[00:37:27] Does that work for you?

[00:37:28] And they're like, is this paid?

[00:37:29] It's like, I don't want you right away.

[00:37:31] I don't want you.

[00:37:31] You came to me and I'm trying to, I want to see if you fit in with what we do.

[00:37:36] So then we do the shadow.

[00:37:37] If they pass the shadow, we meet as an advisory board and we make a decision.

[00:37:41] If we make a decision, we offer a formal letter, but it's 90 day contingent.

[00:37:46] So we don't just hire you 90 days of what's called on the job training

[00:37:49] where we created a total coaches roadmap.

[00:37:52] And that's just getting somebody from point A to point B.

[00:37:54] That's everything from the professionalized side of things.

[00:37:57] Are you CPR certified trainer certification?

[00:37:59] AED, we go through the whole nine.

[00:38:01] Then we go through like our core values, our mission, our training

[00:38:05] models, so it's super thorough.

[00:38:07] If you sign off and you pass in all of those congratulations, you're hired.

[00:38:11] Then we give you a full time schedule and then we just kind of acclimate

[00:38:14] you from there.

[00:38:15] So that's the second part is just true, a true process of hiring and making

[00:38:19] sure you mesh well with our business.

[00:38:21] The third pillar is this is a little bit more big picture, but it's the truth

[00:38:26] is your business has to have the sustainability and the infrastructure

[00:38:32] to be able to provide a real career for somebody where they want

[00:38:35] to come and work for you.

[00:38:37] The training industry is in the bottom 5% according to EBIS world of

[00:38:41] salaries in the world, in the world.

[00:38:45] So if I have somebody come in and I'm like, Hey, you're 32 years old.

[00:38:49] But you're going to make $25,000 a year for two years.

[00:38:52] It's like, dude, I have a wife.

[00:38:53] So that is why the economics of your business, simplifying your

[00:38:57] model, increasing margins, maybe expanding a little bit

[00:39:01] provides real careers for people.

[00:39:03] So what we want to make sure is we want to make sure that people have

[00:39:06] the opportunity to come in and make real money.

[00:39:09] And so we've done that by if you work for Varsity House gym,

[00:39:12] you get a 401k, you get health benefits, you get paid days off.

[00:39:17] And we make sure that we map out your schedule where you don't exceed

[00:39:20] 20 to 25 coaching hours in a week.

[00:39:22] You have the ability, that's just a coach then to become a general manager

[00:39:26] or a facility leader of one of our smaller locations where

[00:39:29] you can make six figures.

[00:39:31] That is true ascension of somebody.

[00:39:33] So I could take it, whether they're an intern or somebody

[00:39:36] wants to come in and coach.

[00:39:37] I want to make sure that we provide real career opportunity for them.

[00:39:41] And so that's the third tenant is does your business offer

[00:39:44] the infrastructure that will elicit long-term career sustainability?

[00:39:50] Yeah.

[00:39:50] Awesome, man.

[00:39:51] I mean, that's that alone allows for all the other things that you

[00:39:56] said in the recruiting process, right?

[00:39:58] If you have a very desirable job, like there's still, you know,

[00:40:01] I don't know what the numbers are, but it seems like maybe there's

[00:40:04] less people interested in being personal trainer or coach than

[00:40:07] maybe there were 10, 15 years ago.

[00:40:09] Right.

[00:40:10] But there's still a decent amount of them.

[00:40:12] And if you can show them an act, like a very clear career path with,

[00:40:16] you know, less risk than some of these other places that you can go to.

[00:40:20] I mean, there's always going to be the ones that want to be the influencer.

[00:40:23] Like that's the thing is like a lot of people want to do part time in

[00:40:25] the gym and then I want to build my influencer, my Instagram and

[00:40:28] take talk and like that's what it's like special, right?

[00:40:30] It's I would argue it's not a viable path forward.

[00:40:34] Right.

[00:40:34] No.

[00:40:35] But I think that's the big thing is like, if you have enough, if

[00:40:38] your pizza is big enough that you can give away a nice slice to the

[00:40:42] trainers, right.

[00:40:43] And the pizza being the business of course, then that's, that's very

[00:40:46] helpful.

[00:40:46] Now as challenges I ran into like a 23% margin and was decent, good,

[00:40:51] right on a gym, but it wasn't enough to really get like full time

[00:40:54] people and pay all the 401k.

[00:40:56] So it was like, it was just, it was just a, it was a difficult

[00:40:58] circumstance to be in.

[00:40:59] So really focusing on the business, having a profitable business to be able

[00:41:02] to have a good offering is going to be able to allow you to be very

[00:41:06] stringent in how you get the recruiting process through and make sure you're

[00:41:09] getting the right people.

[00:41:09] So kudos to you guys for that, for figuring out probably the hardest

[00:41:13] part piece of the puzzle.

[00:41:14] Yeah.

[00:41:14] And don't get me wrong.

[00:41:15] It wasn't always like that.

[00:41:17] You know, when I first started here, it was, you know, it was not

[00:41:19] like that, but that's why growth is so important as any business.

[00:41:23] And everybody knows that usually, you know, if you go to school for

[00:41:25] business or you start a big time company or financial firm, it's like

[00:41:29] you, of course, you know that.

[00:41:30] But for some reason, gym owners, you know, we're a bunch of meatheads.

[00:41:33] We don't know that stuff.

[00:41:35] We just, like you said before, you're like, we think we write the best

[00:41:37] programming and we have the best atmosphere and culture air quotes.

[00:41:41] It's like, yeah, everybody's going to want to come work out and work for us.

[00:41:44] But the reality is, is that we need to grow in order to elevate

[00:41:48] and retain our best employees.

[00:41:50] Because if we don't, you don't want to be, uh, I just was, my

[00:41:53] buddy was on a, one of our podcasts needs a great analogy is you

[00:41:56] don't want people to be stuck behind a park car where they feel like

[00:42:00] they're just doing so much work, but it's not moving.

[00:42:03] And then guess what happens?

[00:42:04] They started looking around, they get distracted.

[00:42:06] They look for other jobs.

[00:42:08] They look for other opportunity because you alluded to it before.

[00:42:10] There was no expectation where it's like, you know, you enter

[00:42:13] the bar, says your ecosphere.

[00:42:15] You have a very long career if you want it.

[00:42:18] And so, you know, we like to say people don't get fired.

[00:42:21] They fire themselves here.

[00:42:22] So it's like, you either get in and you can keep riding this

[00:42:25] wave and we'll, we'll provide you back tenfold or if you don't like

[00:42:28] it, you got to go.

[00:42:30] Awesome.

[00:42:31] I want to touch on technology.

[00:42:33] I mean, is there anything that you guys are leveraging right now as far

[00:42:37] as tech or anything you have your eyeball on as far as tech when it

[00:42:40] comes to gym ownership, strength, client experience, all that?

[00:42:43] Yeah.

[00:42:44] I think we were a little behind actually in the tech side of things.

[00:42:47] You know, the last year and change we've really revamped how we use

[00:42:51] technology, how we integrate with our business, but you know, we

[00:42:55] really have five, which is I'm going to go on both the client

[00:42:58] side in our company side.

[00:43:00] The client side is just a POS system.

[00:43:02] We use a mind body, which everybody knows of.

[00:43:03] So we use mind body.

[00:43:05] We use true coach for all of our programming.

[00:43:07] So that's just universal there.

[00:43:09] And then we use our Facebook group, which is old school, but guess what?

[00:43:13] That's where our avatar are.

[00:43:14] So we're like, we wanted to create a fancy chat.

[00:43:16] It's like, that's not where they are.

[00:43:17] So we have a Facebook group or no matter what location you're at,

[00:43:20] you get added to our Facebook group.

[00:43:22] And then we use something that we're just going to start

[00:43:23] instituting, which is nominally, which I don't know if you guys

[00:43:26] know, but nominally is a client management system.

[00:43:28] So we're going to make sure that we use that in the back end.

[00:43:32] Now on the internal side for the business, we use what's called

[00:43:35] go high level, which is just our CRM.

[00:43:37] And so that's just what we use to manage clients in our pipeline.

[00:43:40] But the one thing that we created, which revolutionized our business

[00:43:44] was I have scorecards that we use.

[00:43:48] We call them offensive and defensive scorecards.

[00:43:51] Offensive scorecards is literally detailed in live time of how many

[00:43:57] members we have, price per client, service offerings, leads, trials,

[00:44:01] conversions, what our total members are at.

[00:44:03] And so we're updating that in real time.

[00:44:06] So our staff, our sales team knows, okay, like we're at this many members.

[00:44:09] We need to get to this.

[00:44:11] And so that is the offensive scorecard.

[00:44:13] It's in an Excel sheet.

[00:44:14] The defensive scorecard is our client retention process, which

[00:44:18] is all about keeping clients.

[00:44:20] So this is everything that includes celebrating our members, doing big events.

[00:44:24] We do handwritten cards.

[00:44:26] We do first workouts.

[00:44:27] We do pictures, write-ups, training reports.

[00:44:30] We keep tabs of all that on the defensive side.

[00:44:32] So our input and our data is very high and that's pretty much it.

[00:44:37] We're pretty simple, obviously.

[00:44:39] And so those are the things that we feel like we can use at each

[00:44:43] location and we just copy it with every gym that we go to.

[00:44:47] So awesome.

[00:44:48] Awesome.

[00:44:49] And yeah, it's my first business coach in the gym setting was

[00:44:52] Andy Petronic from CrossFit Los Angeles.

[00:44:56] He had a, he broke everything down into get him, keep him.

[00:44:59] That's all it is.

[00:45:00] Yeah.

[00:45:00] Yeah, very similar.

[00:45:02] And it's really simplified things like, listen, there's two things you

[00:45:04] guys got to focus on, get them, keep them.

[00:45:06] And it's better if like you kind of not everyone should do all of one thing,

[00:45:10] but there should be a focus, you know, like I was very focused on the get them.

[00:45:14] Oh, that was my job.

[00:45:15] Right?

[00:45:15] Anyway, great.

[00:45:16] I love it.

[00:45:17] Let's, uh, let's focus.

[00:45:18] Tell me about your podcast network or tell us about your podcast network.

[00:45:21] You guys, I was listening to a couple of this morning, really cool,

[00:45:24] really good guest assistance.

[00:45:25] The one you have with Damon Lohler coach.

[00:45:28] That was, that was pretty fun.

[00:45:29] But give us some insights like about the podcast network that you guys have,

[00:45:32] why you started it and what, what's a, why people should tune

[00:45:35] into what type of content it is.

[00:45:37] No, I appreciate it.

[00:45:38] Yes.

[00:45:38] Our podcast is called the business of strength.

[00:45:40] Uh, it's Joe, Dana myself, uh, partners in the gym and

[00:45:44] also the business strength.

[00:45:46] And basically, you know, we just on that podcast, it's, we have guests

[00:45:49] on there or we just talking about what we're doing in real time, which I

[00:45:54] think adds some pretty unique insight into it.

[00:45:56] It's like, we are all still heavily, heavily involved in our businesses,

[00:45:59] which I think is our competitive edge.

[00:46:02] Uh, you know, Joe, Dan and myself, we're not removed at all.

[00:46:04] We're all working at town.

[00:46:05] We're all in the building right now.

[00:46:07] And so we make sure we have a really good pulse on our business.

[00:46:09] We know it's not always going to be the case as we grow, but up until.

[00:46:13] You know, five, 10 locations, we want to be as involved as possible.

[00:46:17] I think that makes our coaches feel at ease.

[00:46:20] So that's what's unique about that podcast is it's just, Hey,

[00:46:22] this is a new system.

[00:46:23] I implemented.

[00:46:24] Hey, this is how we're mitigating attrition or like, Hey, we're having a

[00:46:27] guest on that they're teaching us about how to do something.

[00:46:30] And so that's what's pretty cool about that is that's what

[00:46:33] makes that company very unique.

[00:46:35] It's it's just so real time.

[00:46:37] It's alive.

[00:46:37] It's what's happening.

[00:46:38] It's interactive when we serve our, our coaches in there, just like

[00:46:41] we serve our members in the gym.

[00:46:43] And I think that's what really makes us differ.

[00:46:45] Awesome.

[00:46:45] Awesome, man.

[00:46:46] And where, where do you, what benefits do you personally have

[00:46:49] from the podcast?

[00:46:50] Do you enjoy it?

[00:46:51] Like, is there anything that surprised you about, about doing it?

[00:46:55] Yeah.

[00:46:55] I mean, I like to talk.

[00:47:00] So I love talking and just explaining what we got going on and just

[00:47:04] about training business life.

[00:47:06] So it's just a great place to do that, but also to learn, you know,

[00:47:10] I, every guest that we ever have on is just an opportunity to learn.

[00:47:14] I think we're all so humble here, you know, where it's like, I act

[00:47:18] as if I know nothing that helps.

[00:47:19] So no matter who I have on the podcast, it's like, oh, cool.

[00:47:22] That's a good point.

[00:47:23] Let me write this down.

[00:47:24] Or, yeah, that's a good thing.

[00:47:25] And the size business that we have now, we don't need to take anything

[00:47:29] that's revolutionary and revamp our business.

[00:47:31] We just need little nuggets that we hear that we can implement and

[00:47:35] fine tune to just make us that much better.

[00:47:37] So the real fulfillment is just learning and connecting with

[00:47:40] other people in the industry.

[00:47:41] Awesome.

[00:47:42] And those are, you can find that on Apple podcasts.

[00:47:46] Yeah.

[00:47:46] You can find those anywhere.

[00:47:47] You'd be able to find those anywhere.

[00:47:48] Yeah.

[00:47:49] Apple podcasts, Spotify, all the other networks.

[00:47:52] Right.

[00:47:52] I'll, uh, I know last question I always ask people, but as an industry,

[00:47:57] what do you need help with?

[00:47:58] Like, what can we help you with?

[00:47:59] If people are going to reach out to you, what would

[00:48:01] you like to hear from them about?

[00:48:03] Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's pretty cool.

[00:48:05] That's, I appreciate that.

[00:48:06] I think just tuning in more to what, what we had going on.

[00:48:09] So just getting more involved with the business strengths, you can

[00:48:12] reach out to myself at the business strength or varsity house and just,

[00:48:16] we love to connect with people and we love to make a difference.

[00:48:19] You know, we, uh, we're not stingy about paying for our time and all of that.

[00:48:23] Where it's like, Hey, you have questions.

[00:48:24] If you're running a gym, if you're in the fitness industry, please reach

[00:48:27] out, I'd be more than happy to help you guys.

[00:48:29] And so that is, that is really a core value is ours as a company is served.

[00:48:34] So in terms of help, just check us out more.

[00:48:36] She liked what we're doing from motive, but outside of that, that is it.

[00:48:40] Right on.

[00:48:41] And I just want to point out too, that you guys are part of the podcast

[00:48:44] collective community.

[00:48:45] So thank you for, for joining that.

[00:48:46] It's great to have a brand like yours on that page and, and, and, you

[00:48:51] know, being open to the guests that, that we have there.

[00:48:54] Last last question, where do people get ahold of you?

[00:48:56] If you want people to go somewhere online, where would you like them to go?

[00:48:59] Sure.

[00:48:59] So you can find me on Instagram at Adam Menner, very simple, all lower

[00:49:04] case Adam Menner, and I'll give my email just cause my emails, you

[00:49:08] know, probably respond the best is adam at varsity house, gym.com.

[00:49:13] So yeah, if you want to go on Instagram or if you want to email me a few

[00:49:16] questions from there, I'll answer you.

[00:49:19] And you know, if you guys even need more help, let's get on the phone.

[00:49:22] Yeah, very cool.

[00:49:23] Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:49:24] This is a, it's just been really actionable for people like the value

[00:49:29] and the tactics and the strategies and just the overall kind of

[00:49:31] hearing how you approach it.

[00:49:33] And I say, you know, if there's one thing I would pull out of this

[00:49:35] is like simplify, right?

[00:49:37] There's no, uh, like, you know, the only thing that usually is

[00:49:42] pulling people back from simplifying their businesses, their ego.

[00:49:45] And I can say that for personal experience, uh, that really held me

[00:49:48] back too, so very, very messaging.

[00:49:51] Yeah.

[00:49:52] Really appreciate it.

[00:49:53] And, uh, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Adam Menner.

[00:49:55] Yeah.

[00:49:56] Thanks Eric.

[00:49:56] Thanks for having me on.

[00:49:57] I had a good time.

[00:49:58] Hey, wait, don't leave yet.

[00:50:00] This is your host, Eric Malzone.

[00:50:02] And I hope you enjoyed this episode of future of feminist.

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[00:50:50] This is Eric Malzone and this is the future of fitness.

[00:50:53] Have a great day.