Matt Albrizio of Forever Fierce - Easy Money with Apparel Sales

What's up, Fitness Fans? Welcome back. This is Eric Malzone with the Future Fitness Podcast and Fitness Marketing Alliance. And in this episode, episode number 14, I talked to Matt Albrizio, great Italian name. He is the VP of sales for Forever Fear. So I've worked with Forever Fears, and the best way to describe them is they are the people to go to to outsource your apparel in retail. And the easy way to have a constant revenue stream. I mean, I I'm I have no skin in the game, but I highly recommend these guys because I could tell you after years of dissatisfaction with screen printers and trying to get a lot of t-shirts made with delays, uh having them sit on shelves because I bought too many or I bought the wrong sizes. These guys came through and they offer a solution that's just super simple, but they they do it really well. And you know, if you're not paying attention to apparel, you're missing out on an easy revenue stream. I mean it'll pay for all your vacations and uh a great source of branding and marketing. So um do pay attention. The other thing we talk about here is how they use virtual assistants uh in their business as well, which if you don't use one yet, we use them for sure. Um it's there's really no reason why not nowadays. So uh check it out. A lot of good information in here. I hope you enjoy it. Uh, Matt Albrizio with Forever Fierce. Everybody, this is Eric with the Fitness Marketing Alliance, and today I have the extreme pleasure of sitting with Matt Albrizio. He is the vice president of sales for Forever Fierce. And uh thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it, brother.

Absolutely. Thanks, Eric. I appreciate you having me on here, and I'm excited to uh explain more about what we do and how we help gym owners. Awesome.

Uh so the little ritual, the one ritual I have on this is we always ask everybody what their fitness story is. Um, because somebody's kind of, you know, most people who get into this industry have something, although we were just chatting before you you kind of came in through a segue or a but give us a little bit of history about how you got into the fitness game and how um Forever Fierce uh came about.

Okay, so Forever Fierce originally started as the owner. So the owners here, who owns Forever Fierce? That's a question I get a lot. So it's a family business, it's my two cousins and my brother. So they own it, and then I handle the sales part of it. I came in way later. So my cousin was doing amateur MMA um fights on the side on the weekends, and he needed a walkout shirt. So it first started as him designing his own walkout shirts and stuff like that. And he and then as his life went on, he had kids, the amateur MMA thing didn't work out, so he just had this logo, and my other cousin was going to design school for graphic design and apparel. So he took the ball and ran with it and said, Why don't we make this into a clothing brand? On the same time, my brother was a wrestling coach, and he said, Hey, our t-shirts are terrible for the wrestling program, they fit like burlap sacks, these designs aren't cool. Why don't we get something that's awesome and badass? So we started designing for team sports wrestling teams, and we were we started off really in a niche market with wrestling clubs and you know high school wrestling teams, and that's how we started for the first five, six years, growing it like that. And then sorry. How long ago was that? How long ago was that? I would say 2008 is when they first started it, and then the whole fitness thing, we didn't really switch or even identify fitness as being even viable until like 2012, 2013. Okay. So uh this was a while. But um I would say that I came on in I think 2013 and I was looking for some extra side work, an extra side hustle thing to do. My brother was doing CrossFit in his garage, and he's like, hey, I'm doing this CrossFit thing. Um, I don't really know if it's gonna be viable. Why why don't you try selling shirts to CrossFit gyms? So I said, I know nothing about any of that. I've never heard of this in my life. Why don't I uh why don't I do some research? And I basically just threw myself into the whole movement, and you know, four years later, we're a grown business. We're probably on pace to do a couple million dollars in sales this year and custom apparel for affiliate owners. So, you know, we're really happy and we're really proud of what we built. And, you know, we've we've partnered up with some great people along the way. I'm definitely gonna give them a shout out throughout, you know, our discussion here because the story of Forever Fierce doesn't happen without these people. And it's important to see, you know, partnering with the right people and how fast it can scale and grow your business. And I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned even at the local level, not just the national level, because now we're we're all we could ship all over the world, whether it's Canada to South Africa to the Middle East, we're all over right now. But I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned, even as local businesses, about who you can partner with and how you can really scale your business with thought leaders and people who are, you know, just just main hubs for clients.

Yeah, I, you know, and I'm that you didn't pay me to say this, but I I did work with you guys when I owned my gym and I was um I was very impressed. And I I I'm sure you're gonna get into the difference of what makes you guys unique, right? But yeah, uh what I found in my and if anybody who tries to get apparel done will notice that that industry, probably just like the fitness industry, has a stigma on it at times of like maybe being semi-unprofessional, not on time, right? Not getting the product that you ordered. Yeah, and all that ends up costing you money. I think it just frustrates a lot of people because um, but there's so many great things that can come out if it's done well. And when I worked with you guys, what I found was like, holy, holy crap, I actually just I feel like I just hired on a retail department.

Yep. Yeah. And again, we try and be that one-stop shop for gym owners where, you know, again, like you said, it's the it's the professionalism, it's the I mean, I'm not gonna lie, you know, the screen printing industry is very it's a rough crowd, you know. It's not the it's not people who you know, it's a lot of people who didn't finish high school, it's a lot of people who only have a high school degree, and they're not used to that whole professional attitude. You know, they're just like, I'll do it when I can. It's not a big deal. Uh, we'll figure it out. I'm not worried about it. But for us, you know, the customer service aspect was, you know, that's always priority number one, and that always will be priority number one with us. So, you know, again, that's that's we have to work that much harder too, because we understand you have probably 10, and you were in California, there's a screen printer on every corner there. You know, there's so many people who do it that we have to work that much harder to beat the local guy because we have to be head and shoulders above that to do, you know, to cancel out that local business. I think the first time we started working together, I even think we had a design in place, and you said, I'm gonna go local. You know, I just want to go local and see how that goes. You know, and and that's fine. Like I don't blame you going local, buy local, but if they don't deliver, then you gotta look elsewhere. Yeah.

It was it was a great experience. And I think uh Danny Russell, who bought the gym, I believe she still works with you as well.

Yeah, we still we still work with them and we just did uh Strength to Give and all the other fundraisers are doing there. So, you know, we're we're just keeping it rolling. I love that event.

Uh so why should fitness professionals pay more attention to their retail and their apparel? And um, within that, I guess, you know, what's what's the message that you have for people about this? Because um, I can see a lot of people getting frustrated with it and just kind of abandoning it, right?

Yeah, so I think the number one issue right now is people are buying too much stuff. People are over-ordering, they're getting stuck with inventory, and they're just finding themselves at the end of the year getting frustrated with boxes and stacks of apparel where they're just saying, Why did we spend all this money on this stuff? We took a huge loss. You know, you sit down at the end of the year with your accountant and you say, Okay, what did where did we spend all of our money, you know, as you're doing your tax planning, and you say, you know, we spent $10,000 this year on apparel and we didn't make a penny off of it because we're sitting on all this stuff. So one thing, again, and I guess what we're sort of known for is putting that idea of pre-ordering stuff, not ordering a ton of extra, and just ordering specific to your membership. There's no pressure to order 180 shirts, 200 shirts if you only have 75 people in the gym, you know, hoping and praying that drop-ins walk in. I mean, again, we work with some really high drop-in gyms and they're very much outside the norm. But for the average affiliate, you really should be pre pre-ordering your stuff. You shouldn't be ordering a ton of stuff, and you should be ordering specific to your population. I think that's my main message right now, and the main frustration I see with people is that they put all this time and effort into apparel and they have all these awesome ideas, but it's not worth their time. And I think we've worked with enough owners right now where at the end they could look at it and say, wow, we made we made a few extra thousand dollars this quarter off of apparel. That was worth our time. That's a great um side revenue. Is it gonna be the main thing that keeps the lights on? Probably not, but it's a nice side revenue that you can count on if you plan it out, if you do it right. And we could definitely talk about the importance of planning, the importance of quote unquote doing it right as well today.

Yeah, and and it's I mean, you know, that number a thousand, that's a nice vacation, man. And it's very little work because you guys really do the whole thing. And it's not, you know, it's not just uh it's easy to monetize and just the pure revenue of it, but what about the branding that it applies? I mean, when people wear your t-shirt and they're walking around town, that's branding, right?

That's yeah, that's that's and that's quote unquote free advertising. You know, if you design something that's really clean, unique, and nice, that's something that's going in someone's wardrobe where they're going to wear to the movies, they're gonna wear grocery shopping at the mall, when they're out with family and friends at a barbecue. I mean, that is what you really want to design. You don't we're trying to move our clients off like the hardcore CrossFit stuff, like the old school pukey the clown stuff, uh profanity on t-shirts, that type of stuff. That's not the type of marketing or type of shirts we're going after. We're talking about nice and clean stuff that people can wear out. And like you said, just about branding. If you see someone in the grocery store, they look great and they say, Man, where'd you get that shirt? You look great, where have you been working out? And you're wearing the shirt. I mean, that's that's awesome advertising. That's a free testimonial right there. And I think you would be surprised with the amount of apparel your members actually want to buy from you. They're going to go out and buy that, whether it's through you, Rogue, any of these pop-up brands you see right now. I mean, they're gonna go out and buy their next long sleeve hoodie or their baseball tee. If you're not offering it, they're gonna spend it and buy it somewhere else. They would rather buy it through you first. So, you know, I would definitely make sure you you were at least offering some type of apparel. You don't need to do it every month, but at least once a quarter, roll something different out, roll something nice out that your members can wear and be proud of.

Yeah, and it's not, you know, it's not just CrossFit gyms, too. I mean, it can be boot camps, it can be the classic box gym, it can be um, you know, it can be the kettlebell studio. It's just uh people, I do believe people will want to wear your stuff. How now go over kind of the specifics, uh Matt, of how you guys have differentiated yourselves from from other apparel and and silk screening companies.

Yeah, sure. So I think the the main thing right to understand with screen printers is that there's misaligned incentives, okay? For the small business that you know, for any size gym, if you have 50 members to about 200 members, there's missing misaligned incentives because screen printing is really benefiting off of large volume, okay? They're always looking to hit a number of 150 and above. Okay. What we've done is we've we've worked with partners, we have vendors who are okay with anything under 140. They don't care about bigger orders, they're okay with the smaller batch orders where if you have 24, no problem. If you need 13 coaches' shirts, no problem. But I think screen printers and you know, they can pressure you into ordering more than you can. And what we said is that we're not going to pressure you about that. We're gonna be grateful for if you give us an order of 24, 72, 300, 10,000. I don't really care. As long as we we can help you and go from there, that's our focus right now. I say I would say that's probably number one. And then number two is just with that custom design work. You know, we have an inside edge because the owner of the company is our designer. He's our head designer, and we have other designers who work under him now. But I would say that we're putting out some really, really unique stuff, and you know, I not to sound like a jerk, but I just don't see other people doing what we're doing with the design work, staying ahead of it. You know, we're we're per we're telling you what to offer every month, how to stay on track. I'm not seeing any other screen printers, any other apparel companies doing that. So I would say that's definitely unique right now because from what I gather with new clients and clients I work with now, a lot of the screen printers they work with are just they're just order takers. They just say, okay, what do you want? Okay, yeah, you do that. They're not offering any creativity. They want you to come with art, you know, come with the art. We don't know what's creative. I would say that, you know, again, the time we've invested, we now understand what CrossFitters want. We understand what members want, and we know what people who are going to these fit to any gym really. We know what they want, we know what their style looks like, and we we're pretty confident we're gonna nail that on the first, second, or third run.

Yeah, and I'll add to a third to that, just from my experience, too, is knowing that there's somebody who uh you can bounce ideas off of too. You know, the previous apprail companies that I work with, it was all you just drop off the order, how many want it, when do you want it, and often you wouldn't get it when you want it. That's a whole nother topic. But uh you also sit there and be like, hey, let's calendar this out, right? Let's look at like the seasons, let's look at when you have opportunities um to sell and and why. And the other thing that I liked about it was um, you know, you told me only to do one or two things at a time. I was so used to being like, okay, let's get two different versions of hoodies. No, dude, just if you if you offer one thing and maybe it's a new tank top or maybe it's a baseball tee or something like that, people are more likely to buy it because it's limited.

Yeah, yep. And and like I was saying, that strategic planning is stuff we're doing more and more now, and we're more comfortable suggesting that stuff because we know it works now. We have a baseline that the gyms who have followed that are successful. And you know, we could jump into some of those surefire strategies for sure. But like you said, this the strategy, sitting down, planning that stuff out, and just telling you, hey, you're ordering too much stuff. I think this is a bad idea. That's fine. You don't have to take my opinion for it. Do whatever you want, but at least you have someone else in your ear telling you, here's why I believe that, though, based off my experiences. This isn't according to Matt because I don't feel like doing it. It's because I've seen this before and we're gonna make sure we get you on the right track.

Yeah, that's really cool. Uh so tell me how, because this the name of this show is the future of fitness, right? How have you harnessed technology uh when you guys have been building your business or or maybe just in the last few years? Because I looked at your website today, it's got some cool functionality and it seems to be very up to date. How have you guys uh yeah, how have you guys used technology? Have you leveraged it?

So uh I would say that then there hasn't been like one specific piece of technology, if anything. I would say that some type of strategy that I think more and more small businesses are going to move towards and just more, you whether it's a fitness business or any small business, it's going to be working with contractors. And I think what's really opened up our growth is that we work with a lot of freelancers, we work with a lot of people, um uh virtual assistants and stuff like that. And I think that has really, really opened up our business. And if you're not using a virtual assistant right now to help you out with paperwork, whether it's administrative work, helping balancing your books, just anything at all, I would really encourage you to go look into it a little more when you have the time, because I know for us, we found some people in the Philippines, we found some people in the United States who have taken the administrative stuff off our plates, you know, processing production forms because you know, there's a whole nother back end of what we do that our clients never see. And it's there's a lot of stuff that goes into it, a lot of attention to detail. And without those people, none of this would get done. So we need to hire people, you know, at an affordable rate who we pay for performance. You know, we're only paying for what they produce, we're not paying for them to sit around and sit on their phone all their times extremely tracked. And again, you you find some really, really hard workers. And I know the biggest issue that when I work with and talk to some of my small business uh owner friends in town, they say, I just cannot find motivated people to work for me. And for us, you know, we just have a no-nonsense attitude where you know everything we do is for our clients. And if you're not working hard for your clients, like that that's that's heresy to us, and we we can't have you around because it's cancerous. So what we did is we went out and we said, I'm going to find someone on planet Earth who's going to work as hard as us. And we found that, you know, we found that in the Philippines and we found that all over the world, really, with just a bunch of different guys, and they all work really, really hard to make all these orders come to fruition. So I would say it's probably not a piece of like specific technology that you can go and get right now or a piece of software. I would say it's more so moving to that flexible contractor model and that flexible virtual assistant model that will really, really open the doors for you and take so much stuff off your plate, again, at an affordable rate. And these people are grateful for the work they get. They work extremely, extremely hard for you.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, we have we have a team of nine with FMA and from six different countries, right? Yeah. And the fact of the matter is the world is just getting smaller, right? I mean, the fact that you and I are talking right now over video is crazy. This is like, who would have thought this would have happened five years ago, right? Six years ago. It's crazy. We could have done this over our phones.

And uh is there a particular service that you get that you use to find people to use upwork.com and we uh I first started using them um when I was at my other job because my boss gave me a task of transcribing about 20 hours of um an old economics course that was shot on VHS tape, and I had no idea how to even start doing transcriptions before. I've never done that, so I outsourced it for a fraction of you know what I make per hour, and I got all the transcriptions done in a week. It would have taken me four or five months, you know. So it's like you learn these little things though, because you know, you read the Tim Ferriss books, you read four-hour work week, and you say, wouldn't that be funny if I found your man in India? Wouldn't that be funny if I could figure out a way to get these guys halfway across the world to go and uh do this work for me? And then it just all clicks one day. You know, you just take the leap of faith and you say, you know what, I'm not gonna sit here for 20 or 100 hours and review all these transcriptions. I'm just gonna outsource this to someone who does this all day for a living and they're a specialist. And like I said, Upwork has been really, really good for us. It's a little more manual. You do have to go through the resumes, you do have to try people out, you can't get upset, you can't get mad if you don't like the first couple people you work with. It's a process, it's like hiring anyone else. But with Upwork, again, we found that it's a little more affordable, there's a deeper pool of talent, and we're not going to be stuck with anyone they stick us with.

Awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. How do you see now moving forward, right? I as forward, how how do you see technology or whatever advancements that you guys are working on now changing what you do in the next few years?

Yeah, I I think one of the main things we've always just been talking about is well, how can we automate this process even more for our owners, right? Is there, you know, some type of app, some type of website plugin, some type of just just something we can do where you don't need to work with an account rep one-on-one, right? Like we want, like uh one thing we've always thrown around is almost like custominc.com, but take custom ink and that platform to design your own stuff and you know, put it forever for your spin on it. You know, that that's that's some people have expressed interest in that. And I think that would be, you know, probably the next frontier for us is figuring out something where, again, if you want to work one-on-one with us, no problem. We'd still love to work one-on-one. But if you just want to fire away and design your own thing with some of the elements and some of the designs we already have for you, you know, we would have a platform for that. And that's something you know, we've just started to touch on now that you know we do have the cash flow, we do have all that stuff to invest in some type of experimental platform like that. But we'll see what happens with that. Cool.

Yeah, and it's crazy how how much less expensive apps are now to get with. Yeah, 10 years ago or not, right? I don't know, even five years ago, you would think I saw, you know, we looked at quotes at one point for a couple of different things, and I was like, But now it's it's way, it's it's actually within the grasp of of a lot of people. So if you're listening, you have an idea for an application or some kind of automation or um something, look into it because there's chances are it may be within your reach, and then you just think uh so you guys have done a great job of kind of spreading your web in different areas, especially within the CrossFit community. But give me some ideas and maybe some creative ways that you guys are marketing your business, some things that fitness pros can can learn from.

Yeah, so I I would say the number one thing I would suggest to all business owners, and I don't care if it's a small business, a multinational business, whatever, is that you need to find your little niche of who you're looking to work with and find the influencers in those areas. And You might be saying, Well, who can be an influencer in my area? Well, what about you know, someone who's active in a church group? You know, many of these churches are bit uh this is just an example. If you don't want to work with church people, whatever. But for example, in some of these churches, there's you know, three, four hundred, fifth, five hundred people in the group. That's a great way to get in front of new people you don't even think about. You know, for us, it was working with Zach Avanesh. You know, he was he's really big in the strength and conditioning world. He was a mentor to a lot of the strength coaches who went on to different fitness arenas, whether it's powerlifting, athlete development, CrossFit. He, you know, he mentored a lot of these guys. And we started working with Zach, and then we wound up meeting Chris Cooper, and we did shirts for him, you know, randomly in one August. And I was like, I was talking to one of my clients, and I said, you know, who's a major thought leader in CrossFit? And they were like, Have you ever talked to Chris Cooper? And I was like, No, I haven't. And I was like, wait a second. I think I sort of know this guy. And they're like, Yeah, you know, like Chris has written books on this stuff, and he like he's the one who like lays out the blueprint for all this business stuff, right? And I was like, Oh my god, this guy's been sitting in front of me the whole time. I don't even know who he is, you know. So, but no, it's like you you just partner with people like Zach Evanesh and Joe DeFranco and you know, Chris Cooper, and all these guys are just thought leaders in the areas, you know, of their expertise. Joe DeFranco with athlete development, he's the personal trainer for Triple H the Wrestler, and all these WWE superstars and football players, and you know, Zach Evanesh and Chris Cooper, it's just it all snowballed from there, but they all have a great following and a devout following of people who follow you know their books and their podcasts and their line of thought. And you know, again, if they put their name behind something and they say, Hey, we recommend Forever Fierce, people are gonna give us a shot, you know, and I think it's the same thing for any local business. If you have someone who is involved with a really big group, if they put their name on it and they say, Hey, I got in the best shape of my life going to X, Y, and Z gym, people are gonna be like, Whoa, wow, really? Okay, I trust you, you know, because they've built the credibility and trust for you. You could run a ton of ads, you could run a ton of stuff, but I think the the main thing, again, is still that word of mouth referral where someone will trust you. So if you could find that, I think you'll be huge. And if you know, use it in combination with your marketing ads, whether it's Facebook ads, Instagram ads, ad words, whatever, use it in combination. Don't just rely on one or the other. But you know, for us, I think the biggest thing has been partnering up with we call them hub clients. So someone who has a hub of their own clients who they could refer us out to really quickly and that people trust. We've partnered up with these hub clients, and I think if people think for a little bit, they'll be able to identify those in their own communities who they could partner up with as well.

Yeah, that's great. And if there's an actionable item for for people listening to, is you know, when we first started uh our business here, we wrote out it took about you know a full day, um, got highly caffeinated and started thinking about what's our dream 100? Who are the dream 100 clients that we want to work with? And then just start working your way down the list, man. And uh it can be um it's it's uh it's simple, not easy, right? You still have to work and stuff.

But I think uh but again, I think most people get intimidated by there's no way that person would ever want to work out here. There's no way this person would ever want this. Well, there's no way, there's no way Zach Evanesh has time for t-shirts. There's no way Joe DeFranco, when he's driving at midnight to go train Triple H, there's no way he's thinking about his next t-shirt or zip idea. And it's like, wait a second, these guys do think about this stuff and they're just looking. If it's someone who's really busy, again, they just want someone who's going to take care of it for them. You know, and if you can demonstrate that, like the biggest thing for me right now, especially in fitness, is that I went out and hired a coach because I don't want to have to program my own workouts, I want to have to look at it. I just want to hire someone and they just send me the workout and it's good to go. I think that's what most people are looking for.

Yeah, I totally agree. And just being a former gym owner, I was always looking for ways to take things off my plate that I didn't feel were my my core competencies, right? Yeah. Um, you know, for my and that and that's exactly where you guys came in. You're like, I don't like retail, retail and apparel orders, man, it was so time consuming. Yeah. So time consuming. And yeah, maybe at the end of the day I made 300 bucks.

Yeah, yeah, I know. And like the questions that I tell gym owners all the time, it's like, well, I want to offer all the stuff. I want to offer up hoodies, zips, tees, tanks, pants, duh. I said, okay, well, you need to think about all the questions you're going to get about just the one item. Now times that by five or six. So I said, you have to understand the questions and all that stuff that's going to come with the apparel order. It's not just ordering five or six items. It's has this fit? How does this feel? I don't like this fit. I don't like this color. Can I get in other colors? You have to be prepared to, you know, deal with all that stuff. And if you don't have someone telling you, stay focused, you know, just hold hold the line here. Don't bend to it. I think you know, people fall into that. And like you said, you know it's like, man, I've been answering questions about this stupid t-shirt order for three weeks, and I made 300 bucks. I'm not doing this anymore. You know, so I think a lot of people feel that way. But you know, for us, again, like some of the benefits of working with us is that we're going to send you samples so that when someone says, Has this fit? You don't have to be on the hook for answering, how does this fit? Because the last thing you want to do is tell someone, hey, this fits um true to size. Uh no one knows exactly what that means. Like it means something different to everyone. It might fit true to size to you. So we send samples out to all of our clients. We make sure they get their sizing samples so that when someone says, How's the large fit? Try it on. Tell me how it fits. Does it fit all right? I should probably use an XL. Great. Sign up for the XL. You just saved yourself a refund right there. That's $25 back in your pocket. And there's no cost for doing that. Again, we're trying to think ahead so that gym owners don't have to worry about this and handle the apparel process, uh, like answer those questions and worry about planning stuff out. We'll plan it out for you. We'll send you the sizing samples ahead of time. We'll get you prepared. You just need to act on the plan, you know. And again, like you said, we just want to take this off your plate as much as possible. As much as we can, as much as you want it to be off your plate, we'll take it off your plate.

Uh we work with we work with a lot of clients who actually don't have brick and mortar. So they do, you know, they're more in the digital space. Either they're selling online nutrition, they're selling online coaching or certification programs. Have you worked with people like that? And how does that work?

Yeah, I would say that there's a huge opportunity. I would say even more so than the brick and mortar places to work with online because your your c your online clients still want to feel connected to a community. Whether you have a Facebook group, you know, you do the daily, you do the weekly check-ins or whatever. I would say that your members still want to be connected to some type of community. And for them, taking a picture, taking a uh picture of the gym with them wearing their shirts, they always want to rep what they're doing. Everyone's proud to work with you. You know, if they're doing their nutrition online, they're doing their training online, that means that they're super motivated to do it. Okay, because it takes it takes effort and time to go out and research online programs. There's a lot of research that goes into just for them to figure out what you're about, what you know, do they trust you? Are they going to get the results they want? So they're they're doing a lot of work as well. They want to be committed. And again, buying that t-shirt is a great way for them to rep and to just brag about what they're doing, you know. And, you know, from us working with you know Zach Evanesh, he has his brick and mortar stuff, but his main following is all online, you know, like he has a ton of coaches. We're shipping stuff out to you know, Germany, England, uh, you know, there's a bunch of other even with the Joe DeFranco stuff, we're shipping stuff out to Australia, South Africa. So there's this huge reach of people, but all these people are so jacked up to get their apparel. And you see it. I mean, you see it with Facebook posts, you see it with Instagram tags now. When the people get these items, they're taking pictures. Thank you guys so much. You know, tell Joe we said thank you. And I again, I think if you have an online training business, you have an online nutrition business, I think if you're not doing apparel, you're missing out because it's a great way to bond your community together and to give them something that honestly they want. They want to support you. Awesome.

So just real quick going back to like the the the brick and mortar and the facility owner, how do you how do you have do you give them any tips for because here's a challenge I had was I would have some apparel coming up and it was ready, uh, but I I didn't market it effectively to my my membership or to my clientele. Is there any tips and trips? I mean, I was sending out an email, I you know, I leave something at the front desk. Is there any tips or tricks you have for people on on getting more apparel sold with each order?

Yeah, so one thing we've been doing more of now is I've taken this from Driven Nutrition. They do the best job out of any vendor servicing fitness clients right now of preparing the owner and the gym for selling their products. They do so, they have so many resources. So, for example, with Driven Nutrition, they give you all the, you know, all the information you need. They give you the Facebook posts, all you have to do is copy and paste it. They give you the schedule of when you should post, they give you a game plan of how many times you should post, what you should say, who all needs to have this information, whether it's coaches, managers, whoever. But uh we're doing more of that and giving people, you know, all of our mock-ups are Instagram friendly already. That's a huge driver. But for those who are like, I truly have no idea how to sell this stuff, Matt. This is my first time doing this, or if I've had a bad, you know, I've had a bad experience doing it. We're now giving clients swipe files of copy and paste this Facebook post, post what I, you know, post exactly what I say, just exactly what I say, because we've had it um, you know, we've had it edited with copywriters and sales experts, where you might look at that and be like, wow, that sounds kind of salesy. I don't know if this is gonna work, but it's like if you but it works, you know, it converts people to buying t-shirts, just let it run, you know. So I think once people see that, if you give me that swipe file and it works, then I'm just gonna listen to what you're saying, you know. I'm just gonna listen to what you're saying forever because you guys know what you're doing and I don't. So I think the main thing for us is developing that swipe file, letting people know, hey, here's the game plan, follow it, and I promise you'll see the results. It's no different than you know what you guys are doing with fitness stuff, fitness nutrition. Follow the plan I'm giving you, and you will see the results. If you get off track and you do your own thing, you might not get results, you know. So it's the same thing with us, though. And I think that's a new thing we're doing. That's definitely new in the past four or five months, but it you know, it's working for the people who are following it. Awesome.

Yeah, I agree. And and I now uh trust you 100%. And I push back because I thought I always knew stuff. Yeah, well, and everyone does.

Take it on the chin, you know, you gotta take one or two orders on the chin, and you just have to, you know, have a bad experience. As crappy as this sounds, like we've worked with some clients who have worked with us since they opened, and over time they say, I'm just I'm just wanting to see what's out there. They always come back because they know they're not gonna get what the service they're getting and stuff like that. And you know, if you had a bad experience, you take one on the chin and you say, I'm not doing that ever again. That was miserable, I'm going back. And even with clients who switch gyms, switch programs, you know, it's like uh it sounded like a much better idea than actually doing it, you know, and they come back, they come back to someone who's consistent and serves them well.

Yeah, I mean, there's always that shiny squirrel, right? Yeah. So what's what's coming up in the next few years for for you guys and forever fierce, man? What are you guys up to now?

We're just gonna continue hammering this CrossFit stuff. We have a lot of momentum. We've worked really, really, really hard to get to where we're at right now. And you know, like I said, people um, you know, the one thing some people know me by is that I answer emails super early in the morning. You may have received an email from me at you know 5.30 in the morning, and people are saying, uh, well, what time zone are you in? Or I'm on Eastern time and I'm up working from 5.30 to 6.45, and then I go to the gym from 6.45 to 8. But people are like, oh wow, why are you up so early right now? And it's like, because I want to be known as the number one custom apparel provider for fitness businesses worldwide. And I will stop waking up at 5.30 and working that early when we're considered the number one, you know, custom apparel business. And I say that jokingly, but in all seriousness, like we're just gonna continue hammering it. You know, we have a lot of momentum right now, we're aligned with the right partners, and you know, it's taken, you know, I I just saw someone post a meme where they said, uh, you know, we're a thousand-day overnight success story. You know, it's taken a thousand days for us to get to where we're at. So it's like we're just going to continue focusing on um affiliates, we're going to continue focusing on, you know, fitness businesses and just letting the ball roll, you know, just letting this momentum carry us and see where it goes. Awesome.

And I have to say, you know, for people listening, this is really a no-brainer between the pre-order and the way they do things and the way they help you calendar it out and the service that they provide. It's it's a revenue stream that's just sitting there waiting for you to pick it up. And it doesn't take a lot of time or energy. And it's uh it's it's just an absolute no-brainer. So um, Matt, where do people get a hold of you uh if they want to talk to you more about this?

Yeah, for sure. So my email, you can just reach out to me at mattmatt at foreverfierce.com, or you can go on our Facebook page, drop us a message there, Forever Fierce, our Instagram account as well. You can get I'm pretty easy to get a hold of. But you know, again, we would just love to get a plan in place. And even if you're like, hey, I really need to use this local guy for this reason or that reason, can you just do an audit of what we're doing? Does this look right? Uh what would you suggest? I'm willing to, even if you don't want to go through us or whatever, more than happy to donate our time and effort and uh brain here to uh see what we can do to get you back on the right track. But again, I would if you've had a bad experience with apparel in the past, give it another shot. Give us a shot. I promise we'll make it easy, pain-free. And again, just if you trust the process, I promise it'll pan out. Awesome.

Well, thank you, man. I appreciate your time. Uh just keep crushing it. You guys are well on your way to being the number one.

So uh it's I appreciate it, buddy. Thank you so much. Bye, man. Take care. All right, see ya.

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