Narrow Your Niche...Then Do It Again - John Heagle

Today, you need to be so dialed in from day one. If you want to make your living in this, if this isn't just going to be a hobby for you, if you want to make a living, you need to understand who you are and who you're trying to attract. And you need to be able to ramp it up pretty quickly because whether you're doing an online business, whether you're doing something that's a brick and mortar, whatever it is, there's going to be costs associated with making that business successful that if you don't get it right, you're going to lose a lot of money relatively quickly.

This episode is about John Eagle. So John has been in the fitness industry for over 30 years. And man, he's done it all. So he has owned gyms, he's owned franchises, uh, he's been an advertising director for reader publications. So that's muscle and fitness, flex magazine, men's health, all those things. And now through his company Gym Builder, he consults gym owners and facility owners with getting through the tough times and building their business. And he has an absolute wealth of knowledge. And uh, we'll get into more about what this episode really hones in on. But first I want you to consider taking some action, please. So if you're listening to this and you're fitness professional, you probably have heard that we have a closed Facebook group. It's called the Modern Fitness Professional. And it's by application only. And if you are accepted in, uh, you'll be part of a group of 2,000 fitness professionals from all over the world. And if you're looking for that one place, that one place, because your time is limited to stay on top of all the good stuff that's happening within the industry from science and technology, business development, digital marketing, QA with the experts, which we're about to launch soon, this is your spot. It's the most efficient use of your time, and we promise to keep you updated on all the things that are important. So let's talk about John Hegel. So, with all this experience, right? 30 years, and 30 years in a relatively young industry is a long time. One thing I extracted from this is that some things have changed, some things haven't, right? The basics and fundamentals of business have not changed. You still have to know who your target clientele is, um, what they need, how to communicate that to them, all that stuff. Stuff that has changed is our ability to really hone in on a very, very specific person through our marketing and advertising. So the lesson from this is find your niche and then go even deeper into that niche. So niche down, then do it again. That would be what I took away from it, but there's much more. So listen to it twice, listen to it three times. But here it is, episode number 46 with John Hegel. Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast. I'm your host, Eric, and today I have the extreme pleasure of talking to John Hegel. So, John, before I kind of let you loose on our listeners today, I I want to give uh some points of I'm I'm really excited because it's it's rare that we get to talk to people who have you know 30 plus years of experience in the industry on the business side. You know, not too many people um share what you're willing to share with us today. So thank you for coming on. And maybe you can uh we could start just with telling listeners who you are, you know, your story, how you got into things, and and and where you where you've gone now. And that's a lot to cover, you know. Do your best.

No, I appreciate it, Eric. It's it's um uh it's a pleasure to be on. I've gone back, and I one of the things we didn't discuss is I have listened to a bunch of your other podcasts. You've got you've had some great guests, and I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. I'm gonna make sure I keep up with everything moving forward. As you said, I I got into it a long time ago. I was the lifter. I was powerlifting, I've been a football player, loved being in the gym. I was your stereotypical meathead, um, loved working out, and uh came across a gym that was for sale, bought it for the uh enormous sum of $29,000, and uh and I found myself in business. So uh had my first gym for about six years, uh, built, was able to build that up, make it a profitable business, sock some money aside, and uh went on to buy into a Gold's gym franchise back in the early 90s. And uh that at the time was an awesome time to be a Gold's gym owner. And uh it was a what it was a Wild West show, but it was a Wild West show in the best way possible. Uh so got and then from that that evolved into, which is another whole, that's another 30 to 60 minute discussion, but got involved in a partnership with four other Gold's gyms. So we had four partners, five Gold's gyms, ended up selling three of our five gyms to New York Sports Club, Town Sport International at the time. And uh, although it was never my intention to sell as quickly as I did, but it was the right thing to do, um, got out, took some money, took some time off, and uh got back into the business uh working as a consultant, investing in some uh other fitness-related businesses, getting into personal training studios, other gyms, got involved for a while through initially through a consulting agreement, but then turned into a partnership agreement with some tennis clubs, believe it or not. So multi-sport and tennis, uh, you know, summer camps, the whole nine yards. Most recently have done uh a couple of franchise, did a uh a kickboxing franchise operation, which I had for just under five years, and uh my wife and I recently sold that. And I had a kind of went went back to my roots and opened a real hardcore gym going back about 2009, and unfortunately had to close that down about two years ago just because I had uh they're redeveloping the property and and uh couldn't accommodate me any longer given what they were doing with the property, was unable to find another location for it. So I've been, you know, I've done consulting work, I've done management contracts, I've helped other people open clubs, uh, I've unfortunately sometimes had to help people close down clubs. And and that's that's kind of it. You know, I I got into it out of passion and it, you know, over the years learned the business side of it and have been grateful to be able to help other people get into the business as well.

I'm I'm curious, John, because you know, when you started in the industry, uh, I would imagine, and because I've talked to other people who you know have been in the industry for a long time too. When you start talking about, hey, I'm gonna make a living in the fitness industry, back then that was kind of a crazy thing, right?

Yeah, people looked at you like you were out of your mind. Um at the at the time I decided to do my first gym, I was actually working for Weeder Publications, Joe Wheader. I was uh the Eastern Advertising Manager for Muscle Fitness, Flex, and Men's Fitness. And uh I remember sitting down with the uh vice president of publishing him to give him my my two weeks' notice. And he sat there for 45 minutes telling me I was out of my mind to leave the job I had and go do something like that. Um, well, you know, and I I stood my ground, you know, I was making good money. I was working in New York City in advertising, it was the 80s. You couldn't really go wrong, but I I had it in my head I was gonna get into the fitness business. Uh, and I did it. And it was tough. It was it was really tough. You know, I remember days initially, weeks, months with that first gym because it had less than 100 members when I purchased it. It was, you know, just under 4,000 square feet, like 3,600 and change, just all weightlifting, obviously. And uh I would lay for hours sometimes, uh, take the portable phone, lay on the bench with the phone on my chest, just waiting for the phone to ring, and there'd be nobody in there. And I I lay there thinking to myself, you know, and Marty was the gentleman with a vice president of publishing with Weeder. And I and his his words would be echoing in my ears as I'm laying there on the bench with not a single person in my gym working out. And I'm thinking, wow, maybe he was right, maybe this wasn't the right move. But it it all turned out great, you know, and and when the people do come through the door, and you know, your your passion, my passion as an owner would come through and you know, you start creating those relationships. I realized I was going in the right direction. But it was definitely it was a it was tough. It was a it was a tough, uh, tough first couple of years for sure.

Let's talk about that moment. I think it's powerful, you know, lying on your back, because everyone, anyone who's who's owned a gym or you know, even just been a trainer with with very few clients, you know, you sit there and and number one, you probably have a huge amount of overhead, right? That you're you're dealing with that you gotta make, you gotta crack a big nut, right?

Yeah, relatively speaking, it for that, yeah, it was.

So what what self-talk goes on in your mind when you're sitting on that floor? And what what snaps you out of it and what gets you into action? Or what do you what do you think? What's your advice for somebody who may be going through that point in time right now?

Is to keep in mind that you're you're in a business and you have to think of it that way. So, you know, you've got to sometimes we're in an emotional business. We're dealing with people and emotions and people that are coming to us for help, but sometimes you have to remove yourself from that. Remove yourself from what you view to be negative circumstances surrounding you at the time, which is the fact that you know you're not bringing the money in you need to bring in, and really stop and think objectively about what you need to do to drive business in through your doors. And look at yourself and make sure that you're being clear with who you are and what you're offering. Because if you're not clear, um it's gonna be very hard to attract people. Um when people come and if they make an inquiry, if they walk through your door, if they pick up the phone, if they, you know, they contact you through social media, whatever it is, if there's not clarity to the message that you're putting out, it's gonna be very difficult for people to identify with you and connect with you. So you need to first and foremost make sure that you understand who you are and what you're offering, what services you're offering, what your, you know, what your area of expertise is, how you differentiate yourself, what's your niche within the market. And you better make sure that you're passionate about whatever it is you're doing. Because if you're not passionate, the people are gonna pick up that on that in a second. You know, there's there's sometimes you can get by on, you know, look, everybody, everybody now, especially with social media, is you know, a fitness expert, or you know, everybody that's got a great body, you know, can put themselves up there as the expert trainer. But the reality is unless you can connect with people and unless you can uh give them clarity, uh you're gonna have a very difficult time building a business and retaining clients and customers and and and building for the future.

That's a really good point. I'm I'm curious too, you know, when we talk about finding your niche, I mean, I think now like now, January, 2018 is probably the greatest opportunity for people to develop, you know, some kind of fitness uh revenue stream online, which means that we now have a global market. So finding the niche is is you really gotta start getting specific, you know, in into doing it. I mean, if you want to work with somebody, you know, if if your niche is uh men um, you know, over the age of 50 who are 50 pounds overweight, who have three dogs and live in New York, and you know, the I'm not saying you're overweight or anything like that. That's that's that was a totally wrong. But you know, you can find those people now online. Yeah, you can find those people and build build that that um that following and build that clientele. When you're helping people, maybe you could walk us through an example when you have when you're helping people find their niche, because I think it's it's difficult because at first you just want to help everybody, right, in the fitness industry. And then you can realize that maybe I'm good with this, but then I'm kind of good with this. How so how do you help people find their niche?

I in terms of the business owner finding their niche, is you know, a lot of times for me when I when I'm working with somebody is sitting down and basically interviewing them, you know, having a conversation with them, getting them to talk about themselves and finding out, you know, where their passion truly lies. You know, sometimes, and I and I had this discussion with you earlier, Eric, was you know, there's people that have actually talked out of going into business because they didn't have that kind of clarity. Uh they didn't have the clarity, they didn't have the capital necessary, they didn't have the passion for it, whatever it was, it's like, you know what, you need to walk away from this because it's not gonna work. And sometimes saying that would be enough to get them going in the right direction, though, too. Sometimes it takes that little, you know, kick in the butt to make somebody realize, oh yeah, I'm not really focused enough, and they and they will step it up. But, you know, you you really, it's like whether you self-interview or whether you sit down with pad and paper, you know, do the, you know, whatever you want to call it, your mission statement, your purpose, your why, and figure that out and be realistic about it. And, you know, once you've done that, then you can start to kind of build your business. And and look, there may be there may be a franchise opportunity out there that fits what you want to do. There may not be. There may be something that you have to build on your own, but you need to explore all those different possibilities. You need to do homework. Um, you know, I I when I got into it 30 years ago, there was a lot of room to make a lot of mistakes and still succeed because there wasn't a lot of competition. So I was able to get that first gym and really kind of muddle through it for the first year, like figure out, you know, advertising and marketing. You know, I had done advertising and marketing as a representative working with agencies and everything else for a publishing company, but I hadn't had to do my own advertising. So I kind of had to figure out how to build my own brand, how to send, you know, convey my message of who I was to the public and build that, you know, build that brand and that image so I attracted the right people. And I was able to do that. Luckily, luckily, well, I'm gonna say luckily, I gotta pat myself on the back to a degree, because I knew who I was, and I understand that I want, I wanted as frightening as it was, I wanted more people like me there, which to some people would was terrifying at that time, but it worked. You know, so and you need to do that same thing for yourself. You need to be able to understand who you are, build, figure out what your brand is, who are you in the market. So, and and let you know, back to what I was saying before, you know, 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 20 years, even 10 years ago, you could make some mistakes and still make it. Today, you need to be so dialed in from day one. If you want to make your living at this, if this isn't just gonna be a hobby for you, if you want to make a living, you need to understand who you are and who you're trying to attract, and you need to be able to ramp it up pretty quickly because you know, whether you're doing a an online business, whether you're doing something that's a brick and mortar, whatever it is, there's gonna be costs associated with making that business successful that if you don't get it right, you're gonna lose a lot of money relatively quickly. You know, because you know, doing the right thing online, even like you know, whatever form of market, whether you're gonna pay for, you know, Facebook ads or or whatever, or building the right website and and doing whatever, you know, hiring somebody to help you manage your website and manage your social media, whatever you're gonna do, there's an expense attached to all of that to do it properly. So you got to be dialed in from day one. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars that way just as quickly as you could spend tens of thousands of dollars with a with a brick and mortar operation.

Yeah, and that's it's such an excellent point. I mean, you know, for for what we do, you know, for Fitness Marketing Alliance and our consulting, which we do a lot of consulting too, you know, half of our time is spent like, okay, we let's bring it back. Like, who's your ideal client? Let's just keep coming back to that over and over and over again because the day of the generalist, uh, and maybe you disagree, maybe you don't, I don't know, but it seems to be over. Like if you just open a gym and say, hey, we do weightlifting, right?

Yeah, no, I wouldn't want to be that look, I wouldn't want to be, and I've I've said this to other people before, I I would not want to be the Gold's gym that I was, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah. You know, being the big box, the 25,000, 30,000 square foot facility. You know, back in the 90s, my boy for that gym was 70, $75,000 a month to put the key in the door, to pay my rent, my base payroll, my utilities, everything else, that's what I knew I had to generate every month just to just to cover my expenses. Wow. Yeah. You know, and and thankfully, you know, I did better than that. But, you know, that that's a that's a big weight hanging over you. Um, and even with us even with a smaller business now, I mean, because of rent rates, because of what utilities cost, you know, probably the only thing that actually has decreased in terms of your operational expenses are marketing, because social media has been, you know, what I what I think of what I used to spend on print advertising and cable and then sometimes trying local radio, oh my God. I mean, I could I I could, you know, I could spend thousands of dollars in Facebook and get a much higher rate of return than I ever got for print advertising now. The CPMs, if anybody knows what that is, but the the cost per million when it comes to what you're spending in advertising is so much less now uh than it used to be. So it there's some really highly efficient ways to target people that are out there. And you need to educate yourself on that. And if you're not going to do it, you need to get yourself somebody that knows how to do it well and help you portray your image well. So, yeah, there's there's not a lot of room to make mistakes now as opposed to 25, 30 years ago. And the types of facilities that people are opening are completely different as well.

Yeah, I I can't agree more. My my first career out of college was uh I sold radio advertising. So I oh nice. You were one of those guys. Yeah, I was grinding it out. Man, I made no money. I made no money. I lived in San Francisco. My first year in radio sales, I think I made $24,000. I had so many parking tickets that I got the boot on my car. Oh man. In that first year. And I had no, I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna pay it. So I just opened another credit card, but you know, here I am today. I lived. Um but seeing like you know, the budgets for radio, and my dad was a dentist, he used radio advertising. Yeah. And now, you know, we're we're in the weeds, you know, from a digital marketing agency. We're a full stack agency, and I can tell you we have to educate ourselves every day on what's changing. I mean, between the Facebook algorithm, this is you know, today's January 30th, 2018, or 31st, and and the the Facebook algorithm just changed and just everyone's campaigns. Google just made an announcement that site speeds, you know, one of their most important ranking factors. So really like you you have to either be, if you're gonna market your business, you gotta be on top of things because it's changing so fast. I mean, we talked about the pace of change. Where else do you see that the pace of change with technology and everything like that affecting the fitness industry?

I think there's, you know, there's a lot of there's an enormous amount of online training that's taking place. And, you know, I I come from, you know, just because and it's it's not the only thing I do, but it's it's an area where, you know, it's an area I love, but I see in the powerlifting world, all the online coaches for power lifters. You know, my last gym, I had a number of guys that were nationally and internationally top, you know, top 10 in the world in the country or in the world in their weight classes. You know, they were coaching people, but they were also hiring coaches. And the coaches they were hiring was nobody local, because if you want a top, if you're gonna be a competitor and you wanna you want to get coached by the best, chances are they're not gonna live five miles away. They're gonna live 500 or 5,000 miles away. So that's who you're going to. And the same thing holds true for it, could hold true for anybody now, because if there's nobody locally, if there's not a trainer that you feel that you connect with locally in your gym, why not go online and find somebody? Like you, you see the you see their branding and their marketing, like, wow, that's what I'm looking for. That gets me motivated. You can connect with them and they can help you. Um, so that's I I mean, that was inconceivable even 15 years ago. It's like the difference between driving a Model T and shooting a rocket to the moon. So, you know, that's that's really where we've come in a very short period of time. I mean, you know, now somebody that's 25 years old doesn't see that, but somebody that's in their 50s sees it. Right. And, you know, it's it's it's so cool to me. Like I, you know, I realize um I'm not the guy that's gonna do my social media on my next place. I'm gonna hire somebody in their 20s to do it for me. I'm gonna tell them what I want and what I want to see, but I'm gonna allow them to, you know, kind of figure it out what the best way to present it is. Because I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna figure out the hashtags, I'm not gonna figure out, you know, the best, you know, I know like the the times that it should, I know some of the back-end technical aspects of it, but you know, I'm not the guy that's gonna, you know, sit there and figure out all the content and everything because you know it's gonna be I'm I'm gonna be attracting other 50 somethings.

Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting, and I was um I was actually interviewed on another podcast recently, and we started getting into this topic of, you know, what's gonna happen with online coaching, because you know, I just sold my gym not too long ago and I was already seeing the infiltration of online coaching with my clients, right? Is people that were your clients and now they're they're they're following someone's, you know, program online and they just wanna, you know, essentially use your gym as a commodity. And I wonder, um, you know, where where do you see that going between, you know, what happens with the in-person trainer when, you know, for example, um, you know, if I if I'm a uh a woman who just had a baby, um, I can easily find a trainer who specializes just like that and who's been through exactly what I've been through with, you know, what I'm thinking about, my body image, where my my problem areas are, so they can find someone that they can easily relate to that's so much in their niche. Now, you know, Joe, the fitness pro who owns the gym is kind of screwed, right? I mean, what you know, so where what advice do you have for people in that situation? Where do you where do you see that going?

As a gym owner, you're saying. Yeah. Like who what is the gym owner? I mean, you that well, there there you go. It's you need to have your niche locally. You need to, you can't open a gym in a market that doesn't have anything to do with that market. You need to know the market you're opening in. So, and unfortunately, if your passion. Is powerlifting and you're going into, you know, I'll use an example here nearby me. You're going into Scarsdale, New York, which is an extremely affluent upscale area, you're not going to get a lot of powerlifters. You know, you're going to have a hard time making it as a powerlifting jail. So you need to, you know, you either got to go to the market where there's a market for what you want to do, or you need to figure out where the niche is within your market, and that's the facility you need to open. You know, it's you know, because once again, going back to you're not gonna open the big box that's gonna appeal to everybody because the cost of doing that and the ri the rate of return on it, especially with all the low dollar players now, which have completely you know changed the way people view what they should be paying for for a gym membership. And so you have that on the you have the low dollar players on one end, then you have the lifetime fitnesses on the other end. You know, in my market, we have Equinox, we have lifetime, which we have high-end players, we have excrent, we have Planet Fitnesses, we have retro fitnesses, we have uh, you know, 24 hours opening up coming into the markets now. We have LA fitnesses, so you know, you've got the whole, you know, do you really want to open up next to one of those guys and try to go head to head with them to try to appeal to the mass market? Absolutely not. No, so yeah, no, it's like you're insane. You're insane. Yeah, you know, because even if their clubs aren't, you know, if they're the big corporate national owned, like the LA's in the 24s or a New York sports club in this market, in our markets here, you know, if they open up a club in a market, they're prepared, they've got the war chest to sweat it out for a year, two years, even if that club's not profitable, just to drain the life out of everybody else in the market until they attract everybody. They know they're they're it's gonna take them a while to ramp up, and you can't afford, you know, can how can most club owners afford to you know stick it out for 18, 24, 36 months while their members go check out the shiny new toy before they realize that doesn't really fit them as much as the old gym they used to train at, and they slowly start gravitating back to you, you're gonna be gone before that happens. Right. So once again, the market you're in, you better understand who the market is and who you're trying to appeal to. You need to understand what it's gonna cost to operate your facility, you need to know what's the critical mass of members, what you know, what's your competitive market analysis, what can I, what can I charge in this market? You know, if you got a an area where the average household income is forty thousand dollars, you can't charge $150 a month. You can't go in with a CrossFit and charge $200 a month and expect to get uh enough of a client base to make it work. You know, you've got to be in a market where people have the disposable income to spend what it's gonna cost to make your facility work in that market and to provide you with a living. So, you know, as the as Joe, the gym owner, Joe the fitness, you know, personal training studio, whatever, wherever it's gonna be, you you've got to know the market and know whether or not that market is gonna be capable. And sometimes you just gotta walk away, even though you're passionate and you want to open it, just because you want to open it doesn't mean you should.

Right, right. Yeah, passion isn't enough, right? You gotta know. And I think that's where the value of someone like you comes in, is is you know, having a coach or a mentor or consultant who can objectively take a step back from where you are. Because you when you get in the middle of things, things get crazy, right?

You know, you're yeah, I look, I've been there I I've been on both sides of it. I've been the passionate guy opening the gym just because I want to open it, and I'm like, oh crap. I'm running a charitable organization. Yeah, you know, I got all I it's you know, I'm paying the bills and you know, everybody's happy, but I'm not making any money. I've done those. Yeah, you know. And it it's it's great to hang out with all your buddies and lift, but you know, you gotta make a living.

Yeah, I totally agree. Well, this is a lot of great, great information in there. Uh John, if people want to get in touch with you and just have a conversation, because I know you're very giving with your time, um, you know, uh, they just want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do it?

Um, I could give you, I could give an email address for uh, I'll just give it a Gmail address for for uh initial contact. And then once I've screened you and make sure you're not a psychopath, then we can connect otherwise. Only kidding. Um, but uh so Jim Builder, Jim Builders, G-Y-M-B-U-I-L-D-E-R-S at Gmail. Okay. Uh they can email me at that and uh say, hey John, I got a couple questions for you. I'm looking at opening a facility. I I have a facility that's you know up and running, but you know, I'm running into some obstacles, you know. And look, I'm not gonna have all the answers, but I do have a very good, you know, Eric, you're you're a great resource. I, you know, there's other people in the industry that I I've known for decades now that are great resources. And there's people I've only known for there's a lot of great young operators in the market too, uh in the country now that you know I learned from them. And so one of the things is, you know, connect with me, you you know, connect with somebody like me, connect with somebody like you, Eric. You know, it's uh it helps us all to survive and prosper in the industry. So, you know, if I can't help you out, hopefully I could point you in a direction or I can get the information you need. But I think the thing is, I think, you know, we're in an industry where uh what we want to do is build as much credibility for ourselves as we can and continue to, you know, have people look at us as professionals and understand that you know we're providing a we are providing unique services that are highly beneficial to people, you know, uh in uh you know, not just physically, but psychologically what we can do for them. And uh and anything we can do to help perpetuate that and move that forward, I think, is uh is a great thing. So that's that's part of what I like doing is is being able to help other people out in the industry as well. And there's been people that have been great with me over the years, so you know it's always good to see people succeed.

Yeah, yeah, and pay it forward. Well, that's great. I I appreciate everything that you do for the industry and uh thank thanks for coming on, John. This is this was awesome. And I hope people reach out to you.

Thanks, Eric. I I appreciate it, and uh definitely we'll be in touch. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

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