William Coker - Fibr - Cracking The Code of Talent Acquisition

Hey everyone, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I'm your host, Eric Balzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews with summaries delivered straight to your inbox. Thanks for listening and on to the show. Hey friends, I couldn't be more proud and excited to announce that today's episode is powered by Workout, the ultimate tool for modern fitness professionals just like you. There is one thing that fires me up. It's elevating the personal training and coaching industry. For that, the Workout app is an absolute game changer. No more promoting top brands without compensation or dealing with confusing social media links. In just a few clicks, Workout's user-friendly app lets top trainers and coaches curate and share the world's most sought-after fitness brands like HyperIce, Vega, and more. Product lines covering everything from fitness equipment to supplements and apparel. Save time and boost your earnings with generous commissions and bonuses every time your client purchases the product you already endorsed. Do not wait. Maximize your income and streamline your business with store by workout. Discover more at workout.com. That's w-r-k o-ut.com. Just one-o. W-r-k-o-ut-go get it. All right. We are live. William Coker. Welcome to the future of fitness. Thanks for having me, Eric. Yeah. I guess big thanks first of all to Jason Crow, right? He's the one who got us introduced from the Sage House. Love those guys. And thank you, Jason, for making the connection so I can meet you here. And I'm really excited. There's been a buzz here. We're at Idea in LA recording live from the floor. And there's definitely been a buzz about what you guys are doing at Fiverr. So I'm excited to highlight it. And you personally have a wealth of knowledge and experience from the industry. Well, so maybe we start there, man. Give us your origin story. How'd you get to be uh at the head at the head of Fiber?

Yeah, absolutely. And uh so uh, and by the way, I probably I'm just gonna go ahead and claim right now that I'm gonna have the strongest Southern accent of anyone ever recorded on your podcast, right?

Okay, fair enough.

Yeah, every time I listen to one of these, I'm like, gosh, I sound like a hick.

Yeah, I've had Pat Rigsby on, and he's pretty hard to change. Okay, he's pretty much.

Okay, we'll have to do a comparison. Yeah. So um uh so you know, my background in origin story, thank you for asking, is yeah, you know, I was uh I was a military guy. I was blessed to I served on active duty in the Navy for a little over a decade. I was in the reserves for a couple two, three years after that. Um so in my final couple years in my military service, um, you know, the community I served in in the military and the navy was uh really physically active. Uh so I was given the opportunity throughout my career with them. I was what was called a fitness leader, command fitness leader, squadron fitness leader, etc. And so all that meant was I was put through a lot of really cool training and physical fitness so that I could administer the body composition testing and the physical readiness test and so on and so forth. So I knew that you know I I wanted to go into something like that. My last couple years of active duty, literally by complete luck, uh I went to the closest fitness facility to the base, and uh, and I was able to learn from as a part-time personal trainer uh my last two years of active duty, some you know, industry pioneers. It was just complete geographical luck, you know. So tip of the cat to uh you know Neil Spruce and Jim Rolley and Eric Jenkins and a lot of people that I was just very Mike Clark uh was you know, they were building the academy nearby with NESM. So I was very lucky. Um I I kind of grew up with uh you know with 24 Hour Fitness, um, spent my first decade or so in the industry with them, did all the jobs like like a lot of our listeners. Um, and um in uh 2009, I transitioned from uh 24 uh to uh to crunch and uh did the east coast for crunch, did the west coast director for crunch. Uh when I first was blessed to start with them, we had a grand total of I think it was 16 locations in 2009. And you know, as you can see, they've they've done very, very well. Very proud of that, proud of them. Um and uh along the way I also got some opportunities because of you know shared interest. I was able to work with uh Gold's Gym. I was able to work with uh Sport and Health and One Life Fitness in the the DC, Maryland, Virginia market. Um uh was uh blessed to to work with uh EOS, you know, uh and uh yeah, and then um so uh how I came to uh be the you know uh involved with fiber is you know along the way, uh for whatever reason, uh uh deservedly or not, uh I I somehow became uh the staffing guy, right? So I I should point out that you know my my primary um area of expertise as I did all those things that I just mentioned was you know personal training, personal training revenues, services, you know, education, etc. And somehow along the lines, uh the quote unquote personal training guy became the staffing guy too, right? So I I was I was uh uh allowed and in and uh I had to rapidly educate myself on uh you know recruiting and vendors and ATSs, applicant tracking systems, and all of these things that normally live in our industry and in most industries in human resources, right? And uh it was it was really through that hands-on experience, you know, when you start realizing firsthand uh how much our industry spends on talent acquisition, on uh, you know, the the impacts of turnover and then you know having to go back to the talent acquisition spend again. And and and and it just immediately resonated with me. I was like, you know, this this really makes no sense, right? Meaning I believe, and we believe at fiber, and we prove it with our employers each and every day that as an industry, we're a lot more self-sustaining than we realize, right? When it comes to our people and our talent acquisition, right? I mean, first of all, there's definitely defin uh I would say there's definitely jobs out there that are hard to recruit for, right? You know, uh I often say that, you know, there there's tough jobs in this world, right? There, there's a young man in a foreign land or a young woman in a foreign land right now with you know bullets flying over their head. You know, there's uh there's a firefighter somewhere running into a burning building. Those are tough jobs. Those are tough jobs to recruit for, those are tough jobs to train for. We work in a gym, right? And uh so the concept of fiber came about from those lessons that I didn't understand why on one side of our industry we have all of these well-intentioned people every single year that get certifications, they go through equipment certifications, primary certifications. You know, there's roughly just north of 50 different certification educational organizations who service our our industry, thankfully. Right. And if and if you take just one of those, they're certifying over 40,000 students a year. Just one. How do we have a staffing problem? Right. And and that was where the concept of Fiverr stands for Fitbridge, right? Bridging the industry together. You know, we we like to focus on the war, you know, a few things with Fiverr is we'll serve the people of fitness, right? Who so they can go serve more people so that maybe together, right? That's the key word. Together as an industry, we actually can start to make a dent in changing the world through fitness, right? And so, long answer to a short question. It was just really fiber came about because wanting to solve that, right? Young person, I mean, young, young in our industry, new well-intentioned person comes in, they get their certification, and I just saw too much that the very next thing was now what? Sure. And there wasn't a solution, there wasn't a connection from that to employers, right? Which is not beneficial to either party. And so that person then what do they do? They do like everybody else. They go on job boards, they go on social media, and then over here you have the employers then have to spend an exordinate you know, an inordinate amount of money to go find the very same person that they could have just got directly from our partners in the industry, right? So that was the birth of you know the Fitbridge, you know, is bringing everyone together so that we can make this a lot easier for everybody.

It's talent acquisition at this point is such a uh strong, tangible pain point, not just for our industry, but just across the board, right? You hear it all the time, you know, and it's not like unique to any particular like rural or urban or wherever you go. All industries are feeling nicely this really tough crunch. Like, what what is and I we'll get into so there's so many things within Fiverr. I mean, looking at the app and everything that you guys do, and I like how you break it down into you know, build a professional, build a team, build a business. We're gonna get into that, but I'm just curious, when you look at it from a macro perspective, why do you think getting employees is so much more difficult now than it has been maybe in previous times? Or is that even true, or is that just perception of people?

Sure. Yeah. And I should say, you know, um, part of the reason for creating the concept and working with, you know, my team and my co-founders was also the thing that resonated with me was, you know, I think I shared this with you with you, Eric, is, you know, if you asked me 20 years ago in my first general manager position, hey, what's your number one challenge? Right, I would have said, I need more instructors, I need more personal trainers, right? If you ask a general manager today, I hear the same exact answer, right? I would even say it's worse, right? And so the reality that we have to face as an industry is because I I speak to operators all the time and they're like, but I do this and I do that, and I post over here, and I'm but you you still have to go back to then why do we have a staffing problem? So none of that has worked, right? And and it's probably a lot more expensive, and then it hasn't worked, right? So that was also a driving force of going, you know, we need to solve this, and we can solve this. Um and so, but when we look at, you know, staffing, uh, talent acquisition, and um and then even the quality of some of, you know, um by operator's definition, you know, the the type of candidate that that we're we're seeing, um, you know, uh let's say especially post-COVID, right? So one it's understanding first as operators in the industry, we do not have a supply issue, okay? We have a recruiting and very often a follow-through issue with that supply, right? And so that's the number one thing that we first have to understand, right? And and and uh and you see that as an example with the employers that we partner with. When we know we actually set our watch by it within one to two weeks of us starting to source their primary uh roles and their their priority locations, we know they're gonna the question they're gonna ask us is where'd you guys find all these people? Right? Comes every time, right? Right. And uh and again, proving yet again it's not a supply issue. We just generally as an industry are not very good at recruiting. But some of the pain, the additional pain to that that we're feeling post-COVID is, you know, I I fully understand, you know, when you when you live in the brick and mortar world, you know, running clubs, uh, I you know, I was there for two, you know, over two decades. You're busy, right? I mean, you've got customer issues, member issues, team member issues, you're trying to hit revenue goals, and and you know, and so on and so forth. And um, so so I totally, I, I totally understand it. And so we don't always have the time is the as the operators to take a step back and go, well, why is this so hard? Right? Well, I had some time to kind of evaluate that. And I'll tell you one of the big things that brick and mortar operators we sometimes forget is a large percentage, a larger percentage than those who work in actual health clubs or physical facilities of fit people that you know term themselves fitness professionals, you know, on LinkedIn as an example. You know, they might call themselves personal trainer, fitness, you know, trainer, fitness coach, fitness director, or whatever they, but that that group of folks, you know, north of 65% of them are private, right? You know, and so we talked a little bit about the three brackets in a minute. That's the reason for you know the app being a place that we can, you know, that we can finally start to communicate with those folks, right? And when you say private, like what does that mean exactly? There, yeah, great question. You know, they're 10, they're 1099s, they're doing their own thing, right? And and and uh uh, you know, because yes, I mean part of the pain point of today is you know, when I came, I I started as a personal trainer uh in you know circa 1998, 1999. I mean, there were like five places to work, right? Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean that was it, right? Now there's thousands of different things, uh, you know, which again is is great. You know, it's great for the mission of changing the world through fitness. Um so uh so yeah, so I you know what one of the pain points that we feel is we forget that there's a whole other subset of fitness professionals out there that we're very often have no audience with who are private, they're in a studio, they're in a park, you know, they're doing some things on a social platform and some things live, you know, they're doing virtual, you know. Um a lot of uh a lot of folks understandably, uh operators like, oh, well that you know that was all caused by COVID. No, it was already headed that direction, right? COVID just accelerated, right? And then if you peel that back a little bit further, if we look at the Gen Z generation, right, born roughly 1997 to 2012, right? Hope I got that right. I think so. Yeah, sounds right. So if you peel that back even further and you look at the Gen Z, right, you know, they're resourceful. I mean, they are a smart bunch, you know. They they have uh they have really figured out that I can do this in a lot of different ways. Uh, and when I put all that together, it's a really good living doing a very, a very wonderful thing, right? So uh their percentile, again, depending on which report you look at, is around 80% private, right? So that's you know, that's one thing, again, is we move quickly and we're running gyms and so on and so forth, that we can, you know, quickly forget is that you know, we're you know, as far as where do fitness professionals work, the largest majority is private, right? And uh unless they happen to decide that they want to work part-time at brick and mortar, or maybe they want to go full-time brick and mortar, and and they uh stumble upon our ad on X job board, we have no audience with them, right? So we're we're you know, that's part of the pain point. And uh one of the reasons why we wanted to create fiber was to engage with that group, right, on one side of what we do. Um, because in my you know uh my experience out there running recruiting for brick and mortar, um I was growing very concerned that if we didn't do something, I'm not sure that we'll have very many applicants at all in five to ten years in brick and mortar, right?

That's you know, that brings up an interesting question. And it may have even been Jason Crow who brought this up. And I I've talked about it numerous times in this podcast, but when you look at the the fitness professional, the modern fitness professional, is it a career path still? Like 10, 20 years ago, people get into the profession, they get a certification, maybe they get another one, they start building their hours, personal training, and then they, you know, they kind of step up maybe within the health club environment to a district manager or whatever, and maybe it's it's a profession, right? You can actually build a livelihood, put your kids through college, like maybe have a retirement fund, own a home. Is that still even like something that people are looking to do, or is this becoming, are we worried about getting part of the gig economy where people just kind of come in and out like an Uber driver, right? You get a certification, you kind of do that. Like how how do you see the path within the fitness professional unfolding now?

Yeah, so I you know, I I spoke about how we, you know, as an industry, uh, you know, my my myself included, in, you know, in that we we haven't always uh been the best at recruiting, right? Um and then when you look at the Gen Z, and and this is, you know, for some operators I I speak with, this can be a little bit of a gut punch. I understand that. But with you know, with Gen Z, we're also we also have an attraction issue, right? So let me give you a scenario that plays out all the time. Is so to your question, is there a career? Absolutely. I would actually say that the Gen Z generation and the younger millennials have figured out how to make more of a career out of this than my generation did. Sure. Right? Um, because again, lack more opportunity, right? So this is a scenario that plays out at health clubs in communities all day, every day. So the Gen Z, you know, uh younger millennial person that wants to have a career in fitness, this is how they want to have a career in fitness, unlike my generation, right? So I don't mind being a part of your brand, right? I'll come work at your, you know, the local health club and I'll do my very best work that I can for 15 hours a week, right? I'll be a part of your brand, but I also want to be my own brand, right? So I also want to do 15 hours over here, and then I've got my online thing that I want to do, right? So to directly answer your question, I think there's more today that it's absolutely a career, but here's the challenge. Then you look at some of the health club operators, right? And you know, hey, tell me about your hard skills and your soft skills and your requirements that you're looking for in you know hiring fitness professionals. Oh well, they all have to have full-time availability, right? They can't do this and they can't do that, right? So I think that's what I mean by we are rapidly developing an attraction issue. We we can't expect that the entire generation is gonna adjust to us, right? It's just not the way it works, right? And so where you know, where fiber will assist with that right there, that and that plays out every day in hundreds of health clubs around the country, right? Um, I I can I I don't have anyone that I can hire, right? And the reason is because what we're looking for versus what the generation of candidates is looking for, there's there's become a very big disconnect there, right? And so what we've done at Fiverr is to is to address, you know, to one with the app, right? We talk about for the professional, right? The app is about the professional, it's about the individual, right? Um, and um, you know, again, think about other apps and websites outside of our community, right, where where professionals gather, right? One of the things you'll notice if you go back and you look at the history of those, you know, those communities, those websites, those apps, you know, today they're very much about jobs, right? But 12 years ago, 15 years ago, they weren't about jobs, right? It was about come together, network, share, maybe have some opportunity to, you know, make a little extra money, promote some products, you know, monetize your, you know, your followers or your clients or whatever the case may be. That's what they were about 12 or 15 years ago. And it wasn't until the community became, you know, a certain level that then it became about jobs. Right? So that's where the app comes in is to give that individual fitness professional out there a place to be, a community to network with. Yes, they can you know get discounted education, they can get discounted gear, apparel, and equipment going back to the Fitbridge, right? And everybody wins, right? They can get something at a discount. Our certification partners sell education if we just come together, right? And and again, most importantly, with the app, with that 60 to 80 percent, that we may not have an Audience with right now, right? And then we can employ more of them, right? Yeah. That's really that, you know, for the fitness professional, you know, that app. But going back to your original question, uh, I think it's absolutely a career, but I think their career is defined much differently than my fitness career.

Yeah, it is. I mean, everything's different, and you're right. Like, they're not going to adjust to us. Exactly. Right? As an industry, we have to evolve. And I think uh I know you've worked with a lot of very big minds and names in this industry, you know, that may rhyme with Mastrov and Spruce, right? Um, so you you've kind of seen this whole thing evolve. And I I my personal take is that we are a little bit slower to evolve at times. We would agree, disagree. Well, how do you how do you feel about our evolutionary capabilities within the industry?

Yeah, I I I absolutely you know agree. And uh I think uh, you know, it again within any industry, there's you know, there's exception, you know, exceptions. There's uh, you know, uh people that evolve quicker or slower, but I think just as a whole, right, if we all kind of own that, uh absolutely, you know, I I will tell you that um, you know, I I a lot and and I would challenge anyone you know who listens to this, that's maybe you know, um uh an operator, an owner, an executive that's maybe been you know around for a couple decades, right? Is just take a step back for a second, look at what you're offering the people that, you know, and again, I understand they may not even know, right? Because they've got people who do that for them. So go to them and just take a look, right? And and and look at what we're offering sometimes to candidates in our industry, and then ask yourself, man, does that look a lot like what was offered to me 20 years ago? And and I see a lot of that, right? It's the same structure, the same comp plans, and so on and so forth, right? And and uh so I don't know if it's as much that we're slow to evolve. Um, I think um that there were some models along the way that were created. And um as an industry, uh we were wildly successful with those models. And uh for a long time, you know, myself included, right? Um you know, this is how we, you know, this is how we hire, this is how we train and develop, this is how we compensate, and so on and so forth. I think this generation is challenging that more than we've ever seen, right? And uh I think with this one, we better evolve. Yeah.

You know, that's a really good point. And yeah, you know, we we've touched on fiber quite a bit, and I I've been playing around with the app, William, uh seeing all the things. It does a lot. I feel like there's a lot of different layers to it, and I know there's intention behind that. Yep. So give us some insights, like, okay, what is what is the fiber app? If I'm a fitness professional or just someone within the industry is interested in learning more about it, and I I download it, I'm looking at it. Like, how's it designed? What's what's the experience supposed to be like? And I know you have a long-term plan for it all. Uh obviously you're alluding to like you know the vision of 10 to 12 years, which I think is critical. That doesn't happen a lot, uh, not just within our industry, but just within startups in general. It's like, well, what's the 10, 12, 15 year vision, right? Because everybody's worried about tomorrow's capital investment. And I am too. Yeah. And you should be, right? Uh but yeah, so walk us through it. Like, what are the layers to the app?

Sure. So again, you know, the three, you know, real quick, so the listeners understand the three, you know, the three buckets of fiber, so to speak, right? Is it again, it's it's really fit bridge to be a total solution of bringing folks together in the industry, right? And and so the the app is about the individual, it's about the professional. It'll be heavily marketed to that private person out there, right? And and then we have build the team, right? So if you're an operator, boutique, studios, health club chain, you know, we have an active recruiting firm where right now, you know, very quickly, because of those resources, because of our databases, because of our uh our network, we can solve, we can build your team tomorrow, right? And then the third is build the business. Uh, this wasn't a part of the original plan, but what we started to realize was as we started to talk to a lot of the operators out there, right? There's thankfully, right, it's a blessing. We have a lot of new operators in our industry, right? There, they, you know, they've made an investment, they've they've purchased six franchise locations or a handful of boutique studios. And so as we started having some staffing conversations with them for that second bucket, right? That active recruiting firm, we started to realize and they started to ask other questions that we couldn't yet get to staffing because there were some things before that that they needed some help with, right? Well, okay, I know you can send me a bunch of candidates, but how do I, you know, what's the onboarding look like? What's the con? So that's the build the business. Really out of demand, we said, hey, we need to offer our services to that operator, right? So those are the three parts, right? So back to your question on, you know, the app is first, I think uh if uh any of the listeners out there uh who have ever launched an app or developed an app, they'll all you know shake shake their head and go, oh yeah, I know, I know that, right? But if you haven't, you know, it's important to know this is kind of how launching an app goes, right? Is you put out uh what's called a minimal viable product. We launched it about a year ago. You put a bunch of stuff in there. Uh we never even marketed it to those users. Uh, you know, there's six, seven thousand users in there, all organic, but you do that so that then your development team can build the real app, right? So later this summer we'll pump out 2.0, and then the marketing campaign to those private trainers will commence. So the way the community works for the fitness professionals, we we kind of coin it by the speed model, right? So there's all the social components, right? The typical stuff. They can follow, they can connect, they can chat, they can video chat, you know, all that typical stuff, post their workout videos, so on and so forth. And then the P is profit. So they'll have some abilities through the fiber shop to, you know, as I'll give you an example. So I have Sally and I train Sally down at the you know the local studio where I pay rent. And Sally and I have been working on our you know suspension trainer together. So I want Sally to have her own. I can go to my own shop where I can find a TRX suspension trainer, right? They're one of our, you know, one of our key partners, and I can uh you know select Sally's discount, right? And then drop ship that, you know, to Sally. Again, everybody wins, right? Sally got a discount. I made a little you know commission on it, TRX sold a strap. Everybody wins, right? So that's the the profit. And then the E and the E and the D are simply they can find employment. All of our active employer partners and the jobs that we're sourcing for, they're also up on our app. So we get those passive applies. Those come to us, we screen them and we send them over to the employers. Uh so they can find employment, brick and mortar employment, boutique employment if they wish, you know, health club employment. Um they could also find some other you know, employment in the education space and so on and so forth. And then the other E is education, right? So we have a plethora of educational partners from primary certs to secondary certs to specialization qualifications and so on. So they can shop for you know continuum education, primary education in there at a discount, right? And then the last, the D is discounts, gear, apparel, equipment. Again, it goes back to if we just bring everyone together in a you know, in one space, everyone wins, right? The fitness professional runs, building their network, continuing their education, our education partners enroll more fitness professionals in their education, our gear apparel equipment partners sell, you know, sell more. So that's uh you know, that's the app. So social profit, employment, education, discounts.

So if I'm kind of summarizing this correct, would you say that essentially you guys are creating a magnet for talent through creating a ton of value? Do you do you have like does uh if I'm a Fit Pro, do I pay to use the app? Is it all free? How does how does that work?

Yeah, so they can join the community. Uh everything is free. If they want uh the ability to use some of the profit features, you know, like the you know, uh creating their own shop and you know, making those you know commissions and earning that money, it's a simple in-app upgrade to Fiverr Pro, right? And so a couple bucks a month. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's a lot of functionality, man.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, I mean, I've you know, I've been involved with uh, you know, some some apps uh over the last few years, and I'm not a technical developer or anything like that, but I've seen you know how much it takes to get that level of functionality into an application. Like uh I guess the first question is like, how big is your team? Like, how many people do you have working on this? Back for its fifth year, the Connected Health and Fitness Summit is returning February 7th and 8th in 2024 to explore the industry's most lucrative opportunities and hottest trends. Come learn how legendary players and innovative brands are implementing preventative health and longevity focused initiatives into the business. Discover how to successfully have demands for holistic and wellness and fitness offerings. Next level by leveraging artificial intelligence into your next step by keeping up to date by all white space. No relationships and share ideas with connected fitness or connected health and fitness summit is bringing together the strongest brand of fitness and beyond. Two days of quality networking, security content to get you ahead of the game. Go to Connected Health of Fitness.com to download the agenda and find out more. Use code FOF10 for an exclusive 10% discount on your event ticket. That's Connected Health of Fitness.com, code FOF10, and do not wait. Seats are very limited.

Yeah, so the app itself, uh, you know, we have a couple internal uh, you know, staff members who are kind of like uh we have you know a CTO and uh another business development person on staff, and and they basically coordinate, you know, we have a development team, they're international, so they can kind of run around the clock. Uh and yeah, so as far as the you know the development team, the develop all that's outsourced. Got it. Yeah.

Got it. And you know, anecdotally, I was sitting here at idea at the the workout booth, and someone came by and uh was talking to Kurt because he owns a bunch of locations. And fiber, I heard him talking about fiber. I was like, oh god, I got it really somewhat you know perked up and I was listening because I I knew I was gonna be talking to you today. But they raving fan, right? Like, oh my god, they're like, oh my god, the talent acquisition, like no-brainer. They save us like tell us about the cost savings of working with you guys. There's time, yeah, there's time and money, right? Both are extremely valuable. So, you know, and maybe give us a story of of how that's panned out and and why it's it's so powerful for these these brick and mortar.

Yeah, sure. So because sometimes we're not, you know, we're not always the best at recruiting. Generally, um, those in the industry who are maybe doing a little bit better with talent acquisition, it's usually because they're just throwing money at it. Right. Right. It's highly expensive. And so uh usually every time really, when we come alongside an employer and and we start actively supporting you know their priority positions and priority locations, uh, one of the things that we'll do with their team if they're open to it is we'll take a look at where they may be spending other money, right? Uh again, we very often start those conversations with an executive or with the owner or with the franchisee, right? And so they may not know, understandably, because they've got more, you know, they've got big things to worry about. So we'll kind of dive in there and very often we'll show them like, look, you don't need to do this anymore. You can cut that out completely. You can cut that out completely because we're gonna send you as many as you need, right? So every single time so far, the employer uh saves money by paying us, if that may you know, because that was part of the goal, is we've made recruiting too difficult and we've made it too expensive, right? We have 50 plus organizations that all have students, we just needed to get those students to jobs, right? And so, you know, uh, I'll give you an example. Um if you have one location and you're trying to fill one priority position. So let's say you have uh, you know, a full-size health club and you're trying to find a general manager, okay? And again, understandably most owners, most executives, they don't know this, right? Because they, you know, they have people to to to know those things. Sure. So here's your options is you know, maybe they have an applicant tracking system, you know, maybe it broadcasts this job opportunity that they put into there onto their website and you know onto various job boards. Those are free ads, okay? They're gonna be on page eight. Nobody's ever gonna see them. Okay. Gen Z, younger millennials, they don't go past page two. No, okay. So the only way to get eyeballs on your opportunity is to put money on, right? What's commonly called sponsoring that job on X job board, right? So one location, one job. If you want someone to actually see it and actually apply for it, minimally that's $500 for one job at one location, right? Which those job boards all have controls, so you can't do it any other way, right? We come alongside employers and we will hire for as many positions as you have at a location, right? Whether it's three or twelve, right, for less per month than that one job at, right? And here's the difference too. We don't do job posts. We're tapping into networks, we're tapping into databases that we've built, we're tapping into relationships with the many schools and the many educational organizations who, by the way, also need to help their students find jobs. Right, right. This has existed all along, no one ever connected it, right? So we also um there, you know, there are staffing organizations out there who come into our industry, right? And I will tell you, all of those I know of, this is essentially what they do. They charge employer X so that they can run job ads for that employer at less. They get passive candidates and then they forward it to you. For all the employers out there, you could have done that yourself, right? Right? Yeah. Where we do is we go find, we connect, we communicate, we make sure of interest. And by the way, everyone doing it with us, guess where they came from? The clubs. So we we we already know the alphabet soup, we know the accredited organization, we know what's accepted, what isn't accepted, we know the degrees that are accepted, and the degrees that are not accepted, right? So, but that's just one example of you get all of that at a price per month per club less than your other options on job boards for one job app.

It's it's such a critical thing. I mean, I've seen so many franchises, especially, uh, that are looking at exponential growth when it comes to how many terror, you know, how many they're selling. Yeah. But then the opening is a completely different deal. And it's you know, it comes down to two things generally, like right, real estate and staffing. And that's one of the biggest barriers to just astronomical growth. So I mean, uh, we've talked a lot about health clubs. Is is are you guys specific to health clubs? Do you work with like uh individual studios, franchise chains, all of the above? Like all of the above. Great.

Yeah. And you know, on our like if you look at our our uh our awesome um you know employer partners right now, you look at all the jobs that we're sourcing for. I mean, we're we're literally sourcing for anything from a kids' club attendant to a senior regional manager, right? So whatever it is, right? If it's a role in fitness, you know, you pay per club, per month, you know, with the boutiques, they're a little bit different, right? And in that, you know, the big box operators, our partners in the they're always hiring, right? So the per club per month cancel anytime approach makes a lot of sense for them. With boutiques, you know, they're hey, I need two people this month, but I don't need anyone at that location for three months, right? And so very, very simple. They pay us a very small fee, they keep us on retainer, they never have to worry about recruiting again. You never have to run a job ad. You never have to do anything. And we found with those operators that's what they want, right? They're like, hey, I don't want to deal with that. I don't have time. I'm trying to open 16 boutiques this year. I don't want to worry about recruiting, no problem. They keep us on a small retainer, they reach out to us, hey, I need two GMs over here, no problem. We go find them when they hire them. There's a small placement fee. Super easy. But the big, the biggest thing that we see with the boutiques in the studios and some of the franchisees is just not having to worry about it. Yeah, right? They just reach out. We've got some awesome recruiters on on our staff. They reach out, they have an account manager to say, hey, I need this. No problem. You'll have resumes in your inbox in like three days. Yeah, right. They don't have to run an ad. They don't, you know, and in you know, hiring internal personnel for those types of things can be quite expensive.

Yeah. It it sounds like a really easy sell, William. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, uh, and what I like about it too is you guys have built a recurring revenue model, which is a little bit different than kind of like the typical ones, right? Like a typical recruitment. Uh I used to work, my first job was actually for recruitment for Calderotech, and I got to see the ins and outs of recruiting and the margins, and it's all about margin, right? How much how much can we place them for? That's it. Yeah. That's everything you're focused on from a sales perspective. You know, we talked about vision on this. Uh 10 years from now. What do you what do you see for fiber? Like what is I I obviously you're you're getting a lot of traction early, you're helping a lot of clubs, you're creating the value necessary on both ends, right? Um but where where do you see this going? What's the what's the grand picture?

Yeah, great uh you know, great question. You know, on the you know, I'll start first on the you know the staffing side of things, right? Um you know, we want to be the staffing solution for the entire industry, you know, uh period. You know, uh we we don't want other things solving that from outside our industry, right? We want to be self-sustaining, and and and I think that's very, very uh one, I don't think it's that difficult. Um and um but you know, I was very blessed with my co-founders, and that was a part of the you know, the initial conversation that I said to them is being gentlemen that have done more than anybody else I know in the industry in numerous different parts of the industry was like if there's if there's two guys who can bring all this together so we can stop paying these external entities to give us things that we already have, it's you guys. That was that probably the first conversation I had with them, you know. So 10 years from now, we want to be the place that all of our operators go to uh to find their talent. Um, and uh, and again, uh, you know, that doesn't mean they don't have internal folks to do that, but we just make them look like rock stars, right? We just make their jobs easier. We're just you know feeding them folks that they can then further screen and interview and so on and so forth, right? So um, but uh we we want to be that firm, right? And then there's always gonna be the segment of our industry, the entrepreneur, the individual fitness professional. Like, look, I I don't, you know, I don't want to be an employee. That's always gonna exist, right? Now, it doesn't have to exist at the level it is right now, post-COVID, right? Um, because there's some wonderful operators out there that make fantastic places for fitness professionals to go uh and work, right? But even all of us doing a great job with that, there's always gonna be a percentage that are private, you know, and and that's what we want the app to be. We want to be a place, you know, be the place where all of all of them can live. So if I summarize that in 10 years, Eric, you know, our focus is on, you know, there there's two key communities that we want to serve, and we want to serve very well. And the first is that individual fitness professional. Out there, right? Because what I believe in recruiting is if we serve them, hey, you just got your certification, let us help you find a job, right? And and that's the like the coolest thing is I get a dozen messages a week from a person that just completed X cert, and they're like, this is amazing. Like you guys reached out to me, you set me up with job opportunities, and then we found that that job opportunity geographically, and then you were able to just put me over on a they're like, this is amazing, right? So that's where we want to be. We want to serve that individual fitness professional. And guess what? If we do that better as an industry, we're not gonna have staffing problems, right? And then the the other is the military community. You know, we're doing some um, you know, some very, you know, very, very blessed and cool things and placing military members into uh our industry. Obviously, that's an obvious, you know, connection, right? And um, so uh, you know, that those are are really, you know, as we go about it every single day, whether it's what we do with the app and as we continue to develop that or it's what we do uh with the recruiting firm, um, you know, that's that's the North Star for us, right? Is to to I I I think as an industry we we need to do a better job at serving that individual fitness professional. I really do, right? Because I think you and I talked about um and why those two, it's a passion thing for me. Those are the two communities I came from, right? Right? And and I promise myself that if I was ever lucky enough to get you know to quote unquote make it in this world, and I could go back and serve where I came from, and those are the two communities I came from, right? And so every job placement we do, it's with the individual person in mind. And if we do that, the employers are gonna have plenty of people, right? So, you know, that's you know, that's the vision is anyone that wants to be employed and build that career that you talked about, we'll most certainly try to help, you know, we'll we'll help them find, we'll help them find that place. And uh, and I know our employers will be happy to have them, right? Hey, if that's not your thing, then we've created some technology uh that uh that you know will help you still have a career in in the industry. And maybe if we do all that, brother, maybe if we do all that, you know, Neil Spruce has been fundamental to this, he's been fundamental to my career. And you know, anyone that knows Neil has heard him say, you know, a million times um uh that uh you know we want to change the world through fitness. So maybe if we do those things, maybe we can really maybe we really do that. Awesome.

Right. Awesome, man. Well, you know, William, I I I love the vision. Obviously, you have the experience and and the excitement. You know, I always hesitate to use passion because that's like a buzzword, but yeah, you have the excitement and the energy, right? Yeah, like passion only gets you so far once you hit the grind. Yeah, then things tend to change a little bit. So uh I'm fired up for you, man. I mean, it just seems like such an obvious uh it's obvious now because you've done it, right? But it just seems like an obvious problem to tackle and it's it's really critical for the industry. And the last question I always like to ask people on the show, William, is like how how can we help you? What do you need right now? Uh if our listeners are out there, um, you know, what what can we do for you, man?

Yeah, I think um, you know, I appreciate that. Uh, yeah, and it's uh yeah, I was talking to some some folks who, you know, have done uh, you know, they got very large booths here now, but they were once a startup, right?

Right.

And so I I I sought them out. Um, and and they're they're mentors of mine anyway, but I sought them out yesterday and said, okay, this is where I'm at. Like, is this where I'm supposed to be? Am I supposed to be feeling this? You know, that's it's you know, it's uh I I'm just like a lot of the listeners, right? I grew up in you know, big box corporation, you know, type thing. So I I I learn, I'm humbled every day, I learn every day. So I appreciate you asking that, I really do. Um, but uh I think you know, um we want to help the employers out there, right? And uh, you know, so if you know if anyone wants to, you know, reach over the I'm very hands-on with the employers, the initial walkthrough and demo and be very transparent on this is where, you know, this is where we're finding people, this is how we want to uh be flexible to your internal structure, you know, and however you want to receive candidates, that sort of thing. I conduct all of that onboarding myself. So if there's any employer out there um that um uh is in need of staff, and I think that's uh from from what I see, just about everybody, um, you know, email me at you know william uh at fiberfibr.fit F I T and I'll set up a demo with them and their team and whomever they tell me to. And and uh we you know we generally say, hey, from the time we do a demo, you're gonna have a dozen qualified candidates within a week. Right? Yeah so uh that that would, you know, that you know, the what we're doing with the individuals, with the privates, with the app, and so on and so forth, as you alluded to earlier, I mean, that's development. You know, it just you go through phases and you upgrade, and you know, that'll kind of take care of itself. But really uh what is uh what what we're just absolutely having a a ton of fun doing and doing very well as you talked about, someone mentioned earlier uh is uh you know is that active job placement. So if there's employers out there that need help with that, please, you know, reach out to me. Um I think I shared with you uh, you know, any of the employers that we're supporting, uh this is the only two pieces of feedback we get, right? Other than, you know, they're like, this is amazing, right? Again, we've cracked the code. We know how to find the talent because we came from where the talent is, right? And uh here's the you know, the two pieces of feedback that we've gotten is um uh we set our watch by it about one to two weeks in. We've learned that our employers will come back to us and say, where in the world are you guys finding all these people? Right? Yeah, and uh, and again, it's I get it, you know, uh, but it's not as hard as we've made it as an industry. It's really not. There's a lot of great people out there that, you know, who doesn't want to who doesn't want to work in a gym? Like who doesn't want to teach a class at a studio? Right? It's the coolest jobs in the world, right? We just haven't done a good job at times as a whole of connecting with those folks, right? So that's one thing that we hear from our employers, which is a good thing to hear, right? Um, and the only other thing that we've had happen is the employers have actually reached out to us at times saying, hey, can you not can you not send us any resumes this week? Because we need to give our time, our team time to catch up on the interviews, right? So, you know, if there's employers out there that need help, I promise we can fix it, right? I promise, you know, and uh so that that's how the you know you could you could help, Eric, is just you know, getting getting I appreciate that very much is uh getting that out to them because like I said, I know I know they'll be thankful they did it, right? Awesome.

Well, William, I I appreciate taking an hour out of your uh busy agenda here at Idea. I mean it's uh it's great to be surrounded by people again. I think every time I get to one of these post-pandemic uh events, it's like I just have a new appreciation for it, right? So uh really great. People have your email, uh they'll have your website. I know you're active on LinkedIn as well, so people can go there. And it's uh it's been a real pleasure, man. Congratulations on all the success so far. And uh, ladies and gentlemen, William Coker.

Yeah, thank you, brother. I appreciate your time. Thanks, gang.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futurofitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Derek Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.