Brick and Mortar Business In the Time of Covid

You're listening to the PT Proffitt podcast, episode number 37. Today I'm sitting down with Michael Keillor talking all about the brick and mortar business in the time of COVID So are you ready? Stay tuned. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up coach? I'm Beverly Simpson, your host of the PT Profit podcast and welcome back to another episode. So, so hopefully you can hear me because it's Monday morning at 6:49am and I'm recording this intro because I didn't get a chance to record it over the weekend. And my assistant is on me about getting this out because we're publishing this tonight. So I'm here speaking rather quietly so that I don't wake up my children before we get into the hustle bustle of Monday morning and getting them on the school bus and off to school. So that's what I'm doing right now. But let me go ahead and introduce one of my favorite podcasts today. Now, I know I say that about every episode and it's true. I really do love the podcast. It gives me the opportunity to sit down and talk with some of the most incredible humans that I've known and also that I've gotten to connect it with. And I'm super excited to get their message out to you. And today is no exception because I'm sitting down with Michael Keeler, who is the co founder of Marc Fisher Fitness and also the co founder of Business for Unicorns. And this was an incredible episode, mostly because when I first became a trainer, which I did share on the podcast podcast, when I first became a trainer, I was in and of course I'm in New York, but you didn't know or you couldn't be a trainer without knowing Mark Fisher Fitness. And I had taken a lot of my really early first education experiences with them. I took a kettlebell course before I even knew what kettlebells were. This is before I was strong, first certified, but I took a kettlebell class over at Marc Fisher Fitness and I was actually one of the first people that participated in their Time Ninja program that they were at. And if you don't know what that is, awesome, because we're Going to dive into that in this episode. Mark and Michael are known for their incredible ability to create community within their brick and mortar, both from an employee standpoint, but also for a membership standpoint. And we talked a lot in this episode about how before COVID before the pandemic, they had a thousand people going into their locations a month. But when you went in there, it never felt like it. It felt like it was just you and them, which is an incredible skill. And Michael dives into it in this episode. So in addition to their consulting and teaching through their business for unicorns, they are one of the most successful gyms in the history of the fitness industry. And that is not an exaggeration. They had two physical locations, which Michael actually talks about in this episode. And they were recognized as number 312 on the 2015 incorporated 500 fastest growing companies in America. And I know that that is just one statistic, that they have actually been on that list a couple of times. In this episode, we talked a lot about the brick and mortar experience as a business owner and some of the things that we can do post Covid to help us both from a business perspective and also a mental perspective. We talked a lot about community and it was just a really great conversation. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you, Beverly?

I'm pretty great. Thank you so much for having me. It's so great just to catch up with you and talk. We've never really gotten spend this much time one on one together, so I've just been looking forward to this so much.

I know, I'm so excited. Thank you so much for doing this for me. I really appreciate it. So let's just dive right in. Can you share with my listeners a little bit about who you are, how and who you serve and how you got there?

Yeah. Great. Awesome. I'll give you my two minute career story from the last 10 years. I'll just do the last 10 years. I won't go back any further. So I've been best friends with a guy named Mark Fisher since we were in high school. And in 2011, he was a personal trainer and I was working in the nonprofit space in Philadelphia. And he was having a lot of success training when he wasn't being an actor and, you know, and being his best friend, I was like, you seem to really love this training stuff. Why don't you do more of it and if you ever want to, you know, make it a full Time business. Let me know. I'm happy to help. I had some experience working in nonprofits, doing strategic planning and things like that. So to make this part of story short, he agreed one day and he was like, yes, let's turn this into a business. And we created Mark Fisher fitness in basically 2011. He had already been doing lots of training and had started to build an audience in New York City with his Broadway community and actor friends. And together we just kind of poured gasoline on that fire. It was a good kind of fire quality, happy fire. And we basically opened our first brick and mortar location in Hell's Kitchen in New York City in pretty much. Our doors opened officially at the end of 2011, beginning of 2012. And since then, Marc Fisher Fenton has just grown and grown and grown. We started with just the two of us. We've been on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in America twice. And so we just really grew very quickly. And it was such a fun rocket ship to be on. We opened our second location on the Lower east side in 2016. We called that MFF Bowery because it was on a street called Bowery. So we had two locations as of the beginning of COVID which is no longer the case, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And right around that same time and around 2016, Mark and I also launched a second company together called Business for Unicorns, where we help extraordinary humans become amazing leaders. We mostly focus on entrepreneurship in the health and wellness space. We do have some people that we're working with now that are not in fitness or nutrition space, but we mainly work with service oriented companies to help them build an amazing brand, become great leaders, become great at the things that we think we excel at at Marc Fisher Fitness. And so business Unicorns has been kind of my full time job for the last three years though I'm still very involved in Mark Fisher Fitness. And so that's been the last 10 years of my life. So Mark and I have remained friends all this time. We have a strong business partnership. Both of us have gotten married over this time. Now we're in the process of buying houses and I don't know, maybe starting families. I'll speak for myself. Starting family. So it's been a wild 10 years with my best friend.

That's amazing. And you know, Michael, for those of you who don't know Mark Fisher Fitness, which I can't even imagine that being the case because when I came into this space, it was literally I became a trainer, I think in 2012. And it was like, hey, you're a personal trainer. Have you heard of Mark Fisher Fitness? So I can't imagine that being the case of no one ever heard it, hearing of you. But. And you speak about it very humbly. But one of the things that I feel like Marc Fisher Fitness is known for is your incredible ability to create instant community, both in, both as an employee, but also within your brick and mortar space.

Yeah.

How have you been able to do that?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a great question. I feel like I, you know, even though I've answered this question a million times, I don't know, I still have a succinct answer. I don't know if that says about me. I think it's twofold. I think for starters, we had some really good seeds in the beginning, in that very early 2011, 2012, we were really embedding ourselves in kind of New York City's theater community. Right. Because Mark was an actor, I had been a dancer in a previous life, and so we knew a lot of arts people, a lot of performers, a lot of dancers, a lot of actors. And so we were really kind of attaching ourselves to what was already a thriving, really tight knit community in New York City. So that was our start. Those are the seeds that we planted in 2011. And then from there it's really been a journey of. I mean, when we teach now other entrepreneurs how to create culture, that one of the things that we stress the most is that creating culture is not something you can force from the top down. Creating culture as a leader, your job is to make space for a dialogue between your team and your clients and your community and listen to what's working and what's not working and make changes accordingly. So creating a great culture and a great community is something you can't decide one day in a boardroom on a whiteboard has to be an organic, evolutionary process where you as a leader are making space for and creating systems and processes that allow your team and your clients to communicate and have great dialogue about what feels like, what makes a space feel safe for them, what makes the space feel welcoming for them, what are things they don't like, you know, what, what price points are working. All of that and a million more things all contribute to a sense of community, a sense of everyone in your space feeling like they are seen and heard and belong. And there's not one way to do that. It's like making a giant stew, you know, and you have to start with quality ingredients and then you have to kind of continue tasting it along the way, you know, and it's good. The analogy starts to break down from there, but you get the idea.

Yeah. No, you know, it must be hard because when I was a fitness manager and I was in that brick and mortar space at Crunch, you know, it was one of those things that always felt unspoken, but every knew when someone was in a good culture and you. And you knew when it wasn't. So what would you say are the key ingredients to cultivate in addition to listening? But how key ingredients to recognize when a culture is good. And what were. What would be some of the strategies you would implement?

Yeah, totally. Now I'll just go down a laundry list and you can tell me when you've had enough. But the things I would start with are some basics. You got to start with mission vision, values. Right. You gotta start there. We like to think of a mission as like the north star of our company, what we exist to do. And Mark Fisher Fitness's mission statement is pretty lofty. But if you ask anyone who's worked for us for the last 10 years what it is, they all have it memorized. They can tell you at the drop of a hat what our mission statement is. Because it's not just some cheesy phrase up on the wall. It's something that we live every day and we kind of wove it into the fabric of how we do what we do every day. And so our mission statement is Mark Fisher Fitness exists to unlock and amplify each human's inherent power to live their best life. That's pretty lofty. That's pretty. It's pretty poetic, even if I have to say so myself. But. But it's really meaningful to know that's what we're doing every day. We're not going to work to work at a gym. We're going into work to help every human in that space unlock and amplify this inherent power they have to live their best life. And that feels like a really exciting motivation and purpose that drives us and our team and our clients every day. So mission vision is having a clear picture of where you're heading, a clear picture of the roadmap ahead of you, that if your business is successful at getting your clients the results you want to get and creating the culture and environment. Environment for your team that you want to create. What will the future look like? What does the next one year, three year, five year, ten years look like? And having that really solidified in writing so you're all on the Same page about it helps make a great culture. Values is also on this list. And values I think for us are really the guardrails that modify our behavior from day to day. Right. Values are these ideas or these ideals or principles that you put up on a pedestal and saying this is something we really value. Things like humility and honesty and hard work and fun, you know, and depending on what words you choose, they will affect the way that you and your team show up every day. And so these are just foundational things. I think if I had to add one more on top of this is that you really need some clear processes and strategies. And I would even say systems for collecting and responding to feedback and feedback. I mean, kind of 360 degree feedback, not only from your team, but from your clients. Because that is. Feedback is often the way we think about this dialogue that's required for creating culture. So you have to have systems in place. And I can talk about some of our systems in place for creating this environment where feedback is treated like a gift, where feedback is not one of those things. Oh, we got some client feedback today and everyone rolls their eyes, everyone gets annoyed, and everyone's immediately emotionally triggered and upset that they feel like they did something wrong. It's like that's the culture most people work in. And it's not a culture where you're creating an open dialogue with your clients about what's working and not working for them. And this is one of the things that I think takes the longest and I think this is one of the things where many of the clients I work with, the business unicorns, this is where they get stuck, is that in that relationship they have to giving and receiving feedback. So I think that's crucial part to culture and community.

Yeah. I love for you to break down the system that you have in place for that because I think also a lot of people, and I'll speak for me too into this boat, at least when I, especially when I first started, which is that there is a fear of feedback.

Yep.

I think that on a superficial level, it's easy to say, oh, you know, there's no such thing as failure and failure is just data. And I get that. But when you're. And I get there's a difference between understanding that and knowing it, you know, and when you're pouring you into your service and products, it can be hard to emotionally detach, which I think is one of the hardest parts.

Yeah, it's so hard. I mean, everyone says that, you know, it's just data. Well, everyone Knows also, it doesn't feel like data. Right. It feels like a punch in the gut or a slap in the face or a knife in the back or, you know, it feels terrible often to hear that someone was really upset with something you did or didn't do. It just sucks every time. You know, I think I'm, I've developed a pretty great relationship to feedback over the years and I still get sucker punched every few months. You know, there's still just one piece of feedback every so often. That just hits me like a ton of bricks and it lingers. Those are the ones that really, you know, most people talk about are the ones that you just can't stop thinking about the whole day and maybe the next day and it sucks. And it's that kind of low level trauma that keeps us from improving our relationship to feedback. But a few things people can do. The first thing is, like most habits in life, you only get better at this. This only becomes easier if you do it more often. Right. And one of the ways that you get engaged with feedback more often is to start asking for it more. Yeah. So one of the things that people often hate about feedback is that it comes as a surprise at a time when they're not ready for it, when they don't want it, they didn't ask for it, and it's that surprise that knocks them off their feet. You know, so that when you can be in the driver's seat of how and when and from who you get your feedback, that immediately minimizes the potential of it being a terrible experience. If you can, for example, all your listeners, I'll challenge all of you from this week, go find one person every week moving forward for the next month to ask for a specific piece of feedback from. So an example might be, let's say I have a one on one with someone that reports to me and a place where I want to get better is I want to make sure that I'm really, I'm really leading those one on ones in an effective way. Right. So after my one on one with you, Beverly, I might say, hey, Beverly, one of the things I want to get better at is having this one on one be a little bit fun and for us to look forward to it and be fun. So you don't have to answer right now, but I'd love for you just get back to me in the next 24 hours. If you can think of just one way I can improve these one on ones for you to make them more valuable and more fun and have you look forward to it. Yeah. And so that's just one way to ask for feedback more often. Asking a specific person for specific feedback about a specific thing I want to get better at. And because of that, I'm changing my relationship with feedback. It's not coming as a sucker punch out of the. In the dark. I am asking for. I'm leading into an area where I want to improve, and asking someone, tell me how I can improve here, and that'll start to build the muscle. So that's one thing I think people can do. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And I also think that when you do that, just listening to that question and listening to that hit me, it also changes the emotional experience for the person giving the feedback, because it no longer comes from a place of necessarily of anger, frustration. It comes more from a place of. Of, in my opinion, comes from a place of, okay, now I can give this space kindly, and now the feedback will be delivered in a different way.

That's it, Beverly. That's it. Because part of the reason why we all hate feedback so much is almost none of us give it until we're super pissed. You know, I don't know if I can say pissed on your podcast, but I just did. But, yeah, we all wait because it's uncomfortable. So we avoid it. Avoid it, avoid it, avoid it. Kick it under the rug. Oh, well, it was just one time. Well, I'll get over it. Well, you know, they'll probably never do it again. Well, I'm only working here for six more months. You know, whatever it is, they'll just avoid the conversation, avoid. So we only really give feedback when the discomfort gets so high. We're giving it this moment of real tension, a real frustration. And often then the issue has been going on for weeks or months or years, and so that conversation is always really hard. As opposed to, you know, a culture you want to create where everyone's always giving and receiving feedback. Everyone's always in that space of talking about things when they're happening and not holding onto them for weeks and months. So another thing. A few other kind of quick strategies. Excuse me for a second. Sorry, I didn't want to cough in the microphone. Another thing that. A few other strategies that come to mind. Simple things. One is any brick and mortar business should have a feedback box. A place where anyone can anonymously drop some little sheets of paper in a little box. And on a regular basis, let's say monthly, you and your team sort through those and respond to them publicly in a blog post. An email and a posting on the wall. But that is a starting place to having a dialogue with your clients. Another thing that we do, we have a system called Glows and Grows. And this is maybe more elaborate. I can talk more about this offline. I think you've heard of this before. But you know, I can point to some articles you've written about this if it's helpful to your listeners. But you know, essentially what it is, it's whenever anyone on our team sees some place where we are exceeding our own standards or expectations for clients, they record that as a glow. Yeah, something that's fantastic. And all it is is an online form they can access from anywhere, their computer, their phone, and they fill out, okay, well, when did this happen? Who did it happen to? What did we do to exceed our expectations? What values are we lifting up by exceeding these expectations? And then as soon as they submit, that email goes to everyone on the team saying, look, we just exceeded someone's expectations and we get to celebrate. And that's this moments of praise or positive feedback that we all know are so important. On the flip side, when anyone on the team sees a moment where we are not meeting our own standards or expectations for clients, including ourselves, you can call yourself out for this. Then we record what's called a grow. Same thing happens. They write down what happened when, what was the follow up that's done. And that not only goes in an email to everyone, but it gets assigned to a manager to follow up, to make sure the loop gets closed with that client who had a negative experience and obviously gets tracked in our database. So we can see trends over time for places where we are exceeding and places where we are failing. And so that's an actual system, an actual system that we've used every day we've recorded. I don't know at this point, I don't know. Probably thousands of Glows and Grows over the years at Mark Fisher Fitness. And we talk about them every week in our team meeting as a way of keeping our finger on the pulse of our community. What are we doing that they like? What are ways that we're wowing them and exceeding their expectations or ways that we're not? And without a system like that, at the scale that we were, just for context for your listeners before COVID we had on average about 1,000 monthly active members at, at our two locations in New York. That's just too many people to keep track of. It's too many experiences to keep track of. Just with anecdotes, you know, we Needed to have that stuff be recorded. And so I can talk a lot about glows and grows, but as you can see, it's just a feedback box. A system like that and a lot of other examples, these are just ways that we are in constant dialogue with our clients and our team about what's working, what's not working, so we can keep shifting and changing our culture to meet the current moment.

So I'm really glad that you gave us that statistic because I'll tell you, as somebody who's gone into that Marc Fisher fitness experience, I never would have known that it's 1,000 people a month. And the reason why I'm saying that and pointing it out is because when you go into that space, it feels like you're the only one there. And the team makes you feel as if you were the star personal client.

Yeah, that's the goal. Right.

That speaks a lot to what you've been able to accomplish and that is a skill.

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks. I mean I have to say that, you know, Mark and I do a lot to try and make space for this conversations and try to lead from the front here. But also we have such an incredible team at mff. I mean pre Covid even now. We've certainly had some losses during COVID which I'm sure we'll get to. But you know, we have an incredible team and you have to have people who are ready to do this kind of work, who are ready to put themselves on the line and record a grow about themselves to say, you know what, I actually messed up today. I came in, I started the class five minutes late, no one saw it, no one else is around. But I have enough integrity that I'm actually going to record it. Let everyone know in case ninjas complain, we call our clients ninjas. So I should have said that earlier, but yeah, and so. And that's the kind of people you want to hire. So this goes back to the values and things we were talking about earlier in your hiring process. You want to hire and ask questions about those values because if you don't, if you're not aligned in those values, they won't have the right behaviors in your space. And so that's. We've been so fortunate to have just the best friggin team on the planet.

Well, and I also, you know, you develop them too, like, and they are incredible, you know, so one of the things I want to go back to what you originally said, which is, you know, talking about like your things like your mission and your Values. Those are often things that many business owners want to skip.

Yep.

You're in the online space with the brick and mortar space. That is those key. Those in those ingredients are so important that everyone knows it will help. Right?

Yep. So I can I say, oh, I know you're gonna ask, but I can say this. I'll kind of tell you why they skip them. I might be talking about this, but they skip them because most people do it wrong. They skip it because they've seen other people do it. And what they do is they make a list of values. They hang it on a poster in their wall. On their wall either. And we have two sets of values, actually. Values for our team and values for our clients. We can talk about that later if you want. But they hang them on the wall and then they think they're done. That's not it. Right. You need to actually role play those in your team meetings. You actually need to hire for those. You actually need to incorporate them into systems, things like clothes and grows. Incorporate them into people's personal development plans and education plans. Right. Those values actually need to be present. They need to be woven into the fabric of how you do things. Things. Same thing for your vision or your mission. Right. We actually, everyone knows the mission statement of Mark Fisher's because we recite it at the beginning of every team meeting out loud, all together, like a bunch of weirdos. And we do it in fun, weird ways, sometimes with dances or songs or voices or accents. But, you know, because part of our brand is that we're a little quirky and weird and ridiculous and we like to play, and so that makes sense for us. But, you know, if I just put a mission statement up on the wall. Doesn't do shit. Now I'm cursing on your podcast. It doesn't do anything. Right? And so people think, oh, that's just some academic nonsense. Why waste my time on those documents? But, you know, same thing with your vision. A vision plan is actually the start of how you set goals. If you want to do some forecasting financially for the next few years, you better have a vision statement, right? You want to do some, you know, traction or EOS style goal setting over the next few quarters, you better have a vision, right? So these documents have to actually be used and you have to breathe life into them and weave them into the fabric of how you work, or else they are just nonsense. Then you should just skip it. If you're not going to actually, you know, fold them into the work, then you're right. Don't do it. But if you do them and fold them in, right. Then they become such. They become such great leverage.

Yes. And the foundation for having a culture, because everyone can measure their performance based on these things that you've laid down together.

Yeah, they're principles, they're pillars. I mean, they are literally the foundation of how you make decisions for the business. When we say, oh, should we go in this direction? This direction? Okay, well, what did we say in our vision? What is our mission more closely aligned with this direction or this direction? If we look at our values, how would that have us show up in this direction or this direction? You have to really use them, which means pulling them out of the drawer and actually incorporate them into how you do things. And that's something that people. It makes sense that it's hard because no one ever teaches us how to do that. Right. I mean, most people who are running small businesses like ours, brick and mortar businesses, no one ever taught us about these things. You know, we're figuring out as we go. And the only reason I knew about those things, because I had gone to grad school for a nonprofit business. And so in nonprofits, charities are so driven by mission and vision and value. So, you know, but for profit companies, especially small businesses, they're scrappy. You know, people are. Especially in the fitness space, you know, in the PT space, people are getting into it for their love of fitness and movement and wellness, not because they want to write vision statements. And so it's, you know, I didn't get into it for this. So, you know, and so that's part of why business for unicorns exists. That's why Mark and I do this work, is going to bring these things that have worked so well for us to other people, because I do think they can work for everyone.

And there's two other things that you talked about, and I, whether, you know, you guys did this intentionally or not, you know, you can speak to that. But something I did notice is that you, when you first entered the space, you had a very specific, I don't want to say ideal client, but you were speaking to one person, inserted yourself into a fitness experience for people in the theater world. And the other thing that you do specifically, too, is that you speak to unicorns, you speak to ninjas, and you have also associated essentially an identity to people who enter the community, which is going to help people, tribal humans, feel like they are a part of something.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you. Thanks for noticing those things because, yes, I hope some people have Noticed some of those things. But to be fair, though, Mark and I say this all the time, that. But early on, what we were doing the first year or so was just selling stuff to our friends. Specifically, I had just moved to New York in 2011, so I didn't have that many friends here. But I knew theater people, and we got each other. I was cut from that same cloth, but really we were just selling to Mark's friends, who happened to all be theater people. But at some point early in the first few years, we did kind of formalize that understanding of, okay, our avatar is actually a gay man who likes theater in New York City who's in his mid-30s, probably single. You know, I could go on and on. And funny enough, I have kind of been pretty close to our avatar all these years now married, so I'm not our avatar anymore. But. But. But, you know, being a gay man who doesn't really love fitness, who loves theater, comes from the arts, doesn't feel safe or comfortable in a kind of a traditional gym environment that's driven by a lot of what I'll lovingly call bro culture. You know, those are environments that are not comfortable for me. And that's the avatar that we really kind of have had for since the beginning. We have a female version of that as well, But I think that's a place where people early in their business could do things differently, which is. I know early on, the impulse for most brick and mortar business owners was, I serve everyone. Yes, I'm for everyone. I want to create services and price points that are great for everyone. And I get the impulse. Right? I get the impulse. It's like, I want to serve as many people as I can. So why should I market to not everyone? Well, well, the reason is because you can't. Good marketing is specific messages to specific people about specific problems that you're specifically going to solve in a specific way. And so there's no way to do that. Well, if you're trying to speak to everyone. So I think, you know, early on we said, okay, well, not everyone's going to like us. We can't be for everyone. We're going to curse. We're going to swear. The voice of MFF has always been a little irreverent and quirky. And, you know, frankly, you've been to the space, you've been to this. It's like colorful and weird and glitter and, you know, sparkles everywhere, and there's laser lights and, you know, at times there's been all kinds of weirdness having costumes and things. And that's not for everyone.

Unicorn dolls for people to put on.

Totally. It's, it's, you know, it's like, you know, we always say that it's like a four year old was on acid. Who decorated the place? No. Four year olds, if you're listening, you should not do acid. But, you know, that's a little bit of the aesthetic, you know, and even our branding digitally was always kind of. People thought it was kind of like a slightly more adult Anne Frank, you know. Wasn't that the glittery Trapper keepers from the 90s? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that her name? I think it was.

I don't know, I'd have to look, but I know the Trapper Keepers.

Yeah. So, you know, so when you do that. Yeah, it was Anne Frank just. I had to Google it to make sure I wasn't, you know, misattributing those stickers to someone else. So I think that, you know, that's part of. You have to decide who you're going to serve, which means in your marketing you have to speak to specific people. It doesn't mean you're going to turn people away who come to your door, who are not your avatar. It just means in your marketing, you have to spend all that time, money and resources on speaking to specific people. And that's something we've done consciously. And then what was the other thing you were saying?

You were saying you associated identities.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's another thing that people often think was, you know, were ideas that came from Mark and I. So for example. But they weren't. So for example, the unicorn is our mascot was something that kind of happened organically. Calling our clients ninjas was something, you know, Mark had kind of rattled off randomly and some rant in class. But then people in the class started calling each other ninjas. And so that was something that was an idea that kind of came from them. You know, most of the best ideas we've had at meth have come from our clients, not from us. So this is just an example of, you know, if you want to create community, you gotta listen to the people that are in the community and, you know, and start to. What we've done is kind of just keep our ear to the ground and then try to kind of formalize or codify or turn up the volume on things that we see are resonating, you know, so, you know, our brick and mortar facility in Hell's Kitchen is called the Enchanted Ninja Club, House of glory and Dreams. Our Training area is called the Dragon Lair. You know, all of our classes have kind of, you know, somewhat sassy, irreverent titles like Kick Ass Conditioning and Superhero Strength and Ninja Academy. You know, our intro program where people first do is called, is called Ninja Baptism where you kind of to come in and get baptized before you're allowed to take class. So, you know, all of these things are ways, as you said earlier, to make people feel like they're part of something. We have a language and vocabulary, like every culture on the planet has its own language instead of norms. And I think that any good community has kind of clear things that distinguish them from other places.

Yeah, I love that. So I'm curious and I want to speak to this on a brick and mortar level essentially is that I know in the online space you hear a lot of people say talk to an ideal client because if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. But I think it's very challenging to do that in a brick and mortar space specifically. I feel like a lot of people in the online space resist it, but they don't have quite the financial burden, I'll say, for lack of a better word, because not that burden, but it is different.

Yeah, I would call rent in New York City a burden. That's fair.

So there is a level of pressure, essentially. I feel like brick and mortar owners have. So how are, what are some of the ways that you've overcome that type of resistance? How have you created that? Because if you look at a traditional gym space, they're for everybody.

Yeah. Well, I would say this, that you know that I'm a little bit in a bubble in New York, right. In that we can afford to be only for certain kind of people. Because literally within walking distance are a few million people. And I recognize fully that a lot of people, your listeners might be in places where that's just not. Not the case. They're in small towns or smaller cities or mid sized cities that don't have a million people on their doorstep. So we can afford to be very specific about who we're targeting. And we, you know, we also were very confident that there were enough weirdos in New York City that they. There's enough weirdos who want to come to Mark Fisher Fitness. And I say that word, I say that lovingly. I'm a weirdo too. But you know, we often think of MFF as being this lovingness kind of aisle of misfit toys. People who don't love, don't want to go to Crossfit. You Know, they don't want to be on their own on a treadmill with their headphones on. They want people and stimulus and conversation. Not to say it's all extroverts, but we have some introverts as well. But I say all that to say that not every place can be a Mark Fisher Fitness. I wouldn't put marker Mark Fisher Fitness in small town Nebraska, you know. And so I say all that to say even if you are in a small town and you want to and you know, you have to niche down and define an avatar. I still think there's value to finding an avatar that's maybe not a specific demographic, right? Maybe you can't just serve, you know, you know, just. Just men in their 30s and 40s, right? But maybe your avatar is more around values, right? More around a worldview, more around how people think about their bodies, more around how people communicate and want to interact during their workouts. There's all kinds of ways you can shape and form your avatar, but at the end of the day, the value it has to your business is having you stand out from the crowd. The reason you focus on a specific avatar is it says, this is who we serve and this is how we help them solve these specific problems in these specific ways that are unique to us. And if you can't do that, then you're just one of a million other options. And there's some people who are cool and they'll just shop for one of the million other options. And there's some people who want something special. And I think that's what most of us start open a business to do is not just be, you know, I'll use CrossFit. Even though I have a lot of respect for them, I also like to make fun of them. But, you know, some people are not content being the fifth CrossFit in the same little downtown area that are kind of indistinguishable from each other. Some people are, and that's totally cool. Live your best life and make lots of money. Some people want to create something that feels unique, that takes care of people in a unique way that represents their voice, their mission in the world. And if that sounds like you as an owner, then your job is to attract those people that you can serve with your best skills and your best techniques. You know, and I know that, I know that's you, Beverly. I know that you want to attract people who are going to resonate with the kind of work that you want to do. And so you have to find who that person Is. And I know that that's worked well.

For you and I love that you bring up like when we're talking about avatars, everyone wants to think, okay, what are these? You know, three things. Well, how old are they? What do they. There's so much more that goes into a person than their gender, than their age and whatnot.

Yeah, the two things. We think of it as two categories when we write our avatar. We think of demographics and psychographics. Demographics are age, money, all that kind of stuff. The stuff you put in the census, you know, and the other block of things are what are their wishes and hopes? What are their fears? What are their challenges and pain points in life? Who are they? Who do they confide in? You know, who. What. What do they dream about? You know, like all of that matters just as much. And you know, and you can find people who are all shapes and sizes and ages and incomes who maybe resonate with you because they feel like their bodies are broken. The people who've had long term injuries, you know, that's certainly the case for a lot of pts, is Right. They attract people because they have this narrative about their body that it's just broken and it's always going to be broken. Right. And that's a powerful message to have front and center in your marketing and your advertising because that will attract people who have that same narrative about themselves. And that can be a 20 year old or it can be an 80 year old. It doesn't matter.

So good. So true. So I would love for you to speak a little bit about how. Because you talked a little bit about pre Covid.

Right.

Awesome, thriving, everything nobody could have even imagined or dreamed. The year 2020 justifies it as the year 2020. So what are some of the things that you. What are some of the impacts that you've experienced and how you've gone through them?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sure we could talk for the next hour and a half about this, but I'll try and keep it brief. I mean, I'll start by saying I still have a lot to be grateful for, just personally and for mff, in that no one on our team and kind of my immediate personal family has been super sick or died. And that's something that, you know, kind of speaks to the privilege bubble I probably live in. But I think I have to just express gratitude for that and the fact that, you know, my husband and I have continued to have some income and had some work during this time, have to have a ton of gratitude for that. Gratitude for that. And we live in a place that has felt safe and comfortable even in New York during this whole time. Gotta feel gratitude to that. And even for mff, there's so much to feel gratitude towards is that our community really showed the F up for us. Our community really stepped up. And you know, the big headline of things I'm gonna be grateful for here is that almost, you know, all of MFF operations last seven months went online. All of it, you know, and while we maybe didn't get all kind of 1,000 of those people online, we got most of them. A majority of them actually moved with us online just to do classes. And at Mark Fisher Fitness we offer kind of group large group classes and small group kind of semi private training, three people. And so even the semi private training folks went and just did classes because that's all we could offer. And they wanted to support us. There's even some people in our community who paid us more than we were even asking them for those services because they wanted to support us and make sure our team had employment and healthcare. And so I just, you know, if there's any MFF community members, any ninjas listening, just thank you because there's so much there to be grateful for. And I'd like to think that that's part of what we've been cultivating over the last nearly 10 years. But it's so nice to see that it actually, see it actually play out like that because it didn't have to go that way. So many people have so many personal self interests that I would have rightfully understood if they were just all in their own little bubbles taking care of themselves, but they weren't. So many people are coming to reach out to us to make sure our team and our business were doing well. And I just have to be so grateful for that. And there's also been lots of shitty things. There's also been, there's been lots of crappy things. So you know, where to start. So, I mean, the biggest one, I'll go with the headline first, is that our second location down on the Bowery in the Lower east side of Manhattan, we had to close. We have a landlord there who is, you know, part of this giant international portfolio of real estate businesses, of buildings and, you know, well, I'm sure there are a lot of lovely people who work there. They frankly didn't give a crap about us. So they tried their best to help us with the rent and lower the rent when we were closed for seven months, but they just couldn't help us enough. So we had to let go of that location and that stunk. We're on track for this year to be the best year ever for that location. And so that was really tough because we had just opened it a few years ago and so that was a really hard pill to swallow. And that's one of the hardest things. The other thing that's been kind of the hardest was, you know, just not having work for all of our team this whole time. We've been lucky to keep the majority of them employed at least part time for most of it. We were very lucky to get the PPP loan in the first round. So some of that was very helpful. But there's still team members who just, you know, couldn't afford to stay in the city and have left or had life changes and had to go live with family or just we couldn't afford to keep employed full time and they had to look elsewhere. And so all of that has been really hard because we were a tight, tight knit group and to see everyone kind of distribute and disperse for no fault of our own, you know, has been one of the toughest. So anyway, those are the headlines. I'm happy to dive into anything more that we did or didn't do that you think your listeners will find useful. But those are the positives and negatives that I think are first.

You know, the reason why I wanted to bring it up is because of the mental resiliency that I feel is undervalued when it comes to starting a business. It's so easy to get into sweat whether you're doing online or brick and mortar. It's easy to get into the like. Let me just post this one post. Oh my gosh, I made a million dollars and that's just not how it works at all. And the type of mental resiliency that you need to do, need to have to own a business and build a business is in my opinion, undervalued.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you, I'm so glad you bring that up. I don't know if you know Dr. Lisa Lewis. Do you know naturally Lewis, She's a psychologist, she works in the fitness space, works a lot of athletes performance coaching.

She's married to Tony. Tony, yeah.

Yeah. She talks a lot about resilience and in fact just did a workshop for us business of unicorns not that long ago on the topic of resilience. So if anyone wants to learn more about this topic, she's great at it and can do a presentation to your team or work with you one on one. So shout out to Dr. Elise Lewis. But. But I'm so glad you brought it up because that is. It's really tough. I think one of the things that we try to get all of the entrepreneurs we work with and business unicorns to do, especially over the last seven months, is really understand their relationship to self care. You know, because we do spend so much of our time helping others that in as helping professionals, we often put ourselves last at a moment like this, when literally the foundation of our businesses and the foundation of our lives and our communities in many cases have been just shook. How we respond in terms of how we take care of ourselves is just so important and undervalued. And I think speaks this resilience you're talking about. One of Mina Mark's kind of mentors, someone we've attended classes, we've read books, is a guy named Dr. Richard Boyatsis. I think he's a professor at Case Western University. He's written a few books with a partner. And one of the ways that he talks about self care in this way, and it has to do with resilience, is he talks about this kind of chronic stress that leaders are under, not just during times of COVID but all the time that we're constantly making decisions on behalf of people, feel the weight of the business on our shoulders, that burden of rent, that burden of if we don't make money, my team can get health insurance. That burden, right. That ongoing kind of chronic stress that many small business owners and leaders are under. And he says in his research has shown that one of the ways to combat that is through what he calls renewal activities. Renewal activities, which is not the same as rest. He's not talking about, you know, the way you take care of yourself is like lots of naps and massages, though naps and massages are great. You should totally, totally have naps and massages. But he really is talking about activities that fill you up, activities that give you a sense of hope, activities that give you a sense of compassion, activities that give you a sense of play, activities that connect you to something larger than yourself, give you a sense of gratitude and contribution, right? Those, those activities, if you can weave them into your life, will help you be more resilient, will help you stay on the positive side of that psychological cycle of up and down. So, you know, my invitation to listeners, if you really want, if you really recognize the need for your own resilience during this time or in general, if it's not Covid, no matter what it is, you're raising a family and have a business, whatever it is that you want to think about, what activities bring you a sense of renewal, what activities, when you do that, them gives you a sense of hope or sense of play. And how can you weave some of those activities into your week on a regular basis? You can't save them up for a once a year vacation. These are activities you have to do on a regular basis. And for many people it looks like things like journaling or meditation or walks in nature or bike rides or quality time with friends or family or volunteering somewhere or spirituality. Going to church is often a connection to something larger than yourself. So there's all kinds of ways you can, you can engage with these kind of renewal activities. But you know, Dr. Borat research shows that when you can weave those into your life, you will combat that chronic stress much more effectively than if you don't.

I tear up when listening to you talking about it. Only because like, I recognize, you know, listening to you say it, bringing to that forefront of my mind. Because we all know that, you know, unconscious, you're going to do things unconsciously more than consciously recognize that. I think those types of renewal activities, for me, I just do them naturally without really thinking about it or really putting any for, you know, thought to it. Yeah, except Covid, because to be networked, I like to go to fitness events, I like to go and learn something. Those are the things that fill me up. And I just haven't been able to do it in the same way because.

Of COVID Yeah, I've heard that a lot. I mean, there's a lot of people in the fitness and wellness space who are extroverts. They're in this line of work because they get their energy and excitement and they get filled up by being with other people. That's been really tough during almost, what will be almost a year when you are, and longer than that, I'm sure, sadly, that you are restricted from spending quality time with room fulls of people, you know, and that's, that's, that's tough. That's really tough. So I think, you know, that's something everyone has to reckon with. If your way of getting filled up and renewed right now is not on the table, gotta start to find some other ones, you know, whether it's, you know, obviously you connect with people in this platform. Right. I know, you know, Mark and I, we also like to do speaking and presenting. I've done a crap ton of zooms and workshops and free webinars that we've had hundreds of people on. And that really does fill us up and makes us feel excited about our contribution. And I've also had to find new ways to do that. So I've gone on more walks. You know, I've started reading different kinds of books. They make me feel differently. Starting to think about my contribution to things around the world like social justice and politics, thinking, can I contribute in a meaningful way? That fills me up and gives me a greater sense of purpose. And so I think, you know, the key here is to find out what it is for you for each individual to know. These are the kinds of things that fill me up. And I'm going to prioritize them on a regular basis on my calendar, not just make time for them when I can. Not just get to them someday, but make them a priority every week, a few times a week, if you can, to make sure that you are constantly filling yourself up so you can be better available to others. Only going to make you stronger to do the work you want to do.

Yeah. Well, this has been amazing and I want to be mindful of your time, so I'm going to give you two last questions.

Great. I'll be brief. Okay, I'll try. I'll try.

Number one is, do you know, for the people that you work with specifically in business for unicorns, how have you helped them manage these Covid times with their brick and mortars? And what are some of the things that you would recommend to anybody who's listening that has a brick and mortar right now? What would you recommend for that?

Oh, my gosh. I don't know if I can be brief, but I'll try to pick like a few things. I think, first things first, that what this time has really represented for everyone is opportunity to get better at how you manage change as a leader. Right. Because this is just an extreme example of change of, you know, it's not just changing your services or your rates or changing someone on your team or, you know, changing your location or. Right. You know, we've all, most of us have dealt with some changes on that level. This is a moment we have to kind of rethink everything. And it really has spoken to how comfortable people are with managing change as leaders of their businesses. And so I don't have anything short to say about something. If I have any tips generally for kind of how you manage change, is it really. It really comes down to preparation and communication. Right. You can guide a thriving community in any direction that you think they need to go as their leader. If you prepare well and communicate well every step of the way, which means having a really clear vision of which direction you want to take them in. So I've seen entire businesses like Mark Fisher Fitness go from brick and mortar to all online or all online and only one service that they've never offered before. But they're for the first time, I've seen people add in nutrition coaching now who've never done it before. I've seen people change their prices dramatically in ways that they never would have done before. Right. And you can take people on that journey in your business as long as you are clear about where you're going, you've thought about it, you make your thinking clear in your communication and then listen to the feedback every step of the way, you know, and I think that's a scary thing to do. You know, so many of us have that, have that sunk cost bias where we've been doing it this way for six years. How am I going to change it now? It's like, well, you don't have a choice really. You know, Covid's making you change it. So it's not about whether you change it now, it's just how gracefully can you change it now? How gracefully can you make it clear where you're heading and communicate that to every step of the way, to the people that care about you and care about this endeavor? So I think, you know, I have a lot more to say about change management. In fact, I'm working on a course in business for Unicorns about managing change. Because the topic I'm obsessed with, but I think it's. That's been one of the things that we're helping our clients with a lot, is how do you navigate changing the way you do things in a community of people who are used to you doing it some other way? And that's, you know, it's a step by step, sometimes slow process. But it's happened, have. It's had to have happened much more quickly during COVID It's like you can't take months and months to make the change anymore. You have to do it quickly. So being confident in how you manage change is going to be really important. So I have one more, but we can stick on this one. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say is just changing the way people do marketing and sales. I mean, most people in our space, lovingly, I say, because we were also in this camp before, just suck at marketing and sales. I mean, mff for the first four or five years. We barely did any marketing and sales, and we were lucky enough to grow organically. Word of mouth, that happens a lot early on in business. But then that train ride ends and you're left saying, okay, well, now the organic growth is out the window. We're not the new kids on the block anymore. We're not the new fun, sexy thing in town. And so now what? And so I've seen people during COVID really have to embrace, embrace an approach to marketing and selling that's much more rigorous than it was before. They really have to get good at three things, I think. Testing ads, seeing what works, follow up, follow up, follow up with every single lead they generate, and then really asking for the sale specifically. Those are the three things I think people are afraid to do. You can't be afraid to do that right now because once you get a lead, it's like gold. And so I think two things. Managing change. Well, really embracing marketing and sales in a way that maybe they haven't before. Those are the things I think I'm talking to most people about over the last seven months.

Yeah, I always talk about guessing, testing, and assessing. Being able to assess and then make change, you know, make decisions based on what's happening. What you said is super powerful in terms of, in terms of getting, you know, managing change. Because I take a look at things like people want to fight for their limitations. But if you look at examples like Blockbuster and examples like, I mean, Blockbuster is the famous one where they just really resisted change.

Yep.

What happened?

Yeah.

And fitness is changing in the same. Not in the same way, but it is changing. And you're either gonna get on board or get left.

Yeah. I mean, come on. I mean, what didn't Apple announced recently they're gonna have like a five, six dollars a month, you know, all you can, all you can stream option for a million and one classes of yoga and weight training. Like, come on now, Apple's coming at us. You got to be nimble. You got to respond. People have more and more options, more conveniently and cheaper than ever. And so if they're going to spend as much as it, as much as we have to charge at, you know, a training studio or a PT studio or whatever, whatever you are. If you're going to charge as much as we need to charge to do what we do in brick and mortar, you need to be great. You just stand out from the crowd and you just have a really good marketing and sales process. It can't be. It's not enough to deliver A good service, you have to be good at the acquisition as well.

And success is the worst teacher. You know, I was one of those. You know, I've noticed that when people have accidental success, it's hard to replicate it. But I was one of those people that just. I called myself the Rudy of Internet marketing because it was. But I don't believe in failure. It's lesson, you're either gonna get the success that you want or the lesson that you need. And so I'm so grateful now that I got more lessons than success, because the people who had accidental success are like, wait, all my warm markets dried up now.

Yep.

What am I supposed to do?

You know, that's it. That's it. And it's hard because, you know, the digital marketing landscape at least is still like the wild west. I know it's been around for a while, but it's just bonkers. And Facebook or Instagram or YouTube changes an algorithm, and then suddenly you're not making any money the next week. And so I think at this moment, people really have to consider their relationship to digital marketing, get good at it when you can, and also diversify their marketing portfolio to be good at other things. The unique thing we have as people who are listeners that are brick and mortar is that we are literally part of a physical geographic community that is not bound by the Internet, but is bound by streets and roads and grocery stores and cafes. And all of that is really powerful and frankly, much more consistent than digital advertising in many markets. And so I'm for both. Right. I'm not saying people have to choose one or the other, but at this moment, when so much is uncertain, I think people have to diversify the way they're attracting clients and get really diligent about their whole acquisition strategy.

I love it. Thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation, and I promised just two more questions for all my listeners that want to learn more about you. What's next and where can I send them?

Yeah, for sure. Well, I have a podcast as well, Business for Unicorns podcast. So check that out. You can go to businessfreeunicorns.com to see what we have coming up. We're actually making a pivot that we'll be announcing soon. We're changing a little bit of how we do things in 2021. So I think this, by the time this comes out, I may have announced that already, but just kind of, you know, Join our email list@businessfunicorns.com check out. We're doing at Mark Fisher Fitness we have right now. Our online services are called Homebody. So you can work out with us from anywhere in the world with our crazy wild team of trainers all from Zoom. And so just go check out those websites and follow us because if you're in the fitness and wellness space in 2021, we have really some exciting new ways you can work with Mark.

And I will definitely link all that up. And don't be deceived for anyone who goes and checks us out because while they are fun, they are still incredibly smart, educated and well studied trainers that care about the science, that care about human movement.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they're not messing around.

Yeah, not messing around. I love that. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks Beverly. It was a blast.

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