Ep. 2 - Uncle Marketing Live - Cali Made Arena - Marketing Fitness and Physical Training

Welcome nieces and nephews to Uncle Marketing Live. I'm Derek Cheng. Joining us live is a real commitment. I know because we're all busy with our businesses, building them up. And my hope is that this is a way for you to make time in your week for marketing. My hope is also that it inspires you, and it can't just be a one-time thing, right? If you want to build muscle or get healthier, it takes some amount of dedication. It's about being consistent and making small improvements that stick. Your marketing muscle is a real thing. That's why Uncle Marketing Live Is every week. Even if marketing isn't your primary job as a business owner, it needs to be integrated into everything you do. That's because everything you do that engages a customer is marketing. And once you see it in those terms, it becomes a lot easier. Then, like building muscles, you can move on to the next level of weights. Your marketing can get more sophisticated and get better results. By the way, stick around to the end because you'll be able to ask questions to help your own business. So what's with all the physical training metaphor today? We have a great client. Shannon Franks is part of a power duo who owns and operates Cali Made Arena in San Jose, and I want to welcome Shannon.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks, Shannon, for coming. Um, so Uh, give a little bit of an intro about what CaliMade's all about.

Okay, great. Um, so we are, um, in phase 2 of a phase 4 plan, long-term going to be a lot bigger than just the 2 of us. That's the goal. We want our community of clients to feel like They're all their coaches on team work with them, and we all— my partner and I, we both use our expertise to help make sure every client gets the best possible program. So one thing we try to do is make sure all of our clients get the full package of fitness. So not just the physical training, but they get nutrition, they get recovery, either through stretching programs at home or doing assisted stretching with us. And then they also get mobility training because we're both certified in various aspects of mobility training. And so we want to try to give people the full picture of what, like, health and fitness means to them. And so everything is fully customized to what the person does, whether they're a hiker or they're somebody who just wants to be able to get on their knees and be in the garden for hours and not have to worry about having knee pain. We can create that program completely 100% for them, just for them.

Yeah. How is it different than like a regular gym?

Um, a regular gym, the, uh, again, when you go to a typical gym, a lot of times, uh, they don't include the nutrition and they don't include the recovery. And again, we wanted to make sure that everybody got the full picture. When you're doing group fitness, for example, you can do a variety of group fitness classes. Sometimes you might get some yoga and things like that, but a lot of times you're still going to be missing the nutrition. And nutrition is a bigger part of the battle than actual exercise. And we can— my partner and I both speak to that because we've been group fitness coaches as well. And we're very, very good at group fitness. Our clients always loved us. But they didn't see results the way that our one-on-one clients did. And that wasn't because we were doing something different with them. It was because they didn't have that full picture of mobility, nutrition, and oftentimes recovery. A lot of times those group fitness people are so into it that they're doing classes every single day and they forget about recovery. So we try to preach that, but it's a, That's why, again, the program's being fully customized to that individual and to where they're at in their life right now.

Where would you say you are in kind of the marketing journey of things?

Oh man, marketing, marketing has been a journey. So we've been in business for about a year and a half. And at the very beginning, I was doing literally everything myself. I built the whole website myself. We started with social media advertising, but honestly, we had a very limited budget. So it's hard to break through to get high-quality leads, right?

Mm-hmm.

And we signed up with— about a year, a little over a year ago, we signed up with a marketing company, a third-party company. And the super long story short is that was a complete disaster. And everything that they gave us was very generic. And even I knew with my limited marketing knowledge that this was too general. This was not focused on us. Even one of the first ad pictures they did, the colors in the background were red. And our colors are clearly not red, right?

Right.

So there was a lot of back and forth with them and they insisted to trust the process, believe in what they were doing, blah, blah, blah. You're paying us for this, just listen. And like, they, they, they literally fought with me on it and was like, well, we'll just drop you as a client if you don't listen. And I— they put me on the spot where I said, okay, I'll trust you for another little bit. And again, it just was still failing, failing. So then I took over again, and we had kind of modest success last— this was last summer now. We had modest success and had signed up some clients. And then again, just kind of like through the holidays and things like that, things died down. And I had to, I had to like rethink everything and be like, okay, so the social media marketing wasn't— we just didn't have the budget to really break through.

Mm-hmm.

So we took a step back and we decided to start focusing more on the actual community at large. Right. And so that's where we're at now. We've had a lot more success with actually being in the community, talking to people about what we do, inviting them into the arena, and honestly giving a lot of free time. I'd rather give— but I'd rather give— I'd rather give free time and give a free session and have somebody, even if they take that one nugget and it changes something in them and they don't become a client, at least I changed their life a little bit for something. So our goal now is to just create enough of a branding word of mouth where even if somebody says, oh yeah, I did a, I did a stretch session with them once, like it was really great actually. That might click for somebody down the road, right? And I know it takes an average of 7— what is it, 7 touches?

Maybe more.

For somebody to actually sign up. Yeah. So It— that's kind of like what we were thinking was like, look, let's just try to get as many of those contact points as possible, get people to see our signs, get people to see, uh, us physically and not just through an ad on social media that is just super easy to scroll by.

Yeah, and yeah, there's a lot of noise out there, uh, you know, if you think about it. 1 in 1,000 people who see who you are might engage deeper, and that's kind of a daunting number when you think about, like, if you're a small business and you're not getting in front of people to have a real relationship with them, and you're focused more on just the numbers part of it, it can be very, very scary. Um, particularly how expensive advertising can get. Um, but yeah, so I'm glad that things are kind of turning around. Uh, what kind of community— when you say community, what do you mean by that?

Um, mostly, well, when I say community, I think mostly of just people who like know who we are, know that we're good coaches, know that Cali Made Arena is a good place to get coaching. Because again, somebody might not need coaching today, but they might need coaching six months from now, or something might happen, or maybe one of their kids becomes an athlete and they go, "Wait a minute! Didn't that one place like train kids? Like let me go look back into that." So getting again, getting people in here and building the people who have who've worked with us, even if it was just one off on a free session, to say, "Wow, I worked with those people and I had a." Really great experience, and I'm able to talk about that.

Yeah.

And I always encourage people to, even if it was just a free session, like please leave us a review. Like if you had a good session, da da da. And I and I do try to get the other thing about the community is I want even though it's a one-on-one and partner training thing, so a lot of times like when you're training with me. Uh, it's just you and me and Coach Toma and somebody else. So, but I try to always introduce the other clients when they come in, or, uh, during the weekends we do our body composition scans. So we have a lot of clients come in and, uh, sometimes we have coffee together and things like that. So we're trying to create more things like that where we actually can bring like all the clients together.

Mm-hmm.

And be like, hey, like, it isn't just— it is just you and me, but look at all these other people that are here as part of this community too.

Right. No, that's great. Um, do you find that people are referring, like, after they experience you? Are they open to referring to other people? Are you getting a sense that that's happening yet?

Um, oh, I get— I— we get a lot of strong referrals from our clients.

Okay.

Um, I don't get— I don't know if I'm getting referrals off of the one-off sessions per se, those free sessions, but I do get a lot of those people, they come back and they start asking, oh, I have another question, or I know you taught me this thing, but I want you— like, can you teach me this thing? And so we've been using that to, I guess, like reel people in. Right. Sometimes people just like, oh, just teach me like the one exercise that's gonna make my triceps nice and toned. And you're like, yeah, triceps have 3 heads actually. So there's a lot of things we have to do. And then we're still not talking again about nutrition. So then some people get scared when you start talking about nutrition because they think—

I do.

And it's fair because you, you think about— not you, but you plural, but the community at large— when we think about nutrition from a fitness standpoint. We think about, I have to go on a diet, right? And we don't train people to think that they're, that they're doing this, they have to go on a diet. Sometimes, yes, they might have to change the way that they eat because of certain factors, medical factors, for example. Um, but that doesn't mean that it's something that you're only going to be doing for a few months. Right? We want you to make it where it's something that you're going to enjoy and it's sustainable for the rest of your life, and that you can have the tools, which is more important, just to have the knowledge of even just how do you read a nutrition label. A lot of our clients come in, they don't even know how to read the nutrition label. They don't know what net carbs are. Or, um, one of our clients, for example, she was weighing out her protein and saying she was getting 170 grams per meal of protein, and it was that was the weight, not the actual. It was the weight itself. It wasn't the actual grams of protein because every meat has a different amount of grams of protein per the weight. So she was recording it wrong, saying, "Oh, I'm getting so much protein," but she really wasn't because. She hadn't done that extra conversion. So we try to get people to have that knowledge and that power so that they know what they're eating is going to empower them for what they need.

Got it. I apologize, my connection went out, which is why.

Okay. I kind of saw. I was like, oh, what just happened?

Yeah, and now we're flipped.

Did a shell game there.

That's okay. Um. Uh, yeah, I mean, I would say—

Do you want me to repeat any of that, or—

No, I think other people got it. I didn't, but that's okay because I would say for myself, nutrition as part of— I know it's part of the holistic health journey, but it's hard to give up certain things. And the, the fear of like giving those things up and giving up like, oh, but— or let's say it's the holidays and you're getting close to the holidays. Yeah, well, I'll do it after the holidays, or I'll do it after this other thing. And right, um, it's— that's not part of the discipline, and that I know that, but it is a— it is my blind spot for sure.

Absolutely. Um, our, our tagline is make it a lifestyle. So we want you again where, like, if you know what you're getting on the daily is fulfilling, like, your general macros, the amount of food you need to sustain what you're doing your workouts, what you're doing right now.

Mm-hmm.

And then, I mean, unless you're trying to do something specific, like if you're trying to change your body composition, that's where we come in. We can help you navigate that. But if you're just trying to maintain, your macros are gonna generally be the same day in and day out, depending on how much activity you're doing. If you're doing a lot of activity, like going on a big 6-hour hike, yeah, you're gonna need more food, right? But in the day-to-day, if you're fairly disciplined, then when you have those big weekends where you go to, you go to a destination wedding and you're gone for 4 days, you shouldn't have to worry about that in that way because your body already knows how to eat now because you've been disciplined.

Right.

And so your body will naturally do its thing. It won't, you won't have those big fluctuations of weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, weight loss, where you're feeling like— because your body will naturally adjust, you won't even be as hungry, or you won't— you will continue to follow your pattern naturally a little bit. You just be splurging a little bit more, enjoying more drinks or whatever.

And then when you come back, it's the reward for all the work you've put in. Yes.

Yeah. And we do, we do. You have what we call a deload time. So you have— you can't just keep training, training, training, training, training, training. You have to take some time off. You have to let the body recover a little bit. And again, the nutrition will change a little bit when you do a week like that, but it won't be as drastic. You won't feel like you have to just do these mass changes. And we're not like wrestlers and UFC fighters, so we're not trying to like Do this in 6 weeks.

When you're working with your clients, do you go into those kind of details? It's like, oh, you know, you're planning, you're planning on doing this, that you're planning on going on vacation for a week. Here's what I need you to kind of handle when you're out there. Or do you do that kind of level of coaching?

If they want to, yes.

Okay.

Yeah, if they want to. Sometimes, well, when I say if they want to, what I mean is somebody who's on a goal, and they have, let's say they have a 3-month timeframe for that goal. And this is a work trip, and they're going to be gone for a week. It's like no, we've got to stay on track because you have a goal. But somebody who's just trying to generally live a healthier lifestyle and da da da da, we'll give them things to do as far as general mobility. We know you're going to be going on lots of walks, so here's some stretches to do. Da da da da da. So again, that's just going to depend on the person and how strict they want to be. And how strict they need to be for the goal that they're trying to reach right now.

Okay. Um, how do you communicate with them generally? Is it— I know you have the normal sessions, but do you communicate with them outside of those sessions?

Oh, 100%. We've had people call us at like 8 o'clock at night saying they're going to the movies and can they have popcorn with the kids. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and, and We want to be as available as possible. So our, our business text line goes straight to both of our phones. We're both able to respond fairly, fairly immediately, obviously, if we're with a client or something. But yeah, we get back pretty quickly on things. And, and we try to be really flexible. Obviously, like Even with the scheduling, like, we know life happens and things like that, right? Uh, we don't lock people into like 3-month commitment memberships and things like that. We, we do month-to-month memberships, and then we also do flexible packages. So we want people to want to come back and not feel like they're just coming back because they're obligated to come fulfill these sessions. Right. Okay.

Um, I want to change the pace a little bit. Uh, do you want to dive into your website a little?

Sure.

All right, here we go. Uh, so first of all, I remember seeing the original, uh, site that you had, and you've done so much work on it, so you should be really proud of that.

I think it looks stellar.

Um, so much. So it looks— it feels rich. It feels like it's a site that I go to and I feel okay. It's very clear. Everything is clear. It's, um, the photos are great, uh, which are like 90% of what marketing is sometimes is photos, right? Um, so all that has been super great. I love that there's a call to action right away. Um, client images are great. Uh, the, the one change I might make here would be like pushing the testimonials because you got them way, way, way, way down here. I would put them like maybe number 2.

Gotcha.

Um, so that people can see right away, uh, that you have real clients and they're really happy. The other thing you might consider is, um, pulling in the Instagram feed directly because this is a Wix site.

Right.

And so they do have a plugin where you can bring in your Instagram feed as part of your content because your Instagram is great. Um, it, it actually to me is more indicative of kind of like the fun and the style and the messaging around who Cali Made is. And then there are other client images there, so it feels more kind of authentic. So it's a nice balance between the very polished look, which you have, which is great.

Right.

And then you mix that in with some of the authenticity, really gets to me The point across that, hey, this is a, you know, when you come in, you're really taken care of. Those are great. The other thing I might consider is for somebody who doesn't quite know what they want.

Mm-hmm.

Obviously, a debut workout's great to try and get a better handle on it. But if you just need just a little bit more push, you might consider like an FAQ page.

Okay.

And the reason for that too is the search engines love it 'cause they basically absorb that as if it was their own content and oftentimes will display it as their own content natively. So if somebody searched for like, what do I do about Nutrition and workouts. And if it's able to pick up that you have that content, um, it will try and extract that and then kind of source you as the purveyor of that content.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and then you're able to kind of leverage that on your side. Um, but the other reason for showing up FAQ pages, maybe I don't know what I want But you can explain to me what I want or what I need to ask, and then I can just kind of see it in one kind of fell swoop. Because maybe I don't know if I need, uh, you know, do I need a one-on-one or do I need a mobility session, or what is it exactly that I'm trying to accomplish? Um, and, uh, and you have it, it's all there.

Right.

It's just like putting in one location where it's all summarized as well. Is another way to kind of inspire.

How do I pick what sessions are best for me? Well, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

So that's something definitely you might want to consider. But no, it's looking very good. Yes, I would say significantly better than when I last saw it.

So oh yeah, definitely thanks.

Yeah, everything looks pretty solid. I didn't dive into any of the SEO. I guess I could. Here we go. We'll dive in deep. Interesting. Okay. So what I'm looking for is where the page titles are. And where the descriptions are. Title, Refer Friends, Cali Made Arena. So this is what you're telling Wix about the page. You have some room, you could fill that out a little bit more. Maybe it's like 10% off, or, uh, in San Jose, or, you know, work out with friends, or whatever it is that, you know, you might be able to start packing. This is kind of like free area. So the title and the description, um, there's arguments to be made whether or not they actually are effective, but when someone sees it on a search, it at least has some potential visibility around that. I've used emojis on titles as another way to just kind of like break it out from the standard display that comes off of a search engine. So something like that will be helpful. I see you're kind of avoiding Yelp, or at least you're not featuring anything from Yelp. Um, are you, uh, asking for reviews as well?

Uh, not on Yelp. We usually ask for a Google review.

Okay, that's fine. I mean, as long as somebody's reviewing somewhere, right, and you have good content there. That will help. And then do you have a Google Business page?

Yes.

Okay. Uh, and are you filling that in with like your Instagram images as well?

Uh, I do sometimes. I do some content.

No, something is better than nothing. But yeah, you want to keep that one active because Google likes to eat their own dog food, and the more you can use their tools to market, that they kind of give you a little bump. They won't like explicitly do that, but it does— to say it doesn't help is not true either.

So, right.

So that's pretty good. So yeah, I would say the, you know, packing to your SEO headings as much as you can. Add the FAQ page, add the Instagram feed. In fact, you could potentially add the feed to other pages, like just right before the footer, just as another way to engage. It doesn't necessarily have to end here, for example, on this page. Because this page is great, it tells you a little bit about it, but introducing more activities within the page makes the page fuller, um, and gives you, uh, more visibility there, potential clicks there, um, and kind of beef it up that way, uh, so you can be bigger. Let's see one other thing I had to note on. Um, so you have the Instagram video of— I think his name is Vivek. This guy. This is great. I want more of these. And what I was thinking was, could you do his workout, for example, like record him doing his workout And then have him talk over it.

More of a voiceover.

More of a voiceover. So it's almost like a little documentary, mini one, you know, 2 or 3 of those. And not just put on Instagram, but like drop it into your homepage somewhere.

Okay.

And again, it's— I'm looking for more validation. You've got great starter content. You've got a very clear Mission that you're on. We know who we're dealing with. Now I'm looking for more validation, which comes up at the beginning. So the more we can do that—

Like, instead of, instead of prompting to calendar right away, it's like put more of the, the content and the testimonials.

Yeah.

And then be like, do you want more? Then offer the call to action, basically.

Right. This looks great, by the way. Are you using Wix's native scheduler or you have another one?

Uh, it's through the platform.

Okay, I'm impressed. Yeah, usually Wix is like, uh, but no, you've gotten it to do some really cool tricks.

Yeah, some of it I don't— I, I do plan to move off of the Wix platform. Okay, because eventually the— my problem Right now is I have the website, which it's still branded, it's calimaderina.com and everything, but, but that's— it's powered, so to speak, by Wix, right?

Right.

And then our programs are through Fit Software, so our clients have to have our Cali Made Arena account, and then they also have to have a Fit Software account.

That's the login.

And I, and I don't like that. Um, But there's no way to put the programs up through the— I can't even upload progress pictures in, in like up to their profiles and things like that. So that's one thing. There's a platform called PushPress that we're looking at.

Okay.

That seems to have most of the features that we want, but we just have to wait till we can— it's the, the monthly fee for it's pretty high, so we have to kind of wait wait until we can make sure that we can do that for several months and have that cushion.

Toma's very cut, but he always wears baggy shirts. This is— yeah, so good. So very good job there. Um, are you— let me stop sharing for a second. Um, so you have Facebook, you have Instagram. Um, I would say definitely look at TikTok and YouTube as additional vehicles to deliver.

Mm-hmm.

Only because their algorithms are too good to ignore. And YouTube, because it's part of Google, um, there's a reason why it, it is the number one site, um, for any kind of content. And so it doesn't have to be a lot. It can just be, you know, some, some videos that you occasionally run into and want to put out. Just go out and put it out on YouTube as well, just so you have a presence. The other reason for doing that is to hold that brand identity So that you own it. Same for TikTok. Just create it, hold on to it. If you don't want to use it right away, that's fine.

Right, right.

But you're gonna—

so nobody else does.

Yeah. And you're gonna want to because I, I mean, I've talked to you about this before, but I know there's another gym that's kind of Cali made and it's hard to know. It's like they were in, in business or out of business or something and Uh, I don't know the story there, um, but, uh, the more you can kind of take over with yours, right, the better off you'll be. Um, especially if somebody's searching for Cali Maid and let's say they hit that Yelp page and it's not you, that's, that's not okay, right?

Right.

They're gonna think you're something else and Um, so if there's anything we can do to kind of overcome that from just the awareness perspective, you know, you might want to do that.

Does that include like buying up like other domains, you kind of like we talked about a couple weeks ago?

You might. Um, they're— I mean, they're relatively inexpensive just to buy and hold, or even buy and redirect. So if you have some, you know, lunch money, it doesn't hurt. And then what was the other thing I want to talk to you about? This is something new that I've been toying with. It's actually And I don't even know if it's going to be effective yet, but I have seen rumblings that you can start to train, uh, things like ChatGPT to know about your business.

Mm-hmm.

So if you use the free version of ChatGPT, just in fact, don't even ignore— don't even log into it. Just kind of go in and create like an incognito window. Go to ChatGPT and just start talking with it about the business. And you can even go at it from like, um, uh, uh, use it like a Google search. Does CaliMade Arena serve the San Jose area, right? That would be like a query you could ask it, and then it will try and figure it out, uh, and then you can respond to that figuring out Well, what kind of classes do they have? What kind of, you know, uh, what's their minimum package? Who, who do I talk to there? Just kind of like getting it to now acknowledge that you're an entity.

Uh-huh.

Will then trigger it to go, I wonder if I should learn more about this thing. And if you do this like, I don't know, every week, just have a conversation completely blind as if you were a potential client. searching on GPT for you, you in theory are training their model to understand what you do. And you, you can even go in and go, uh, yeah, that's not, that's not them. This is, you know, uh, uh, if it comes back with things like that, um, that the things that are wrong, you can actually correct it. You can actually correct it and it'll go, oh yeah, my bad.

Gosh, okay.

So it is a way to start that process. It's a very long tail. I don't know how— where it's gonna go, but it doesn't hurt to spend like 5 minutes a week just, you know, you could even do it through the— to the— I think, I think you don't need to pay in order to use the voice one. Um, uh, But even if you just go on and ask it some questions about your business, you could even ask like who are their ideal clients, and it would come back with some responses. And you could say, yeah, I heard they don't do that, or something like that. If you want to like really refine it that way. But what you're trying to do is you're getting the ll you're getting the the chatbot to. Um, to just recognize that your business exists. Um, and it, it puts it into its little repository deep in the hole of, uh, of their space. And then you can— then when other people who are legitimately looking for stuff, Mm-hmm. you know, that is a way to go, oh, okay, uh, give me 5 gyms in San Jose or 5 gyms on Union and Bascom or something like that, then, uh, it has some more information about you, um, than what it's pulling from, say, uh, your web page or, uh, Google. Uh, the truth is, when you do like a search, it only knows what it's indexed. And, um, the more you can tell that index what you want to know Uh, then potentially down the road it has more resonance through what you've already trained it on, if that makes sense.

Right.

It's very new. It's, uh, uh, I'm gonna try to start it on my— on For Uncle Marketing stuff as well. Um, but I think that that will be the future for search. Because search is so terrible right now. Um, you, you know, if you do a search for San Jose, uh, physical therapy or physical training or gyms, you know, right?

Uh, you could get anything.

You can get anything. And chances are, for a smaller business like yours, You know, you don't have as that that kind of robust content that will be utilized, and so as as much as you can kind of leapfrog that process a little bit and maybe start owning some of the the chat space, that might not be a bad idea. And again, don't spend like a ton of time on it. Just it's a fun exercise in general because you could actually like. Workshop your own business on it.

Um, that's what I was thinking.

Yeah, yeah. But, uh, it's also a way to tell the, tell the chatbots out there that, hey, this is, this is what this is.

Um, I, I was also thinking too, it makes sense because if, if ChatGPT can't give you a clear answer, that means you aren't explaining it clearly enough and you should go back and kind of reassess.

Now sometimes it will hallucinate. And just make stuff up.

Totally. Yeah.

So I think I did. I asked it about Uncle Marketing and I said, yeah, where's Uncle Marketing? Is it New Zealand? I was like, New Zealand? That doesn't sound right.

Oh no.

Are you thinking of Uncle Marketing for Derek Cheng? It's like, oh, you— yeah, Uncle Marketing for Derek Cheng is in New Zealand. It's like, that's not right, is it? Where are you getting this information? And then it says, oh, you know what? I don't have information on why I got that information. So you're probably right. It's wrong.

Oh, interesting.

And therefore it's a way to just kind of prune some of the content on behalf of the chatbot. And we're going to need to do that anyway. The AI, if it's not— if it goes off on its own, is going to make its own interpretations. So if you can just do your little part for your little brand, um, and figure and help it figure out what the right thing to say is, then down the road, uh, when chat search becomes more prevalent and takes over for search engine search, then you have a A leg up on that.

So I think it makes total sense. Yeah.

Um, are you working on any kind of campaigns right now, like direct campaigns that are kind of more pointed?

Like ad campaigns?

Uh, ad campaign or community campaign, uh, any kind of outreach you're doing that is very targeted? I think we talked about potentially athletes Or schools or something like that?

Um, there's a lot of runs going on right now. We're trying to get in on the events in the city. There's Stars and Stripes in Campbell. Stars— Stars and Strides. Yeah, Stars and Strides. It's at the end of the month.

Okay.

Um, and then there's another one that's for Pride. I think it's next Saturday.

Okay.

But I haven't heard back from them. So that's kind of, I guess, our main focus is to try and get either get into another event or that's in the city close by, or, or, or curate another event, maybe with some of the other like wellness professionals in BNI and things like that.

Okay. Oh, speaking of BNI, that was the other thing I was going to suggest is For those who don't know, Shannon and I—

Hi, Lauren, by the way.

Shannon and I both belong to the BNI chapter, the same BNI chapter, which has been great.

The—

for your profile on BNI. So this is another way the bni.com site is very well Respected by the search engines.

Okay.

For its domain authority. And so anything that land— that's in that site has greater resonance for, uh, for your profile. So if you spend, again, just a little bit of time going into your BNI profile and talking about all the things we've talked about, um, the kind of clients you want, the kind of training that you do, Why it's different than a gem, that kind of stuff, and really build it out there. It's free space on a very respected domain. So in those situations, you want to kind of like jam as much as you can in there.

Yeah, totally.

Knowing that not even that people would read it, but that it will get indexed in a way that creates your own brand. And so Uh, definitely do that part of it. Um, and make sure, like, you know, if maybe if you have an offer, like a debut workout or something, like the debut workout, actually link to that instead of like the home page for something like that. Um, so that gives you a lot more, again, room to kind of express and build off of. Um, there might be other sites like that, other kind of directories that aren't Yelp that you might look at, um, to also kind of own some of that domain authority.

Platforms like what?

I'm trying to think. Um, oh, like Nextdoor. Um, something like that.

Okay, we do have a Nextdoor.

Okay. Uh, let's see what else. Um, I mean, there's Yelp. Yelp is the dark corner, uh, like the necessary evil. If you start engaging with Yelp, then chances are they'll start wanting to engage with you and hold your stuff hostage. I've heard very bad horror stories from folks.

Yeah, I didn't really like working with with them either. Yeah, it's a shame, but it's okay. Um, the— would you, would you recommend still being like more active on like Yelp and Nextdoor also? Like kind of the same thing as the Google Business Page, just like uploading things once in a while?

Yeah, it doesn't hurt.

Okay.

Um, and then just, you know, block their calls, right? Uh, because Even Google to some extent will, if they might reach out and say, "Hey, would you like to do?" And maybe if it made sense, but at your stage, probably it doesn't necessarily. I mean, you've you've bit you've bit into the advertising apple, and I think you got the poison one, which is sad.

Your screen froze out.

Your screen froze out again.

Sorry.

That's okay. Yeah, so you know biting into that. Advertising Apple, and it's only one you take on when it's only one when you take on where you have the resources. You can basically say, "I know this isn't going to turn into anything." I'm just going to— but I'm going to say because I want the traffic or I want the brand out there, I'm just going— I'm not counting on any kind of return necessarily. I'm just doing it and I have the money to do it. That's a different— that's a different playground, you know. Uh, it's what the bigger brands do. It's like why Coke has no problem putting up a giant billboard or McDonald's or whatever, they just don't care. You know, they're not looking for a direct response. They measure at the million, multimillion-dollar levels as to why you would want them. And, but you have to spend that much to get there.

Right.

And people's attention spans aren't that great. And local market, saturated market, confusing market, those things aren't gonna hit as strong as when you sit somebody down. It's like, here, do this with your arm, don't do this other thing with your arm.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's where the more you play in that space, the more intimate you can build that relationship. It's kind of where You're gonna thrive. It sounds like it's already happening. So, and so now it's like, can we accelerate this? Can we get the clients who you do have more verbal? Can you get— can you involve them in more of your marketing? Because they're telling the story is way better than you and Toma telling the story. Even if they don't refer people. You recording them and saving it for posterity, you know, that that is I there that's gold. It you know the last company I was with, we were a little tiny startup when I started, and but we had this one really great video, and it carried a lot of weight. Uh, because, uh, the people in it were exactly the kind of clients we wanted, and their stories were unique. It was, it was well shot. Um, and the ability to sometimes explain to people what you do, um, doesn't come through in your own marketing ever. It comes through like the person who's experiencing it. And so if you can like just pick out 2 or 3 folks who are that person that you want to replicate 10 of these, 20 of these, that video can do all the work for you.

So, okay, definitely get the clients more involved. I do. Some of my clients are very involved. Some sometimes because of the privacy, they're like, yeah, I like the privacy part. I'm not trying to be on camera, and I'm like, I get it, I get it.

Yeah, yeah. And this is a sense. I mean, it is a sensitive thing. You know, people's physical nature and appearance. I wouldn't want to be photographed, you know, lifting twenty-pound weights. I want to be doing 75 FOMO rates, you know.

Sure, sure.

You know, but if folks are game and, you know, you throw in a few bonuses like, I don't know, extra half hour or something. Yeah. As long as you can continue to build those, I think that your reputation Just improves dramatically.

Definitely.

Any other any questions for me?

No, I don't think so. This is a lot of good stuff.

Well, great. I'm gonna see if anyone online has any questions. Oh, Lauren, I heard Google's more people for review system. Nextdoor, great place to advertise. Yeah, thanks, Lauren, for commenting. Google is still very much tied to the They do suck down the Yelp reviews. They basically go everywhere, right? Google is an omnipotent entity. So, uh, so they can— they'll grab whatever they can. Apple certainly grabs— has a partnership, I believe, with Yelp. That might not be true, but I'm thinking that's true. They have a partnership with Yelp where they're sucking down the Yelp reviews for their map systems. Um, Uh, but anywhere where anytime somebody needs to type, you know, CaliMade Arena review, uh, you know, those are the places where you kind of want to be and be able to try and control what's going on those in those places. You know, if you have somebody who's not unhappy and they said, uh, I gotta— not you per se, but I got a Groupon and It sucked. It's like, well, hold on. That's a Groupon, right? And they always suck to some extent.

Yeah, ones are Groupons for a reason. Usually, it's a yeah.

There's no free meal. You know this as a trainer.

Yep.

There's no. Easy path. Well, maybe Ozempic. There's no easy path to even then. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you might lose some weight, but what's under there? Um, but yeah, there's no there's no quick fix for any of this. Same for marketing, especially if you're at it a while and marketing. Is just a— it's just the afterthought for a lot of businesses. Does it make it easier to get better at it? You just have to like gather all your belongings and sort through and go, okay, what do I have? What can I keep? What can I improve on? And what do I just, you know, throw out? And Uh, it's the hardest thing about marketing. It's like convincing people that, uh, it is a process, not a shot in the arm.

Yeah, definitely. There's no easy— there's no easy solution, that's for sure. And just like, uh, just like, uh, with people, every business is unique too.

Yep, exactly. And it's all situational, you know. You might run into a client who Like you said, they're not quite ready, but at least they heard of you and they under— they understand what you do. And it's not until they get to a compelling buying stage, right, where they go, oh, actually, I'm getting ready for a wedding, or, uh, I really want to do that tri, or, um, my case, my hip hurts, so I need to like figure something out. Um, That kind of stuff doesn't— you can't predict that. And nobody can, as much as like all the technology in the world says they can, where you're like walking through Minority Report style and telling you what you need to buy. A lot of that is true, but even then your hit rate is going to be low. So, right. And when you're small, you can't afford to be Definitely. Well, uh, this has been great for me. I don't know if it's been great for you.

No, this is super helpful. This is awesome. Thank you so much.

So, uh, hopefully you come back like regularly and we can kind of go over what else is working, what else isn't working, how's it going. I would love to have you back on, um, for like Future, future eps.

Yeah, absolutely. That would be great.

Cool. Thank you.

I don't mind at all.

Uh, so everybody knows you can go to Cali Made Arena, uh, at calimaderena.com. You guys are on, uh, it's Union and Bascom, is that right?

Yes. Yeah, so Cambrian Park Plaza.

Um, uh, So definitely check out Shannon. Um, I want to thank everybody for coming online and joining live. If you're not live, that's okay. We missed you though. Um, but definitely, uh, want to keep this going. So appreciate you, Shannon. And for everybody else, uh, uh, thank you.

Thank you.