The One With Bedros Keuilian - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #117

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish, and we are here ready to do an awesome I Love Marketing episode with another special guest. And when I say another one, and only because we've had many awesome special guests, and this guy is really, really sophisticated. Ain't the right word. I'm trying to think for the right word to describe it. A little sneaky, little. A little clever. Very strategic. His name is Bedros Killian. And personable. Say that again.

Handsome. Personable.

You know, within reason. But, Bedros, first off, welcome to I Love Marketing. It's great to have you as a guest. Let's give a little background about you. You're one of the top trainers, gurus, coaches in the fitness health. You invented Fit Body boot camps. You have a franchise. You teach personal trainers how to make money and how to build a clientele and how to keep a clientele and how to position themselves so that they're not just viewed as some meathead weight trainers or Pilates instructors or, you know, yoga instructors or whatever. I've had the fortune of speaking at one of your events, and you do a really good job. You've changed a lot of people's lives, and you have thousands and thousands of people that use your methods and strategies. So let's give some background about who you are and how did you get into this business?

Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be on here with you guys. And like you said, a bit sneaky, a bit strategic, but mostly handsome. But anyway, the way I got in this industry, in the personal training industry, is pretty much how most personal trainers get in the industry, which is you were either fat and you got fit and you decided, oh, my gosh, working out has changed my life. Or you were a former athlete in high school or college and decided, this is what I want to do forever and train people and work with others and make them the best that they can be. For me, I was not the athlete. I was the fat kid in high school who wanted a prom date. And so I decided in my junior year, I got to start working out. And so I started working out, lost about 25 pounds throughout the summer, came back senior year and was in incredible shape. I mean, as it turns out, you know, as a young man, your body's in its prime to build muscle, burn fat. And yes, I was in great shape, but I was still the shy, bashful kid in high school. And so that kind of led to One major problem, I still didn't have enough of what it took to ask a girl out to the prom. So I never made it to prom in senior year. But, you know, I was in great shape and I had a whole new level of confidence. And so one thing led to another and I decided that this is the line of work I want to do. I want to help others lose weight, achieve their fitness and fat loss goals, because it completely changed my life. It's almost like the person I was inside came outside for others to see. And it was a neat feeling. So one thing led to another. I ultimately became the. I was like the personal trainer and fry cook at Disneyland. And then I was the personal trainer and bouncer at a, at a bar. And quite frankly, I never wanted to have any other side jobs I wanted to do just to be the personal trainer. And I remember thinking one day as a bouncer on a Saturday night, I'm in this nightclub thinking, gosh, you know, there's probably no one who's a police officer and has a side job, or a nurse and a side job, a doctor and a side job. But trainers, I know so many trainers who have the side job just to help make ends meet. And that's because one thing we lacked is the marketing and sales skills to grow our business. All of us go in the industry, in my industry at least, it's a service industry to help people. And so you later realize that, holy crap, you know, I need to really dial in my skills, otherwise I'm screwed. And so anyway, one thing led to another, and I had a coach at a training, personal training client who felt bad for me. And he said, hey, look, you know, listen to this tape. And it was a Tom Hopkins tape. And that Tom Hopkins tape led to a Brian Tracy tape. Brian Tracy led to Dan Kennedy, Dan Kennedy led to Jay Abraham, Jay Abraham led to Tony Robbins. And it was just this big chain of domino events. And I had this awakening that, holy crap, you know, I don't need to just look at myself as a personal trainer. I need to look at myself as a marketing expert. And the thing that I'm selling and marketing is personal training. And once I had that paradigm shift, it was like a complete reawakening for me. And within probably six to eight months, myself and that client opened up a personal training studio together. Something small. Until that point, I was just training people out of my. Either out of their house or out of a gym that I was paying rent to and working all types of erratic hours. Anyway, so we opened Up a gym together in San Diego. We're blowing this thing up. And it's successful within a year and a half or two years. Ended up owning four more gyms, small personal training studios and loved it. And so, you know, one thing leads to another there. And personal trainers started calling me, asking me, hey, you know, how do you, how did you do it to open up multiple locations and what's your system for marketing and how do you pay your trainers? And I realized I really like this whole coaching and consulting thing. And at that point I had a pretty good offer to sell my personal training facilities. And the reason I had that offer is because the buyer wanted to buy my EFT, my electronic fund transfer, my receivables for the last 12 months. I figured out quickly through my client there that I need to get my clients on a ongoing reoccurring payment plan versus just kind of selling them 10 or 20 sessions at a time. And so the buyer wanted obviously my receivables for the next 12 months. Voila. I sold. And in 2003, late 2003, I started coaching and consulting personal trainers. And here we are a decade later and I've got four mastermind programs and coaching programs. Geez, 52,000 personal trainers on my list who I coach and consult and mentor. My last live event, we had 500 trainers, the three day event, same one you went and spoke at and just really blessed, man. And now we've launched Fit Body Bootcamp the last two and a half years and it's the fastest growing franchise fitness franchise, or fitness boot camp franchise for that matter. And created our own little category of one and just rocking it out. That's who I am and how I got to be.

I love it. There's actually a tremendous amount of lessons just in your introduction there that we could talk about when it comes to building a business. I also will say that your partners also not in all the things that you do, but one of the things you do with coaching is with Craig Ballantyne. And we've actually had Craig as a guest on I Love Marketing. And if everyone listening has not heard that episode, it's really fantastic and worth going back and listening to. So, Dean, there's all kinds of things that I could make statements about based on what Pedro said. But before I go into that, I want to give you a chance to say whatever you want to or ask any questions.

Well, I'm excited to carry on. I mean, Pedro spoke at our very first I Love Marketing conference and everybody loved everything he had to say. He's really, I love, you know, he's got a really great ability to find just simple strategies that work, especially in. In communicating with people. So he was. He's been sharing with us some of the things that he's been doing lately, and I'm excited to see how people can model what he's been doing. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, let me mention that just hearing your introduction reminded me that there's a lot of similarities in what happened, I think for both me and Dean and you is that we're all converts of our own system. I mean, we learned marketing because we needed to eat, we needed to make our business work, we needed to survive. I don't think any of us actually ever thought that when we were first reading our first marketing book or newsletter or tape because, you know, there was no Internet back in the days when I started studying direct response, where we ever probably thought, oh, we're going to coach people in the carpet cleaning industry or in the real estate industry or in the personal training industry. It became a byproduct of learning marketing and seeing how not only important it was, but how effective it was, and then turning a company around, learning how to create success, and then realizing that that success is replicatable and formulaic and that you can teach it to other people. So how long did it take you, Bedros, to become literate? And when, I mean literate, I mean, like, you know the term financial literacy, where you actually kind of get it, where you understand it, where you become good. What was your journey in the beginning of first being introduced to marketing? How did you get into it? What did you read? What did you study, and how long did it take before you actually became effective?

You know, that's a good question. And I know everybody listening to this would agree that it's more like a journey than a destination, but I felt I reached that place of competency. In other words, I knew what I was doing. I could take a calculated risk and knew that the odds were in my favor with that marketing piece, whether it was a postcard, a referral generation strategy, or. Or even some kind of a lead box system in a local business. I knew after about two, two and a half years of studying this stuff that, okay, the odds are in my favor of this thing I'm about to deploy and spend money on. And that's a real confidence builder. But, you know, it all started with, like I said, that first client of mine, Jim Franco. He's at the time in 2003, he was 63 years old. The Guy just lived a life of abundance. And he was my first kind of mentor and I was always looking for that person like I can click with. And he was the guy who lived a life of abundance. Everything was optimism. The glass was always half full. Even when he flipped over his bike and broke his wrist and tore some ligaments in his eye and had to get that fixed. The guy was just this abundant minded guy. Like everything was, oh, hey, I'm glad that happened because look at the new challenges that I've had to take and the new skills I had to build to recover from this. So to me, that was huge. And so when Jim handed me this Tom Hopkins sales tape in the beginning because he felt sorry for me, in fact, what he said was, he said, hey, I just want you to know. And this is while I'm training him, Joe, out of the booth, he says, hey, I want you to know when I bought personal training from you, you didn't sell me anything. You just took my order. You know, I'm what they call a lay down. What do you mean? What's a lay down? What do you mean? I mean, he just laced into me. I felt awful, right? He goes, no, you're just an order taker. You know, you just sell that one third of the group that was going to buy anyway and they came to you and they bought training. And you have this misconception that you're in sales. You're not, you know, you're just an order taker. It's like, holy crap, this guy's hurting me here. But as it turns out, he was letting me know that what I learned real quick from him during that training session was one third of the people you come in contact with will always buy no matter what. That just makes you the order taker. They're there to buy. One third of the people are undecided. And that's where that sales skills that you're going to develop, the ability to transfer feelings and knowledge, build rapport and get them to see things your way to become that assistant buyer, that's where you get like a 60, 66% close rate. And then there's that final 1/3 that Jim said that one last one third will never buy. However, you know you're a heavy hitter. You know you're a closer when you get some of them to buy and that'll put you in the 75, 80% close rate. And so I, to me, I'm, I'm, I'm a dummy. If you tell me, hey, I believe in you, you can walk through that wall. I will somehow find a way to walk through that wall. And so my goal was to, to get to 75, 80% close rate. And so when I went through that Tom Hopkins tape that he gave me, I said, what more do you got? And he gave me Brian Tracy. And I remember like it was this case that had 12 cassette tapes in it. The younger kids listening to this won't know what a cassette tape is. Might as well call it an eight track. But anyway, so I listened to all these Brian Tracy tapes late at night. In fact, I'd wake up in the morning tangled up and my head, headphone wires and. But somehow it took. And so again, hey, hey Jim, what now? And this is all right, you've got Dan Kennedy, got Brian Tracy. The Guy ran an $8 million software company. It was totally unbeknownst to me. And so the next thing he told me was I said, hey Jim, you know, I'm really tired of selling people like 10 and 20 sessions at a time. And then I feel like all of a sudden I go from being a trainer to a bill collector and asking them, hey, you know, your 10 sessions are up, can you buy another 10? He goes, kid, what you need to do is take a little bit of money from a lot of people. That one sentence, take a little bit of money from a lot of people gave me this aha moment. And I realized as personal trainers, as any business continuity, ongoing recurring revenue for a service of value added service is what we need to do. So I instantly changed my programs to 6, 12 and 18 month programs. And you buy a program that I think is best for you, if you have £50 to lose, you're not going to lose it in 10 sessions. You're going to lose that over probably six or 12 months. So let's get you on that program. Each month we auto debit you X amount of dollars, we don't have to have this uncomfortable conversation about money. I know that I've got reliable, secure money coming in and you know that you've got consistent training happening so we don't have to have any awkward conversations. And so all of a sudden, you know, it's all these little things. That next tape and next audio program that he gave me that kind of led me to understanding direct response marketing. And that people are moved by emotion and not by logic. And so that took about, like I said, two and a half years for me to feel like, okay, I can take the training wheels off and really deploy a 10, 15,000 piece postcard. After testing out with about 2,000 pieces and know that that 10 or 15,000 piece postcard that was going to mail out, the odds were stacked in my favor and sure enough, I broke even. But I knew from everything I learned through a Dan Kennedy program, which is stuff that you also reiterate when I joined your Genius Network program, was that hey, certain programs, certain types of businesses, if you break even on the front end, well, that's totally fine. So I broke even on the front end. My managers in my personal training studios were like, oh man, that's disappointing. We didn't even make money on these postcards. To me, we broke even. I knew next month all those clients are going to pay recurring monthly again as long as we keep delivering the service. And by month number two, we were making money, we were cash positive on those postcards. And it would have been that thing that had I broken even the two years before, I would have said, this is a dude, I'm done. Off to find a new marketing strategy, but it's about knowing what direct response is and how your money works, how your finances work, how your business works, to know whether that promo was a home run or a dud.

Yeah, it's amazing how many people.

Go ahead.

I was going to say it's amazing how many people put that kind of pressure on their front end. I see that all the time that people spend money today and they're expecting that the money that they spend is that they're going to make a profit on that right away without really looking at what's the six month value, the one year value of what you're actually generating.

That's exactly right. And in fact, it's funny you mentioned Joe, you mentioned Craig Ballantyne earlier and he's one of my dearest friends and just an amazing guy to work with. And he and I run that info mastermind together and you know, on the front end we give away the buy in. So if anybody refers us, you know, like Joel Marion's, the Vince Del Montes, Mike Eries, any of those guys who are within our circles, they get contacted all the time by personal trainers or people in the fitness industry. And those people want to know, hey, how do I sell information products like you guys? And you know, these guys know that hey, if you just refer them to us instead of just kind of brushing them off or trying to help them out the best you can, but not really being able to refer them to us, we'll give you 100% of the buy in, which is $2,000 because we know what our lifetime value is of a coaching client. And so, you know, we're giving away $2,000 all day, every day to people who are referring as coaching clients. Because we know our lifetime value. And it's those little things when people see we give away that kind of money up front, what are you doing? But it's knowing that I can make money on the back end that really excites me. I can care less about what's on the front end.

You know, this seems like so basic and we've talked about it in a million different variations and everything, but it just seems now that we're far over 100 episodes of I love marketing, we should just simply go back to some basic terminology like front end and back end. Just more so as a reminder for people that obviously are skilled marketers and for people that are kind of new to this, talk about that. What does I mean, you've already said even in the beginning when you're introducing yourself, you know, just being an order taker, not even really understanding how math works, you know, marketing math and you know, continual sales. But with everything that we teach at, I love marketing with it before, during and after unit. You know, most carpet cleaners, if you would just want to take that industry where I started, you know, they focus on how to get a customer, you know, and they're not thinking about anything beyond that in many cases. Whereas, you know, you're constantly thinking about nurturing and developing a client for, not only on a continuity basis, but for life, for as long as you can maintain that relationship being the back end. So what does front end and back end mean?

Yeah, that's a good example. And I'll use our personal training, our Fit Body Boot Camp locations, our franchises for example. Because this was a challenge that I had to then explain because once I got it, I had to then explain it to our franchisees who are personal trainers and non personal trainers for that matter. They're just Joe Public who saw a good opportunity for a franchise model and bought in. And their mentality is, okay, well I need to make money right off the first sale. And so we teach them how to build a local list and they do. And I write all of their monthly email promotions. And one of my most popular promotions is called the 14 Day Fat Furnace Program. It's a three email sequence they send out to their prospect list and it's $67 to do a 14 day fat furnace program at their local Fit Body Boot Camp location. Now the locations who are short sighted in the Beginning and this was my fault because I failed to explain it to them. They were short sighted and they just, you know, wow. I got $67 from 40 people who bought the 14 day fat furnace program. Now I'm going to use Bedros close client system that he taught me and see if I can convert, you know, 40 to 50% of these people into ongoing clients who pay 1, 97amonth. Well, that's fantastic. That's our business model and that's about the con percentage. But what we found quickly was that once I explained to them that that front end money of $67 that you got from each person and that's the front end money of the promotion, the front end money that came in from that promotion for each person of $67, use that to love up that client. And those are the words we use over the next 14 days that they're on your program. And by loving up, we mean a handwritten thank you card that goes to them the day that they sign up shows up in the mail with the $5 gift card to Starbucks that says simply, here are the top five drinks not to get from Starbucks. They're high in calorie. Oh by the way, I did the research and here are the top five calories to get or top five drinks to get from Starbucks because they're lowest in calorie. Here's a $5 gift card. And oh by the way, here's three $100 plastic gift cards to Fit Body Bootcamp that you can give away to your friends, family and co workers. So right away we come to them with a giving hand and the rest of that $67 gets spent on a T shirt that they get. They get a Fit Body Bootcamp coffee mug during those 14 days they get a Fit Body Bootcamp rubber bracelet. And at the end of the thing, if you did it right, you probably have maybe 10 or maybe $20 left of that $67 they gave you. But what that automatically did is it took our conversions from 40% to 65%. So all of a sudden these people who would only, only 40% of the front end people who gave us the $67 would convert and stay on board for a longer period of time. Now that went up to 60, 65, sometimes even 70% where people would convert from the 14 day program to an ongoing month to month program at $1.97 per month. It was all because we took the time to come to them with a giving hand. Love them up, build up a lot of reciprocity. We made a promise and we delivered on the promise of those 14 days. And then we gave them an exceptional client experience that they couldn't get anywhere else. And those are the three factors that helped us convert more people. But number one thing was to use that front end money to not try and hold onto it, but to use it to build the deeper, more meaningful relationship with those people so they'll want to stay longer. And Obviously I'll take 1. 97 for 12 months all day long, over $67, one time payment. So I'm willing to part with that $67 in order to build a relationship with these people so that they'll convert. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it totally makes sense. I'm sitting there taking notes on that and I just wrote I love the term love up that client. Just like we're just loving everybody up right now by giving them I love marketing for free. Did we mention that before, Dean? This is free.

This episode is free too.

Yes. It's like diet water, man. It's just. It's free. All right, so love up that client. So I wrote some of the things. I might have missed some, but. So they take that 67 bucks. And this applies to everyone. I mean, like anyone that does not get this and go back and listen to what Bedros just said. If you are not applying some variation of what he just said in your own business, it is costly, but you basically said you send him a hand handwritten card, $5 gift card, along with not just the gift card, but education on what's good to drink at Starbucks, what's bad to drink, $300 plastic fit body boot camp gift certificates. So you come to them with a giving hand. I think you said T shirt, bracelet and mug.

Yeah, T shirt, bracelet and coffee mug all spread out over the 14 days. And so we keep that whole, the wow factor, you know, level 10 the whole time. And so when you get that much love and appreciation and client experience, I mean, how can you not by default have created a category of one there no gym, no other personal trainer, no other boot camp can offer that. And so these people, see, that's something that really reciprocity, right?

That's exactly it. That's a conversion that totally fits with our model of the before unit, during unit, and after unit. Like if you're building a business that is based on ongoing recurring revenue from the same people that is your after unit. So your business is after unit focused where you've got. You're building a lifetime relationship with people who are paying you Month after month after month. And your during unit is really just the gateway into the after unit, which is where all of the money happens. You know, you're building that asset because every month that you add new people into it, your eft, your EFT numbers go up, up, up, up, up. Every month you're making more and more and more. And you, when you take that view of it, you really see that you can take that front end money, whatever you generate in the initial phase to really solidify and get as many people as you can to convert into your after unit. So your before unit was to get people to the point where they would take the 14 day fat furnace program. And that starts then the initial part of your during unit, which is about creating a dream come true experience for them. But what I want to point out to people is that we talk a lot about not only the core objective, which is to, you know, just deliver the program, that 14 day program, that would be the core. They're giving you $67, they're taking that, that course. What Vedros just described is really masterfully focusing on the strategic objective during that period of time. It's not just enough to deliver the program and hope that you can do that at a profit and hope that they convert into it. He's looking at the big picture of this, where the big revenue is. And you look at every moment, from the moment they sign up, everything is completely scripted out. Here's the note that we send, here's what we do and the reason that we do it. The handwritten note and then the $5 gift card showing them that you and that you're taking this personally for them. Identifying and researching the best drinks for them. Because that's what most people think is, well, what do I, what do I get at Starbucks now? And so doing that is really creating a wow for them. And then giving somebody three gift cards is now focusing on the strategic objective of getting referrals. Because how are they going to, you know, continue? They're talking about what they're doing now. They've got these hundred dollar gift cards. And remember the real reason that people refer is because they want to look good and feel good about what they've done for their friends. And giving them a hundred dollar gift card where it's not, you know, it's not a 10% off or it's not a buy one, get one or anything like that. It's just a real $100 gift card. It's like you giving them cash. So very exciting. Awesome work.

Well, let me also mention again, to reiterate What Pedro said, 25% increase from 14 days to month to month, going from 40% to 65%, as high as 70%. That in and of itself is so significant that that's where if people don't get and understand this and figure out how to orchestrate this, they are literally just le leaving money on the table. And this is gold that already exists in the mine that he's mining. It's just he's figured out how to really leverage it. And see, that's one of the beauties of understanding back end. That's one of the beauties of understanding going deep. That's one of, you know, so when you talked about creating an exceptional client experience, bedros or reciprocity, I mean, these are not just persuasion terms and seminar terms. I mean, this is literally what you need to orchestrate and create. Because if you do, it just results in not only happier clients and customers, but it just is more money for you. I mean, you know, from a financial standpoint, to understand this and hear this and not to execute it, if you've already got an ongoing concern, a business is idiotic.

Well said.

Well, let's talk about your current business then, because we can talk about specific marketing strategies and like, that alone could give people enough to really, you know, do a lot in their business with. But you've taken this not only to the level of teaching, marketing and building up your own business, teaching other people how to do it, but now you're doing this with a franchise model and you're doing unique things that, you know, I'm not aware of any other franchises in any category, doing it quite the way that you do it. So I'd love to have you explain what you're doing with your Fit Body boot camps.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, let me first tell you that when I launched Fit Body Boot Camp about two and a half years ago and made it a franchise, I had no idea. I was absolutely clueless what a franchise was, but I knew that this is what I wanted to do next. And, you know, because we have this big major 2020 goal. And our goal is that by the year 2020, we're going to affect 20% of the world's population with health and fitness in some way somehow. And that's with our Fit Body Bootcamp workout app that they get to work out at home. That's with our book that we just wrote. That's with our locations and each person going and impacting friend, family, co worker, etc. And so with that to happen, then I realized that we have to grow Fit Body Boot Camp locations quickly. Plus, it's the perfect model for personal trainers and quite frankly, for anybody who wants to open up a small business and make it successful. So I went about it a couple different ways. And I wanted to be the anti franchise franchise, which really gave my franchising attorney heartburn because the moment he came down and sat in my office and this guy's like really high level. I mean, he's helped Cinnabon franchise, he's helped the company Fast Signs franchise, even Fat Burger franchise. So he's helped some big organizations franchising, and here he is sitting in front of me and I'm telling him that we're going to be the anti franchise franchise. And he says, well, how? I said, well, first of all, we're going to charge under $10,000. So our buy in fee is 9997. He said, what's the purpose for that? I said, simple. I want everybody to be able to afford this. You know, McDonald's, 7 11, Subway, all these other franchises have kind of priced themselves in a way where the average individual who wants to have their own small business can't achieve that. So that was that. And I said, well, secondly, we're not going to do a 6 or 8% franchise fee like it's standard. We're going to do a flat fee of $497. And he then said, hey, you're making a big mistake. You know, you don't understand the cost of operating a franchise and making a big mistake. What he didn't understand was that what we're doing is we're also again looking at the back end that we have over the years developed strategies where we can convert people who come to a website and we've got the skill sets and the team here in my office to drive traffic and do search engine optimization like nobody's business. And so what we quickly did was we said, hey, we're charging 497 a flat fee fee instead of 6%, let's say. Because when you look at the average fit by the bootcamp location, that does about $20,000 a month in gross revenue. If you charge 6%, that's $1,200 a month in franchise fee they're paying us. So when that location, you know, let's say in the next six or eight months goes up to $30,000 a month in gross revenue, well, now we're charging them $1,500. And the way I Look at it is I'm actually punishing my franchisees for making more money. And so we said, hey, we'll do a flat fee of 497 and we're going to make money on the back end multiple ways. Number one is we've got this exclusive deal with Groupon, another deal with daysights where we run national campaigns and programs to drive leads into our Fit Body Boot Camp locations. And when we drive these leads, we sell anywhere from 3,500 to 5,000 Groupon promotions per deal over a three or four day period, which means we're driving thousands of leads to Fit Body Boot Camp owners. And we split that money with our Fit Body Boot Camp owners right down the middle that Groupon gives us. So that's one way we generate money here at the corporate office. And I look at it as when I get paid on production, I, as a franchisor am going to be more motivated to help you grow. Of course, that's completely opposite of how franchises think. The other way is obviously we'll do search engine optimization and drive traffic for you to your websites where we have a four session $29 introductory offer and we're going to split the cost of that as well. So when somebody buys a web special from a Fit Body Bootcamp site, we get the money and then we share that with the location. And so as far as I know, we're the only franchise on the planet that sends a check back to our owners each and every month for not only Groupon payments, but also for the, for the web specials that we're selling for them. And best of all, we do all the work. And so I went from, forget about the whole do it yourself marketing. Why teach them how to market when I'll do it for them? So they don't have to handle any Groupon calls, they don't have to handle any of the emails that come in from Groupon buyers. We've got a call center and they handle all the Groupon calls during those three or four days. All we do is we just take those FitBody Boot Camp websites and just swap their numbers out with the 800 number to the call center. So our owners do what they do best, which is deliver the service behind the scenes. They're getting a ton of leads. So that's kind of been our model. We're the anti franchise franchise. And I wanted to preface that because it's using that model that's really gotten us to grow so quickly. And just to give you an example, as we were Talking earlier In the last 49 days, actually we've gotten 34 new fit body Boot Camp locations on board. Now as far as I know, that's got to be some kind of a record for a franchise. And these aren't people who were once, let's say, licensing Fit Body Boot Camp locations. And we converted them. These are brand new people who came on board in a 49 day period. We got 34, 37 of them on board. And the way this happened was I decided to do exactly what I talked about just a second ago, which was again, deliver tremendous value on the front end and have a launch where we educate, motivate and move people's emotions and then make them an irresistible offer. So I had a launch and the launch was real simple, just like an information marketing launch. We put out three videos where I flew across the country and visited three Fit Body Boot Camp owners. One of them had two locations. One of them was brand spanking new, six months old, and the other one was kind of a middle of the road. They've been open about a year and a half. And so we did a cross section of the three types of Fit Body Boot Camp owners. We have multiple location owners, kind of a brand new owner, six months old, and then one that's been established for about a year, year and a half. And we literally told their story and we saw them on film and we got to see how they have 150, 200 clients and they're making 20, $30,000 a month. And even the newer location after six months was already on pace for $10,000 a month on a reoccurring basis. And we just peppered these out over a six day period. And finally we put out an offer video which was me with a white background. And I'll send you guys that video if you guys want to share that. So that people who are, you know, selling franchises can or anything, any kind of big ticket item can do this. But what everyone should know is you can't really sell a franchise with a buy now button because all franchises are governed by the Federal Trade Commission. And so what really has to happen is if Joe, you wanted to give me $10,000 right now for a Fit Body Boot Camp location, I would first have to send you a non disclosure agreement and you got to sign that. Then I'd have to send you a confidentiality agreement. Then you sign that and then I send you a FDD franchise disclosure document. And this is all by law, I have to send this to you and I have to Give you a tour of this. I have to explain this to you, make sure that you understand it. And then you sign a form that says, I've read and understand the franchise disclosure document. At that point, even if you're itching to give me the money, I can't take your money. We have to wait 14 days after that last signature. It's a cooling off period before we can take your money. Sign a franchise agreement in fa. Now for all that to happen, I realize I can't sell. No matter how excited people were to give me money online, I can put a buy now button up. The best I can do is showcase the value of Fit Body Bootcamp and what we do and how we do it so differently using those videos. And then put up a pitch or offer video that says, hey, look, if over the next three days, if you fill out this application, it's called an expression of interest application, it doesn't obligate you to buy a Fit Body Boot Camp. It doesn't obligate us to sell you one. This just says that you're interested in learning more about being a potential FitBody Boot Camp owner. If you fill it out over the next three days and then you come on board by May 15, that I will either give you a $4,000 credit or I will buy you $4,000 worth of equipment to build out your Fit Body Boot Camp location. The offer was real simple and again, it was an irresistible offer. So I was given almost 50% of the money back to the owner by way of either a credit or by way of equipment. And that allowed us to get 379 applications in over a three, maybe a four day period, which was brilliant, which was awesome, if I do say so myself. Of that we had about 40% of those people say, yes, I can afford. Because on the application we do ask, can you afford the 997 buy in? $9,997 buy in. Can you come out to the Fit Body Boot Camp University that we hold here every other month to learn the entire business model before we allow you to open up a territory, et cetera. When they answer yes to those two questions, 40% of them said yes to those two questions. And those were the people that we sought first. We went after first and we contacted them. We did the getting to know you calls. We put them through the NDA and non disclosure. We walked him through the FDD and the Federal Trade Commission. You know, they don't want you to hold anything back. There's a way that you're supposed to write your fdd. That is very scary. It's probably the second scariest thing next to getting a letter, a packet from the irs. And it pretty much says, look, you know, you've got the potential to make money, but you also have the potential to lose a lot of money in opening up this franchise. Here's the extreme high end of what extra can cost you to open up this thing. And oh, by the way, here's a middle of the road cost. So it's certainly not a sales document, the fdd. It's the greatest reality check and scare tactic on the planet. But the Federal Trade Commission wants us to do this and we gladly do it and comply. But what we figured out was that rather than having you flip through that, let's again, be service oriented, value oriented, and let's face it, most of us don't know how to read a thick document like that. I certainly don't. And I own the franchise. I need people to explain it to me. So we said, hey, we're going to send you the FDD in the mail when you get it. We're going to schedule a call where we can get on the phone after you've reviewed the fdd. Now, one of my reps here, one of my operations officers, and the prospect will get on the phone when the prospect actually has the FDD in front of them and they'll walk them through. Okay, now go to page number three. Page number three says that these are the obligations that you have as a franchise owner. And it certainly says that you can potentially completely go out of business and go bankrupt if you don't follow the program that we say. Now, if you look at page number four, this says these are the obligations and requirements we have towards you as a franchisee. And our goal is to obviously drive leads, to give you the systems, the operations, and give you a protected territory so that you can be successful. So while there are chances, according to the Federal Trade Commission, and we're completely open about this and transparent that, hey, Federal Trade Commission wants us to write this, and while there is a chance of you possibly going bankrupt, as long as you do what we say, and as long as we are held accountable by the same document that you are, we're going to do everything in our power to make you successful. And that alleviates so much stress and anxiety in people that it was great, I understand. And we showed them all the scary pages. We didn't just gloss over it. We also explained to them all the benefits of being a franchise. Owner again with Fit Body Boot Camp. And they simply understood and signed the document and sent it on over so that they can be in the 14 day queue for that waiting period, cooling off period before we can take a check from them. And that allowed us in that launch period in those 49 days from the time we launched to the time that May 15th came about, to get 34 fit body boot Camp locations on board across, let's see, United States, Canada, UK and one other country that escapes me now, which I think was pretty, pretty amazing. And I don't know if anything.

Was it Namibia?

What's that?

I said, was it Namibia? We had people streaming the I Love Marketing conference from Namibia.

Holy crap. So that was our model and this is what I wanted to share with you again because what we simply did, we came to these folks with a giving hand. We made an irresistible offer of $4,000 credit or $4,000 in equipment. And during those 14 day, that 14 day cooling off period that the Federal Trade Commission wants us to put everybody in, we didn't just stop communication, we sent them more videos of other owners who are successful. We sent them stuff in the mail like a Fit Body Boot Camp bracelet. We sent them the Fit Body Boot Camp newsletter that our owners only get access to, things that kept them excited about looking forward for that, for that 14 days to go by. And again, it's all about doing those little things. We sent them a DVD in the mail called Rebuilding the American Dream, which was a 19 minute mini documentary that we made with Fit Body Boot Camp owners during the height of the economic crisis there about a year and a half ago. And so it's all these things that kind of kept them hot and excited and they saw that we had tremendous desire to get them on board and we were willing to do whatever it took. And I think that built a lot of confidence in the prospective buyers. And here we are, loving them up. Yeah, loving them up. That's it.

Well, you know, boy, there's so much stuff that you said there.

That.

One thing I do want to ask you, I mean, I'm trying to think of which direction to take this. So much of the franchise world has conveyed this belief that the reason that you're going to be successful when you have our franchise is because of this whole group co op, you know, advertising, promotion, brand. Now granted, there's a lot of useful things with franchises such as someone creates a prototype in a system that they've had success with and then gives someone the opportunity to buy, license, use that proven quote Unquote, recipe. And many people have had tremendous success with franchises. And I've also encountered many people in different franchises that are absolutely frustrated with their franchisor. And so I've also seen, like, in the cleaning industry, as an example, there's, you know, big franchises that have a lot of name recognition, but there's many that pretend like they do, but they will sell that. Oh, you know, brand building. So I've seen a lot of really stupid and idiotic and inept advertising done in the franchise world because there's such this emphasis on the brand and the importance of the name and the logo and all that stuff. But here you are, a direct response guy. And I wanted to get your take on that in, you know, incorporating direct response, which all of the stuff that you do into the marketing and promotions for the franchise, your franchise ease.

You know, it's funny that you say that, because in the beginning, I was torn because I totally realized that we need to build the brand of Fit Body Bootcamp. I mean, we want people to say, hey, I'm going to Fit Body Bootcamp. And not just, I'm going to boot camp, just like people say, I'm going to go get Starbucks and not coffee. And so we realized the value of branding. However, my strongest belief system is this. The best branding that you can do. Selling. The best branding is selling. The more you sell, the more you're branded. And I heard Craig Ballantine say this once before, and I was like, holy crap. I mean, this guy hit it on the head. And so the best branding I could do for Fit Body Bootcamp is to. My job is to sell more locations to people who are qualified to run them and operate them. And then my other job is to teach them how to sell their programs so that more people can walk around wearing the Fit Body Bootcamp shirts and they can Facebook about it, because, hey, I lost 15 pounds of fit body Bootcamp. And the more clients they get on board, the faster our brand grows, and the more locations we open, the faster our brand grows. So we have spent, to this point, $0 on any PR firm on any kind of branding whatsoever. And we've been on every news media there is across the board, television, radio, and print. And we keep getting more offers from television, video, and print. And it's simply because we have spent time, money, and energy in selling our product and not necessarily attempting to brand it. And as a byproduct of that, we've branded and we continue to brand tremendously well. So there's my belief system on that.

Gotcha. Yeah, that's great. Let me ask you another thing too. And then Dean, I'm sure you've got plenty of stuff. You mentioned Groupon as an example and.

I see a lot of people, I was gonna suggest we a little sidebar just on Groupon of what you've learned doing it on a big scale level and how people can apply that. The lessons you're willing to learn.

Absolutely. Is that what you're doing?

Because here's what's interesting about Groupon is that a lot of I hear so many people poo poo the whole thing and all the people on Groupon are price shoppers and it's like, well, yeah, well, I mean obviously look at the angle. But it's the ability to understand the back end and once someone comes into your funnel, what to actually do with it. So there's all these vehicles that could be great ways to acquire and introduce your business to people in very non threatening ways. But if you don't understand how to position it and of course you going through the whole experience process of the handwritten cards and the gift cards and everything is part of it. I just want to reinforce a lot of people will blame the media as the problem. When the media is not the problem, it's what you do with it that is the problem. And I wanted you to speak to that for a bit. What your experience is and like Dean said, doing this stuff on a large scale.

Yeah, well, let me see if I can, I can touch on both in one fell swoop here. You make a really good point. And it's oftentimes people will blame the media, meaning the source because oh man, too many people came on board and I wasn't, I wasn't prepared and so I let them slip through the cracks. Well, do I look at it is that's your problem. You should have a system in place. We all know the system is an acronym. Save yourself time, effort and money. And so if you don't put the system in place, you're going to have people fall through the cracks. But as it relates to Groupon, the biggest misnomer out there, everyone says, ah, Groupon. These are people who are tire kickers, these are people who are cheap, these are people who are broke. These are people just kind of looking for deals. And the problem, the biggest problem I have with social media and let me just tell you, I'm a guy that spends about 20, $22,000 a month on buying traffic from Facebook. So I love social media. But the biggest problem I have with social media is that one Yahoo Small business owner, big business owner, it doesn't matter, will say, oh, Groupon or any deal of the day thing sucks because these are all people who are looking for deals and they're not committed and it spreads like wildfire. And it literally infects and affects all of these other small business owners who could have run a Groupon deal, had the opportunity, but chose not to because they think for some reason Groupon shoppers are nomads or gypsies, which is far from the truth. And we've proven that. Fact of the matter is one of our Fit Body Boot Camp owners, He's a former Mr. America. His name is Butch Nieves and he is in Bronx, New York. He owns two locations, two Fit Body Boot Camp locations, and still runs his Mr. America personal training studio. The guy has plenty of money and like me, he's a car fanatic. And he's telling me this story privately. Gosh, about six months ago, he's telling me the story and he says, hey, you know what? I'm on Groupon. I got a Groupon email and it said the local racetrack is offering a Ferrari experience. Take a Ferrari around the track three times. And it was something like $59, because as you know, Groupon wants you to give them at least 75 to 80% discount. So Butch decides that, hey, I like cars. I definitely want to go out there and drive a Ferrari for three laps on this racetrack. And he buys the deal. Now he goes to the racetrack, he gets in the Ferrari and instantly the co pilot, the guy who obviously runs the show, who's sitting shotgun, he says, hey, so how did you make a small talk? So how did you hear about us? How did you get here? You're doing three laps, that's great. He says, oh, I saw the offer on Groupon and I thought it was a great deal. And I picked it up. Butch said it felt like a light switch just turned off. The guy turned completely cold. He just said, all right, well go straight and then make a left. You'll be on the track and let's go ahead and do our three laps and we'll be done with this thing. And Butch was absolutely livid about it because here's a guy who can not only afford to do this once a month, he can afford to get himself a Ferrari. But the fact of the matter is he was immediately discounted and pre qualified in a negative way because he came from Groupon and not from a full price offer from somewhere. And Butch said, If only I was treated like a normal customer client that they would treat, I would have stayed on board. I would have taken whatever upsell that they would have given me, which by the way, they did not offer him anything else to continue. And so there's a company that was just trying to make money, keep their, you know, the Ferrari experience business alive and well for another month based on front end sales. And so what we found is we're going to take our Groupon people and we're going to actually treat them just like anybody else who came from a web special, who came from a referral, who came from a direct response ad, a radio promo, who came from an email campaign like the 14 Day Fat Furnace promotion. And we take, and our owners take that money that they get from Groupon, the half of the money that we share with them and they love it up those clients for those six weeks or for those 28 days or for those 10 day programs. Now what we found with Groupon is these are people. And so this is. Dean, I'm speaking kind of to your question here. How do you, you know, what do we, what have we learned? So when you get people who buy a deal, all they're looking for is a home. Everybody's looking for a home. You're not going to go out and even though you can afford it, go out and work out a 24 hour fitness today, LA Fitness Tomorrow, Lifetime Fitness the next day. You're certainly not going to go out and call one carpet cleaner today, the next carpet cleaner the next. I mean, this is someone who comes into your house. You want to trust them. If you're going to hire a real estate agent, over the 20 years of your home buying experience, you ideally want to work with the same person because they know your buying behavior and habits. The problem is that people just kind of discount Groupon people and just go, oh, they're just deal shoppers and they're deal hoppers. They're not. They're looking for a home just like you and I are for whatever business or product or service they're about to invest in. And since they're negatively pre qualified, they just go off to the next thing. Now are there crappy people? Yes. Why do people feel like there's more in Groupon? Because you get a mass flood of them. If each location gets 250 groupon buyers, well, guess what? I bet in that month, in a normal month, if a Fit Body Bootcamp location or any business for that matter got, let's say 100 leads, if we Just sent all those hundred people to you in three days. You'd probably find 20% of them are probably not the kind of people you want around. They're kind of tire kickers. They're pretty much cheap, they're not committed. So getting 200 to 300 people all of a sudden over a three or four day period and then they come to you in a week, week and a half time, yeah, it seems like there's a lot of tire kickers, but it's just because they all came to you in a concentrated period. So what we do is we take half that money that Groupon gave us and we split that half with our owners and they again love up those people over that the 10 days or the 28 days or the six week promo that we run. By the way, some of our best promotions are usually 10 day and 28 day. And Groupon was kind enough to run a test with us where we did an a B split where we were one of the first companies to make have two offers, which was 10 days, which was, I'm sorry, it was 10 workouts of over 10 days or it was 28 days of unlimited training. And so, you know, we sold something like 83% more of the 28 day unlimited training. So anytime you use the word unlimited in a Groupon promotion, the key was that unlimited, because we even did six weeks unlimited, we tested that. More people buy that. And we always negotiate with Groupon. Here's another takeaway for people. If you can get Groupon to raise the price of your offer your thing by another $2, $3, you know, negotiate with them hard. That is a big difference. And so we're always, you know, we started with our 28 day promo with Groupon was around $29. We're now around $39 for a 28 day promo. That $10 difference is a tremendous difference in quality of person you get. True, we don't get 500 people per location now we get around 250. But that's okay. There's a greater number of them who convert into ongoing clients. Which kind of leads me to the last thing about Groupon, which is these are people that came in on a deal, they came in on a deal. So what does that tell us psychologically about them? They're probably going to react to a deal better. And so as soon as we do the initial par q which is just a liability waiver and learn about their health history, we make them an irresistible offer. Instead of our normal 197amonth we say, hey, would you like to get six months paid in full to get 30% off? You can do that right now and we'll refund your money or apply the money you paid for groupon towards the six month program where you're gonna get 30% off. We get about 30% of the people who come into Groupon to take that offer. And if they don't do that offer right away on the day that they sign up for their trial period, we'll offer that to them again one more time. Usually about three to five days before their program ends. And typically if they didn't take it on the front end, they'll take it on the back end. But no matter what, it's usually around a 30 to 33% conversion rate that we get from Groupon people. So you figure you get 200 people in a location or 200 buyers, really a hundred of them are going to come in, the rest are not going to come in. So you got 100 people that came in over, let's say a two week period to take advantage of their Groupon deal that they bought. You know, 30 to 33 of them are going to become ongoing clients. And true, they're going to buy that six month program for 30% off, but that's money in the bank and you can keep selling them that.

You know something that you said there too, Bedros, that you know, the way you described that Ferrari experience is often the way that most businesses take the approach that they take is we talk about five star prospects, we talk about, you know, people that 33% the people who are going to buy. Now the thing is you don't know which 33 out of the hundred are going to be the ones who buy. So the very best course of action is to treat all of them like they're the one.

Like they are.

They are a five star prospect. So we always talk about treating people like they are a five star prospect until they prove that they aren't, versus taking the other approach like most people do by painting everybody as tire kickers or deal shoppers and treating them like they're not five star prospects until they prove that they are. And it's so much more profitable to treat them like they are five star prospect because you're future pacing and getting people, you know into that role. They get an experience of what it's going to be actually like to work with you.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. Well, no, secondly too, if you don't treat people like that, it's like inviting somebody over, but then treating them like they're not welcome.

Right?

Yeah.

There's some great insight in what you shared there and I really hope that sunk in with because not only is that useful for people to hear, but you're influenced continuously by other business owners that are not in the know. I mean, you know, one of the biggest things that I think we do as coaching and teaching people is not just giving them new strategies and stuff. We also operate as a reminder service for people to remember things they used to do could do that they forgot about. And we also operate as helping people to basically get the nonsense that is planted in their heads by peers, colleagues, media about how people are and how they respond and getting them realize this is not really the way it is. And frankly, you should do everything humanly possible to meet and exceed expectations. Because anyone that's going to do business for you seek you out looking for a home, as you said, you're either going to, they're going to get less than what they expected, exactly what they expected, or more than what they expected. And to strive to deliver more and to create a happy client experience is where all the future business revenue referability lies. And that's what you've done with your company in the beginning. That's what you're doing with all of your fitness and personal training and coaching clients and that's what you're doing with your franchise and that's what you're doing with your follow up marketing. So I think it's awesome we're getting close to the time where we are almost out of time and I mean we could do probably 10 episodes with you bedros to wrap this stuff up. I think the best thing would probably be just to have people get some information about if they're in the personal training business, if they're in the world of health and fitness where your company organization would be useful to them, please give out a website for that. And then secondly, if anyone wants to do business with any of your franchisees or you know, get one of your franchises, how do they get that info? Or if they just want to spy on all your marketing and see what you're doing, give, give out some resources.

Yeah, well, one of the best ways to not only get on my list and contact me, but to also spy on my marketing and feel free to swipe and deploy yourselves is just to go to my blog pt power pt power.com and just opt in and you know, they'll be on my list. And of course I'm always available and active on Facebook and so they can just look me up Bedros Kuilean and you know, shoot me a private message or just leave a message on my wall, something, something foul and mean and, and I'll reply back to them. And that's really it. And if they want to learn more about Fit Body Boot Camp, our main directory site is fitbodybootcamp.com and they can, you know, I always tell people, hey, before you call me, go, go work out at a Fit Body Boot Camp. Go check it out, talk to the owners first, let them know what their experience is, let them tell you what their experience is, and then you decide if you want to get on board or not. And I think there's tremendous value to being fully transparent that way. And it's really helped us along the ways.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. You know, and I have to say this, since I never mentioned it on this episode, is that the Shelby Cobra that has now become part of Peter Diamandis abundance contest, that was and is my car currently, actually originally came from you, Bedros, and then it used to belong to Dax Shepard. The comedian, the actor. So you're a car dude. And what other weird things are you into?

Well, you know what, I'm a car dude and I'm a bit of a, I guess you would call a hillbilly since I really, right now I'm sitting in workout shorts and a T shirt at my office. We've got a staff of 15 working out there and I like to live in a two mile bubble. You know, my home's two miles away, Starbucks is right across the street. The gym is right there and the sushi restaurant next to that. And if I'm not in one of my cars, I'm typically shooting guns. And so I guess you could say I'm a bit of a hillbilly in that way, but I'm okay with that.

Sort of sound like Dean in some ways. In some ways. So, Dean, anything else you want to.

Ask Bedros or say thanks a lot, Bedros? I think that's been fantastic. I just think like the big if people can't get enough detail in working on and deploying an incredible client experience in the beginning and all of it of the during unit. But you just described an incredible orchestration of that because really you have to imagine how you're going to love them up for that 14 day period or whatever the amount of time is to set that up systematically so that it happens again and again and again.

Also, I need to take this opportunity to feed my ego and possibly my Wallet Bedros. I don't know how many of my 25k groups you've actually participated in in the past. Why should somebody be part of my group?

Well, that's a good question. I was part of your group. And I remember one time. You know what I remember Dean Gracios, he was at this particular meeting and somebody gave away a direct response piece that had just absolutely destroyed it for them. And for me, it was real simple. I just took that direct response piece, swiped it, changed the copy around a bit and emailed it out to my list and ended up doing $500,000 in sales by mailing that out twice. And there was probably no better example of swipe, deploy and make tons of money than that. And you know, as much as I run my own coaching programs, when people say, hey man, what other coaching programs out there? And you know this, I've referred at least 5 to 6 people to your, to your 25k group because I believe in it and I'm a disciple of that group, my friend.

Awesome. Well, what do you think of that, Dean? It's just kind of like exploiting your guest to pitch.

It's fantastic. Well, why else would you have guests?

Now just, just remember, send that check over to my house and not to the agency.

Now, by the way, if we get like, if for some bizarre reason like your Fit Body Boot Camp franchises just resonate with our I love marketing listeners and you pick up another hundred along the way, do we get like two grand from each of them or how does that work?

Yeah, it's funny you should say that actually, because Craig Valentine is not only an owner of Fit Body Boot Camp owner, he's opening up multiple locations in Toronto, but he's also one of our best affiliates and we give a $2,500 bounty for anybody that you refer. So absolutely, we take care of you guys.

Wow.

No, that's funny. Well, look, in all seriousness, this was some really, really great wisdom. I hope you know this is one of those episodes where I would ask everyone listening to it. I mean, you know, business owners think of three people that just really need to hear this and certainly that's easy. And just zip off a text of this episode link or shoot an email forward an email if you're finding out about this. If you're brand new to I love marketing. Welcome to the club. We'd love to hear your comments about Bedros, what you learned, what you're going to apply, go to ilovemarketing.com Please leave your comments about this episode. It was good stuff. We may have you on as a future guest, Bayros, or you may see him at one of our future conferences or something, because he's just fantastic, and he's always on the cutting edge of stuff. And so, on behalf of myself and Dean, thank you, Bedros. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Bedros.

Yeah, guys, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.