How to Build a Fitness Studio (What I Wish I Knew)

In the next 30 minutes, I'm going to be talking to you about how I went from broke wannabe trainer to having a 7-figure studio, being sought after by athletes and trainers all over the world, having a world-class team and culture, and so much more. So I started actually as a trainer earning $16.75 per hour, uh, working at the gym floor in Genesis in Ringwood. Oh, and also I've authored this book, The Enterprise Diet. I've done a lot of— in the industry, that's with, uh, obviously the former PM Tony Abbott, who's actually a regular client at ours as well. So some specs on our business, just to give you a little bit of context. We do on average 320 to 350 personal training sessions every week. All our sessions are 1 hour. We don't do any 30 minutes or 45 minutes, and that was a practical decision that I made in 2006 because I didn't want to work with clients for half an hour or 45 minutes. If clients are going to work with me, it was an hour only. No, we don't charge by the session, we charge as packages. That's to keep things transparent. That's where we're at. We do 12-week minimums with our clients as well. So if someone comes to us, it is 12 weeks. And we have 14 coaches. I've got a team of about 19 on staff. We've got 14 coaches. And the last client I trained, it was $400 an hour. If there's one thing I know, it's personal training. And they say it takes 20 years to become an overnight success. I'm 2 years away from being an overnight success. I've been at this since 2006. I finished my course in 2005, so about this for a while. So this was me, started my journey, probably not unfamiliar to a lot in the room. But the point here is I was the fat kid, I was bullied, I was below average student, all those things. I was actually told by a teacher that out of a scale of 1 to 10, I was an 11 in useless lumps. So I was the kid that no one thought would do anything. And your voids in life dictate your values. So for me, I had a big value on health, fitness, education, knowledge, and that lit a fire into me. So this was me 20 years ago, my first bodybuilding competition, and the best thing ever happened to me is I came last, and it absolutely crushed me, completely crushed me. And it was that day 20 years ago that I vowed that I would become an expert, and I would travel the world, I would pay whatever price, I would be a dedicated learner to understanding body transformation and all things nutrition, all things training, all things strength, because I never wanted that to happen to me again. I also never want to happen to anyone in my care again. And I can say 20 years later, we've trained over 300 competitors who've won on the bodybuilding stage. In actual fact, we've got a whole bunch— we've got a team over at the expo who are competing today. Last weekend they won a bunch of titles, so probably closer to 350 now. But we've trained thousands of competitors from that. So just reflecting, like, in your own personal journey in life, often there's things that happen to us that we reflect as really tragic, tragic and bad. Often they're the best things. So I competed again, dyed my hair blonde and auditioned for the Backstreet Boys— not really— and competed again and again. And all I ended up with is a— I've got a shelf at home now filled with second place trophies. It's a true story. But, um, Genesis Ringwood, that It was my first real job in the fitness industry, and, or first real job as a trainer. So I was earning $16.75 an hour, and I was getting up at, you know, 5, standard PT hours, getting up at 5, working till 9. The thing about Genesis Ringwood is it doesn't have any, uh, windows. So the time you walk in to the time you walk out, it's the same time. And it really messed with my head a lot, but I was ready to pack it in within 6 months. And fortunately, they brought on the Independent Business Owner program, which is pretty much mainstay in the fitness industry today, whereas I paid rent to the floor. And the rental fee was $1,100 a month, and that was more that I'd seen, more money that I'd seen. And I was, I was very scared to go ahead. But fortunately for me, my manager was a sales gun and he sold me on the idea and I took the plunge. And when I say I took the plunge, I went headfirst. So I was signing up to business courses left, right, and center. I actually did a mastermind program for $20,000 back then, and it was a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And I had no idea how I was going to afford it. And the point is, I really did play full out and wanted to learn this thing called business. And I started my first business, really. It was an online program back in 2006. 2007. It was called the Alpha Body, and the idea was I was going to charge people $49 a month. I was going to do their programming, their nutrition, have a power call with me, give them e-classes. I was going to get 1,000 members a month, and I was going to be a millionaire and make money in my sleep. But it didn't happen that way. So I had this— this was my Alpha Mobile, the Suzuki Ignis. Great car, by the way. Doesn't compare to a Range Rover, but it was a great car. And, uh, you know, more front than Maya. Still do. So my plan wasn't working, right? So I thought, I'm not going to give up on this plan. Instead, I'm going to develop, you know, vertical integration model. Have a low barrier to entry product, sell them the membership program. So I was like, what's next? I gotta buy, I gotta develop an ebook, right? I gotta write an ebook. So I spent like the next year writing an ebook, got a foreword by the great Johnny Bowden, who is one of my heroes. And I thought, okay, now my ebook's out, people are gonna buy my ebook, then they're gonna buy my online coaching program and I'm gonna make money in my sleep. Also didn't work that way. So I thought, no, no, all right, I gotta have a low barrier to entry. I gotta, my free opt-in, I gotta make a landing page. So I did this, Eat Your Way to Abs, which had a phenomenal opt-in rate. Opt-in page, you've got it. Opt-in page, Truth About Supplements ebook, Alpha Body, I'm gonna make money and I sleep. Also didn't work that way. So then I started a podcast, and I'm really actually still really proud of this podcast because this is the podcast where I essentially got free consultation with all of my heroes. I interviewed so many amazing people, um, all over the world. And so one of my friends, Dan Gardner, who actually the foreword of my book— I've got amazing respect for because he's trained some of the best athletes in the world— he listened. That was one of the things that was a catalyst for him to start learning, and he talks about that experience of listening to my podcast. So you can still YouTube it and Google it, but really those podcasts reflected as a kid who was interviewing his heroes. And that's why I love that podcast. Training Competitors, 2009, trying to heap competitors. But the point that I'm getting at with all of this, I'd consider all of those— I'm quite proud to say, except for the competitors, the competitors were awesome in the podcast— I failed a lot. I failed a lot. I tried so many things. And my first point, that in business and in, in this, you know, path that you're doing as fitness professionals, it's okay to fail. Completely okay to fail. But it's, it's really important to try. So it's okay to try, and it's okay to fail. In my gym at Enterprise Fitness, there's only one thing that gets rewarded, and that's effort, right? Because it's the effort that you put into things that ultimately going to lead to that outcome. You can't control the outcome. I can't control, you know, the next home run that I hit, but I can control the amount of effort and work that I put into something to make it a success. And if it doesn't fly right, if you don't get the first place trophy, it's okay. But what's not okay is not to try. Now, these manuals I would consider as golden artifacts in the world of strength and conditioning. These are— for those in the room who know what these are, these are the PICP manuals developed by the late and great Charles Poliquin. Charles Poliquin trained over 300 Olympic medals. That's him and me at our gym comparing arm size. I don't know who won. Quite debatable. Of course he won, but he was my mentor for many, many, many years. And I traveled to Rhode Island, Canada. I've traveled many times over the world to mentor with him because he trained some of the best strength coaches in the world and best athletes in the world. And in those manuals, in this book, what it says is 5 levels levels of the PICP Level 5, PICP program, which is the Polyquin International Certification Program, which they don't run to the same level nowadays. But in Level 5, it said to be a Level 5, you have to have either trained an Olympic gold medalist, a Commonwealth Games gold medalist, an MVP, or a pro athlete who had achieved basically a high status or a high salary. So I remember opening that book and those manuals, they changed my life, completely changed my life, changed my career because I opened those manuals and I said, I'm going to be a PICP Level 5 one day. And the only way to get there is to actually put proof in your pudding. So I trained this absolute superstar of an athlete for over 10 years. Her name's Janet Kane. She won 4 Australian titles. She won the Arnold Classic 3 times. And I went to Charles and I said, Charles, you know, I've trained Janet. She's won everything. I got my PAC Level 5. He goes, I recognize you as PAC Level 4. But he had some colorful language that he said that I won't share because I might never be welcome back to this stage. But he basically said that, no, I'm not going to give you PAC Level 5 for training competitors. You need to train real athletes. So I put my intention out to the universe and I started training boxers. And I had a very successful boxer that I trained, Freddie Tooks, who won the Australian welterweight championship. And it got the attention of this young gentleman, Andrew Maloney. And Andrew Maloney, this was before he got into the Commonwealth Games team. I met him through a mutual friend of ours who I was also training at the time. And I basically met Andrew and I said, you're going to win Commonwealth Games gold. I'm going to train you as your strength coach. I'm going to get my PhD Level 5 and you're going to get your gold medal. Do we have a deal? And he said yes. I'm like, awesome. So I started training Andrew. He won gold medal at Glasgow in 2014, so a career highlight. And I trained him for many years after, was with him for about the first 10, 11 professional fights of his career. He's now a former world champion, him and his brother, sensational athletes, unbelievable humans, great people. Point there is that I've done— I mean, this is just a short list of courses that I've done, but the point that I'm getting here, that's my PhD Level 5 that I chased for probably over a decade— well, not quite a decade, but I chased for many, many years. Point here is if you want to own a studio and you want to be high level, you need to become an expert with a white belt mentality, right? The fact that everyone's in the room here today shows to me that you want to— you're on that path, right? It's not enough just to do a course, do your certs, and that's it. You've got to be constant and never-ending improvement. You've got to be hungry for knowledge, questioning things, learning from those who have the answers, and also challenging yourself to those who disagree with your opinion and put yourself actively into debates. And also, I would say as a business owner, the fact that I can throw down and I have the success that I have as a coach, my team respect me. They respect me as a coach, which they make— respects me as a business. So if I say no, this is not how we squat at my gym, it's not because I'm like the business owner and I'm trying to like put people down or anything. It's because it's not correct and this is not what yields results. So I— because of that experience that I've had training high-level athletes, the level of talent that I get is, is exponential. I— we, we breed industry-leading coaches, and it's because our culture breeds industry-leading coaches. And that's something that I've you know, that's what I'm about, right? So I like how George St-Pierre puts it: I keep the wipeout mentality that I can learn from anyone, anywhere, at any time, and it's the constant and never-ending improvement mindset. So at this point, you know, my career was starting to, to, you know, starting to do well. So I competed in strongman and, you know, started to do quite well. I won my first strongman comp. That's a— I don't know, the biggest stone there was about 140 kilos. So I won that comp. Also, me and my buddy, we won. We both won our divisions. I was under 90 kilos, he was under 100. And I was charging at that time $250 a consult, right? Pretty good money because I was booked, I was booked flat. And a lot of my clients started to win and had wins and wins and wins. And something interesting happened. This was back in, what was it, 2010? I got kicked out of my gym, right? The gym that I was at— this was before Enterprise— I got kicked out of my gym. Why? I was too successful. I was intimidating the status quo. I was shaking up the status quo. The gym didn't like it that I was charging more than everyone else. Everyone was coming to me for advice. I was bringing— I thought this was a good thing. I'm getting you guys members. The point here that I'm getting at, on your path, not everyone wants you to be successful, and that's okay. Because I remember, I remember vividly, you know, I was at a gym where people would complain about everything. And the owner, for example, you know, didn't like cold weather. The weather was beautiful one day, and I said, you should be, you should be really happy. It was a great day, you know, sun outside, it's a beautiful day. He turned around and he said to me, you know, I ate too much chicken today. I was like, what? He's like, I ate too much chicken today, I feel bloated. Like, this guy complains about everything. And I translate that to the experience that I had when I left that gym and I went to the mecca of bodybuilding in Brunswick. And you know what I'm talking about, Doldy's Brunswick. And I was there the first day and I remember saying, Tony, how are you today? And he clapped his hands and he said, Mark, I'm unbelievable. How could you ever be upset? We have the best jobs in the world. We get to train these people and transform lives. And I thought, wow, this whole time I was in the wrong environment. And if I was just in the right environment— and that's when I really— I was able to open up Enterprise. In less than 11 months because, you know, I was starting to be in the right environment with the right people. So lesson there is, you know, if things are struggling, sometimes it's, it's an environmental— you shift the environment, you go around people who actually want to see you succeed, it helps so much. So not everyone wants to be successful, but the beauty of that is that a smooth sea never made for a skilled sailor. So I don't look at these challenges, I don't look at these people, I don't have any resentment or hatred. I'm I'm unbelievably grateful for all of the challenges that I've had because now I look at the challenges that I have on a daily basis in business, and I have a lot bigger challenges now. I would not be equipped if I did not have those challenges earlier in my career. So everything that you've been going through, just understand that's part of you leveling up. That's part of you being better and building you as the character for who you're destined to be and the things you're destined to do. So don't look at these as negative. And that was my, my team at the time. At Doherty's in Brunswick before we opened up Enterprise. It was 3 people, it was me and 2 other guys. And you know, that really came out of one of the guys. I fell into this because I was having so many clients contact me that I'm like, I don't have enough spaces, I need to hire people. And I hired my first coach and fortunately he just loved what I was doing and I eventually got good. So these are some of the transformations that we do. And I show you this because we really do, like I talk about, have you seen those before and after photos? You know, the one on the, on the left, the guy's overweight, and on the right, he's in shape. Well, that's what we do, but for real. And the transformations aren't just superficial of, you know, body beautiful, whatever. Where— no, these people change their lives. They change the way they relate to themselves forever. I mean, Helen, she lost 40 kilos, and she has fallen in love with health and fitness. And from that, her career, all these things has completely changed. Her outlook on life, she's so much happier. She's done things. This guy was scared to pick up a dumbbell. Now he's benching twice his body weight. So we've done— yes, we do the competitors as well. And I mean, she looks amazing, she's in her 60s now. Uh, we have these people, I'm just going to throw them out. This guy's almost— well, he's 60 now, he's 57 when those photos were taken. But why I want to show you that is because in business, think about the outcome, don't think about the hour. And this was a turning point in my career because I can tell you right now, there are 4 ways to sell personal training and fitness. The first one is by the session. And anyone selling by the session, I guarantee you this is the, the way to make the least amount of money in personal training, is if you're selling by the session. The second is by the pack, which is only slightly better but not much more. I say it's like by the packs, you might have 5 packs, you might have 10 packs, you might have 20 packs, you might have 100 packs. I'm gonna— I'm still gonna say it's only slightly better because you're still framing it into the client's mind that they're buying a commodity, they're buying your hours. The third way is to sell by the program. And there's no shortage of programs, some of them good, some of them, you know, indifferent. But, you know, 6-week body, uh, you know, body blast or whatever it is, uh, 12-week hypertrophy, whatever it is. But programs sell, and programs often— the reason why programs and challenges and these things work is because it sells the outcome. And the fourth and final way is to sell by the experience. And that's what we do here at, uh, what's what we do at Enterprise Fitness is we sell the experience of personal training. So this was us, this was last year actually, this was our Good Good Friday, uh, and we've got an amazing team and culture, which I used to not be conscious about, but now we're very, very conscious in building our culture, which I'll talk about in a sec. This was our Good Friday event. We raised $13,500 for the Good Friday Appeal that year. This was this year, we did Minions, we raised $12,500. Got an amazing community. All of our sessions, as I said, is one-on-one, but everyone in our, in our environment, we come together, and, you know, my trainers, they hire out these outfits and all this kind of stuff. It really is quite amazing and humbling. All my guys love training. The other thing on team culture is be willing to say no to things. So at our team, like, we are very— we like to laugh, right? We like to, as you would say, take the piss out of each other. If people are sensitive, they're not going to fit into our team culture, and that's fine. We're not looking for sensitive people. We're looking for people who like to have a laugh and who have that type of sense of humor. But if that's not you, that's cool. But you got— when you're building a business, you got to outline like What is your team culture about? And it's okay that other people won't get it. It doesn't have to be for them. That's fine. The way we are with our clients, the way we're with our team, it's completely fine. And when people come to us, people sometimes say, oh, you guys seem really full-on. I'm like, yeah, we are. Is that what you're looking for? Someone says no, well then no, you're not for us. Go somewhere else. It's completely fine. And you need to draw that line in the sand with business, especially now there's so many options in the fitness industry too. With team, one of the things anyone who has a team in the room. Yeah, I, I really like this, right? Your team don't— you don't work— so the team don't work for you, you work for them, right? And when you flip that mindset as everything that you do— I want to create an enterprise, a Disneyland, not only for my clients but for my team. First and foremost, actually, I want to create a Disneyland for my team, because if I create a Disneyland for my team that every day they love coming to work and they just love working where I am, well, what's going to happen to the clients? They're going to— it's going to be passed on to the clients. The client's going to love coming into the, into the studio because my team are happy. If my team are happy, my clients are happy. So it's so important. And in this industry, your product are your people. So I can't be on the floor— we do 350 sessions a week— I can't be monitoring every single session that we do. There has to be a degree of trust. And I say culture is the invisible force that holds it all together, that when you go away, when your key players go away, people do the right thing, is what upholds that culture. And it's something you have to be very conscious about, and you have to communicate and you have to celebrate examples of people who enforce your culture. So I want to give you something, some really like practical tactical steps. This is summarized in 5 steps how to build a world-class studio, right? And this was essentially my journey summarized in 5 steps. Steps: 1, be a master of your craft, right? No exceptions, and continually trying to master your craft and hang around those who are masters of their craft. I've spent time with Olympic weightlifting coaches. I've spent time with world champion powerlifters. I've spent time with world champion bodybuilders and everything in between. And nutrition, functional medicine, you name it, supplementation. And I'm constantly learning those things and constantly trying to improve and learn, right? So number 1, master your craft. That will also dictate the level of service you can give. The better level of service, the more people will pay, right? Simple. Step 2, master sales, right? Master sales. I know some people think sales is a dirty word. It's really not. And if you have some stuff on sales, just understand motivational coaching or coaching, because coaching is sales. You know, the fact is I'm a great coach, which makes me a great salesperson, because I can coach people to be compliant, right? I can coach people to do what they need to be doing rather than eating the cupcake or going off diet and getting them to train. So sales is about that. Sales is sometimes— and coaching is a bit about confrontation as well, and you need to be able to handle that. So you need to be— if you want to be a great coach, you need to be able to handle high levels of confrontation, at least at the same time with confrontation, with care, if that makes sense. Get good at sales, and the fortunate thing is sales will teach you that. Uh, building a market— a marketing machine, right? Step 3, build. And I would say in this order: you want to be a master of your craft, learn sales, then build the marketing machine. Most people these days, what I see is they want to know the greatest, latest Facebook hack or Google hack. Those things change every month, right? I wouldn't worry about that. Once you know how to sell, then you you ramp up the traffic. So build a marketing machine, and marketing machines can come in many ways: offline, online, referrals, Google, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts. I'm like, yes to all, right? I'm everywhere. I'm omnipresent when it comes to online space. Therefore, learn how to train and delegate team members. Super, super important because you can't do everything if you want to scale. And step 5, be conscious about creating a brand. What I see is most people put this as number 1. This happens organically once you understand who you are and what you do. I said before, I'm totally okay with saying to people, this is not for you, right? Totally okay, because I know what we're about, and I'll keep the gates closed to ensure that everyone who comes into our environment is about what we're about. Because when people come into that environment, they light up and they're like, this was, this was as if this community was made for me. And I'm like, yes, it was made for you. It was made for you. And that's why we can charge the prices that we are, because it's also about who we say no to. So don't be scared to say no. And this is encompassing of everything, right? You want to delight your customers and team at every step, and that's what it needs to be about. So this is my current project at the moment. So as I said before, I've become my own landlord. Sorry, I didn't say that. I should have said that before. I bought a commercial building back in 2020. It's been an experience so far. We're not moved in yet, but this was the building I bought, and all of it has been paid for by personal training. All of it. So I don't have investors. I don't know, like, you know, rich parents or anything like this. You know, no one helping me out. I'm the sole owner. Everything has been done by personal training and the business. Business is self-funded. So we ripped out pretty much everything, gutted it, took the roof sheets off, no more roof, knocked down the back wall, knocked out the slab, put a new slab in, new roof. Things are getting built out. That's where we're at at the moment. So I'd say within the next couple of months we'll be, we'll be moved in there, which is an exciting next era for us. Because I will be my owner, owner-occupier. I'll own the building and own the business, which has been a goal of mine for many years. So I think we've got a small amount of time for questions, but I'll kind of like give you some places if you want to learn more. We've got obviously on my Instagram, you can search my name. I'm on YouTube. And also I want to give everyone a gift. If you like what I've said today about business, I've got my— I used to charge for this $2,000. I've got my whole entire business course online for free. Just Mark Ottobre on YouTube. I'm releasing actually courses that I used to charge for, for free, like every so often. The next one I'm launching is how to do skinfolds. So there's heaps of courses that I've got on my YouTube. So free resource for you if you want to check that out. My website, markottobre.com, has links to pretty much everything. We podcast regularly, we do heaps of YouTube, we're everywhere. If you Instagram us or go on my website, you'll see.

Another question would be when you're screening your team, Have you ever put somebody on that doesn't have the same value set?

And yeah, early days, yes. And they get found out within probably 2 weeks. So we have a different process now is if we, if we have interest in someone, we'll get them to shadow for a week and then like within— and we've since doing this is there was a guy that came in, we thought it was an awesome fit. He shadowed in his first session. We're like, this guy's just not going to fit. There's just no way. So we asked him to leave. So we didn't hire him. We did a shadowing session. We brought him to the culture because it's— we see it straight away. They either fit in or they don't. And yeah, that's how we protect against that. We see how they are in our habitat because the thing about interviewing, just quickly, is I'm not— the interview isn't about how someone speaks. The interview is about how they perform as trainers. And the thing is with interviews is people can be good at interviews. So And some people who are really bad at interviews are actually awesome trainers. So you need to screen for that and have a process that eliminates that.

That was really great, thank you. Um, I had a question just about the business model with your coaches and trainers. So are they, um, I guess rate-wise, do they take a percentage or is it rent? Is it scalable?

All my guys are employed by us. We find every single client, uh, we sell every single client. My guys don't do any admin, don't do any marketing, don't do any sales. They're paid for as coaches. We have casual, we use it as a casual model. The reason for casual is because it's more transparent, as in if I pay you, let's say, you know, for 25 hours this week but you do 27, there's constant catch-up. And the reality of personal training is that we are at the mercy of our clients. And the clients, like, we could have someone— what we found is we could have someone booked in for 49 sessions but they end up doing 35 sessions that week. Week, so there's about a 17% variance, which is fairly common. So how do you manage that? And the only way I've found to manage it, instead of giving someone say a full-time contract where we could be under or overpaying them on the given week, we've done it as casual where it's, here's the hour, here's what you've paid for, this is the work you've done, and we've been able to manage it better that way. So we still pay super, we still pay the tax, all that kind of stuff, but we do it as a casual to keep the model more transparent. So Mark, you're 100 miles an hour, How do you balance your work life, particularly as you've got 2 kids? Well, just said, just with the schedule, to be honest. Look, I am pretty obsessive. I don't need much downtime. That's the truth. I love what I do and I feel like I'm on a mission in some respects. You know, we've got multiple aspects of the business, but in terms of managing, like, it doesn't feel like work to me. And I think that's probably why I've been able to outwork a lot of people. Like, the book took me 3 years. The studio, the build, is taking me another 3 years. I also think, I think on longer time horizons, like we're building a YouTube, and I know there's things that I want to do that I can't do now that frustrate me, but at the same time they're in process. So like, I'd like to do more if I had more people, to be honest. More people, more money, I'd be doing more, right? But it's, it really is just a matter of like being able to segment parts of your life and put them into compartments, I suppose. And you know, I live by my schedule. Schedule, and that's how I manage things. And I don't have— like, if it's not in my schedule, I, you know, I eliminate it, if that makes sense. So it's just being protective. You need— as the busier you get in business, the more protective you need to be over your time. So I'm just protective of my time is how I'd answer that. Yeah, thank you for having me, everyone. I hope you enjoyed. Thank you, baby.