Ep29: Scaling An Online Fitness Business To Do Over $1.5 million/year with Jake Wilmott

What's going on, everyone? I am here for another podcast episode. I've got Jake from Fit Tribe here with me today. So welcome to the SoJ. We've been connected on Facebook for a little while now, but over the coming days we've had some, some awesome conversations and I'm really happy you're able to, to jump on today. How are you this morning?

Very, very good, thanks. It's an honor to be on the, on the podcast, consumed many episodes. So always cool to. To be the one speaking 100.

It's. It's always good to connect with other people in the industry. So let's get stuck in, my friend. So for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give the listeners a bit of a summary of, you know, what you currently do, what you've done in the past and I suppose the journey that you've been on in the fitness industry?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I feel like the, the journey I've been on probably could take up the whole podcast. But yeah, obviously my name's Jake. I be running Fit Tribe now, which is an online health and fitness company for the last two and a half years. But prior to that, my now wife and I, plus our business partner Paige, who that's. The three of us all run Fit Tribe together. So, you know, and we used to run it. We used to run gyms. We used to have a gym in Southport on the Gold coast, plus we used to also have one in Morrifield. So I know it was a little bit of a distance apart. It was part of a franchise at the, at the time and, you know, now that franchise ended up going into the. Into the hole, which was never fun, but a lot of learning lessons for us. And that was why, to be honest, the actual reason why we started Fit Tribe, yeah, we jobs got made redundant and one of us left and then literally we had three days to. To start Fit Tribe. And we literally, we'd already planned months and months prior to that whole scenario happening. We were going on just up to the sunny coast and just, just for a weekend away. And it just how the, I don't know, the world worked. And then that whole weekend we just built Fit Tribe and launched it on Monday because none of us wanted to have to go back and, you know, work for someone else because obviously when you start working for yourself, right, can be quite a, you know, quite a daunting thing to have to have a employee again. But even before that, guys, I actually am an engineer, which is like very probably a Lot of people don't know. So yeah, I actually used to work for an engineering company, started as a draftsman, designer and then that's how I started health and fitness started. I lost a lot of weight myself, lost 18 kilos in a couple months and just started coaching people on top of that, just more from an enjoyment standpoint. And then, you know, years and years and of doing that and, you know, different other things and businesses and that was when we started the gym. So sort of give you a bit of a 10 year period. It's been, you know, lots of, lots of online like always, always found online space to be, I think because you can help so many more people at a, at a, you know, and, and your reaches so much more. But to add to that as well, like I've only ever coached, you know, females, which is what we do to this to this day. So that's a bit of a, I guess a bit of a snapshot. I know there's a lot in that, but yeah, that's what, that's where we are today.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I was gonna say there's so many things to, to uncover. I didn't realize you had, you were part of a franchise gym. Do you mind if I ask which franchise that was?

Yeah, so it's, it's, it's redundant now. So the franchise doesn't exist. So it was called Five Element Fitness 5EF. They had 13, 13 studios from calling Gadda up till Morayfield. Yeah, so we were a part of that. We were part of the prototype. Paige, Jade and myself were part of the prototype in Southport. That was sort of the one that we'd built up and we loved it, man. Loved every like, loved that, that, that process of building the gym, it was such a hustle and then it allowed us to. Once the, the owners ended up, you know, franchising it and opens 13 studios, it allowed us to see it from a different perspective as well, from like, you know, from operations to managing all the studios. So we learned a lot and we are internally grateful, you know, for that experience. Albeit we didn't love the ending of that relationship. But, you know, it is what it is. But we are internally grateful for the lessons that they taught us because, you know, it's allowed us to, to know what's. What, what to do and also maybe what not to do and yeah, allowed us to be the success that we have in pit tribe. I wouldn't, I'd say we wouldn't have the success without those, you know, learnings as well.

Yeah, it's interesting that you. You say that because, like, I remember back when I was building my business, sometimes at the time the hardest times become the greatest times, but because it allowed you to, you know, for example, pivot to a different direction, which therefore changed your life in a different way. Or, you know, as you said, the learnings that you. That you had from that experience have now set you up in the. In the new business, which is 100%.

Yeah. And it's hard in the moment, right? Like, in the moment you're angry, you're annoyed, you have so many emotions going around. But yeah, like, I think that's always the scenario with a lot of things that happen in life. We. When. When the moment happens when your adrenaline or your emotions high, you think the worst and you read face and, you know, pissed. But then you look back, you know, as. As that sort of dies down, you go, oh, like, I am grateful for those scenarios. And, you know, I think it's. I think it's key. Like, you know, we could be annoyed at the way the relationship ended, but I am internally grateful for it, you know, and I know all three of us are for the lessons and the experiences that we got to. To learn. I think that's the biggest thing in life, right? We're all trying to learn and become better. And sometimes you got to be put, you know, in those bad scenarios or scenarios that aren't the best, you know, but unfortunately, until you're in the moment, you know, you can't be. I want to be in this scenario when a business is going down. Like, no one wants that, you know, but if it happens, you just end it, right? So you don't know. You only know what you know. So I think it's. It's just one of those things where, when, when they start to compound those lessons, that's when you really start to. Or I think when you really start to. To grow and become a, A better person as well.

Yeah, 100%. I'm curious to know a couple of your takeaways from that experience, because that could obviously be pretty. You know, I think you said you made redundant essentially, and had, you know, pretty much nowhere to go. You had no, no other business set up. So what were. What was some of the challenges that you learned from that experience to then type it into Fit Tribe now where it's. I think you're obviously completely online with Fit Tribe, aren't you?

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Completely online. Yeah. Like it was a sink or swim scenario, right? Like, you know, it was. Once again, like I just said before, it's a scenario where I would never wish that upon anyone ever. You know, it was a scenario where, you know, maybe we could have said we can see it coming, but we never wanted it to see it coming. But it's one of those scenarios where it is what it is. You know, it allowed us to build something and go out on our own. You know, to be very honest, you know, before when we were part of the franchise, the, the, the owner or the CEO was like our mentor for, you know, over seven years. You know, someone that we, we were very know, close with. And to be honest, maybe before that we might not have felt comfortable to, to go out on our own and create a fit tribe or, you know, do that because we'd always sort of done things with, with himself, with, with that guy. And you know, so that, that's a huge, you know, gratefulness, you know, that we, we just had to like we had no other, there was no other backup option, you know, so we were like, we, we knew we had the skills, but it was always having that confidence. And I think that's always, can be a hard thing with business owners. Especially, you know, if you're going from PT to online, it can be quite daunting, right, because it's like you only know what you know, you know, so you know, if you don't know online it's like, oh, at Facebook ad or you know, having a setter or clothes. Like there's all these, you know, many aspects that I think as humans we, we can overwhelm ourself to make it seem a lot daunting. And I think in the scenario we were, just because we had the sink or swim, you don't think, you just don't think about all of them. So that stress level just goes because you have to make it work, you know. And I think that's the hardest thing when someone makes a transition, you know, from you know, like we have closers that some of them are part time, you know, for us and they have decent wages and you know, for them to make the step from becoming, you know, to a full time closer, it's daunting because they get a paycheck every fortnight where becoming a closer, it's comms only, you know, so the harder they work, there's more upside. But it's also daunting because it can be inconsistent, you know, so that's, that's where I think it's, that's one of the biggest things that we we, we, we got from it and then, yeah, just there's so many little things that compound, you know, that's, I think all three of us learned, you know, which is why Fit Tribe is a success because all three of us wear very, very different hats. You know, I'm, I'm not a visionary. Like, I'm not, I am not the visionary for Fit Tribe, but I'm lucky my wife is, you know, I'm the doer. I will, you know, I'll get slapped. Something can have to make it a process and make it, you know, something to make it work. And you know, I think that's where people as well in the online or the fitness space are afraid to go into business with others. You know, I know you can get burned. I understand that. But I, I've always found it so much more enjoyable doing this business with my wife and our business partner. I think we would not have had the success that we've had because when we did it, people like, why don't you. And you know, my wife and I just do it together. But it's just so much more enjoyable. It really is. I really, I really do think that's a, an important point for fitness owners to, to get across because you can, you can do it on your own. Of course we could have, but it's just so much more enjoyable when you're doing it with others. Trust me.

Yeah, 100% I'd like to dive because, you know, for me, I, I do, I wear all the hats in my, in my business. And you know, my wife also runs her own business as well with, with the hair salon. So when you, when you're in business with your wife and obviously you also got a business partner as well, how do you, how do you come up with who, who does what? Like, what's that conversation like? Because I feel like it could go, could go either way sometimes you could, you might have conflicting things and then it causes more issues on your relationship and then also affects the business as well.

Yeah, I, I definitely don't think it's a black and white answer this one. But yeah, like I'd say over the last two and a half years it's gotten clearer and clearer. Like right. With the plates we're at now we have very clear direction with like what hats are worn by who and what is happening. But to say, you know, it's been a smooth road, that would be a flat out lie. You know, within the last two and a half years, my, my wife is, you know, we have a 11 month old now, you know, so we've had, we've, we traveled Europe for six months whilst we started Fit Tribe. You know, we've, we've had a baby. Like there's been so many. It's not just been smooth sailing. Right. I would say it's not simple, but I always do think it's important to. You know, I said it earlier where going in business is one of, I think one of the best things, going in business with, you know, others. But I know I've heard of some wild horror stories as well, so I can understand why people are hesitant. But obviously we'd already had experience running a business together, so it wasn't like this was like our first, you know, rodeo. Like we'd already run a gym together and had built something very successful so we already knew there was a trust level there. And I think it's just riding it out right. Like knowing what people's skills are is something where I think we sometimes can lack as humans. And you know, having that transparency and being like, no, I'm, this is not what I'm good at. But also not being afraid to try. Like, I think that's why, you know, and I know many people would say this about the three of us is we're just, we're just tries. We'll try. Like why not try? Like we've tried, we tried to launch into Europe, America, weird countries. Like we just try. Like what, what's the worst thing that can happen? You know, like we went into a country called Liberia. I almost guarantee no one's going to know what that country. That actually was an roi. We ended up cutting it because it made no sense and the time zone was, no, was wild. But we just try, you know, and I think the, and it's getting a little off topic but you know, I think the key to it is you have to have tough conversations. But also like that, that's. If you can't have tough conversations, do not go onto business with someone, you know, because I think that's where, you know, and, and you know, obviously that scenario we run this with my wife, you know, so it's like we have to know when to, you know, have that balance between business, you know, our relationship. Plus now we have a little man, you know, 11 month old. So once again, different hats, wearing at different parts at different times of the day and there's, there's tough conversations and I think my wife wouldn't be annoyed at me sharing this because I shared this the other day, but there was a time you know, obviously when once we had our little man, like postpartum, you know, depression is, is a legitimate thing.

Right.

And it's, it's, it's something where it was tough. She was not in a good place. Fit Tribe wasn't doing it wasn't in the best place either, unfortunately. And I had to have a tough conversation with her, you know, and I, I think it's something that made us stronger. But I had to say like, I just didn't feel like at the time she was being our CEO of Fit Tribe and, and leading us. So, you know, I had to take over as that interim CEO and, and it's not me, that's not my hat. Like I, I, when I took over that hat, I was said, this is not what I want to do. But I'm happy to do it for the short term because it's what needed to happen, you know, and that slowly I've trans, I transitioned back out many, many months ago. But it's, it's important to know where like that's a hard conversation to have and I'm really poor at communication, like my communication skills. I don't know if it's, it's one thing that I think I need a lot, a lot of work on, but the way I perceived that coming out was not the way it came out and you know, I probably made it a lot worse than it needed to be. And it's one of my massive, you know, flaws, but also something that I'm, I always want to work on. But yeah, that's, it's tough like to have that conversation with your wife, you know, and business partner and to, and then come out and ended up being a good thing in the end. You know, it's just those scenarios. So guys, if you're listening to this, yes, go into business, it's great with, with friends and etc. But you have to have those tough conversations and be willing to, you know, I think if you can't do that. Yeah, probably don't 100%.

No, it sounds like you're very self aware, which is I think a very important part of, you know, being in business with other people where, you know, you can identify if things do need to change, then you need to have that tough conversation where a lot of people would just, you know, let it, let it run its course type of thing. And congrats on your little man as well. I, yeah, I've got two kids now, so I've got a two year old and a six week old now. So you Know, still balancing, we love the balancing act.

Right. Congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. So I suppose because from my understanding, like fit tribes, quite a big, big brand now. So how do you, how do you kind of manage? Yeah, I know obviously you said before we jumped on here, you've got your little man into, into daycare but do, do you find it quite challenging to balance the, the family life aspect with such a, you know, big business?

Yeah, like to be honest, when you use the word big business, I, I still think we're such a small fish, you know, I really do. You know, in the online space I know there's some big players out there that makes us look like we're still very small fish. But. Yeah, like up until two months ago, to add to all this degrees of difficulty, my wife and I have lived a very nomadic lifestyle for the last two years. We found out we were pregnant in London. Like, you know, like just wild stories, like our story, we always explain it to friends and family and like, like I said, we just try, we just do stuff. Like earlier this year we did a month in Melbourne, six weeks in Cos harbor, like we were moving. So like that adds to the difficulty of we'll make it harder for ourselves. And that's when we were self aware to look, look back and go, we probably need to commit to like a place for six months, if not longer. And that's where we moved to Woody Point, you know. And yeah, like that balancing act, you know, it was so hard for us to, to put the little man into daycare because for the first, you know, what, like seven, seven months, eight months, we were like, oh, we can do and we could do it but it's, it's, it's just being self aware enough where like he needed more of our attention and we're in a stage where we want to grow and Fit Tribe was our baby up until having the little man, you know, so for us, you know, to get rid of that is very hard. And there was guilt, you know, just talking from my first hand, I'm sure my wife was in a similar scenario because we'd always wanted to not have to put him in daycare, but we were self aware enough where it's, it's, it's what was needed, you know, for us as well. I think that's a big thing as well. And the guilt we can put on ourselves putting each child into daycare, especially when like, you know, we are, we know we do work from home but you know, we do have things we do have to do and to balance that out. So I think a little off topic there, but yeah, it's a balancing act. Like it really is. I don't think there's a clear answer of how to balance it. You know, we live our life by a calendar, but we've always done that. So. So, you know, for us once we had the little man, it just was, if it's not on the calendar, it's probably not going to happen, you know, and if it's on the calendar, it's going to happen, you know, and, and it's not the most sexiest thing in the world, but it's what's worked for us. And it's just, yeah, even like catching up with friends, it's got to be on the calendar. It's probably got to be some warning because last minute it just probably doesn't float.

You're very similar to me. Like, I. But everything is in my calendar and my wife knows this and she was like, well, are you picking up, you think about winter? I was like, it's not in the calendar. What do you mean?

Yeah, but it's like once again, for some that will work, you know, and for, for many it won't. You know, I'm not, I can't say I'm super strict with like everything I do with day to day, like as I'm actioning things throughout the day. But like events and prior planning is important just because I think otherwise you'll miss things. Right. You know, especially when there are so many variables at place now. You know, we don't have, we don't have really any staff, but you know, we have contractors and people that do need us to get better. And you know, there are variables that are ever so changing. People leaving, coming, like that's just, that's our hard right now. Right. You know, and I always think that you get to pick what your heart is and you know, if we can't complain at that, you know, because it's what I picked this, I picked to do this. So I'm the only one, like I can't complain to someone if I'm the one that chose to do what I'm doing 100%.

I love to dive into, you know, the, the online business because obviously, as I said before the podcast, a lot of my audiences, personal trainers that have the ambition to do online, a lot of them start face to face and then they want to go kind of all in online. So I wanted to kind of understand, I suppose, what, what the business looks like. He said, you've got Some contractors, some closes, I would imagine. Do you want to give us some context and what the, what that actually looks like to run a business of your size? I know you said, you know, you're still relatively small, but do you want to give people some insight into, I suppose, what it looks like to run a business of your size? From my understanding, I was listening to your podcast with JD the other day. I think you, you're running 100k per month at the moment, roughly. I don't know how accurate that is, but I'd love to know kind of what, how it actually operates in terms of like, do you have appointment setters, closes, all that type of stuff?

Yeah, definitely. So lots to unravel there. So, yeah, like I said, like, if you're, if you're a face to face pt listening to this and want to go online, I understand it can be very hard and daunting, you know, but having good people around you will make it easier. We have great people around us, you know, and I, I would, I put a lot of our success down to that because, you know, I think it's having that transparency to not reach out to people to be like, hey, like, what is it that you're doing? You know, we're very transparent with, with our business and the numbers, you know, that we do. So yeah, this year our goal coming in was to, to bring in a million contract, so a million, you know, in contract and you know, that that is hugely shifted to now bringing in a million dollars. And we're way, way on track for that with probably bringing in like one and a half to 2 million contracts. So, you know, just exceeding our expectations. Like we were way ahead, you know, and we're just hitting numbers we never thought were possible. Right. You know, we've done it a little differently, I would say. We have no organic, like, no, like, I think we've had less than, I'm going to say five clients, I probably count them on one hand, that have come in organically. All of ours has been built, built purely from a, an advertising, you know, spend. But once again, that was the business we'd built, you know, was what we knew. It's when we first started, I was, and I still am very confident with ads, but it's now something that we have outsourced, you know, but when you first start, we didn't have that luxury to outsource. And I think that's also the other hard thing. You know, I can tell you the way I run my business, but when you first start, it was not like this. You know, we've built, we've built in luxuries and things to have setters to have closes. But as business owners, like coming off this, I just did a two hour call drive this morning because we have setters that unfortunately a couple of left. You know, we have closes. One sick. Like, you know, there's variables, right. I'm not, I'm not beneath me to like, we love doing all this stuff. It's why I built the business we do. So yeah, we have appointment setters, we have closes. They're all comms only they get, they get rewarded, I believe, very nicely. You know, we, we always try and build a very like team focused, you know, with that goal that we had at the start of the year, bring in, you know, bringing in a mill. So it's 350 clients for us. We're actually taking the whole team to the Philippines, you know, so for us that was something we wanted to reward the team. And you know, we have a couple of EAs that are in the Philippines. One that's been with us pretty much since the inception of Fit Tribe. And I've never, we've none of us ever been to the Philippines. So we thought it was a really cool like little team goal to build into as well into the success and the reward. And it keeps people around because like if you're not a part of Fit tribe, you know, and you leave us now or something happens. Well, yeah, you're not coming to the Philippines. So it was just a reward to incentivize people staying, but also for us to have something that's fun and, and rewarding as well.

That's awesome. That's so cool that you can. Yeah. Give that opportunity for your contractors to, to go to the Philippines. That's, that's epic. What's, I'm curious obviously, because you didn't obviously start like that as you said. So when did you make the decision to have, you know, whether it's appoint appointment setters or at what stage do you kind of do that? Do you kind of just. Are you kind of doing everything yourself and then, you know, you can just get so, so busy. You're like, well, I need to offload this stress type of thing. Or were you, I suppose, forecasting when to actually get that done and did you have specific numbers that you had to hit in order?

It was, yeah, definitely not the forecast. Now, now we can forecast like now, you know, it's taken a while, you know, and a very big tip. And this correlates across to any business is like know your data and be super clear with what you're tracking and why you're tracking it and have purpose around tracking because I think you stuck in a well instead of just tracking all this data and you're like, are you actually utilizing that data now? We can forecast and like have a bit of a game plan of like, you know, always trying to be ahead of like the people we need on the team. But yeah, no, initially it was just, you know, it was just something where we wanted to start to slowly I think we've been, we've outsourced like setting and closing settings. Been more recent. I would say like, I'd say maybe the last like three to probably like four to six months. I'd say pretty much this year closing. We've probably outsourced now for nearly, nearly a year. The reason it was that way was purely because like the three founders, Jay Page and myself love to set like and we still do setting all the time. It's a part of our business. And I said this on JD's podcast and he said it's very strange to hear this, but it's a part of our business. We really like, I like that first point of contact. I get to hear, you know, and change that person's life and you know, get them out of their own way to help them. And it's something we still do every day, Monday to Friday, you know, we all do at least an hour, if not, you know, two hours, sometimes more because it's a part of our business to enjoy. But I think it can be to know the right time. It can be quite tricky because you know, obviously for yourself, but you can't even outsource unless you're in the high ticket space. You know, before we did high ticket programs we were doing eight week challenges. We were just churning and burning, you know, and, and once again it was what we knew at the time, you know, until we had a sales mentor shift our focus to, you know, bigger programs. And once again I, I almost, I know he'll be listening to this. You know, it was something we're internally grateful for because we only knew what we knew at that time. And he shifted our pro to programs to be a lot longer and that was a huge game changer, you know, for, for our business, you know, and if we didn't make that change, we would never have been able to have setters and closes because they just, there wouldn't be enough margin to be able to give them comms, to be able to make It a viable option, you know, so that's where that high ticket space. And I know a lot of trainers get eerie about it because it's, it's that perceived value. Right. But like our program costs what most people will pay for one PT session and we're everything. Nutrition, fitness, accountability, you know, so once again, it's just that perceived value. And you know, I think it's always. It can be. You can make it scarier than you think. That's for sure. Coming from the one side to the other, 100%, it.

It resonates with me a lot because I've got one client comes to mind. He was, he was saying to me, oh yeah, no one can afford, no one can afford PC anymore. And I was like, well, you know, what's the perceived value that you're putting on your, your package? So when you, when you said your, your procedure value was obviously quite high, what were the shifts that you needed to change to be able to chart? Was it just that you charged extra plus the longer duration, or did you.

Just value just a longer duration? Like we never. Yeah, and, and I don't know who you're talking about, but I, I was used to be exactly like that person you was talking about. I used to think our program was a lot of money, but it's what I perceived, you know, and I think that can be a downside to a lot of, you know, owners or even sales people. You push your perceived values onto the prospect on the other ends. No, don't. Oh, I need to talk to my partner. And, but for Jade and I, that's something we do. So I actually believe when people would give a partner objection, but it's just like, I can't push that on and believe everyone has that mindset. But yeah, to answer the question, it was, I think the longer programs for us was a big thing and, you know, pricing it at a point where, you know, now for us, like, we can, we can shift prices and then just go off like a conversion rate. And, you know, that's the metric that we follow to see if we've priced it well. And you know, right now we've beat.

We've.

We've been wanting to up our prices for a little bit, but, you know, it's something we've sort of, we've put it on hold for the last couple of months. But once again, you know, I know our program is probably like a mid to. I wouldn't even say like, I know there's more expensive programs for what we offer, you know, so for us and then knowing the results we get people I perceive that value so, so high. I know the results we get. Like it's something we are so internally proud of at Fit Tribe because it's something where our product is very, very, very, very good. It gets assessed every week. Every single week the product gets assessed because it's what is makes us Fit Tribe. Like I can have the best team in the world, but it will help every other person of the team. It helps the closes, helps the setters, helps every part of that funnel because the product is so good. And once again, you know, if you, if you're assessing it every single week and making that product better over a time, it compounds like this. We didn't start this last week, we started two and a half years ago. And now it's at a point where there's so many client wins, so many before and afters, where it's just that domino effect. Right. You know, and it's what makes it very, very exciting.

Well said. What, when, when you say you assess it every week, what do you, what do you mean by that? You like review the progress of client results or are you reviewing the systems that you have?

What do you mean by data? Everything. Yeah. So like from people who are filling in check in forms to you know, people messaging through because they have access to us 247 to people who on our live calls like data guys, data, like data driven. You know, once again I love data. That's engineering background. Love it. Numbers really, really do. So obviously there's some, definitely some correlations there. And to be honest, I know for a lot of people like if I vibrant data to. My wife hates it. Like not, not her thing. Like just not, you know, she'll, she'll, she'll respect it and know that, you know, things are improving is its excitement but I love that that drives me. So once again it's the hat I wear within Fit Tribe. Paige who also other business partner does like data but you know, not as much as myself but it's just making assessments because I think as well for any part, not just the program or the, the, the what you're offering is like you make assumptions, right? Oh, I think this is working. You can't use the word think like you're making an assumption of what. Oh, I think I can use an example. A little off topic here, but the other day we have two niches that we coach and I perceived for a very long time that both niches are doing well. Cost per sale was dropping across both Niches somewhere. Oh, beautiful. And then I started tracking the data clearly and I was like, wow. One is like holding the, holding the other one up. So we had, we ended up shifting it from 50, 50 split ad spend to 80, 20. Now the goal is to get that one that's at 20 back to. I want it to get to 50, 50. But for a long time I was making an assumption that I felt I was just using my mind and how I felt. But then when I started clearly tracking the data, I was like, wow. What I was assuming was way off, you know, so a little off topic, but I think it gives context to what we're asking here. Like just assessing. Because if people are doing your program, guys, and getting results and checking in and talking to and jumping on the live calls, you've got a good program. If people are. There's parts of your program that are missing and, and it's not being afraid to like test stuff. You know, we like when I even say test stuff, like the check in form, there might be too many questions on your check in form. People, people are time poor. Like, you know, so just as little things like that. Not saying that you need to like overdo it because I, I know there's times I probably overdo it but you know, it's something that, that, that's how we assess it, you know, and it's that communication that we have, you know, and, and we just have so many like different things in place that allow our program and allow people to succeed.

Yeah. Love it. Very good. So what's the, what's. I know you've got some pretty epic goals that you're smashing this year, but what's like the long term goal for you guys with Fit Trap?

Yeah, like obviously this year we, well, we are well exceeding our goals. So for us it's just, we're at a really good place. Like, we are, we're at a very, very good place. You know, we have very limited stress in our life, you know, and, but, but it's obviously been the, the hard work, right? Like it's so easy to, you know, and it's always hard to talk about the success, but it's like, yeah, like it's so easy for us to be like, yeah, we're in a great place, but we are, but it's been so much hard work, guys. You know, like, I didn't even go into this story. Like when we first came back, we were like, I was like flyer dropping. We're doing wild stuff because Fit Tribe wasn't doing as well as it was. Like we just come back from traveling Europe for six. There's so many little stories that's happened over the last two and a half years. But you know, the one thing you learn is when it's not beneath us, like if that's what we have to do, we'll do it. Like I'm not against, you know, making ends meet to keep things rolling because there's a bigger vision. We only just really started paying ourselves not that long ago, like with some decent coin. We were living off like very limited, you know, dollars because we knew there was a place we wanted it to get to and now we're getting to reap those, those massive rewards. But yeah, the goal is just keep scaling it up. We never want to be the, the biggest, you know, we just want it to be at a place where margins make sense. Limited. I shouldn't say limited. Stress. There's always stress in any, anything you do. But just. Yeah, it's, it's hard to know a clear goal and I know that's, it's not, it isn't super clear. Like I couldn't give you a three or five year goal but, but where we are right now, I think our goal would be to just sort of scale it up and, and be with the, be in the mindset and the place we are where we're, we're like, yeah, this is good. This is what we, why we started Fit Tribe, you know, and we, we're the, we get to create the vehicle we're in, you know. You know, and I think that's the, the fun thing with business because it ever so changes, you know, like it's the cool thing. You can do something tomorrow and change and shift and you know, I think you changed recently. Right. Like it's just that you have that luxury. That's, that's the luxury you get to pick. So yeah, not a really clear answer, but some exciting things, that's for sure.

Yeah. Like obviously I've, you know, probably over the last 12 months for me I've just been similar to you. I've just been trying different things. See what, see what works, see what doesn't work. And you know, not everything is going to, to work but you know, you're going to learn along the way as well. I'm curious as well. Like I know you mentioned on it before, but I'm curious. Why don't you do any organic is. So you say you only do paid. Is that just because that's what you, what you know, do you find that organic doesn't work as well.

There's no, there's no logic to it. I will not lie. It's just, it's just how it's worked. I don't know. We had one random reel the other day that like is up to like 30mil views and moved our follower count from like 1k to 10k now. But it's like you look at that and you're like, wow, 10k followers. But it's like it is what it is. Like, you know, it's something that we do want to put focus on at one point but for us, like, why stop doing what is working, you know? So for us right now it's just not like I shouldn't use the word not needed, but it's just like, I think that can be the other downside to business owners is we try, you know. Yes, you do have to try things. And I'm not going to say we have never not tried because we do. We still upload, we still upload quite regularly on our stories and our, on our, on the socials, but there's no thought around it, you know, so if there's no process, well, I can't expect that process. And it's like, you know that it's something we're working on but it's just not something that we're putting all of our energy in because right now what we are currently doing works amazingly and it's one, one again like I'm sure there's a lot of personal trainers on here that, you know, organic would be the best thing in the whole world and to start that might give them their first, you know, one to you know, 20 clients and we, we did that initially to start as well but you know, then we started spending marketing budget and have now scaled it to a pretty decent point and it allows us to, it just, just I, I think it's, I think it's easier but once again it's what I think is easy, you know, so someone who's coming from an organic background might be like, wow, I have to spend $0 and I get all these people coming in. Once again, it's just what they know. So I, I, you know, I don't know, I've never, we've never been good at it. So it's just one of those, it's a hard thing to, so there's anyone out here listening that can help us with our organic. I'm open ears. I'm, I'm open ears.

Yeah, I suppose it comes down to like if it's, if it's working well, then why, why change it? That's one thing that I've been talking to a few people recently about, you know, because I'm trying all these different things and I'm like, well, why don't I just go back to what worked really well the first time instead of trying to change.

It's where you can get stuck. Right. You know, I think there's a learning in what you just said. Like, I think yes, you do have to try and be adaptable and do all these different things to be open to it, but you also have to be aware that like, you know, you don't want to stop what was always working, you know, and, and I think it's so hard as an ego thing to go, oh, you know, you know, we always think the grass is greener on the other side. Like most of us humans think that, you know, but I think it's one of those scenarios where, you know, we had, we had an example, I'm almost gonna say maybe a year ago, right, One of our mentors was like, we wanted to do like these little add on things with our program. These like sporadic challenges, all these things. And he's like, he's like, just stop. Just like, well, it's like, just explain to me what's currently working. We, you know, the model, the process we do now. And he's like, and why, why do you want to change? Like, keep doing, it's like keep doubling down until, until what you currently work, like is working. Like either plateaus out or starts to lot more than what it initially cost. That's when you start to add email marketing or maybe we go down an organic route, you know, so that, that's, that's where I think it's a metric. Once again. It'll be different for everyone that people should track because it's hard. You want to, you want it, the shiny thing, the exciting thing, but it's like, keep doing, keep it boring. Keep doing what you're doing until it stops.

Good point, good point.

Awesome.

I love it, my friend. That was an awesome, awesome conversation. If people do want to follow along your journey, whether it's Fitdribe or yourself, where can people follow you on socials?

Yeah. So Fit Tribe, just Fit Tribe official and then, yeah, mine's just Jake Walmont on, on Instagram. Yeah. Slide into the DMs. Always happy to have conversations and see where they, see where they land. My wife and I are about to start a podcast as well. Was actually off the Back of. To be honest, we've always wanted to do it, but it's just always been a time thing for us. You know, just talking about like literally what we spoke about today, business, family, how we manage that, because it's not as simple as here's a, here's a solution. You know, just, just talking, talking it out loud. So yeah, make sure you follow and stay tuned for that. And yeah, appreciate, appreciate the chat. I think it's been a good one.

Yeah. 100. Yeah. One of the things that, one of the things or the best things I did was start the podcast because even just talking things out loud helps process a lot of things that, you know, sometimes gets stuck in your mind. So just obviously connecting with different people, even if it's podcast and just, even if it's you and your wife, I'm not sure if you're going to do it just with you guys or if you've got to get other people on. But just talking, talking out loud sometimes just brainstorming ideas sometimes helps clear.

Well, you've got to have good, you got to have good people around you. Like, you know, have good people to, to go with ideas. Because we all have ideas. That's just called being a human. Right. But it's then knowing how to action them and if they are actually a good idea. And I think sometimes having that unemotional person that might not be in the crux of it. That's where I think a lot of the mentors that we have in our current life have allowed us to just succeed a lot faster. Because, yeah, there's, when there's emotion attached, you think that's the best idea in the whole world and this is going to get you, it's going to be your North Star. And then you explain and you're like, oh, yeah, maybe it's not, not to ruin the, the excitement, but I think that's just something where, you know, I think that's a really big little tip there that I can end with have good people around you.

100, mate. Well, thanks again for jumping on and yeah, enjoy the rest of your day.

Awesome, man. Thank you so much.