Ep70: The Truth About Scaling a PT Business No One Talks About - Brad Bedford

Alrighty, team. Good afternoon, it's Matt here from the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. I've got Mr. Brad Bedford here. How are you this afternoon, my friend?

Very good, Matt, how are you, mate?

Good, thanks, champion. Thank you so much for jumping on and having a conversation. We're just talking before we started recording, saying that, you know, we've been probably connected on social media for a while, but haven't really properly had a proper conversation, to be honest. So it's actually good to have a. Have a conversation. But for those who don't know who you are, do you want to give us a bit of a summary of, you know, what you've been doing in the fitness industry and how it all came about?

Yeah, certainly. So, like, for me, I suppose I'll try and keep it as short as possible at first, you know. I Left School in 2004 and became a personal trainer straight away. It was my first job out of school, literally straight away. I was at a gym there for about 12 months and I actually went bankrupt, unfortunately, so I was forced to transition and I'm based over here in Perth. So as everyone in Perth did back then, I went to the mines and was up there earning really good money, wasn't passionate about it and knew I sort of wanted to get back into the fitness space. So I had to obviously redo my CC points. So I did my Cert 4 program again, camera, came back and went into good life in success here was there for about six months before I hired my first coach to work underneath me. Within 12 months, I had two coaches working underneath me for delivering 50 sessions a week myself, plus my coaches doing really well. And then transitioned to another commercial gym, did the same again. At that point I had five coaches underneath me and. And was paying for it to rent a room as well. And I was like, this is crazy. You know, rent's costing me a fortune for all these trainers. I'm gonna go out and do this, do this myself and open a gym. And at that point I was getting some business coaching from Jack Zuvalek, who used to own the Body consultants. And someone mentioned to me, oh, hey, Brad, I heard you're opening a Body Consultants. And that wasn't the case. They were just helping me out. And Jack, Jack and I had a bit of a chat and I was like, oh, hey, this sort of rumor came, you know, out in the industry is very small. He's like, well, that's a good point. Why? Why, like, why don't you come and open a studio with us? And why don't you sort of join up with us and we go and do it. So we did that. We grew our facility very quickly and I then became their operations manager and helped them go out and scale to the five locations we had here in Perth and one over in New Zealand, helping train their team and develop their staff and build out their processes and systems with them. And then in 2020, obviously through Covid, you know, the gyms got shut down. We did some online stuff and actually started getting some, some business coaching with a guy, Jimmy Pomponio. Our business actually grew in Covid while most people were shutting down. We were still marketing and still selling. He was like, bread, what the hell are you doing? How are you converting people? What's going on? And I started doing some work, work for him inside of his program and then sold out of my gym in 2021. And I sort of been in the, I suppose the sales coaching space for gym owners, personal trainers of online coaches ever since. And now I suppose really sit in that seat helping, you know, everyone from rental based pts to studio owners, online coaches really dial in their sales processes and sales systems so they convert more of their leads into.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a pretty crazy journey. Hey. Like it's, you know, some of, some of it's very similar to me like, except obviously you've been in it a lot longer than me. I actually only just started in Covid, so I've been a PT only for five years, but I do similar thing. Had trainers underneath me and you know, had multiple locations, had a gym myself, but I unfortunately couldn't even sell my gym. I was actually in a rush to get rid of it because I was so keen to get online. I just let the lease run out and kind of sold all the equipment.

But, well, I, I was even selling my studio. It was funny, like Jimmy was like, hey, come and work for me. And I was like, bro, I've got this studio. And I was, I was pretty much outsourced other than doing sales and a bit of management stuff. But he actually knew someone looking to go and get more studios or open more studios. So he introduced us and within sort of 30 days of us connecting, the deal was done, it was sold and I was out of there. So worked out really, really well. I sold the studio September 2021. My daughter was born in December 21, so I'll be able to work at home the whole time she's been around, which was part of the reason I wanted to get rid of it quickly once that was the decision and best thing I ever did.

Yeah, it's, it's so funny how some stories are very similar to, to, to mine because like my, I sold my gym last year in March, so I got, I got two young kids so I've got almost 3 year old and 10 month old and one of the reasons why I wanted to close the gym is to be at home more with the kids. Yeah, it's funny how things kind of work out and you know, now I'm doing some business coaching as well for pts and I'm still doing online pt. So. Yeah, it's funny how a lot of people are on a similar, similar journey. Yeah.

And you know, it's one of those things. There's lots of pts. I always say this to myself, if I had my time again, what would I have just stayed a pt, paying rent in a studio. Because people always think that hey, going out and owning a studio is always this like big end goal for personal trainers. Right. But the thing is you go from paying 350 a week rent or around that to paying like 50 grand a year for a lease, plus marketing, plus insurance and plus everything else and no one tells you any of that, those sorts of things. And you know, you go from worrying about, you know, filling yourself up with PT clients and maybe one or two PTs working under you to now, okay, I've now got, you know, the whole gym I have to fill up plus all these trainers, plus they're all working for me and everything falls onto my shoulders. So you have to do all the marketing, sales, bookkeeping, processes and systems and all this stuff that, you know, they don't, they don't tell you all of that when they're saying, hey, go and own a gym, it's amazing. So they're kind of like, would I have my time again and just stay being a rent based PT without all those overheads. Possibly knowing what I know now.

Possibly literally like very similar to me, like because I had, I had one gym on my own and my other five were rental based trainers and my other five were the same rent as what my just my one gym was.

Yeah.

Well, is it really worth it?

Yeah.

But I'm super keen to dive into a couple things with you. Like you mentioned, obviously a lot of processes and systems, obviously sales as well. Specifically talking, like if we were to talk about rental trainers, for example, what are some of the things you see in terms of either sales or systems that a lot of pts kind of struggle with?

Well, I think a big Part they don't have anything in regards to processes for sales or systems. You know, a lot of rental based pts, they get jumpstart or kickstart packs and they're sort of told, hey, you have to do, you know, some sort of movement screen, a little bit of a consultation and then take them out and you know, show them how to use a program. So I think we need to go right back to the very first part of that is, you know, we can't show someone a program or even help them really until we know what they're trying to achieve, what they've been doing so far to help them try and achieve it, why they think it has or hasn't worked, and what they're looking for in regards to the next sort of program or next phase of training they're going to go into when they start working with a new coach potentially. So Lindsey Go would have a very thorough conversation with them to figure out what they're looking to achieve, what's kept them stuck. Because those consultation processes aren't to make a sale. The goal isn't to sit down, do a consultation and make a sale, it's to see if there is a sale to be made. And there's a big difference because there's no point selling someone a program who it's not a good fit for. So going through and actually having a script or a framework that you stick to consistently with that that gives you a predictable outcome is massively important.

Yeah, that's huge. And I think a lot of people, especially the people that I talk to, they think that everything is kind of sold in the PT session where I personally think it's kind of the opposite. It all kind of happens when you're actually having a conversation with them and understanding the reason why they actually want to achieve a certain goal and why they haven't able to achieve it so far. So do you feel like a lot of people kind of get it the wrong way around?

Yeah, they try and rely on the experience they give someone to make the sale. And it even happens with people that own gyms. They come and do like a one session free trial. If this person's ever been training before, you're going to take them on a session, they're going to be sore after it and all these sorts of things from doing nothing. So quite often we're given the framework as rental based pts. We have to do a consultation, we have to do a training session. We've got 45 minutes. I was quite happy to spend that whole 45 minutes having a conversation with someone, knowing that if they had a problem, I could convert them. And then the session they were going to go and do on the gym floor was generally their first PT session with me. Or I would just give them a free PT session to start off the process because you're trying to rush that conversation and then to get them out on the gym floor and sell them on experience. You're not really, I suppose, serving either yourself or your prospect fully because you're rushing through the conversation and you're rushing through the session on the gym floor.

Yeah, completely agree. And in terms of that, like what do you, what do you say to kind of. Because a lot of clubs that they'll try and they'll try and dictate what the PT should do sometimes in those kind of complimentary sessions type of thing. I know some of the people that I've spoken to in the past, they said, you know, no, you have to give them two physical PT sessions. What do you do in that scenario when the clubs are kind of dictating what you should be doing?

Ask why? Like, like it's, it's out. I know that's our business we're running, right? We have to remember this. Like we're running a business inside of their studios, we're not employed by them. So it's like, finds out, okay, you have to do two sessions. Okay, excellent, like, can I get some help? Like, why is it two sessions on the gym floor? Like, why is that the case? And they're probably going to come and say, oh, we want our clients to know that they know how to use the equipment, they know how to do this, they know how to do that. But for us to do that, there's no point showing someone a machine or a piece of equipment but they may never ever going to use based upon the goals they're looking to achieve. So we have to have that conversation with them first and foremost. And that's probably the most important part of even showing them the machines is getting to understand what they're looking to achieve and why. And then from that, then taking them out and showing them the pieces of equipment that are really, really important. I definitely think we have to, you know, in rental based scenarios, we have to go out and show them the equipment if they've never been here before and never use the equipment before. Definitely that's a part of what we have to do. But for me it's the biggest part is the conversation. Now if the studio is like, hey, you have to do two sessions on the gym floor. That's the process. Then I would take it upon myself to make it three sessions in total. I'll do a consultation first and then I would go and do the two sessions on the gym floor, backing myself that I'm going to give them an amazing two sessions on the gym floor and if I don't obviously sign them up in that first session, I'll then become the person they come back to when the time is right and they need a program or something else updated because you've given them great service. Yep.

Love your work. And in terms of like, if you need to do those, you know, two, maybe three sessions and you kind of said it just then, but are you still trying to like, if, if they actually need help and need a solution, are you naturally just going to provide that solution in that first session or.

Do you wait in the first session? Yeah, if I've like, if I've taken you out of taking you to a movie and bought you dinner and you're back at my house, I'm not going to send you away to come back to the next date. Right. Like I'm going to take it, make a difference there. So this is where you're having a conversation that makes sense and it makes sense to present a solution there. And then like what is taking them on the gym floor and showing them around some equipment, how is that helping them make a decision if you're the right person or not to help them with their goals? It's, it's not. If anything is going to distract them from the conversation you've just had. So that's why I'm always a big fan of the first session is purely conversation. I might go and at the end of that conversation, if I haven't signed them up and they're brand new to a gym, I'll go and show them how to use some cardio equipment and then I'll try and book them in again for a session the next day or a couple days later to run them through the workout or the, you know, the equipment that I have to get shown through. Yeah, love it.

In my opinion, when you're doing that follow up session or that next session, in my experience, in terms of getting like a high show up rate for that as well, I always tell people like you need to book that in literally, ideally within 24 hours, 48 hours after that first initial, you know, conversation. Because then like a lot of the time in that conversation you're creating a lot of impulse and a lot of like emotional triggers for People as well. And in my experience, and that's when people make the decision is when they're emotional. What are your thoughts on that? Definitely.

And like, and what everyone cares about themselves first and foremost. Right. So we need to explain to them what's in it for them to come back to the next session. So it's like, hey Matt, obviously had a great conversation today. Like in the next session I'm going to take you through and map out exactly the sort of exercises you should be doing to help you achieve xyz. So at the end of that session you're confident coming in and you can run yourself through a workout. So like tell them what they're going to do during the session, what the outcome of that session is going to be so they have something to look forward to. So hey, let's meet back here tomorrow and I'll run you through a workout. It's like, well that, what does that even mean? Like to these people who have never been to a gym before, they had no idea what's happening and they may expect a full blown PT session where you're there running them, running them through a whole workout or are you going through and showing them equipment so they know how to be safe and how to use everything. So you need to be very clear on the expectations, what that actually session is going to include so you can meet them during that session.

Awesome, that's really good. And like obviously we talked a little bit about sales, so let's talk about like overall systems. Can you mention obviously you've scaled teams, obviously you've been operations manager. So obviously a lot of systems need to be put in place for obviously that type of position. If it was just like a solo PC, like a solopreneur, what type of systems do you really need to kind of make it work? Just, just working for yourself.

Yeah. And like saying like systems and stuff like when we get at the body consultants, we had six studios on Google, Excel documents, right. So you don't, you don't need to have, you know, all these massive systems and processes to be, to be super efficient. It can be, you know, simple as possible and it's all about matching where you are. But I think the biggest thing you need as a, as a personal trainer is somewhere to store a database of prospects. So whether that's in an Excel spreadsheet, if it's in a note section of your, of your phone, if you're like brand new and getting started, but somewhere to keep name, number, email addresses of all the people you're Speaking to the date dates that obviously you're meeting them just so you can obviously schedule follow ups and those sorts of things. A little bit about their goals and some notes and then really just the process of, you know, booking calendars and those sorts of things where people can book in seamlessly to do your sessions with you. You know, they're sort of the two main ones. So if someone, you know, you speak to them on the phone, they want to book in a session, you can put it into a calendar link that sends them some invites, a reminder and then a process to follow up on those prospects and then obviously, you know, payment systems and those sorts of things. But that's as simple as it can, as it can be and probably as complicated as it needs to be for someone who's just a solopreneur.

Yeah, 100%. Because I was going through some training with some of my clients and we were kind of weighing up saying cool, well we can either kind of use like Google Sheets for example. I'm a massive fan of Google Sheets, Google Docs, it's all free, which is epic, which still does the job. And I was making it clear, I was like, you don't have to buy the software. Like yes, it's probably going to make it a little bit more time efficient for some things, but you can get the same stuff done in like Google Sheets for example or even as you said, even your phone, it just might take you a little bit longer. At what stage would you kind of upgrade from that, like basic Google Sheets or phone to something a little bit more productive like a CRM for example, to track all that stuff?

It's when it's when time becomes the bottleneck, it's like what, like what is the solution a CRM solves like let's use go high level as an example and there's hundreds of versions out there with ACR and Automation King, a whole bunch of other companies that run them now, you know. But the big thing you're getting with those platforms is you know, the automations for emails and text messages that come with that, which essentially buys back time. So most personal times when they first get started they have a lack of funds and an abundance of time and they spend so much of their, I suppose, effort buying back time when that's the thing they have the most of. They need to spend most of their effort, you know, in time in doing the actual work and getting some money behind them so they can start to make a living out of this and then put those systems in place. To buy back their time when they're needed.

Yeah, that's so true. So true. I completely, completely agree. And then in terms of just quickly.

I talk about websites, I was like so many rental based pizzas. I've got this website. It's why you're, you're a rental based PP inside Good Life in, in Wollongong. Like you're not, you're not driving traffic to a website from any of your marketing. Why have you spent two grand building a website? Like that's probably at the moment a whole fortnight of your wage that you've wasted literally.

What are your thoughts on? I have a very similar opinion on like websites even like paying someone through like a full logo design when you're first starting out. Complete waste of time and money in my opinion. Anyway.

Look, side story, I had a clothing label when I was fifo was one of the things I did to keep and I, I haven't had all the logo on my arm here, but that cost me like $8 on fiverr. Like yeah. And it was like they gave me a full caliper, a color palette, a brand guideline for like eight bucks. Like don't, don't waste money on things that you know, don't, don't matter. Yeah.

Which is so funny. It's so many people that have spent so many thousand developers on websites. But you know, because some people just get told, you know, you need to have a website if you have a business. That's such an old way of thinking. Like these days your social media is your website in my opinion.

Yeah, I would be like, hey, if you're, if you're like, got some things you want to spend like time on branding and things like that, it's like get a really nice picture for your banner on your Facebook and your Instagram. Get a really clear picture on your profile picture. Spend some time, you know, going through and cleaning up your social profiles, getting rid of the stuff that's, you know, you pissed with your mates three years ago, that's you know, still 10 scrolls behind and just start putting up some good content on your socials. Like that's going to do a lot more for you than building a website.

Yeah, 100%. As we've talked obviously a little bit about systems for like a individual trainer. What about like systems for getting to the stage where you like growing team, whether it's hiring trainers or even hiring closers or appointment setters, any of that type of stuff. What's your process in terms of like what systems would you need to for one, think about first and have implemented before you hire a team. Like, do you have to have all your systems kind of ready to go before you hire a team or is something you do after?

The biggest thing is like when you start thinking about, okay, it's time to hire a team. So I'm a personal trainer inside Good Life. I'm getting to 40 sessions a week. I'm probably at capacity shortly with the amount of programming and stuff I'm doing with sales and those sort of thing. I'm going to hire a, hire a new coach. So the thing is, okay, what do I want to be known for as a business? Because now you're turning in from just a coach yourself into actually having a business here. Right. So you might want to make sure that every person that joins as a client has exactly the same experience from consultation to onboarding. So all you have to do is document exactly what you're doing with your current clients and your current prospects, document it down, turn it into a procedure, take clients, then as you bring them in through that procedure, make sure you've missed nothing and then have it somewhere where you can give to the new person coming through. So just about doing all of, all of those things. You know what, how do you want the programs that your clients for your business written? Are there certain parameters or exercises you believe should be in programs or shouldn't be in programs? Those sorts of things. So just really documenting what you're doing in your current business yourself first and foremost. Because that'll be a great base to start training the coaches and people that you bring into your business.

Yep. And when you say documenting, this is not doing extra work. Right. It's just documenting the stuff that you're already doing.

Just, yeah, documenting what you're already doing. So if you're like, hey, I work in good life, our clients get, you know, we have to give three kickstart packs. They were called when I was there. Excellent. In session one, what do I do? So session one, I greet them at the door by their first name. I take them to the seated area, I run them through a script. Here's the link to the script. I take them to this, here's the link to this. Book them in for a second session. Here's how you do that with the calendar. Like it's all just documented. Then start of the 2nd session, what happens in the 2nd session, what happens in the 3rd session, what's the follow up process after that 3rd session? If they haven't bought what am I doing with the Lead, where am I adding it to the pipeline to make sure it gets followed up? So it's just documenting everything that you currently do and then once you've done it, then run it through a couple of clients, through it yourself to make sure it actually works and you haven't missed anything. And then you can start training your team on it. Yeah.

When you like, what, in your opinion, what are the, what are like, the first things you would either outsource to a team member or automate or delegate in the business? Because some people have different opinions here. Some people want to, you know, get a team to do sessions so you're not working in the business as much so you can work on the business a bit more. Some people like to, you know, get rid of the calls. Some people have different opinions. So curious what your opinion is on that.

Yeah, it all really depends on what the, I suppose, state of the business. And I say this in regards to like, you know, lots of people can still be in a small business, you can still be time poor and also money poor, depending on how you set up your business and how many, I suppose, systems you've implemented and softwares you've bolted onto your business very early on. So usually the first thing we're trying to do is buy back time. So you need to look at, you know, where are you spending most of your time in the business that has the least ROI in the business? So for pts, it's generally two places. The first part is delivery of sessions. We're charging say $75 a session. We know we can hire a coach and pay them, say $35 a session. So there's some room there where we can make some profit. The other area is we're doing miscellaneous admin tasks, posting on social media, and we could outsource that to a virtual assistant offshore. And we could pay them five to sort of $7 an hour. Now, out of the two, where are you spending most of your time that you feel you could outsource? For me, it's also where can I buy back that time that costs me the least amount of money? So in some cases it's like if I'm spending 10 hours a week doing admin tasks, I can pay someone $5 an hour to do the admin task compared to paying a coach 30 to deliver sessions. I'm going to outsource some admin tasks first and foremost because that allows me to keep the most amount of money in my personal pocket or inside of the business and then it will be okay. How can we start outsourcing sessions, delivery of sessions. So for me, usually it's admin tasks first. And this is where if you've got, you know, amazing partners and wives and girlfriends and things, they could pick up some of those admin tasks to help you out. If you don't want to outsource to VAs, but it'll be, you know, VAs and then, you know, outsourcing of sessions are the first two. Yep.

Yeah, I'm very similar and obviously I'd love to talk about VAs because I know Jimmy has some VAs and I've got a couple of VAs as well. Me, personally, I. I hate, or not so much hate, but I'm. I don't have a very good skill set in editing videos. So personally, I, when I outsource, I'm like, cool. Well, you know, it's not my skill set and it's taking up a lot more of my time to get this skill done. Whereas if I was to find a specialist, even, even if it's like, you know, $5 an hour offshore that has that specialty that's going to save me XYZ amount of time, then the other thing to consider as well as the baggage that comes with. And for me, it was stressful making, making social media content. I don't really like doing it, but I know it needs to be done. So that's why I was like, well, if I can offshore that to someone else for, you know, small amount of money, then, you know, for me I can spend more time doing the things that I actually like doing, which for me, I like doing the delivery side of things for my clients.

When I say pts in gyms, like sitting there in the gym editing videos, I just want to like, shake them. I'm like, you, you literally charge yourself out at 75 an hour, usually, you know, minimum. For most pts. These days, being like 75, you're doing a task you'll be paying someone $5 to do. And even if you're not out there doing a session in that same time, go and have a life, spend time with your mates, like, buy back some social life that you have. Because we spend so much time in the gym as, as pts working and, you know, you have breaks throughout the day. I'm going to edit a video, like just go and produce the more content and then just send it to someone for $5 an hour. So again, like you said, so you can produce more and more content. Because again, that hour editing that video, you probably could have made 10 videos, 10 more videos in that time and just shipped it off to an outsourcer to edit it for you?

Yeah, literally I literally do 30 minutes of content creation like a fortnight and I literally got like 15 videos done.

I'm terrible at putting time aside for videos. Like I'm terrible because I like to be on calls and chatting to people and things. And I have a guy that's come out once a month to my house. We spend like an hour and a half together and pump out like 60 videos. He just film it raw for me, hits it up his camera, we just send it off to the editing team and it's done. So I've got my next content for the next, you know, 45 days and it's literally taken me an hour and a half and probably another hour to script some of them. So maybe, you know, two and a half hours in total and it was done.

Yeah. Wow, that's, that's pretty impressive.

And again like, like why, why learn a skill that is essentially below your pay grade.

And just, just on, on that as well. At what stage would you outsource or get some help with the sales side of things? Because like obviously as the business owner you're always going to have the highest, or in my opinion, you're always going to have the highest conversion because you're the business owner. Because people would have seen your content, et cetera. But at what stage would you outsource that? Obviously it's to do with time available, of course, but is there any other considerations for you?

Well, it's not even so much time available in the fitness space. It's having a program that is actually going to attract a good enough salesperson. So quite often in, in the sales space, you know, a good, a good closer is going to be wanting 10% commission, you know, if they're working on straight up commission. But if you're only selling a program that's 45 a week and it's an eight week program, you're not going to get a great closer who wants to come and sit on that offer when they can go and sit on an, you know, for v shred that's worth, you know, three and a half grand and they're going to make $300 a sale. So quite often it's one of the hardest tasks to outsource because it costs the most amount of money to replace that person. So lots of the time, I'll say to most business owners it's going to be, you know, it'll be one of the last roles you generally Outsource will be sales in your business. You will outsource the coaching. You may, depending on your ad spend, you may outsource the Facebook paid ads. But generally it's like paid ads and sales are the two last things you want to outsource in your business because they cost you the most amount of money to replace.

Yeah, I'm on a similar opinion. Do you know, just side note, do you know Jason Motley? Yeah, yeah. He's doing some sales for me these days as well. And he literally, and it's very ironic you say that because he says the same thing. He's like, most closes will take like anywhere between 9 to 12%. He said it's like, it's just hard to find someone that's going to stick around for long enough unless you have like a super high ticket or not super high ticket, but like a high ticket offer. So just going back to talking about like leveraging, getting your time back and whatnot. In terms of when you were hiring trainers, was there any kind of mistakes that you made during that hiring process or during that time that you had trainers, part of your team that you could share with us to help people avoid those mistakes when they're doing it?

I suppose the biggest thing with hiring trainers is you need to really look internally and think, why is a trainer going to work for me rather than just go out and do this for themselves? Because as, as you all know, listening to this podcast, it's very easy just to go and start an online business today. Literally, you can put a post up on your Facebook profile and you can start an online business. It's that easy once you're qualified, some even unqualified. So what are you going to do to make sure the coaches, once you get them, you keep them and you keep them around long term. So for us, a big part of it was, okay, we're going to make sure that we deliver the best internal training for our coaches we possibly can. And that includes, you know, their own programming. Can we program them their programs? If they want us to. How we upskilling them about exercise? How we upskilling them about nutrition? How are we upskilling them in their personal life? You know, does their goals outside of work, how can we help them achieve those goals as well? Because if we're only filling up their cup inside of work and they're not, you know, fulfilling their financial goals and buying property and houses and cars, whatever else it might be, if we're not all aligned, there's going to be a point at Some point when they go somewhere else so they can go and achieve those goals. So for us it was like, okay, what do we have to do to make sure we have that first and foremost? And then what are the values that we're hiring on? Because we all know we can teach someone how to run a training session, we can teach someone how to, how to teach a squat, we can teach someone how to do a bench press. Does this person have the core values that I want inside of my business? Because lots of the technical ability, we can generally teach people how to fix that if it's not quite at a standard we want it to be. And I always found it's obviously great to hire experienced people. People think, because I have all this experience and this is great. But you also have to remember when you've been a trainer for a period of time, you inherently pick up bad habits and your own style of doing things. So I quite often found like hiring people that were somewhat new to the industry. They had a bit of training background themselves, but they wanted to be, I suppose, molded and educated and were sort of hungry to learn. They were our best coaches that we hired.

I have a very similar point of view. Excellent. Well, I'll tell you a little, little story. When I hired my first couple of trainers, I hired in comparison, I hired like an 18 year old, fresh, fresh from qualifying as a PT. And I also had a, like someone who's been in the industry for like 25 years. And I couldn't tell you how painful it was to work with someone that's been in the industry for 25 years compared to someone that literally knew nothing. Yeah, just teach me everything that you do and I'll just copy it. Whereas the, the other trainer was like, no, no, I don't do it like that. And I'm like, okay, well I understand that, but obviously you're not running your own.

If you was, if you were so good at doing this, mate, you'd be doing your own business, you wouldn't be here working for me. So, like, this is how we do it. Yeah. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

Yeah. Literally. That's all the last question for, for us. But what, what are you doing now? Obviously you're working with Jimmy and mentoring people. So for people who want to kind of learn more about you or follow along on your journey or possibly want your help with system sales or anything to, with the fitness industry, most of.

The kind of best place, obviously social media, Brad Bedford on Facebook, over on Instagram, it's just Brad underscore Bedford 87 but open book. If anyone has questions about sales processes, building teams, anything, really just wants to have a chat, reach out and say hello. As you know, Matt, this industry, it may seem flooded, but it's actually very, very small. So, you know, relationships are one thing that get you a long way inside of, you know, every industry. So I find, like, quite often reaching out, having conversations with people, just introducing yourself can open lots of doors in the long term. So if you're listening to this, definitely reach out, just say hello. I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from the podcast. And yeah, been a pleasure to be on.

Awesome. Thanks for your time, Brad.

Pleasure, mate. Speak soon.