Ibrahim Hotseat

Hi everyone. So for our client hot seat this month, we've got a long-term client of mine, Ibrahim, from Melbourne. He's an MMA kickboxer who is a face-to-face trainer, but it's not the usual face-to-face trainer that we generally have in our community. You'll have to update me on the exact numbers, Ibrahim, but you've pretty much gone from zero to over $10K per month, and you've also got two trainers that work for you. Matt Dartart as well in the last— I'm pretty sure we've been working together just over the 12 months, which has been awesome. And we've pretty much been able to do this with pretty much no help from leads from anyone else. It's pretty much all been you. And obviously we've been crushing paid ads recently. I think you sent me a message the other day. I think it was like 13 sales or something in the last 4 weeks. From paid ads. So I just want to firstly say congratulations on all your success, but secondly, I just obviously want to understand what you've done, what didn't work, and give us a little bit of insights into what it's like kind of running a business where you've got to literally do all the marketing yourself. So for those who don't know you, can you give us a brief, like, 60-second summary of who you are, what you do, and who— well, what you kind of specialize in. Yep.

So for those of you that don't know me, my name is Ibrahim Kara Ali. I'm a professional pad holder and personal trainer. Uh, my story, I think I'll just start from the beginning and we'll go from there. So when I first met Matt, I was actually, um, recovering from homelessness, so I was sleeping in my car um, sleeping on the gym floor. Seeing as I'm actually in the boxing ring, I'm up elevated, so I'm not sure if you guys can see, um, that kitchen there, but that back corner, that was my bedroom for over a year, um, because I had this dream of pursuing my sport and, um, and being a coach full-time. And yeah, that's basically where it all started from. So Matt took a little bit of a chance on me by working with me because I'm not his usual probably client avatar. How we first started getting me clients, we ran one of his giveaway strategies. I think that took us to about $3,000 to $4,000 a month at the time. We ran that giveaway strategy more than once, but the first time we did it was it was notably really, really successful. And then the expansion off that, we mainly do paid marketing now. So Matt and I, we've had lots of little 20-minute coaching calls. It's like he's shown me how to do ads, everything from like creative understanding, Meta AI, headlining, ad copy. And the thing is as well, that's probably like the thing that's accelerated me the most as a businessman is all the sales training as well that you get in PT Mastery. Because the thing with me, like when I first met Matt, I had like 12 years of experience. My, like, the thing I brag about is like with striking, anything that's like taekwondo, karate, kickboxing, boxing, I'm like an encyclopedia of it. So I've got all the knowledge. I've got more knowledge than most people my age and my time around the block. But knowledge by itself doesn't convert into currency. If one, you can't display it. So that's why learning to market properties— sorry, you can't display it. So that's why learning to market properly is really important. And even if you can display it, it's worthless if you can't convert it into currency. So if you can't sell.

So yeah, 100%.

Um, yeah, it's a pretty crazy story. Um, when I— when we obviously look back on how far you've come, I'm just actually looking, looking at your stats that we collect, and in March last year, your monthly income was $900. Yeah, in, uh, in March last year.

Yeah, and I remember being stoked on that.

Yeah. Um, and then last month you hit $10,000. Last month, you know, which is freaking crazy to think. So I obviously want to dive into, obviously you talked a little bit about the giveaway, which most people are pretty familiar with that type of strategy. So it works to a degree, but obviously like long term we needed to find like a more predictable way to get clients or to get leads as well. Joel, by the way, if you've got questions throughout this interview, just drop them in the chat and I'll get Ibrahim or myself to answer them. So, and also I just want to quickly touch on as well, you actually almost quit literally like one day after starting with me. Do you remember?

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

I remember that.

I sent a message, I think it was something like, hey Matt, I'm sorry for wasting your time. I don't think this is going to work, but I like, um, I was doing things like without being guided because I was so keen to get going. So I was looking at the wrong content. And then Matt explained to me like the content I was looking at was wrong and it wasn't the right thing for my situation. So guys, like after you're on board, just like take a chill pill for a bit and just let him talk to you. Don't just like start doing stuff.

Yeah.

And yeah, like, um, and I was like, oh, what do you mean you want to quit? And he's like, oh, well, I've watched this and this and this. I was like, oh Tim, that's the wrong stuff. No wonder why you want to quit. Part-time, I thought that was pretty funny as well. But just going through obviously some of the stats. So we got to about $3K per month pretty quickly, like within like a month or two. And then we got to about $6K per month. So from $0 to $6K per month, I think mainly organically. I don't remember exactly, but we've only really been running ads for, do you remember exactly? Probably like maybe 6 months. What do you reckon, a bit longer?

I'd say 6 months.

Yeah, okay. We've been pretty consistent going from $6K up to $8K and then obviously last month getting to $10K. So can you tell us the reason why we wanted to go down the paid ads route rather than just focusing on organic marketing?

See, bro, because, uh, organic is very time-consuming. So if you're doing organic, you're spending a lot of time, uh, doing DMs, you're spending a lot of time creating reels. Like, there was a time I was pumping out 12 reels a week. Like, this is no joke. I was going to the shopping center, like, local shopping center with my wife, and people were battling me up in the shopping center trying to talk to me because they're like, oh, we saw you on Instagram. I was pumping out that much, which is good, but it's very, very time-consuming. And like what happens is half of your time gets divided into— or my time was getting divided into holding pads for people and the other half of the time was like doing stuff that's related to Instagram. So I think it was a good place to start because it made me get good at marketing and it kind of helped me establish my fundamentals with sales for my niche. Um, but it's not a viable option long term. Um, I think even like if you're— if you've got the capital to go straight to ads, you should. Um, but there's still a lot of valuable skills you can learn from organic marketing. The main thing too, the biggest thing I got from organic marketing was, um, because I was doing so much of it, I just got really desensitized to the camera. So my, my public speaking got a lot better. I a lot more, a lot more like fluidity in what was coming out of my mouth instead of like stammering and stuttering all the time.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

But now definitely.

Just a quick question from Perry. Do you pay rent in the kickboxing gym?

Nah, I'll be honest with you guys. No, I don't. Not at the moment. The owners The owner's my best mate, and, um, like, he helps me, I help him. So yeah, so basically I've been— prior to being a PT, um, I was a carpenter, and I actually— I've been in this gym now for about 4 years. So pretty much like the boxing ring I'm standing on, I built it. I've done all the— a lot of the maintenance on the property. So yeah, I just help him and he helps me.

Yeah, I love it. Joel, have you got quite a long question? I think you're unmuted now. Do you want to ask your question?

Oh yeah, just quickly. So I've just come across something I've never come across before where I had essentially a family get in touch with me for personal training and I told them my like gold and platinum tier. So platinum tier being 3 a week with 45-minute sessions, which is like $250. For all that plus online coaching. And they were like, well, we all want to train in the same session 3 times a week. So I didn't really know what to do in relation to price, and I kind of like froze a bit and said, oh, well, I'll just downgrade you to $200 each because I thought there's still value. They're still getting 3 sessions that I'm turning up to, and I'm still gonna have to do their online, like, their review and everything and do their own nutrition individually. It's just they're just all being combined. So I was like, I kind of froze and said that, and they've just come back to me after a couple of days of thinking about it, and they've just said, oh, it's just out of our price range.

Yep.

Could I just ask you a question in turn, mate? How long have you been, how long have you been PTing for now, and how long have you been working with Matt Dart Dart?

Matt, couple weeks. PTing, 4 months-ish.

Okay.

And how many clients do you have at the moment?

Not like 5, 4 or 5.

Okay.

That's pretty good. It's a good start. Alrighty. So you've said like what I heard from you there, you've got multiple things happening, right? So you've got multiple tiers, you've got online. I think you said something about nutrition as well, right?

It's just 2 tiers. So it's just Platinum, which is 3 times a week. So it's all including the same stuff. It's just my Platinum is 3 sessions a week and my gold tier is 2 sessions a week. I also have the drop sale of 1 a week if price is an issue, but I only advertise 2.

Yeah.

So look, how my, my business model, my sales model when it comes to long-term after I've got people signed up is really, really simple. I don't do tiers. I just have a flat rate. So the flat rate to work with me or one of my trainers is $90 for an hour. And then the drop sale is $65 for 30 minutes. Right.

Right.

So I've—

what I found was I used to do like packages when I first started. I was doing packages, different tiers, like I'd have like a full presentation to give them. I just found it didn't work. So you just got to give something that's like really simple, stupid. And then because it sounds like to me there's a good chance that they weren't really overwhelmed by the price. It's possible they were, but they're overwhelmed by the amount of information you're giving them.

Yeah, I mean, they came to me saying they wanted 3 a week, 3 sessions a week, and they said, is it possible to do all as a group? And I said, well, absolutely. And they were even locked in time. I was like, yep, Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning works, works well. Yeah, but I just didn't know.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt. What you would want to do there, if they specifically said they want to do 3 sessions a week, then perfect. So usually what you would do if you're going to do like a small group is the second person or second and third person would be half price is what we would usually suggest, right? To make it like a no-brainer for them. But if they've openly said, oh, it's too much, but okay, cool. Because people don't usually do this. Let me know what your range is in terms of budget and I'll let you know what I can do for that range, right? Um, yeah, I probably want— I want to have probably another conversation with you after this, actually.

Um, is it all right if I just make one last comment on that? Because there's, um, kids involved, man. Like, make sure you've got a working with kids check. But kids, bro, it's actually a gold mine because people will— like, parents will go without their session because they want their kids to have theirs. So all of the kids that I've had, the majority of them have been with me like since the beginning. Or the retention rate for kids is really high. Right.

Okay. Yeah.

But the main thing, like, with kids is you've got to look at it long term too. Like, it's still taking up the same amount of your time. So that was another reason actually why I put in a flat rate because it's like, okay, if I do $10 off because you're a kid, I'm still losing $10 on that hour.

Yeah.

You get me?

Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense.

The retention rate is really high, but you've got to do it in a way where it's scalable. So don't take you know, don't take any money off the top would be my advice. Right.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Cheers. Well said. I'll catch up with you after, Joel, as well, because I've got some other feedback for you.

Yeah, sounds good.

Cheers.

No worries. So just going back to, obviously, we were talking about doing the paid ads. So can you talk us through, because obviously your organic content was doing good and obviously you're doing so much volume, so you got really good very quickly. On making content, right? Because you were doing so much of it, which is awesome. So the one thing I will say is to get really good results with paid ads, you need to have foundational organic, uh, or not, not so much a big following, but the content that you make still needs to be like, you know, semi-decent. You can't just post pictures of cats and then go, you know, do some paid ads on weight loss and then think that people are gonna trust you. You would obviously make it relevant. So I think we put a lot of groundwork into the organic stuff first before we obviously did the paid ads. Can you tell us what the experience was like when we first started doing paid ads, if you remember?

Yeah, well, when we first started doing paid ads, I was doing it by myself. We were kind of just, you know, throwing I'll just hang on. I'll start it. I'll try again answering that. So what I remember doing at the start of paid ads was I just take my best performing content off Instagram and TikTok. So I'd test something on TikTok. I'd do two versions of the same piece of organic content, post on TikTok, whichever one on that on TikTok, I would keep that and then eliminate the one that didn't perform well. That same one that performed well, take that over to Instagram. And then if that performed well on Instagram too, then be like, okay, that piece of content is going to be used for an ad. And then you've just got to make sure once you get to the stage where you're using that piece of content for an ad, in your headline, you're calling out your ideal client.

Yeah. Okay. And one of the things that I want to make super, super clear when people, when they first start ads, because most of the people on the call right now you guys wouldn't have done ads. Clint's on the call as well. G'day, Clint. Um, Clint's also printing money with ads as well, actually. Um, Clint was actually, um, a little bit skeptical to join us as well, and he actually spoke with Ibrahim, um, about his experience. So, um, great to see you, Clint. Um, what was it kind of like in terms of, like, how hard was it when you first started? Because you're obviously just watching a lot of the trainings that we've got in school and then obviously doing it yourself? And then obviously when you— we had to have a couple of coaching calls to explain a few things in terms of how Meta works and that type of stuff. But how did you find the overall process? Do you find it relatively straightforward or do you find it quite challenging?

Me personally, I actually found it really easy.

Um, didn't find it too hard. Like, it's the sort of thing where practice makes perfect and it's something even now I'm still perfecting. Um, yeah, like, I didn't find it particularly difficult. I think the reason for that is, like, just being really immersed with organic marketing first. So yeah, it was literally, for me, it was just like copy and paste, make sure that you're doing your targeting right. Even with that, now, like, on those, Matt Dart is getting better and better.

Yeah, just, um, just quickly, can you move to the other spot you were at? It's a bit crackly.

Yeah, I hope that's a little bit, a little bit better.

Um, okay, so because on our stats you went from $4K per month to $10K per month pretty quickly, and that's, that's mainly, I think, it's personally to do with paid ads. Can you tell us a little bit of insights in terms of what your offer was on the ad? Like, were you offering, um, one-on-one sessions? Were you offering kids sessions? Uh, and then also, can you also tell us how much you were spending per day to start with and what you also spend now?

Yeah, so initially I was spending $75 Um, sorry, Matt Dartart, did you repeat the question?

Hold on, it's crackly again. Is that just me? Is it crackly for everyone else? Someone give us feedback in the chat. Yeah, it's a little bit crackly. Where were you at the start? In the boxing ring. I think that was the best spot. Yeah, because I think I heard you say you were spending 75 a week to start with.

I'm now at $205 to $250 a week. What, um, most of that, like, going to the gym, doing anything, was free. So, um, are you like—

Hold on, it's still crackling. Try a different spot. The other side. Yeah, nothing better than outside. All right, talk again. Yeah, I don't know what's going on here.

All right, try again. Kind of there.

It's still a little bit crackly. Like, I can still understand it. So you started at 75 a week, and then what happened after that?

We just started testing content and seeing, uh, what's the best way to do it. So, for example, you basically just create the ad that's doing well, you put it in a separate folder on the server so you don't need to like delete it as any, and then add another ad to keep testing. Okay, one second.

It's not too bad for me, but it's still pretty crackly for everyone else. Um, can you— hmm, because I don't know if you're gonna get any better internet because you're already outside. I don't think it's going to be any, any better anywhere else. Where do you usually do your coaching calls with me? Because it's not usually like this when we jump on Zooms.

Normally, that's much better. Stay there.

Yeah, yeah, talk again.

Okay, so what I was trying to say was at— yay, finally— at, uh, we started off at $75 a week but then escalated to $280.

How we got it to escalate was, um, as you—

when you do your first, um, test ads, the one that wins, you save that, uh, you duplicate it, you save into a separate folder, you title that winning ad. Right, because you've got a winning ad that then increases your sales volume, provided that you've got your basic, um, sales training down pat. That then gives you more cash flow. You then reinvest that cash flow back into finding another winning ad, so you test more. You then keep filling up your folder, the winning folder, with more and more ads that are winning. And then once you've found enough ads, um, to kind of suit your needs that are winners Um, you just stop testing, you leave all of your winning ads on for a while until they start to fatigue, and then you just start the process again. But when you start the process again, you won't be, um, going down to like $75 a week. You'll stay at about the same range you're at, but you'll just be removing from that winning folder whichever ad is fatigued. So let's say for example, you've got 4 ads that are winning. You might remove one, go put 2 new ads in the test folder, whichever comes out on top after that test, you then replace the losing ad in the winning folder with the new winning test ad.

Yeah. Is that making sense for everyone? I know for the guys that haven't done it before, it might be a little bit confusing, but essentially you're pretty much always testing new things. Uh, like I'm currently running Ibrahim's ads for him right now and I'm basically getting him to send me new videos, um, every couple of days to test because you just, you, you never want to have like what we call like ad fatigue, which you will eventually have ad fatigue. But if you don't have any like backups that are also quote winners, which are similar in terms of results, then, um, you'll lose the predictability of what ads is, which is consistent leads coming in. And if you think about this in terms of you guys that are in commercial gyms that are paying $250 to $350 a week, if you guys weren't in a gym, for example, or if you want to make the transition to a home studio, maybe online coach full-time, you would, you would not just kind of pocket that $250 or $350. You would spend that money on ads. I pretty much just said in the chat there as well, like, at the moment the ads are performing really, really well. We're probably getting 4 or 5 clients a week at the moment. Um, can you give us some, some— I'm not sure if you know the exact stats, but roughly how much do your clients spend with you each week? And then, um, what's like the average spend per client overall? Like, do they spend like $1,000 with you usually, or $500?

Uh, so the short-term, uh, $500—

anywhere from about $500 to $1,100. So the average is about— is about $700 last time I checked. Um, yeah, so in terms of like weekly income people will spend about $90 to $130 a week.

Awesome.

So yeah, basically, like, we had— I'll put it in a way that's a bit easier for people to understand. Like, we—

Matt and I just tested a new ad recently. Um, the cost per lead was $9, so it's costing me $9 to get that inquiry.

Um, So that $9 has a 25% chance of converting into a sale.

Once someone's had their first session and then I do their sign-up process, so that's later after their first sale, everyone has signed up with us for a direct debit contract except for one person.

So like, if you do—

so it's 25% that that $9 is going to convert into a sale. So you just do $9 times 4 is, uh, $36. So it's costing me $36 to basically make $700-ish.

Yeah, crazy.

It makes sense. It's like, um, once you get it down, it's like, it's basically a license to print money. Like, I don't even see the point in me being on the pads anymore. It's just, there's just no point because I can just sit here and just do content and it makes me money. Yeah, it's taken quite a while to get to that.

Yeah, so like when a lot of people think that PT is not like predictable or inconsistent, it's one thing to obviously have the predictability in like a commercial gym where you obviously have consistent leads coming through. But if you guys want your own control of leads coming in, because remember when you do add inbound inquiries, they're inquiring with you, you're not, it's not a cold lead, like they're inquiring with you. If you could go in and if you could go into a casino and put $36 on blackjack or roulette or whatever, and every single time you come out with $750, would you go in every single day? Because you're literally just printing money, and that's why ads are so powerful, is because you can predict the outcomes. And as per what Ibrahim said, he started at $75 a week to start with, but as you find winners and as you start to find winning ads and start to get clients, you reinvest that into more ads, and then you just continuously print money. Over and over and over again, which is why for me, for example, I spend about $1,000 a week on ads because it gets me clients like every single week. So, uh, we've talked about obviously the good stuff about ads. What's some of the bad stuff about ads that have happened or that you find challenging with ads? I think you have to go back to the other spot. No, can't hear. Uh, speak, speak again. It was kind of a little bit better. Um, there we go. Got you back.

You got it?

Yeah, got you back now. Maybe not. Hello, you can still hear me okay? Yeah, you can hear me?

Yeah, I can, I can hear you, but I don't know, I'm hard to keep up with what's happening because, um, Yeah, I'm going to send you a screen recording later on my end because, yeah, very crackly and the picture's not very good.

Okay, the question that I've got now is, we've spoken about all like the good stuff about the ads, what are some of the things that you found quite challenging, um, or things that didn't go to plan?

I don't think there was anything that didn't go to plan, to be honest with you, and there wasn't really anything I found that challenging. Um, yeah, like, yeah, that's just my honest answer. Like, for you guys that are, um, in, you know, you're getting leads from your gym, like, you'd be mad not to be doing this, running ads and getting leads from your gym. Like you guys will just clean up. Like, I've built this, my whole business, off getting no assistance from the actual gym I work at. Like, they haven't— they don't supply me with any lead flow. So yeah, if you guys have lead flow from a gym and you've got lead flow from Meta, you'll just dominate.

Yeah, 100%. So The, the next thing I want to briefly talk about is obviously you've got 2 trainers now, um, as well.

Yep.

Um, because we've got a few people that have the ambition of hiring trainers, um, as well. Can you tell us probably some of the good and bad things about, um, having trainers that work for you, just to give people like a neutral, um, response?

The good thing is that, um, You get a lot of your time back and you can kind of like, days that are for me like really labour intensive, you can kind of avoid that labour more. The bad thing is that they're just not as good with you. Like in terms of, I've got one guy who works for me, he's an absolute shitpack worker, but he can't really calendar. If I zoom the camera, the field of view is terrible. Like, it's just little things like that. And it's another thing of, you've got to develop a different kind of set of people skills to start managing a team. And the other thing, I'm now managing authors, it's one, and their ideal client is different to mine, so you're dealing with like, from personality types as well, because you're dealing with different personalities. So it does take a lot of like, social energy and getting used to, because it is a little bit of a bouncing act. But, I'd rather be doing this bouncing act than working at a desk.

All right, just wait a second. You're getting a bit crackly now. Uh, keeps going in and out, but I heard most of that. So, because like we obviously had a bit of a conversation the other day about you obviously stepping back off the tools so you can obviously focus more on the ads side of things, because obviously it is pretty much just growing pretty much every single week in terms of performance. So I suppose, if Pete— because I also suggest anyone who doesn't follow Ibrahim, I know he's generally not on a lot of the coaching calls during the week, but if you guys want to follow his journey, I'll post his— actually, if you can just put in the chat your Instagram handle so people can kind of follow along as well. But last little bit of advice, if anyone's kind of on the fence of starting ads, what advice would you give to them? You guys see me now? Yes.

Hello?

Yes. Yep. Um.

Yeah, look, if you're someone who's hesitant about getting started with things, like, just definitely just do it because, um, you kind of gotta just take a chance on it. Because like what I was doing just wasn't working. I was doing things the old way and it just, it was never going to work. So, you know, that's either going to blow up in your face or you take a risk on something. It might blow up in your face, but I'm pretty sure that it won't. You know, Matt's been doing this for a long time. He's got a lot of experience. And if he can like kind of change my circumstances, when I, you know, I'm not really his usual client avatar. If you guys are all just like commercial PTs, he can definitely change your circumstances and give you the tools too. Like I, I almost wish sometimes I was a commercial PT doing this because Bro, it'd be so much easier.

Yeah, well said. You guys are very in commercial groups that get like leads given to you, um, are in a privileged position because some other people that we work with, like Ibrahim, like people that have like home studios, online coaches for example, they get given nothing. They've got to do everything themselves. So In summary, I think it's really important to obviously, if you're in a commercial gym, obviously still keep doing the stuff that you're currently doing with like new members, et cetera. Um, but worth exploring having that second option, especially if you've even got a little bit of spare cash flow that you can test a few ads, even if you start at $5 or $10 a day, which will be like $50 a week, not going to break the bank, but at least start the process. So if you guys want to have conversations on brainstorming about ads, then now's the time. Send me a message on school, uh, so we can brainstorm what that looks like if you do want to start to play around with some, some paid ads. Because it does take a little bit of time to get the traction, of course, because you'll start with a smaller budget. Um, but once you've kind of figured it out, or once you kind of find the right type of, uh, ad copy or the right type of images or videos, then you literally are just printing money. So I'll give a couple of minutes if anyone has any specific questions for Ibrahim before we finish up. So if you do have a question, just either type the question in the chat if you want to know specifics about ads or specifics around what he does. Otherwise, I'll finish up in like a minute or two. He's dropped his Instagram in there as well, so Hardstyle Personal Training. He's very, very good on content creation. So if you guys want any inspiration on the type of content that works very, very well, then he's a really good person to follow because he's been doing it a while, but he's been able to grow his audience organically quite, quite quickly. So props to you, Ibrahim, and props to you for also always asking questions. When you need help or if you're a little bit confused on the ads because part of your success is just part of it is obviously me guiding you in the right direction, but it's also you're asking the right questions and doing the work as well. So props to you. Love working with you.

Thank you, guys.

And no questions so far. So we might just leave it there. I'll post the recording and your Instagram handle in the recording notes as well. And if you guys are wanting to have a conversation, you don't necessarily have to start ads straight away, but if you wanna have a conversation on what ads might look like for your business, then send us a message on school and we'll come up with a game plan together. Cool. All right, team, have an awesome rest of your Friday.

Sorry, Matt, you said you were gonna catch up with me.

Yes, I'm going to give you a call.

Sweet.

Cool. Cool.

All right, team. I'll catch you later.

Bye.