EP 197: How to Grow A Fitness Studio For The Long Term with Ben Fletcher From Listen To Your Body

The first point, if you want to get a franchise, you've got to be willing to be a team player and listen and be a student of the system and trust the system. But to do that, first, taking it back a step, you've got to do your due diligence on the system to make sure you believe in it, experience it, believe that this system and this market or what they're trying to do is in your wheelhouse. For me, with all respect to old, if there was a bodybuilding franchise out there, I wouldn't open it because I'm not passionate about bodybuilding. I'm passionate about healthy lifestyle. So to be a good franchisee, you need to follow systems, processes, Be a student of it, ask a lot of questions, be willing to learn, be extremely coachable.

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. I'm your host, Richard Toutounji, and in today's episode, I've got someone who's been in this game since 2001, conducted over 500 thousand workouts, I should say, signed up tens of thousands of members, employed over 150 staff, overseen $50 million in membership sales, and helped close to 20 franchisees open and run their own studios. Today, my special guest is Ben Fletcher from Listen to Your Body, the CEO and director there. Welcome to the show, Ben.

Thanks, Richard. Thanks for having me.

Outstanding. We were just talking before, Ben, and you've been in the industry probably a similar time I've been in the industry, and you've done so many different things in that space. But you're a person that's been in the industry really well regarded as providing quality, keeping your head down, doing your work, and most importantly, giving back to your franchisees. the 20 locations that you have. Tell me more about running a national business like this. I'm really curious around— today there's so many ways that people can start a business, grow their fitness business, and you've been there through these whole 20 years. I mean, you must know some things that people would die to know. That's why I've got you on the show. So first of all, welcome. And I'd love to know a bit Like, you know, why you do what you do for, Ben?

Yeah. Thanks, Richard. When you were reading that up before, it's got 23 years. It feels like actually yesterday, funny enough. So it's crazy how it works. Yeah. I guess through the time in the industry, I guess to one of your questions, why do I do what I do? I just love making impact on people, whether that's members, staff, franchise owners. So I guess taking it back, I ran a studio after working in a gym for years, We ran a studio that was pumping, going really well. And it was actually the part of it was frustrating because there's people traveling from all over Melbourne to get there. And it was like, oh, we need to replicate this. So that was when we decided to franchise and get it in more locations. So I guess probably the biggest motivation is having a positive impact on people and expanding that through different areas.

Yeah. Wow. Now, I mean, listen to your body. First of all, I need to ask you, what does it stand for? What's it all about? Listen to your body.

Yeah. I get asked this all the time. So in my younger day when I was playing a fair bit of sport, we had a lot of fitness coaches and I still remember we were training like 20, 30 hours a week physical training. And I always used to say, listen to your body, listen to your body. And then you'd always think about it when you're back then nearly spewing up training, doing hard running sessions. You'd always be listening to your body say, yes, I can do more. I can do more. So I guess I just thought about the concept of listening to your body as, can you do more? Do you need to do less? Do you need to recover? What shall I be putting in my mouth? Do I need sleep? All these factors, you go listen to your body. So in 2004, when I grew my one-on-one PT business, which was Ben Fletcher Personal Training, which is a cracking business name in 2001, 2004.

That was the way you did it, right?

Yep, totally. That's how you do it. Ben Fletcher Personal Training. How good is this on the invoice? But then 2004, then just incorporated the name Listen to Your Body and LTYB, and it sort of stuck. And it's come— that name itself has been 20 years, and it means multiple things on, I guess, listening to our body and trying to get the best out of it. Well,

there's so many things we can talk about today, Ben, so we might have to do a few episodes here, but there's a couple of things I want to really focus your attention, get your insights on. I mean, You've grown successful business over time. You've been able to manage multiple staff, bring them on and so forth. Take me through, first of all, the longevity of business. What does it take today if someone's listening to this and they're 4 or 5 years in? What does it take to be in this game over the next 10, 15, 20 years?

It's a really good question. You need to be very resilient and manage those expectations. I think sometimes business owners will get into it and looking to make a quick buck and expect it all to be blue sky. I think in business and everyone who's been in the business for a long time, I'm sure yourself as well, you go through phases where things are really good, then you get your challenges, but you've just got to be resilient, be level-headed how you go about everything. That's from a mindset point of view. And I just think that If you can absorb the challenge when they happen, grow when the time's right and just ride the wave of being a business owner. So I think that's from a mindset point of view. And then from a stimulation point of view, I think the one thing that's always stuck with me and I use sport a bit as an analogy, I think it's the same is that when you go to work every day trying to improve, trying to get better in everything you do, learn new things, don't do what you did yesterday or else you might not be here tomorrow type theory. I think that stimulates you because you're continually progressing. Whereas if you do the same thing over and over, you get to a certain period where you're cooked and there's no more upside. So always trying to improve and progress is another big key for longevity, I think.

Yeah, great. Now let's talk about— I'm just going to switch some topics around because I'm just so interested in what you do. And one of those things is your avatar. It sounds like Listen to Your Body has really nailed who they're actually working for. Now, the fitness industry has done a great job of getting the fit fitter, As you've probably seen over the years. And from my understanding of what you do, and I'm on your website and it's got some great avatars there. You've got Ben, you've got Sherelle, I think, and it's sort of Janelle, and it points out exactly who this person is. And one of the things we, you know, fitness, we kind of, we could do a much better job is calling out the people that actually need Our help. And for your case, it's more of a personalized training service. And I'll get you to run through what your business model in a second. But how have you been able to stay away from the fit, getting fitter? And you've really nailed a great avatar there.

Yeah, really good question. So in 2001 to 2009, our bread and butter was personal training one-on-one when that was absolutely peaking. So I was pretty lucky for timing there. As we might remember about your time as well, when you started late '90s, it was going through America, hit Australia, It hit Australia in the late '90s hard. I was part of that wave, so I think I was quite lucky and it was crazy, like 80 sessions a week. So we attracted that market that needed that support in one-on-one. Yes. So then in 2008, we then flipped the— I decided to flip the model and say, can we do a personalized workout within a group, which we can elaborate on shortly. But I guess in that time over the years, we've really evolved by targeting the people that they don't want to go to a gym and do it by themselves because there's no accountability. They could get lost with all— this is not a sexist thing, just to clarify, but the ladies will probably go into the cardio, the men a little bit the weights area, but the ladies will get a little bit lost. But strength training is so important. So that person wouldn't go there. They might not go to a group fitness brand where it's high intensity and you see it all on socials where people are doing air bike as hard as they can, slamming med balls.

That's not our market.

So we want to hit that market that 45+ market that will feel comfortable. And how we do it, which is segue in, is that within our sessions, we dial up and dial down the exercise in a non-circuit-based environment. No mirrors, none of the nasties in the industry locking contracts to try and say to people, it's totally comfortable. You got nothing to lose. You don't like it after a week, you can stop. But they get a trainer to guide them through a workout at their pace, but dial up and down the exercises based on our— Right. Programming and run individualized sessions. So we've just sort of tried to go after that market for now 16 years. And even last week I was in Brisbane and Adelaide and they were the exact same members in both. I met them, I actually trained them because I do the training session. Then I'm here, it's the exact same members at all studios. And that market, they get a bit lost in the industry and we really want to help them because we want to make them feel comfortable. There's no judgment.

I love it. No mirrors, supportive trainers, part of fitness community, no locked-in contracts. So you're taking away all the basically the barriers for somebody who's not used to fitness possibly, or not raving about doing the slam ball medicines every morning at 5 o'clock, and you're marketing to those people with their language. That's what I'm hearing here.

That's exactly who we're talking to. That's our brand voice. That's what we want. So yes, there's no doubts about it. We do have people that are ridiculously But they've been coming to us now, they've done their 1,000 sessions, they've lost their 20 kilos, they've created habits, they've developed training techniques, routines. So we actually get them from point A to point B.

Yeah.

And that's at all studios. So yeah, that's exactly who we're talking to. And years and years ago now, I still remember it actually at a basketball bar, we're always talking about and having meetings and workshops about what do people don't like about the industry and how can we actually do it better? And it's like, well, why should they be in a 12-month contract? What if they relocate or Mirrors, judging, time delays. The only negative of that is technique corrections, but we think that if a trainer's doing their job well, they can monitor technique and teach that. So yeah, we just tried to remove all the obstacles to make it friendly for people to join. And that, I guess, a mature market. And we've actually got other markets as well. Young people in their 20s, we've actually fell into it. We didn't do this by design, but 12 to 16-year-olds are becoming a market for us now. I think that's more on the mental health piece and the wellbeing and the support that parents want often because They'll fall out of junior sport from probably 13. They might finish up basketball, cricket, footy, tennis, whatever it is, and then they're falling into our studios as well. So that's been— yeah, that hasn't been by design though. We haven't done any campaigns, but that's been luck, I'd say.

Yeah. Really interesting. I love to hear those stories because, yeah, really, I always say listen to the market. What's the market telling you? So that's really interesting what that's telling you, that's for sure. Ben, I've got to— while you're here, I do want to pick your brain on a couple things in regards to opening up a fitness studio. A lot of people now, they're going open up studios, going open up businesses. What are some solid tips that you can give to someone to open up a successful studio? And I obviously know that you are working on your growth of your studios as always, but what are some of the secrets that you could share to us, Ben?

Yeah, really good question. This is the world we live in, opening up studios a lot because we spend a lot of time doing it and we're talking about properties today with potential owners. So it's a big part. First thing is tip is getting a really good lease agreement. That's number one that could make or break you. You've got to work on really a total rent you're paying for the space you need. So yes, you've got rent per square meter, rent-to-revenue ratios, but it's like, well, if I want to open a studio, 200 square meters, I want, depending on the model, what people want to do. But let's just call it 200 members at $50 a week and there's $10,000 a week and therefore I don't really want to pay much more than $1,500 a week or whatever it is. So get your good lease agreement first, I would say. Number one, making sure, please take this advice, whoever's listening, making sure your lease is always subject to permit, making sure you've got that in place, the council approval, because you can get bitten later on.

Yep.

So you get the foundation right first. We have like 3 phases in that. Then there's company setup, whatever. And then it goes into phase 2, phase 3, whatever, whatever. But I'd say lease and making sure that's tight. Then when you've got the site, clearly it's your local area marketing, your paid advertising. So you got to get your members, your staff, and then all your training and systems and processes. So there's lots of angles for it, but I'd say in simple, having a good marketing plan, having a good actually sales skill to be able to convert those leads into members because there's no point getting 100 leads and having a very low conversion.

Yeah.

Having good systems in place and then finding the right people. But I could talk to a lot more than that, but I'll try and keep it simple there of opening a site. But it starts with a lease agreement.

No, that's great. And you see businesses, and talking about lease for a second, because I mean, we can be talking all day on the amount of volume, volume, volume of members and so forth. But it does really come down to that lease because I mean, if we are overpaying on the lease, we really need to work our butts off to to grow the members? And is that even possible with the size that you have and so forth? Talk about that. Is there always a, no, I'm not going to go there? Because a lot of time the ego can probably talk if you're a new budding Stu owner and go, I want to get that front door location, the premium location, and pay a fee on that. I mean, do you like the back doors and the factories? Do you like retail shops? How do you— What's your sort

of— Yeah, great question. We're pretty passionate about this. I'm actually very passionate. I've got a golden rule. I'd never recommend for someone to sign a lease that I wouldn't sign. That's the golden rule number one. Prime location can be overrated in a destination business anyway. So for us, a shopping strip's ideal. We don't need to be peak. The other thing with peak locations, depending where they are, they also can be poor for parking. And when you run session-based, the time, the sessions run, people can often not get a car park. So shopping strips are perfect for us. We've only got one in a factory or warehouse out of our 20. Majority are in shopping strips and we've got one outside of a shopping center, but we try and stay away from shopping centers at all costs if we can.

That's great. Really interesting. Go to shopping strips, hey? Go to shopping strips. Now, if you are not a business, don't have a business head on you, right? And obviously that's probably the big advantage coming across to your network is that you've got the systems and the processes proven over the last 20 years. So your limit of risk is quite good, obviously, when compared to going yourself. I mean, take me through who should go out on their own with their own brand, Who should consider looking at a franchise brand like yourself? And what are the 2 different types of personalities that are in the game?

Yeah, really good question. And once again, I feel strongly about this and it doesn't make people good or bad people, whether they're franchise ready or they're not. The first point, if you want to get a franchise, you've got to be willing to be a team player and listen and be a student of the system and trust the system. But to do that, first, taking it back a step, you've got to do your due diligence on the system to make sure you believe in it, experience it, believe that this system and this market or what they're trying to do is in your wheelhouse. For me, with all respect, if there was a bodybuilding franchise out there, I wouldn't open it because I'm not passionate about bodybuilding. I'm passionate about healthy lifestyle.

So

understanding that, so to be a good franchisee, you need to follow systems, processes, be a student of it, ask a lot of questions, be willing to learn, be extremely coachable. Yeah. If you're a person, once again, it doesn't make you a bad person who, I wouldn't say my way or the highway, but not I'm doing it my way. Please do not buy a franchise. Please don't. It'll end up in tears because franchisors, it's not a dictatorship, but you need uniformity, you need connection, and what's good for one's got to be good for everyone. So someone just can't come in and buy McDonald's and say, you know what, I feel like doing some souvlakis today because there was good meat at the market the other day. You can't do that. So that's the type of person Business acumen, business skills are critical. You'd get that at a franchise. If you want to do it yourself and you're that personality type and you've got the means to do it, I highly recommend to build a team of consultants around you for project-based to upskill yourself because you will need those skills in business management.

Yeah, that's a great explanation of where people should go because it is true. If you're going to open up, If you're going to open up a— well, if you're going to invest into going into a franchise operation, it's like, well, you want to believe in those systems because that's ultimately what you're paying for, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I see some people say it's true or not, but I see some of those health bars and even acai bars that, you know, when a guy's got one, those places are pretty cool, right? It's a bit of a treat, acai. It's probably got a bit of sugar in it, depends on how they make it, but they've got other nice little things. So I actually like that thing. So if I was into hospitality, Mentality, that's the brand I'd be inquiring about going, no, I could see myself that because it's cool, whatever. Probably wouldn't because I'm in the fitness industry, but that's the mindset you need. You've got to really be passionate about the brand and then you can sell it.

Yeah, no, that's great. Love that. Now you've conducted a lot of workouts, right? Let's just flip the— it's usually talking about business marketing, but I wouldn't mind This question, you conduct over 500,000 workouts. I mean, what do you think the best workout is now? What's the best exercise or machine or workout? What is your go-to thing?

I'm going to give you the most boring answer here, Richard. I'm sorry, but it's just whatever's specific for the person. So that's what the best, the worst workout. I mean, strength-based as an overall is, I think that's the best. I mean, there's elements to that and there's certain machines that jump in there and we've all got our So personally, if I'm going to pick one strength exercise to do and to give someone that's capable, I'm giving them a deadlift because posterior strength is— it's easier to do anterior. So deadlifts would be my number one to give. And then when it comes to cardio, actually favorite machine, I'll give Synergy a plug here, but I love their Power Tower. I just reckon anyone can do it. You can have different levels and it's just climbing and it gets your heart rate up really high. But it's really what's specific to that person. And that's boring answer, but whatever's going to get people motivated.

No, that's the thing. You got to get them motivated and keep them motivated. Love it. All right. A couple quick questions for you. I'd love to know, right? We do talk about marketing on this show and I'd love to talk about if you're down to your last $100 and you had to spend it on marketing or business, well, what would you spend it on, Ben?

This is a great question. This is a great question actually. And if I was in that position, what I would do, I would look internally as much as I can when it comes to marketing and I would run like a kick-butt open day with $100.

Yeah.

But I would actually lean on all local businesses to sponsor me. And this might be the easy answer for the day and get donations. And I'd do awesome door prizes to come in, like really aggressive door prizes that aren't gonna cost me dollars and cents but time.

Yeah.

And make that $100 stretch further as far as it can. And then on that day, generate enough cash flow from that day. We've seen some open days that are really good and they've got different purposes, but that's what I would do if I was down to my last $100.

Oh, you wouldn't even spend the $100. You're asking for sponsorships. That's even smarter. I love the answer. That's great.

I'd be trying to keep the $100 in my pocket and hopefully there's a couple of zeros added to that. But I would try and— the answer to the question is with $100, I wouldn't put it on red or black, to be honest. I know it's probably not the ideal answer, but I would look internally to my number one asset, and that's my database, and see how I can maximize that. And then they can then exponentially bring other people into that one event and do it on a shoestring. That's what I'll

do. Yeah, I love it. What a great piece of advice there. There's a concept that I've always used. It's called the bleeding edge or the leading edge. Bleeding edge is a concept like, well, you had a great idea, but you were just ahead of the market a little bit too early and nobody kind of believed you. It's like possibly selling solar 30 years ago or 40 years ago, right? I want to know, has there been a time in your business history or a product that you brought out and you were on the bleeding edge? It was a little bit too early to the market and a time that you're on the leading edge, Ben?

Really good. That's a very good question. I've never been asked that question before, Richard.

No, we can throw a curveball or two.

When we first opened up a studio on November 9th, 2008, now I could be wrong on this, so please don't hold me to this. I know this will go out to a few people, but At the time, there was like PT101 studios in the Australian market that were doing well, but there wasn't a lot of like what now brands as like boutique fitness studios, like strong fitness community. And we were in there in 2008. Then the big bang really come in about 2015 with the brands and followed 2017, 2018, '19. So you could probably say that we were probably a bit ahead of our time, but we also Interesting. And this thing, this does answer your question because that was a good question, by the way. But we probably at the time didn't have the technology because we were before our time to do it unbelievably well. We did it on the back of industry experience, a bit of ad hoc, a bit of management on the run, still ran profitable business and hit great numbers. But I think we were so early in that space and now it's a total different business. Everything's tech enabled, everything's systemized. But at that time, It wasn't.

Yeah.

Well, I think, I think if that answers the questions, that's why I think it was, it was pretty early on for us, very early on to us. I was just, because it just, I was just there one day in 2007 and I was training someone and I was doing a one-on-one session, probably getting paid $60, $70 a session, whatever. And they're doing 30 on, 30 off. I'm just standing there, all these people not knowing what they're doing, thinking, what am I doing? I said, I could be over there helping them. This person knows what they're doing. I could go and help this person, this person, this person. And yeah, that's when we opened the studio.

Yeah. So good. And it is interesting when you're on the journey for a long time. I love the question because I think there's so many different things. Even if you have that one same business, we have different products, different services, different price points, all these different things. And sometimes we just don't know, especially when you're leading a company and you're leading multiple locations. You do have to try things out. And I think that's That can sometimes be a negative when people fail, but it's like, well, you're going to fail if you're really pushing those boundaries.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is where you want to play. Yeah.

Nah, so interesting. Now, Ben, I probably didn't ask too much about the structure of Listen to Your Body. I'm really curious around how does it work on a few different levels? One, if I want to be involved as a client, and 2, if I'm actually looking at going, hey, where's the next You know, where should I invest my money into if I want to open up a studio with limited risk? I'd love to know sort of the model of all these things.

Sure. So from a member experience, what happens, members book either strength or cardio on the app. So it's not like a class where it's like called, you know, whatever name and it's a certain circuit style class. It's actually like you're either booking for strength or cardio. And within each of our studios, there's like 4 strength, 4 cardio zones where multiple people, 2 people go into each zone up to 2. So we have stand comfortably per class. We have another small area as well once the business is really pumped there. And within those classes and in those zones, there's multi-level exercises like progressions and regressions.

Yeah.

And then the member will book in 45-minute time slot and say, say it's strength day 1. Let's say I'm partnered with John Smith and let's pretend, so I don't sound like I've got a big ego, let's pretend I've never trained. Well, instead of doing a back squat of 90 kilos, I'm doing a bodyweight squat regress, et cetera. And the trainer's dialing up and down the different movements so it can be customized to each person. Yeah. There's 12-minute rounds. Do as many sets as you can, but at your pace. So it's not like, okay, it's a 45-second, even though timing, we've done timing before and varied things, but it's not like, oh geez, I've got to keep up. I've got to get to the next station. It's not like that at all. It's like, okay, you've got squats, you've got single arm bent over row, you've got 200 meters on the SkiErg or whatever it is. That's your exercise for the 12 minutes. And then we go to another area, yada, yada, yada. So then the next day I'll book in because I'd lifted on Monday. Tuesday I'm doing cardio core. That might be XYZ. So personalized approach. And then I guess from your other part of your question was about sort of the franchise side of things. That's what you're asking, was it, Richard? Yeah. Well, from a franchising side of things, if people are interested To look at opening up a Listen to Your Body, or I guess any brand, we've got a system or process probably similar to most brands where people inquire. We go through like a 5-step process where there's a lot of to and fro, a lot of— there's interviews, there's applications, there's discovery sessions, there's meeting other owners, there's trialing sessions. So it's a very thorough due diligence process. Then they secure a territory. Then what we do, we do 99% of the heavy lifting, help them find a site, bring in all our suppliers, help them find their PT team, train their PT team, do their pre-launch, help them with their membership sales and help them open the door. So we oversee the whole project. And then ongoing, we've got a support system where we're quarterly onsite. There's usually contact 3 times a week, annual conference, other upskilling sessions, 12 Zooms a year where we're doing some type of— yeah. So if you're interested—

It's quite intense, the support you give. And that's what I've noticed. You're really focusing on that support. Where a lot of the models, they just grow, grow, grow. No support in the back.

Yeah, we do. We spend probably 98% of our time on support and performance versus growth. So people like, we're at 20, it's not a big brand. Of course we're small, but every pretty much dollar we have, pretty much everything, resources we'll put into supporting our guys because we think that if they're having a great experience, like we've just signed a franchise renewal last week for the 11th year of one and another one's due this week for their 11th year going into their 3rd 5-year term. So retention per franchisee is through the roof. Our open, we very rarely have to shut them. Unfortunately, we have a couple over the years, but so our strike rate's really good and performance is good, but I think it's because we're so focused on that. So yeah, it's pretty thorough process.

Yeah, that's excellent. It's almost like you guys are working for each location and working for that. That's really, really, really good to hear. Ben, it's been a pleasure to listen to your story just in a really quick format. I look forward to possibly having him back more because there's a lot of different topics that you can go on, but I'm just really fascinated about your avatar and I'm just so surprised why the clues are on the wall. 20 years in this game, really focusing on a clear niche. And with the population of Australia, the overweight and the illnesses and the disabilities, and you've really got, I think, the future right here with Listen to Your Body. So I'm loving what you're doing. I'm looking forward to hearing how that goes.

Oh, thanks, Richard. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate the chat. It's been great.

Awesome. Thanks, Ben. It's been great. And If they want to get a hold of Ben, what's— yourself, Ben. I'm saying Ben. Where's the best place to direct anybody? Is it to your website, Listen to Your Body, or somewhere else?

Yeah, website's good. And people, website, listentoyourbody.com.au. People can contact me direct. I'm ben@listentoyourbody.com.au. And yeah, happy to chat from there.

Awesome. Thanks, Ben. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, definitely watch the YouTube version. You can check it out. On YouTube, on our website commarketing.com.au, and if you have enjoyed this, there's over 200 other episodes that you can listen to at commarketing.com.au. If you want to be a marketing ninja, jump on our website commarketing.com.au and find a course or program or service that suits you. Thanks, team. I'll catch you next time on the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. Bye for now.