Getting Raw Ep #15 Michael Jordan, Creative Fitness Marketing

Welcome to Getting Raw. It's Richard Mark Turtungi, and today I'm with the one and the only number 23, Michael Jordan. How you going? It's really a bad joke. Everybody uses it. I'm sure a thousand times. How many people come up to you and say, hey, Michael Jordan? How many signs do you get?

It's unbelievable. I mean, every single day for the last 28 years. Like, you know, you think— I thought when he retired I was going to have some reprieve. I thought, great, he's retired, he's going to go off the scene a bit. But every day, whether I'm calling, I get a telemarketing call, whether I'm visiting a business, they've got to get my details. There's a joke. Sometimes I'm in the mood to humor them with a, ha, good one. Other times I'm just over it. If it's my 8th one of the day, I'm over it. Oh, that's such a good name anyway.

Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan's from Creative Fitness Marketing. And why I wanted to speak to Michael, one, he's a sponsor of Mega Fitness Marketing, which I believe that as a community, as an industry, we need to make sure we keep supporting it. And Creative Fitness Marketing's been around for a while now, and they're continually supporting the industry. They're here supporting WAIFC in WA, and it's important to make sure that we, you know, these guys have got something to say. They've been around for a long time. And Michael hasn't come from the fitness industry, which I like, because there's a lot of people in this industry that are coming as personal trainers. They go on to managers, they go on to sales, et cetera, et cetera. But Michael has come from out of the industry and he's teaching us in the industry how to run clubs better, how to retain staff better. And you've got some cool projects. There's one that I really, really love, My Zone, which I'll get to later. Mm-hmm. Tell me a bit about when you came into this industry. Were you shocked? Were you— was it like, geez, this industry could do a lot better in sales? Are we good at sales? Are we good at retention? What do you think as an outsider?

To be honest, the first couple of years were a learning curve for me as well. I came from, you know, a corporate background working in an international-style advertising agency where it was business-to-business in the sales and pitch presentations and all that sort of stuff was very different from the sales presentations you give on the gym floor.

Yeah.

So actually, the first gym I ever did a sale for was in a hardcore bodybuilding gym in North England. I just got the job with CFM through a colleague I knew that was working over there, and we rocked up to this hardcore bodybuilding gym and we were putting pretty balloons and posters up around their free weights area.

That would be nice.

Yeah, yeah, they were very impressed with our little promotion that we had going on. So, you know, the initiation process for me for selling was definitely that, an initiation process. And I guess we got taught well by Dave and Emmett, who were the directors of CFM, and had a lot of experience with sales myself. So it took me a while to really understand what was, you know, what was quality sales and what was quality marketing and what wasn't. Obviously, you know, the clients that we dealt with in advertising industries, they had, you know, million-dollar budgets. So the type of marketing they did was very different to what an independent club could do on a much smaller level. But you started to see those that knew the basics and the fundamentals and how to get those fundamentals right.

So the fundamentals are always the same in any industry. It's just, I guess, how you execute them. How much money you have to spend, etc.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, today I was talking about the return on investment. Now, you know, a club with a $100,000 budget, you know, their target may be to get a 3 to 1 return on their $100,000 budget. You might not have a $100,000 budget, you might have $10,000, and 3 to 1 with that might be just as effective for what your goals are as well. So it's all relative. It doesn't matter if you've got a lot of marketing money or not, it's just trying to make it As effective and as best cost return as possible.

Okay, so I'm going to get down to the juicy stuff. I want to know, if I've got $50 as a club, run out of money, about to go bankrupt, what can I spend my $50 on in marketing? What's going to be best bang for my buck?

Well, I guess first thing, I was just in a seminar with Rick before, is not going straight out there without doing a bit of research. If you've gone out of business or— sorry, if you're down to your last 50, I'd question whether you've been providing a good experience for your members. That's what we're always talking about, you know, providing the ultimate member experience because the number one generator of sales in this industry, of course, is referrals. So obviously, if you've got to that stage where you're down to your last 50—

You've got problems.

You've got problems. If you've got a $50 marketing budget, there's not a lot we can do. No, no, I shouldn't say that. Once you've done— what you should then do is look at the members that you've got. Yeah. Okay, so why are the members using your gym at the moment and how did they get there in the first place? Look at the demographics, the type of people that you've attracted, whether it's been deliberate or not deliberate, and then come up with a strategy based on the type of people you're targeting.

Right.

So if you're targeting, you know, a high revenue PT-type client, you're not going to do a mass marketing campaign because you're going to spend a lot of money and a lot of that's going to go wasted. Yeah. You want to target the people that have money. You want to go to the places where people have money. Sure. So for instance, if you're going to corporates, then you've got to work out on a strategy to get to the decision maker or the person with the money, not just going there blazingly with a flyer and go, here, Dan will ask $50, please.

Please remember.

I'll do my best. I'm desperate. So, you know, as I mentioned in the seminar, there's a great example of a club owner in Toowoomba, Troy Morgan. And his approach was going out to businesses and talking to the CEOs and inviting them to a breakfast.

Good.

Okay. And then he'd ask the CEOs the question, what do your staff What are the most important things for your staff and your business in terms of their health and wellness?

Sure.

You know, talked about productivity, energy levels, nutrition, all that sort of stuff. And he got that information together and then said, okay, not a problem, I'm going to put together an exhibition. Okay, and all you need to do is invite your staff down. Now this exhibition will have nutritionists, physiotherapists, obviously our exercise side of the business, the WeFit, all that sort of really cool stuff. And then the staff came down and what they did was simply pick and choose the stuff that was relevant to what was missing in their life. Okay, they need help with their nutrition. They may be very good with exercise and not need that help. They may prefer to exercise at home, so having an exercise program written for when they're at home is better suited to them. So they went and handpicked all the stuff that was relevant to them, and then Troy Simply got that together, packaged it together, and went back to the CEO with not something that he was selling, but exactly what his staff and his team wanted. They'd handpicked it. So he was giving not only what the CEO wanted, but what the team wanted as well. So it took the selling element out of it. He was just connecting the dots and putting it in a package. So, you know, when you— whether you're approaching a business or with any Side of your marketing, you've just, you've got to be smart. You know, the common sense and stuff and, you know, doing the research on who you've actually got and then just putting the pieces of the puzzle together of the most effective and cost-effective way to reach them in the first place and then have an engaging and worthwhile offer for them to come down.

I like that. It's not, as I said, just getting the machine gun and just going out. It's really sniping. Sniping what you have as well, you know what I mean? And we all have. And that's, and that's what I want to talk about more, retention, because you guys specialize in retention. There's a really cool gadget I tried out last time we were together. It's very colorful, I like it. And tell me about that, the MyZone system.

Yeah.

Because with Getting Raw, Getting Raw is all about how to get more money, more profits for business owners, club owners, personal trainers. And having something like this in your club, tell me some, I guess, some stories in regards to what people are experiencing now because it's launched just in Australia, I think, recently. Is that right?

Yeah, correct. We've got it in about 20 clubs at the moment, including my own out at Warwick. And the system is quite simple. A member purchases a heart rate belt. They cost $50 to $55 for the club owner and on sale for $60 to $70 $65, for the member. $69, depending on how the club wants to position it within their club. The member simply puts on the belt and then works out. Now, in the live environment, if they're doing a fitness class, group PT, PT, or in the regular gym, the console and the TV screens connected to the console show a live reading of their heart rate. So for instance, if they're in a spin studio, And the instructor's up the front going, righto guys, time to turn it up, crank it up. And we've all been there before and we put on the face and we pretend to crank it up. We're really like, oh, I'm knackered. I'm knackered. Do the 3 turns. Yeah, do the— Done half. Done half. And so it's taking— it's putting accountability in their workouts. So with everyone's nicknames up on the screen and it's color-coded based on the heart rate that you're in, 50 to 60, 60 to 70, 70 to 80. So they're engaged in how hard they're working.

This is live, is it?

This is live.

Oh, nice, nice.

So that's the live element, and it's great for competitions, great for engaging the member, and just a great USP of the club. But probably the most impressive part of it is at the back end, whether they've worked out in the club or outside. They simply need to walk 20 meters, within 20 meters of the console, and through Bluetooth technology, it automatically uploads that workout data to Right. So it creates an ongoing logbook of every workout they ever do.

Right, so if they do a really bad workout, they don't want to go to the club, they can just walk past the club's front doors. I don't want to go to the club, it's been bad. Scan it, they don't have to go to the club.

Well, no, unfortunately not, because it records every one. Right. It records up to 15 hours of exercise. Okay. Okay, so you can, for instance, go on a 2-week holiday, the member can go on a 2-week holiday. They can record all of their workouts. Yes. Come back to the club and you as a trainer or an owner can have an engaging conversation to see how much exercise they did over the break. We did a challenge over the Christmas period, which is obviously usually a lull in attendance time for club members. And we had just simply a platinum, gold, silver, bronze based on— and the MyZone system simply records the amount of calories you burn. And MyZone effort points based on the time you spend in each heart rate zone. And so we set a tally board. The platinum got you 1 month free. The gold got you half your belt back. Silver got you a singlet. Bronze got you a shirt. Now over the break, we set the targets. All the members with the belts simply worked hard to hit that goal. And guess how much we had to do as a club? Nothing.

It's all done.

All we did was set the targets, and because it's all automated, all we're doing is watching our members hustle to try and—

It's amazing how competitive people are when they do it, hey?

Exactly. There's a lot of

competitive

husbands and wives going at it. Sam has a fitter couple. So yeah, it's, it's really cool. And for instance, on Christmas Day, we had almost 40 people at the gym on Christmas Day.

Really?

Because they were all up to win the competition.

Win the competition. Amazing. And that's what it's all about, is retention. And I think as we move into an industry further and further, we're going to see more strategies like this, I think, because people, you know, they go to the gym, they want just more out of it. They want to be a community at the gym. They want to get results as well. And they want to be able to do it at home and at work. So I think it's a phenomenal way to, you know, to grow and to keep Keep those clients, retain those clients. And we all know, obviously, if you retain clients, getting new clients is going to be a lot cheaper to retain those clients versus new clients. So it's really good.

Yeah, and we, you know, we as a company, CFM's been around for 21 years, and for, you know, 20 of those years we focused on membership drive, generating new members for health clubs. But we've also realized as the industry's changed and matured that the retention and the customer experience and the length of stay are the things that we should also be measuring. You know, I did the example at my club. If I can increase the average length of stay by just 1 month, at 1,000 members at $60 a month, that's $60,000 I can add to my bottom line. Yeah. Yet because it's a longer-term investment and a longer-term measurement, we sometimes lose focus and go back to the simple stuff. I like

it. We've got new clients and we've got retention. That's very important too. 21 years Creative Fitness Marketing's been around. Obviously, they're an international company. What countries are they in? Australia and Asia, you said before?

Primarily, it's the UK, America and Canada, and Australia and New Zealand. Now, that's primarily been through our membership drive. With MyZone, of course, it's much easier to transcend into different cultures where we don't need to know the markets and the demographics and the cultural differences. So we're in the process of having MyZone installed in pubs in India and Asia and all parts of the world.

Sure, sure. So where's the future for Michael Jordan? What's happening next?

Just really excited about Myzone and also my club. My club's in a country town in Warwick, 2 hours west of Brissy. A lot of passion just for helping Warwick become a much healthier regional centre, so that's a big drive for me. And I love the fact that I can go around visiting club owners and, you know, take ideas and hopefully share some ideas with them as well and then put it all together and and see it work in action at my club. And then, yeah, just trying to get out there both in the fitness industry, in the corporate market, in the education market with MyZone, and try to be able to, you know, make more people accountable to their exercise. Sure. And make it, yeah, a great experience.

It's been a blast, Michael. You've got to go, but you can catch Michael— where do you hang around? Your Facebook? Are you online? What do you do?

You know what, Richard, and this was actually one of the things we're going to be talking about, you know, probably my online presence needs to improve. And, you know, we've all got areas of improvement. So I'm on Facebook. Probably the easiest way to start is my email.

Good old-fashioned way. Good old-fashioned way.

I haven't got any YouTube channels, you know, Yet, or anything like that going. So michael.jordan@cfm.net.

No problem, we'll put it on the bottom of the

screen.

Yep. If you do a good editing. And of course, he's on Meet Your Fitness Marketing, so click on the banners, check him out. They're always at expos, they're always sponsoring events, he's always speaking, so get to his session. And I look forward to seeing, you know, as an industry, we get better with retention. We get better at new sales. And thanks for sharing with us and getting raw.

Cheers, man.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time, guys.