Getting Raw Ep #45 Brett Campbell - Fiit International

Welcome to Getting Raw. It's Richard Mark Toutounji, and I'm at the sunny Gold Coast today with my special guest, Brett Campbell. How you doing?

Very good, thank you, buddy. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Thanks for coming along.

Firstly, mate, I just want to point out that is the first time I've ever known how your last name's actually pronounced. Oh, really? Thanks for clearing that up for me.

It's Toutounji. It's very easy actually. That's why I've got Mark Toutounji. But I always used to spell it like number 2, the number 2, MG.

Well, there you go. Maybe you should get a depot and change that.

So yeah, we're just— we're in the sunny Gold Coast today. It's middle of July. It's a beautiful day outside. I thought we'd do the episode in my apartment today. Figuring out— I guess I've seen your success and your different style in the fitness industry and I thought, you know, give you a call, what you're doing up here. What have you been up to now? Because I see you on the horizon doing a few different things. I just wanted to see what's happening in the Gold Coast fitness industry up here. What's been happening?

Well, mate, a few things have been happening. How long have we got for the episode, I guess, is the question. I guess if I give you just a quick snapshot of what's actually happened over the last, let's say, 15 months, which I guess has really prompted I guess the 15 months

is the stuff that I've seen you change

quite a lot.

That's right. You were doing a lot of mentoring and coaching before and I've seen you now take a new kind of business on. I've seen you get out there a little bit and I was very curious about that side of things.

Sure. So I guess again, just a bit of an overview is my company's Fit International. So that was established— actually it was only established about 6 months ago, the company itself. But what actually happened was Again, I was a personal trainer. I've been in the industry for a few years and I was a solo personal trainer. I had some apprentices work for me. So I built a small team of trainers but I always knew that that wasn't the way I really wanted to head. Basically, mate, we've chatted about this before, I just fell in love with internet marketing. I just fell in love with what the internet can actually do.

Yeah, because you've been to the States a few times where you've been to a few of the similar conferences that I've been to before and so yeah, you've been Back and forth to America to learn a few tricks of the trade.

Yeah, well, I've been there 3 times now and I'll be there many more times as well because I guess it's that thing. I'm a big believer on if you want to be the best at something, you've got to be around the people who are being the best at it currently. So yeah, I travel over there quite frequently. I've met some really good friends over there, really good contacts, which is priceless in itself. But going back to that whole thing of internet marketing, my partner Emily, a little over— it would have been maybe 16 months ago. No, actually it would have been just over 2 years. Emily was like, I want to be a personal trainer as well. And I was like, okay, well look, be a trainer. I'll be able to get you some clients, because I understood the marketing side of it and how to get clients and keep them, etc. The marketing part, yeah. Basically, Emily quit her full-time job, she studied to be a trainer, became a trainer, and it was the day, I guess, to start getting Emily some leads.

Sure.

And then I used my, I guess you would say, skill set that I had learned currently at that stage from internet marketing to generate leads from the web. Long story short, if we were to fast forward it, Emily was booked out within a couple of weeks. And then we found that maybe having Emily doing one-on-one training wasn't the best use of our time. And in that time, I guess in the first 12 months, we built a Facebook fan page of over 100,000 likes. It's currently at 140,000 now.

Great, amazing.

And it builds by the day. And not only that, I guess all likes from Facebook aside because I guess likes is one thing but really what I'm really into and I'm sure yourself as well, it really comes down to your email contacts. It's about the size of the database.

So you're building a database, an email database and you're obviously building your social media interaction through Facebook, yeah?

Sure. And to this date we've had over 200,000 people download our free giveaway to get them onto our—

That's great.

Into our funnel.

So let's talk about that a bit more because I'm sure a lot of people are curious about, you know, You know, there's trainers out there that are struggling with getting the first few clients in. You're able to create a large database of email and Facebook contacts. Is it choosing the right niche? Is it choosing the right industry? Is it choosing the right demographic? How would you best describe doing that?

I think all of those 3 things are extremely important. But I'm always a believer, and as a coach and mentor to hundreds of personal trainers around Australia, And some internationally as well. I've learned to— when I get asked this question, there's that part of me that really wants to show you the tips and strategies exactly how I did it. But all of that aside, because I could reveal exactly how I did it right now, but there's a backend, which I like to call it. There needs to be a backend to anything that you create. Sure. So every system needs a backend to it. What I was able to create, I guess, was the point A to point B to point C. So I really mapped out the whole client's journey prior to even generating leads, to be honest.

So like a system, a plan? Correct.

Yeah, so I like to call it your client's journey because— and a quick example is what's the first step from when someone sees you or first hears about you to them becoming a long-term serving client who stays, pays, and refers and is just a raving fan of your business? So it really comes down to the actual backend, the system on one, being able to collect the leads, then secondly, being able to follow up consecutively with the leads as well. Okay.

And so now what does your business look like? What, 6— you said 6 months. It's only been 6 months into the company.

The actual company, yeah, Fit International, Fit with 2 I's as well. We decided to take a whole different branding approach with that and use the word fit. And I guess what we've done is is we've created a heap of different products and services based off the fit. So one of those is this Friday, in a few days, we're taking a group of 30 girls to Bali.

Great.

So we've got a leg to our business called Fit Retreats. We've got our flagship program, which is called Fit Chicks, which is where we've had, I guess you would say, the Facebook success. And basically Fit Chicks is an outdoor or indoor group training bootcamp program for females. And with that side of it as well, we've created a license program for personal trainers to be able to own their very own Fit Chick location. And then I guess be able to benefit off the back of us being an established brand and having—

So instead of giving your, as you said before, your tricks of the trade or your secrets, right? You're basically saying, okay, Trainers can now actually— don't have to worry about that. They can pretty much go to you direct and license. Is that correct?

Well, what that means basically is, let's say you're the personal trainer. We're here in Gold Coast. There's 3 locations currently in Gold Coast. And let's say there was another one available for you. You being Richard Marques, you could be Richard Marques Personal Training, is now the licensee for FitChek's Coolangatta. So you would have your own location. It's your business. You just get to utilize, you know, all the extras and all the systems and the systems. So you get your own website created for you where leads basically can come generating through. Now there's obviously an element where as a licensee you need to build your own business.

Yep.

You know, we don't just build a business for someone. Um, yeah, or else we just set up all the locations for ourselves. But, um, being a coach and mentor in the industry, I know, you know, after consulting with hundreds and hundreds of trainers, I know what the problems are. I know what problems I originally had when I started out. And to be honest, it's not about I can't get clients. It's about they don't have a system in place to get clients because anyone can get clients, I believe. I could show you right now how to set up a Google ad or a Facebook ad or a Gumtree ad and get a client like that within 10 minutes because there's a system behind it. And it's just about understanding that and not only understanding that, I think understanding the psychology of the person you're actually trying So you're saying you're going

to get the leads, but then that's one thing, but you actually make sure the client gets results, they get systems overall. That's what you're talking about.

Oh, 100%. I guess, you know, I'm a big fan of what they call education-based marketing. So not only do we get leads by giving them something for free, you know, who would have thought, you know, giving— you've got to give something away first at the front end to get at the back end. That's, that's my motto. And We not only— I guess when we capture the details, it's our duty and I take it as a responsibility. It's our duty of care to then educate and motivate them to then take the next step along their way. That may be turning up to a FitChic location somewhere in Australia. Now we have over 30 locations. In the first, it's now 12 weeks that we've been open for personal trainers and we've got 30 locations. Yeah. Now what that means is The leads that we actually generate on a daily basis, we'll generate anywhere from 400 to 1,000 new leads a day from around Australia. And the great thing about that is now we're able to then offer them a service in Geelong or a service in Chermside in Brisbane or Townsville. So that's basically the back end of the whole thing.

That's a lot of leads a day you're generating.

Yeah, it is a lot of leads.

And that's going to all your licensees?

So not all of those are going to our licensees. See, so I guess that the first step is those are the people that—

Taking the free product.

That have basically put their hand up to say, hey, look, I think I'm interested in something that you offer.

I understand.

And then it's up to us because I could give someone, I could give a personal trainer today 400 leads and they will go and do nothing with it and they won't turn it into money. Because at the end of the day, we're in this, in the industry to make money, right?

We need to monetize our leads. We

need to monetize it. And not only that, you need to offer products and services that are going to complement them. If we're going back to what does Fit represent, we've got Fit applications. We've got an iTunes and an Android app. We've had over 40,000 downloads of that now and it's a paid app. We've got Fit Professionals where again it goes back to the license program. We're creating a community of fitness professionals where we want to educate and motivate them as well to be the best they can be in business.

So what's the grand plan? Because it seems like you're getting a lot of traction now. You're starting to move now and you're getting a lot of locations set up. A lot of downloads happening, a lot of inquiries happening. Is it— is— what's the overall plan for Fit International?

So Fit International as a whole, like, there's the Fit International plan and then there's the Brett Campbell plan. The Fit International and Brett Campbell. So as Fit International, our aim is to not only just have our Fit Chex program, we want to open Fit Kids, Fit Mums, Fit Executives. So we've got a smorgasbord of different products and services because not every trainer, we realize, wants to just train females. Some trainers want to just train guys. Some trainers just want to take on the kids. So we want to create a smorgasbord of products there. I guess in a whole, we want to be known as the largest, most successful fitness company in Australia. Okay. We're in talks with some people from overseas looking at licensing outside of Australia as well. But our first target is to have our first 100 locations in 12 months. That's our first initial goal with that. And every other product and service that we can create on the side of that, you know—

At the moment, are you just based in Queensland? Are you in the other states at the moment, or just focused on the Queensland market?

So we've got— we're all around Australia. So Melbourne's actually our most popular place at the moment for trainers to take on locations.

Melbourne? You think it'd be here, it's got good weather. Why are we in Melbourne for?

It's cold. Yeah, look, we've got, I believe, 13 locations down in Melbourne at the moment. And to be honest, Because of the opportunity that we present to trainers, we've had to turn away, and without a lie, we've actually had to turn away over a dozen people who have wanted a location, but it's already gone. So that's really interesting as well. But we're as far as Townsville and as far down as Point Cook down in Melbourne.

So dealing with a lot of trainers, mentoring trainers, what are you finding the biggest issues out there at the moment with personal trainers in the fitness industry? Either not understand the marketing or is it something else? The fitness industry is growing so fast, I guess, and you're mentoring a lot of trainers in this industry. What are the 2 major problems that why clients can't get leads or inquiries? What's out there?

Again, I think it comes back, mate, to understanding the system as a whole. It was a little—

So they have to create a system, would you say?

I would have to definitely say so. And I'm a massive believer in, like, I'm absolutely in love with marketing and what it can do. It doesn't matter what you do, whether you're at a pub and you're walking up to a girl or a guy, you are marketing yourself. Yeah. Everything we do in this world is a form of marketing and understanding the psychology of marketing even more so because the biggest problem, I guess, you know, if you were to put, you know, ask 10 trainers, they would say, I want more clients. And like I said, I could get people clients, but if they can't keep them and get them to refer on, then that's where the biggest issue is going to lie. So I'd really suggest, my biggest piece of advice would be indulge yourself in marketing. Learn marketing. Learn as much as you can about marketing. That's why I guess I've created a podcast where I just want to talk about business and marketing because I love it that much.

So marketing, marketing, marketing. That's the biggest tip you give. It really is. That's lacking out there at the moment too, marketing?

It is indeed. marketing, you know, and because there's so many people out there who call themselves marketers and there's so many people who call themselves coaches. Yeah. You know, there's so many people who— and this does my head in, this one— so many people call themselves Facebook experts, you know, and the reason why I say that is, you know, there's a few people that I've been looking and I check up on and I go, well, you're saying you're a Facebook expert and you're charging someone for your services, yet your results don't Prove that, right? Sure. Um, so I mean, it really comes down to becoming an expert in a, in a, in a field, in my opinion, because, you know, I, I struggled to get clients when I first started. I always had the gift of the gab. Like you get anyone in front of me and I could, I could sell them a tea pot.

Well, I think most trainers can, they get somebody in front of them, they can always sell the session because they're very good at what they do. They're very good at what they do. Uh, it's getting them to, In front of them, that's the issue. I think the biggest issue.

Well, I 100% agree. And it really comes down to understanding online is really where it's at.

Online is where it's at. We both know online is where it's at. Let's talk about something else. I do like to hear the success. I like to hear the struggles to get there, to your story as well. Let's talk about the Brett Campbell story a little bit and tell me, I guess, you know, we mentioned before you're You're back and forth to America to learn those internet marketing— that's obviously where you developed your marketing skills, you know what I mean? What about, I guess, the hardships like every trainer goes through? Like you mentioned, you had a few trainers working under you. Talk to me about that process. I mean, was that a successful process? Did you learn from that? Like, what were the struggles? Was there highs in that process?

Sure. So I guess if we start first with the trainers. My journey was, you know, I started as a one-on-one personal trainer and I was trading my time for money, right? Yeah. And then I stumbled across, I was living with a flatmate when I first moved to Australia. I was living with a flatmate and she was sitting on her computer and I walked, I was walking out of the garage one day and I seen her there and I was like, oh, what's that? And she was scrolling through and it was a PDF. I actually didn't even know what a PDF was really. And she's like, oh, it's a PDF. And I go, oh, because I seen it. I seen some photos of, Like someone doing some exercise on it.

On the PDF.

Yeah, on the PDF. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And, um, you know, I looked at the book and I said, oh, where'd you get that from? She goes, oh, I downloaded it from a guy. I said, oh yeah, where? Oh, Canada. I'm like, that, that was like, to me, that was, I just got goosebumps then because that's the light bulb moment for me when I realized, I was like, shit, this dude in Canada just made $37 off her sitting in her garage. in Australia. And I'm like, there's got to be something in this. Like if she bought it, then other people must have.

Bought it. Yeah.

So I guess that was where my internet marketing journey started from. I just jumped on everyone's email lists, looked at what they were doing, saying, sending, promoting, that type of stuff. And I just, I really just got, I guess, obsessed about it for, for some time. And then it was, it was quite funny because I traveled to Let's fast forward 2 years to that. And I actually traveled to the United States and actually got some mentoring from that particular person whose ebook it was, which at the time I was never, I never would have thought, yeah, I'm going to fly to America and see this person and see what it's all about. But that was where my love for internet marketing took over. And I guess what it did for me was I sort of put my PT business on the back burner. the wayside a bit. And because I'd always had my clients and they kept coming back and I wasn't really excited about building a big fitness company.

So that was pretty much on autopilot. You turn up to your sessions. That's right. Whilst you're learning marketing at the same time.

Yeah. So I was sitting there and I wouldn't recommend this to anyone at all,

but— Not a good move.

I sat there for like, literally I tracked, because I used to track and measure my time and where the income was coming in. And I'd literally spent hundreds, spent over 600 hours sitting at my computer trying to learn web stuff, looking at this, trying to build a website.

This is why they say go find experts and not have to spend 600 hours.

Mate, honestly, it was unbelievable. And I guess I'm always someone that I look for a lesson out of something. And I guess the great thing about that is everything I know about that now. And when you meet a lot of marketers, you don't really get many marketers who are like, oh yeah, I know how to do the technical side of it. And that's where those hours come into play where not only am I able to look at a system and go, okay, this needs to happen here, here, here, and here, but I know actually how to technically do it, which can be a bad thing as well because I'll see myself submerged in it.

It can be a bad thing, yes.

Like this morning, an example of that is we're running a campaign at the moment and I had to create a capture form for it and email sequence for it. And normally I could send that off to our web team because I do— I've learned from that and I've got people in our team to do that. But the thing with that is it took me 11 minutes to do it. I set my stopwatch and it took me 11 minutes to do it. It would have taken me longer to email that off to someone. So again, that's probably a whole other kettle of fish there to chat about where you should be spending your time.

Oh yeah, we're talking about like if you're building a team in-house, if you're outsourcing overseas, if you're going to do it yourself. Correspondence. How's that? I'm going through that at the moment actually, just moving a lot of teams around and in-house, out-house, do-it-yourself, things like that.

So it's crazy work.

Yeah.

But I guess if we go back to, you know, that was my thing to go, you know what, I think if I put time and energy into this, yeah. So I created my first information product. Guess who the first person who bought it was?

Who was that?

It was my mum.

Your mum?

So I made $17 off my mum.

$17 off your mum? Geez. Come on. I almost had it. I felt I

was actually, It was supposed to be one of my most proudest moments, but I actually felt quite sad because I was like, oh no. And I really wanted to give my mum the money back. But she's like, oh, don't worry about it. I mean, she's been compensated since, but—

She wanted to do it.

Yeah, she wanted to do it. And it was quite funny. And then I looked at the sales of it and because I'd tried to do a first launch and I didn't really know like how to do it. And I looked at it and I made about 15 sales or something and I made, you know, couple hundred bucks. I was like, oh yeah, this, you know, maybe there is something there. Um, you know, and, and I think the biggest thing is, cause I see so many people want to do information products, create products, but they don't have the patience. Now I am not a patient person. I, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I jump from one thing to another to another, which I've had to control myself over the last couple of years, especially now that our company's growing large. But this thing, I actually knew that it would work. The internet would work. So again, I just spent the hours, spent the time, spent the money, invested heavily into myself. In one year, I spent over $45,000 just investing in my knowledge in internet marketing, which is, you know, to some people that's just— I told my mother that, she almost dropped dead, had a heart attack. But the back end of that is, you know—

Well, yeah, I mean, I think I can relate to the story very much obviously because it's like, you know, I know a lot of people, I've done it myself. You start products and Let's make some money online. It's not that easy, obviously. Teaching other trainers how to do it without having to sit down for 600 hours and do it themselves.

Yeah. Oh, look, 100% agree with you. And I guess that 600 hours and the lesson— again, I'm always picking lessons. The lesson I took out of that was that 600 hours would have been a total waste if I didn't follow through with it. True. We did our first ever product launch. We did over $15,000 in 3 days, which I was like, wow, this is amazing. We did a second product launch, we made $50,000 in 3 days.

That's great.

Amazing. And that again, those numbers aren't to impress anyone, but more along the fact that, hey, I just spent $45,000 learning some stuff. Now I can go back into that. That's right. And it just shows you that—

And I think it also shows that, yep, those figures are great, but you actually have to spend to get to those figures. Like, it doesn't just say, hey, I'm going to do this. You had a lot of lessons.

Yeah.

To get to that point. Very interesting story. I'm excited to hear more about and see more of the FIT brand as it starts to expand out into other industries. So we have to leave it there, but any, I guess, last words of advice to trainers?

I got a fair bit. I guess initially, guys, it really is, you know, I talk about 5 key things or 5 keys to success as a personal trainer. And one of those things is you've got to be genuine. You've got to be a real deal. You know, you'll get found out in the industry pretty quickly with special social media. You know, you'll get found out and then you'll be a one-hit wonder. And you know, if you don't have, you know, that genuine thing about you, then people won't gravitate towards you. Um, I've got, you know, another thing is a product suite. You know, think about your product suite.

So long-term.

Yeah. What different products and services can you offer other than just one-on-one training? You know, group training, you could do nutrition plans, massage therapy. Like there's a, there's a heap of different things.

Not just what you can do, the whole thing. Yep. That's a good one.

So, um, we've got the product suite. Um, geez, you'd think I'd know these. I wrote them.

Well, I said one, now he's gone 5. So you're up to 3. That's not too bad. That's not too bad. So that's good. I'll put all your details down, but, um, you know, people can check out your story and where you come from, give you a call if they want to, um, get more involved in the FITS— the FIT brand, FIT International.

Yeah, no worries.

Awesome, thanks for your time. Thank you guys, and I'll catch you next time.