Evan Lindsay - Gym Builder Method | Incite Tax
Evan Lindsay scaled three Canadian gyms to $1.2 million in revenue in under two years. A firefighter-turned-gym-owner, he credits mentorship from a local businessman named Reg for shifting from hard work to smart work, then built a system: audit digital assets, fix client experience, gather feedback, cut low-value tasks. He now teaches this method to other gym owners.
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All right, today we have a special guest and his name is Evan, and you are going to have your mind blown, I think, with, uh, some of the stuff that he's going to share with you. Um, I know a lot of times we people start with bios. We're not going to do that. Um, we're just going to start with some of the nuggets first, and you're going to find out how awesome Evan is and why you should be listening to him. But I do want to start with the most recent thing, Evan. You have recently, you said, acquired in the last 2 years, 3 gyms, and you're on track to do about $1.2 million in revenue. Tell us about that experience the last 2 years with acquiring these gyms.
Yeah, it's been It's been a trip anytime you go from 0 to 3 in that short period of time. And yeah, so kind of how it started was there was a failing franchise unit in North Carolina and the guys that own the franchise, I've known them for years. So I grew up Canadian, played hockey with them. They'd known that I'd owned gyms that helped people support them with growing their gyms. So they reached out and it was basically a The franchisee wants to give this back to us. We're growing at a really rapid rate. If you can fix this, you can have this. So obviously, anytime anybody wants to give you a business for free, it's probably not crushing it, and this one is not crushing it. So the rent is more than the revenue. So that kind of gives you an idea of where that one was at. So yeah, but I looked it up and down. I really liked the model. And the woman that had been managing it for the last years, I really liked her. She was great. She was passionate. She was hardworking. She was like in it to win it. And so even though it didn't look like it'd be particularly easy at that point, I was primarily just consulting with gyms. I was like, all right, well, let's put my money and my proverbial time and basically my reputation on the line. Let's take a rip at this and kind of I've told people like, you can do this. And I did this in the past one before I sold it. So let's go for it. So it was actually 2 years ago, about, I think a week ago that we took over that gym. Yeah. And so that year went from, I think, 44 autopays to about 115. I think I was there for about 3, 4 days. The next year it went from 115 to, I think it ended last year at 181. And this month right now that we're starting to hit like a real uptick with getting enough things in place, they're probably gonna end at 210 to 215 autopays this month. So in the midst of that, once the one got going, someone else reached out about 9 months later and they're like, hey, I have something broken too. Would you like this one? In my infinite wisdom, and I maybe should have said no to that one, I said, sure, let's do that too. And yeah, so we took that one over. It went from last year like 59 to 118. This month they should end at about 140 members and they're basically growing at the same trajectory. And then recently another one came through with not a distressed business. This was actually a good business that just someone wanted to go do something else. So they were, you seem to be the guy for this. Do you want this one? So long story short, that's how we went from 0 to 3. in about 20 months. And I think I've broken probably every system possible inside of a gym in the last 20 months and refixed, uh, well, fixed them and then refixed them and scaled them up. So it's been a trip.
Yeah. So, um, what you guys need to know is that Evan did have a gym. Was that in Canada, your first one?
Yeah. So I opened a CrossFit gym in Canada in 2009. Um, so that was, uh, I think we were the first one in our province. So it would have been like, you know, the the first one in your state sort of thing. I think we were maybe like the 600th or 700th CrossFit gym. So it was a relatively early adopter. Yeah. And it was, I guess the technical term would be a total dumpster fire for the first 2 years, cuz I didn't know what the heck I was doing. And then eventually raised my hand and got some help and figured out how to grow that thing before eventually selling it.
So what does, what did, what did life look like when it was a dumpster fire for you?
Yeah. Uh, what did it look like? So, uh, at the time I was working full-time as a fireman. So had a fireman, uh, my wife had a career. We had no kids, thankfully. Otherwise I probably still wouldn't be married. Um, and then in my free time, uh, I was at the gym for, you know, whatever your 45, 50 hours. Uh, what did it look like? I was probably coaching like 15, 17, 18 hours a week. Uh, I was the website fixer, the email sender, the toilet bowl cleaner, the, you name it, I was the guy while, you know, trying to take a bunch of more courses. 'Cause I thought that's what I really needed was like 98 more CrossFit courses to like figure out how to run a business.
Yeah.
Um, and so I kind of spun around the drain like that for probably about 2 years. And so we did maybe, uh, $10,000 to $13,000 a month in revenue. And just, you know, if I wouldn't have had like a proper job, it would have been, uh, pretty meager. I managed to pay back all the debt and do all that kind of good stuff during that time, but it was just because I had a job and did not need to pull anything out of it.
So yeah. But not necessarily paying yourself a livable wage.
No, I was just, I was working for free, paying myself back for all of my money I put in, just trying to, trying to cover home base and then, uh, just doing the thing. So yeah, I would guess it was probably like, you know, 70, 80, 90-hour weeks. And I don't say that to exaggerate. That's probably what it was between there and the fire hall.
And so then life challenges got to you. Sound like there was a bunch of surgeries. You guys moved to the Cayman Islands.
Yeah.
And yeah, it seems— correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like at that point the business was— the gym was humming. And then even when you're in the Cayman Islands, it grew like 20%. So from kind of life is hell in the first 2 years to it humming. Could you pinpoint a few type of like, what was it that got you over that hump? What was that?
Yeah, that's a good question. If I look back, a couple of things stand out to me. At the time, I remember we had a client that came in. I'm sure everybody can relate to this. You've got a couple of clients come in and one of them was a guy, his name was Reg. Reg owned like 3 or 4 restaurants. He owned some real estate in town. He was pretty successful. And every time Reg would come in, I'd be like, I just want to be Reg when I grow up. Like, how does this guy do these things? Right? And so I just asked him, like, cool, like, what did you do? What would you recommend? Uh, and I remember at the time, um, I wouldn't say I was particularly coachable in certain fronts. I had my own opinions, uh, about how things should be. Um, and he just basically said to me, he's like, he's like, you work hard enough, but he's like, you're, you're not working very smart if you want my honest opinion. And he's like, here's a couple books I would recommend you do. In the meantime, he just gave me a couple like basic things to think about. That started me down like a trajectory of like, I'll figure it out, or I got all the answers to being like, I wonder what I don't know. And so that basically jumped me down the rabbit hole. I started to get some business coaching at that point. I just started to figure out like, oh, like with my current pricing, I I can't ever actually be very profitable. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that there's no way I could even win this game I'm trying to play. And from there, I think the biggest next thing that we did was I didn't understand, even after playing professional sports and being on teams my whole life, how to build a team. So we chatted a little bit before the call and you were saying how different things you've learned and how you've evolved. I think in the gym space, the one thing I started to realize is once we started to build some momentum, I started to understand that like the biggest bottleneck was probably for me was my communication, my ability to communicate with people. And I would say partially it was my personality, to be honest with you. I'm not like a rah-rah, like a group fitness kind of person.
Right.
And so if I'm like the face of the business, it's like a very like low-key business. And that's not necessarily something that most people want. And so I think that was a big piece for me was just understanding like I need to surround myself with people that are better than me. I need to give them the tools to become really good at what they do to be better than me. And I need to figure out like what are the things on the flip side. I think that was probably the biggest catalyst was like that conversation with Reg and then starting to see that like it doesn't matter how good I am or what I know. It's like how How well can I get other people in the right seats and give them the right tools and get them working together? And when we did that, that's when the business basically doubled, like just about doubled 3 years in a row. And then once we moved here, I basically, I had anything that I thought I was good at. When then you're running something from like 2,000 miles away, you're gonna find out that you're really actually quite shitty at them. Because you're just good at them when you're in like the same room with people. And so basically I faced the mirror again of like all the things I felt really good about or thought I was doing good. I was like, oh geez, I'm failing at like a whole new level and I have even less control because I can't go in there and fix any of these things.
Yeah.
And so that was some of the things that I would say those were like, without getting like really tactical, that was probably the biggest things that stood out to me was like, A willingness to go learn and be kind of coachable for once, like, because I don't think I was before that. And then just understanding, like, I have to do the same thing with other people.
No, it's good. And I think I love that because what you— one of the things you said that I think is really important for us to realize is just because you're at a place now where you had a gym, it was humming, you sold it, and now you did coaching, and now you're back, you're you kind of like, I'm gonna run these gyms remotely. You understand how it works. You have team in place that we hear these stories like it's the Facebook social media cut, right? Is my life was terrible and now I'm sipping margaritas on the beach. It's like, yeah. The reality is there's that whole middle part that's problematic. And even now, right, there's still problems. Like there's this never-ending end of like, We should be focused on continuous improvement. There's always something to improve. It doesn't matter what it is. And so if anyone's listening to this and you're struggling with some stuff, that's okay. It's normal. You wanna have— find the things that you're struggling with because fixing those will likely take you to the next level.
Yeah, I think that's just the— I agree with you 100%. I think when we moved here, I don't think I've— when we first moved here and we ran that business remotely and I'd worked myself out of the like the ego stoke of being like the guy that everybody went to for like solving their problems. And then I moved here and it's like we'd installed a team around them. I'd never felt more miserable in my business because I didn't really know what my job was anymore. Didn't really understand how to fix anything. And the thing that annoyed me more at the time, because I didn't really know how to like think about the problem, was I assumed once we moved here, I was like, I'm living like The 4-Hour Workweek. Like this should be easy. I'm gonna enjoy this. People are just gonna mail me money. it's going to be great. And I was like, what do you mean shit's still breaking? I was like, things aren't supposed to break anymore. And I think to your point, that first year was hard because I had an assumption that it would then be easier, better, there'd be no problems. And I hadn't figured, I hadn't wrapped my brain around the fact of understanding that as long as you have a business or you're alive, basically, shit's always going to keep breaking and it doesn't mean anybody's done anything wrong. It's just like, Cool. Just like fix it so that it doesn't break the same way again and like carry on and it'll be okay. And so I found that was the hardest part for me was like I believed a false idea of, I guess, what business should look, actually look like or what it was.
No.
Yeah.
That's so good. 'Cause one, it's interesting. Once we figure one thing out and that's working, as we add more stress to the system in the form of bigger team or more clients, what did work for us at one level isn't necessarily gonna work with us at the next level. And I think we just, we have to know that and it's totally normal and okay. It doesn't mean you're a failure as a gym owner. That, that's just the natural progression. Like if, if I'm a PT coach and I have this online business and I have 10 clients, like, oh wow, now I have 20 clients. That's gonna look different. Oh, I'm gonna move to brick and mortar. It's gonna look different. And, and that's okay. So let me recap a, a few of the things that you've said just so everyone's listening and paying attention to this. Professional hockey player opened up firefighter and then opened up a gym, struggled but figured it out, was able to move. I don't know if you guys look at a map, the Cayman Islands is pretty far away from Canada. Able to run a gym, not just maintain it, but actually grow it from completely different zip code. Is it the other? It's not quite the other hemisphere, is it? No.
It was only 2 time zones off. Okay. It wasn't that far.
Then sold it success. And so it had a successful exit, which I think is another important thing. You know, some people who do coaching, and they say they sold their gym and it actually wasn't for a good reason why they sold it. Like, I can tell you, because I talk about this, I owned a gym for 3 years and it failed and we just never got off the ground because I was growing an accounting firm and my focus was I want to understand gym owners, but I wasn't able to dedicate time to it. We had good GMs, but they didn't have buy-in, you know, and we just couldn't figure out the marketing thing. And so when we got to the end of our 3-year lease, my business partner and I were like, look, to move spaces, which we were gonna have to do because the landlord didn't want to keep us there. Like, we're gonna have to— it's like a $30,000 hit to like remodel a new space and all the moving expenses. It's like, well, at the current rate, we're never going to recuperate that. So We ended up selling it, uh, because I want to be transparent about it because I feel like all coaches, if you're in a space where you're giving advice, you should be open and honest about what you did accomplish or didn't accomplish, right?
100%.
Um, for me, Profit First came full circle because the guy who bought the gym from me, he had said at one point he almost wanted to just stop being a gym owner because he couldn't figure it out. And he found my book, said he read it like 4 times in a row and implemented the systems. And because of it, by the time he bought me, we were like his 3rd location and he had the cash to just buy the gym from me because of Profit First. It was like, huh, at least there's a good silver lining. Profit First works. I suck as a gym owner, but the system still works.
Awesome.
Um, okay. And then, so you did coaching And you still do coaching.
Yeah.
But then a couple years ago you're like, yeah, let's, let's add some gyms to the table. So I wanna make sure we're all on the same page there. So now you do the coaching, maybe with these gyms that you took over, cuz 2 of them were basically failing.
Yep.
Share with us your approach to how did you approach— I'm gonna turn this around. What, Maybe you don't have to go like super tactical, but go as tactical as you want, or just like overall, these are the categories that we looked at and we're able to fix it.
Yeah, happy to. When we took those over, we, you know, this is gonna sound a little bit funny, but it's like I've been asked this question like a number of times in different domains from different people. And the thing that I come back to as a general premise is And I say this kind of jokingly, but it's like the whole goal for the first 6 months was to stop doing stupid shit. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I don't mean that against anyone. But like the goal wasn't like, let's go and find like these 1 or 2 like awesome things and it's gonna change everything. Literally at the start, it was like, what's broken? And when I went through what was broken with the people managing the gym, I would just have them walk through and they could see the world through my eyes. Because for a lot of people, For them, for me, anybody. It's like if you go look at your own business or you look at something, you look at it every day, so you can't see what's obvious to somebody else when they come in. So you're just like, you know, what's that over there? Well, that's the thing, it's always been there. It's like, yeah, it really shouldn't be there. That garbage can in front of the desk, that's not where the garbage can goes. The garbage can goes in the corner. Oh, the button on your website that doesn't work? Yeah, it's never worked. Yeah, we should fix that. It needs to work. And so honestly, the first like month or so is like very minimal stuff. So what we would do is we would literally go through and we audit everything digitally. Do all of the links work? Does everything make sense? Is everything spelled right? Do we have any new images? Like common sense, like basic, basic stuff inside the gym. Same thing. Let's audit the client experience. Let's clean it all up. Let's make it look better. The funny thing is, miraculously, as soon as we changed some of the things online, our lead flow went up. Why? Because everything worked. And it's like weird, like we now have like 30% more leads inside. What started to happen? We audited the classes, gave the coaches feedback, gave them what they're doing well, gave them one thing to work on, made the space feel a little better. Shockingly, the next month we went from getting no referrals to getting 5 a month. And it was like— we're growing. And it's like, well, you know what I mean? So it's like, that was really the biggest things at the start was like, what are we doing that we should not be doing? What is the low-hanging fruit just to like change structurally what it is? And the big thing with the team was starting to like listen to them. You know, what's working? What would you guys do more of? What do you think's not working? What do you think would be cool?
Great.
Same thing with members. What do you like? What did we do that you liked in the past we should do more of? What should we stop doing? And you kind of get like a nice shit list of things to stop doing. You get a list of 3 to 4 things you should do. Then you can go and you can just roll out a simple vision. Here's where we're going, here's what we're going to do, and then you do it. Because the thing I find with a lot of these gyms, when you start to get stuck, to your point, like you hit the plateaus, often the way to get through them is to like stop the bus, look around. What did we do in the past that we should do more of? What should we stop doing? Then you tell people what you're going to do and you do it. And then as soon as you do that, what you do is you build trust with your team, you build trust with your members, you build an affinity to them, and you then have momentum. Momentum is the most precious thing, whether you're playing sports, whether you're in business or anything, because if you have momentum, more people are going to jump on the bus, things are going to start going, and that's what's going to open the door to the killer stuff. So for lack of just sounding like we didn't really do that much, we just did like really boring shit until we got to a certain spot. And then once that started to work, what I found was like, cool, retention rate went from like in all of these gyms, 7 to 8% down to like 4. It took about 90 days to 4 months. Conversion rate immediately fixed because we fixed the process. Marketing was fixed. And then it was like, all right, like we need to now onboard more team members and we need to like start to evolve the team. That's like, without getting tactical, that's the basic flow. And I find consulting is usually the same thing. Even if a gym is doing half a million a year, you tighten up all of those things, like you just build speed.
It's interesting. What I didn't hear is that you had a super sexy marketing campaign that you did and a special magic bullet hype like that. If you read it online and it's good marketing copy, you're like, oh my gosh, that's the one thing to solve it. You did all the stuff that basically any gym owner should be doing all the time anyways. Yeah. I have a question though. So you said you got feedback from the coaches.
Yeah.
I remember owning the gym and interacting with some of the coaches, and I found that there's some of them that their heart was in the right spot and they provided good feedback. And there's other coaches where they're only out for themselves, really. How do you balance the feedback between those different groups of coaches? And do you do anything with the coaches because knowing that dynamic?
Yeah, I love that. Uh, so one of the things that I've found with like these kind of gyms when you take them over is to literally like turn a gym Takes about 3 to 6 months. And it doesn't take 3 to 6 months to turn it like tactically. It takes 3 to 6 months to turn it culturally, because that's the thing where you're going to start to create like the space between where people then like see a problem, they pick it up, they put it in the garbage, they see some needs coverage, they go and they help them. They're coaching a class, all of a sudden everyone coaches classes better. Like, that's what takes 3 to 6 months in most of these gyms. And so To your question, when I meet with people, at the start, I just ask a lot of questions. And you can usually just by asking questions of like, what would you change? What do you love? What is it? There's a simple thing. I don't know where I heard this back in the day, but I just listen to see like how many times did they use the word I versus we. If someone's like, I like this, I do that, I want to do this, I think leadership's important, I, I, I, I'm like, Cool. That's great. If someone actually has like a little bit of like self-awareness, they're going to start to use the word we a little bit more if they see it as a team game. And so just by listening, you know, like if you ask a few questions, like, you know, people will show you who they are really quickly. So I think it's just asking. That doesn't mean they're a bad fit. That doesn't mean you need to be like, they're a bad person, get them out of here. It's just the awareness piece of like, where are they coming from? So at that point, what I find is like, great, it sounds like what we could do is A, B, and C, A, B, and C. And you can get a list of like, here's your top 3 things to do. At that point, when you can share the vision of where you want to go with them, the biggest thing then is like, tell them what you're going to do and do it and follow through. And if you see people doing it well, call out the basic stuff. This is where I find a lot of people when they start leadership, it's like they try and make it really complex or like really sexy. And it's like, if someone does something good, tell them. They did something bad, tell them. Keep doing that because what happens is those coaches that are maybe more in it for them, or they're like, I'm an athlete first, I'm not actually here to help people. What they do is they usually shoot out within about 6 to 8 weeks because it gets really uncomfortable for them because they can see you said you're going to go there, you're going there. I don't know if I fit in here anymore and I don't think I'm as special as I was or I don't actually fit in. So what I found in all of these gyms is usually in the first 3 months when you do that, you'll end up having For us, I usually find you'll lose about 2 to 3 coaches off a team of like 7. And I don't think it's bad because we aren't like, you're bad, you need to leave. People just seem to like go a different direction.
Yeah.
And at that point, when you bring 2 to 3 more people on and they'll see the same vision, what starts to happen when you do that over 3 to 6 months, people start to line up because they want to be a part of your team. They see it's something cool. They see it's something different. And that's usually the small shift where again, it's like, that's what builds speed. Because you're not having to micromanage things. You're not walking around resentful or pissed off all the time over all the little nuanced bullshit that's not happening.
Yeah, I don't— well, you just— one of the things you said is the first time I heard it, but it clicked based on my experience. There are coaches who are athletes first, and then there's coaches who are coaches first.
Yes.
And we had a better experience, and our members had a better experience with the coaches first. Yeah, like it's one thing— the reason the athletes first coaches can be good coaches is because they're doing stuff every day. They can walk through, they're getting their own coaching on this is the mechanics of how you do it and make sure you're moving your hips first and don't bend your back. Like, a lot of great instruction.
Yes.
But the reality is, is it's— it was hard to get them to buy into culture and wanting to be a team player. It was just like my athlete stuff comes first and yeah, cool. I'm showing up and like, yeah, they coached a good class per se, but members knew they could feel like who was in it for that camaraderie and enjoying the experience versus just like, I'm here to— we're compliant. Like, like let's just get the workout done. Yeah.
Am I wearing the shirt to post on social media? Cause it looks cool. Or am I here to be like, Cool.
Are you all right?
You look like you're having a rough day. Yeah, like, that'll shoot a gym that's at 120 up to 180 in like a few months, just because that's what actually keeps people and gets people results, is like those like small space between of willing to look at someone else as opposed to like, look at me.
Yeah, interesting. Um, okay, so, uh, tell us about your company. What do you do? How could people reach out to you?
Yeah, so, uh, Gym Builder Method. So that's how we end up supporting people. So we work with people depending on the size of the gym in different, uh, capacities. So we work on some people on a one-on-one basis, um, and we have a mini mastermind. So we got a group of about 15 to 20 gyms in there. Most people in there are doing $30K a month up to— there's several people in there that got like 4 or 5 locations that are acquiring more gyms, growing. buying buildings. And we have a program called the Gym Builder Academy, which is weekly calls for those people that are at a smaller phase. So recommend your book to everybody, Profit First for Microgyms, because if you don't got money, like, you're going to be on the struggle bus straight away, right?
Right.
So those folks, typically what we're going to do is we'll implement some of the strategy stuff around like basic KPIs, knowing what levers to push on, where to focus, making sure you have money set aside. what is the role of a business owner if I want my business to run at the next level? Because it's one thing to know what to do. Another piece of it is knowing how to show up and what does a business owner look like? How do you handle some of these situations? How do you organize your week? And then how do you build a system in terms of retention, sales, and marketing? So that's the 2 ways that we end up working with people in there, which works really great. So that's really the goal for most people that come working with us is Looking to increase their profits, have more time. But for a lot of these folks, it's how can I build a gym that doesn't require me to be in there while still doing those other 2 things? Because that's one of the hard things I find in micro gyms. It's such a personal thing for a lot of people. They have a hard time figuring out how do I pull myself out of the fabric of the thing and have it actually be as good or better.
That's good. And so it's gymbuildermethod.com.
Yep. gymbuildermethod.com.
Great. Um, well, Evan, thanks for being on the show. One last question.
Yeah.
First, like, big life lesson that comes to mind, what would you share with everybody?
Oh shoot. First big life lesson that comes to mind. Uh, first big life lesson I had, or just for anybody?
For, for you, like you, that you wanna share with people.
Oh man. Uh, whenever I think of like life lessons, I think of a, Coach I had, his name was Butch Henry. So when I played baseball— so I played hockey growing up, like you mentioned. I just quit hockey when I was 16 before the first draft, and I went back and I played baseball. I hadn't played baseball in 3 years. And I remember I showed up and there was this little guy who was like this tall, and you guys can't see, but maybe like 5'6, big bushy mustache, had a hat on, and he just kind of walked around. His name was Butch Henry. And I came in and I remember he pulled me off to the side. And he's like, it was kind of like, uh, like an Austin Powers moment where you like lose your mojo. And he's like, this isn't you. Like, you, you can do more than this. He's like, sometimes, son, you just gotta fake it till you make it. So even though you don't think you can do all of these things, you will be okay. It's okay to be scared. Keep doing it and just keep going. I always think of, uh, you know, talking about coaches, I think back to like him often, uh, as probably like one of the most influential people in my life. So, you know, I don't believe like fake it till you make it, but it's like, it's okay to be scared. Keep going. Love that.
Well, thanks for that. Um, thanks again, Evan. Remember, guys, profit is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.
