Mathew Park - Marketing for Gym Owners | Incite Tax

All right everyone, welcome to our episode. We have a special guest for you today. His name is Matthew Park. He's with Trainer Revenue Multiplier. Matthew works with a lot of fitness professionals. Today we are going to talk about some of the intricacies of marketing because a lot of times It's a sexy thing that appeals to us, not just as fitness professionals, but as all business owners. Oh, hey, like marketing. Of course I need more marketing. What's the new shiny bullet? But the reality is the phrase itself, marketing, is almost way too vague. And so Matthew's gonna help educate us on some of the things that he teaches his clients, and I think you're gonna value a lot from this. So first, Matthew, welcome to the show.

Thanks for looking forward to the show. I'm looking forward to it, buddy. How you doing there, John?

Good. I'm doing well. I was telling Matthew, as we're recording this, we are getting a crazy snowstorm here. And he said I should just introduce him as a guy who lives in the corner of a snowbank. But the reality is he's, he's a little bit more credible than just that. So Matthew, why don't you start? You were just sharing with me there's different avenues of marketing. Maybe start— let's start with that.

So here's the first thing. I think a lot of trainers or coaches in the industry, they get mixed up with what marketing actually means or is, you know. And obviously marketing isn't advertising. Marketing comes into understanding exactly, number one, is who we are looking to serve in the marketplace, a certain kind of audience of some kind. And of course solve a problem, you know, solve a problem of course where they're basically at. So obviously if it's the aspect of a business problem, a health problem, you know, a wellness problem, or basically maybe it's weight loss, um, and look at like how can we develop our marketing angles to solve problems, generate of course leads, build our business, and go from there. Where too many coaches will, you know, spend, you know, $1,000 a month or whatever it is on Facebook ads and traffic and a bunch of ads, they really have no plan, no strategic plan of why they're doing it in the first place. Like newspaper marketing, whatever basically it is, or Facebook, whatever they say it is. It's almost looking at taking 5 steps back to look at the foundational principles of where they want to go, and then from there take 10 steps forward with an actual plan to generate revenue and build leads.

Yeah, so it— one thing I learned years ago, I think that's what you're kind of referencing. A lot of times if we don't know what we're doing, the temptation is to jump straight to advertising, but the reality is advertising is a technique It's a tool of an overall marketing strategy. So if you don't have a marketing strategy behind what you're doing, I mean, that's just like saying like, I pulled out this socket wrench from this, like one tool out of my entire set. Well, what are you gonna do with it? I don't know. I need to hang up this picture on the wall. Okay, well, that tool doesn't work for that strategy that you need.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I like that approach. Because as you mentioned, you need to first kind of identify the audience and honestly, it's good for you to figure out what tools you want to use because there are so many out there. Yeah. As you're saying that, I was thinking, so help me understand if I'm a client.

Sure.

A lot of times there's apprehension. When I first did a business plan, I was in a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program. and said, write up a business plan. Like, okay, my business is gonna serve small business owners, right? Like, yay, that's my— that is my niche. Small business owners. Even though statistically 95% of all businesses are small business owners.

Exactly.

I had a lot of apprehension as I converted in those years to putting a more specific message out to just gym owners, for example. We did a lot of specific marketing to gym owners for many, many years, and, uh, I had some apprehension. I don't know, how do you talk your clients through that apprehension of like basically not wanting to come up with an audience and then to actually define it before they see the results?

Love that. So say for example you've got, you know, 100 gyms, of course, of course you're serving, and they could be gyms from, you know, a gym with trainers to a gym that has 25 trainers, right? So if we take that list of 100 gyms, you might ask the question, well, what's that one gym that's like, you just love, you can best serve them, they're your best suited for that one gym? It could be the gym with 2 coaches that's maybe, you know, a small micro course gym that of course you serve. And that's the one to compare to the gym that's 20,000 square feet. You want to go for the one that's 5,000 square foot. And that's kind of like the smaller gym you're kind of going for as your avatar. That's your one client you have right now on your roster. So say for example, that's where you start. So you actually break that one client down on a piece of paper, you know, basically from basically why they came to you, what they're wanting, where they're struggling, what they're needing, what keeps them all stressed up at night, all the kind of basically the whole breakdown of the actual avatar. And then ask the question, what if you had 100 more of those people in your business? How would that change things around? So now we look at, as opposed to 100 Mike, you know, Jims from You know, 1,000 square foot to 25,000 square foot. Now we're only targeting 5,000 square foot gyms in your niche audience. Well, now you can really just hone it down to serve just that kind of gym or that kind of avatar and become that much more focused on getting double more of those kind of clients, but actually having an actual like niched model.

Well, what if, I don't know if I can get enough of those clients to grow my business. Do I limit myself by being so focused?

Good question. So by basically looking at that kind of avatar and serving that kind of avatar, you aren't limiting yourself to other gym owners, but you're basically serving one the best that you can. So if I take a fitness coach, for example, who comes to us for coaching and they're doing $10K a month in their company right now with 45 clients, right? Well, like, how do I get a niche? I have like, I have moms and dads and athletes, all kinds of stuff. Well, that's awesome. Who's your best client? Oh, this one client, professional male, 45 years old, owns a business, you know. Awesome. Would you want to have 40 more of those guys? I would love to. Wonderful. Let's break that client down. So break that client down, and now we're like, okay, guess what? If that profitable client— of course, that's your thing, Profit First obviously is your thing— also, that profitable client now comes in, we're like, now you know the things you'll need for resources, systems, you know, sales, the whole thing on the back end to support that client to get more of them. Well, now of course you're not gonna derail the rest of the clients cuz they're gonna come to you no matter what, just out of, out of like referrals and so forth. But now you're serving somebody as opposed to everybody and you become, you can charge more, you can probably triple your rates, you can give better service and everything else basically in between.

Yeah. So great points. When you dial it in on a specific thing, one, it makes your services that much more efficient because you Know their problems before they come in. Like with us, with the gym owner, I know what their major issues are before I even have a conversation with them. And then the conversation just reveals which of the ones I'm familiar, like that I'm expecting them to have, they end up having because we just are so intimate with that. We're intimate with how their accounting needs to look. I'll say this though, the one of the benefits of niching down. is you become more specific in your marketing message. But guess what? Other people who aren't gym owners, for us, for example, or in like your example, they're not a 45-year-old man, they'll see themselves in your messaging because they might have the same problem. So you don't actually limit— you're not saying I'm not serving anyone else other than this specific person. You're just saying my marketing efforts is going to be here. And it actually usually gives you a better, more appealing message to people to then reach out and express interest in working with you.

100%. 100%.

Cool. So as you approach marketing, if you're educating one of your clients, as we, before we started, you kind of mentioned like there's database marketing, there's social media. Can you talk about those, those types of categories?

100%. So database marketing basically is like the kind of marketing that, say for example, a coach comes to us who's been coaching for 5 years and they have a database of 325 clients that they've worked with in the last 5 years. Wonderful. Well, those clients of course know, like, and trust George, right? So George of course is a trainer, and out of those client— that client roster, maybe like 100 of them are current clients and the rest are old clientele. So the whole thing is basically starting in that database. It's almost like marketing and sales combined together into one conjunction together, right? Is number one, like, identify of course who in that circle is the kind of clients you want more of, of course, number one. So when you're, of course, you're marketing on your social media or your marketing messaging, it's starting to like tailor to an audience you're looking to serve. But database marketing basically is going in that database and starting to nurture and really serve those people and rebuild the connection again with those people that generate again free marketing for you, which basically is, could be referrals. They all know, they trust you. So of course that angle is like getting on the phone with these people Building conversations again, and because now you know who you serve, you have an offer built that of course you can offer these clientele. Now you're getting them course in for basically zero dollars, right? Zero dollars. Where most trainers like almost put some ads up and spend this money. I'm like, no, forget that. We have clients doing mid-six-figure companies doing no Facebook ads at all. Zero Facebook ads. Haven't spent a dime in advertising at all. But because they went back and literally built from the ground layer, the foundation principles first. Work database first. I— it's funny, I had a guy come in late last month doing $5K with his training company to work in the database for 1 month. He doubled to $10K in freaking 5 weeks, right? Doing 1 social media post in a month. I was like, dude, if you just focus on database first, now we'll move over to social media maybe on month 3. We'll build a plan for that next. But social media kind of comes after we work stage 1 in the marketing and sales approach.

Would you say the database marketing is the lowest hanging fruit?

Yes, 100%.

And it sounds like that's because they have an existing relationship with those people, right?

Exactly. And that can also mean almost— so say you have 300 people in your database, that could also mean over 1,000 more leads.

Explain.

Well, because let's say, for example, out of that roster, you identify that you have, say, you know, Jeff, the 45-year-old male professional guy, is the kind of guy you want more of. And you got 25 of those kind of guys already in your database. And they all own companies with other executives that they're a part of. Well, you might go and do a presentation at no charge to basically those executive guys on their 3 pain points for their executive guys to solve problems, to solve problems. Boom. Offer on the backend more consults for the gym on the backend. And now because that guy knows 30 more guys over here, you generate leads for free again. I had a guy in December, Christian, Christian, one of our trainers did the exact same process basically with his database. Went to a guy who had a company that basically had over like 500 employees, but they had like executive team, basically 50 executives. He did a presentation on basically like health and basically stress, sleep, and stress, sleep, and food habits, you know, like better food habits. He gained 20 leads at one free seminar, right, from that one contact for no charge because he knew the guy, knew that he trained the guy before for a year. So he used the guy as kind of a testimonial to lead it basically into the presentation, did this talk for an hour for no charge, gained 20 new leads. Closed 12 of them, got some more clients on board.

Yeah, that's awesome. So it sounds like the one— like it's— you're gonna use relationship capital because that's financially— that the financial capital that's free, that's a better first approach. Because really, if you think about it, if I go out and do Facebook ads, I'm using financial capital, but I have— I don't have a relationship with those people. So I have to, like, I'm paying to create that relationship, which isn't, that's not a problem if you guys are doing that, that's okay. But from a scale of like least expensive, successful ways to bring in clients compared to more expensive, why not start with the least expensive option first, which happens to be free because you've already invested the time into creating a relationship with them. They like you, like you said, know, like, and trust you. Then yeah, work that database first. And while you continue to do that, then you can do some of the other things as you have the capital, financial capital to pay for those things, right? We definitely saw this with gym owners, even with the gym when I owned it. We are trying to do Facebook ads and get people in, and it was very expensive for a pretty low return. When like just ask— talking to our current members was a lot more— spending time on that was a lot more successful than the financial dump of cash that we went in. Now, once you get to the point where the free stuff is working, it's flowing, then you have the excess leverage, right? We didn't have that in my gym. So it was like we were purposely making an investment hoping it would pay off. It's always better to make an investment with money that is left over from profits as opposed to hoping it works out, which is gambling, um, and which is not a great strategy for business growth. You actually build into your system, you know, I'm gonna set aside a percentage of my income for marketing because I can afford to do it versus now I'm desperate, I have to put this money in and I hope I get more clients out.

Yeah, totally. I'm actually gonna give an idea if I could, John, to your audience of MicroJizz, because actually we have 5 clients right now in the last month that actually have been a fitness coach for, oh, well over 3 to 5 to 10 years. We're opening up brand new gyms, you know, from like scratch, right? And there's something that we've actually learned through the process of launching, like, you know, these trainers. We've already built 6-figure companies, but now they want to open a gym. And like, how do you do that and be in the green opening the doors the first day, right? So actually, it's funny because we actually have this process called the VIP program that actually has worked phenomenal for our gym owners, of course, that are kind of opening their doors for the first time. Right? Which basically is, as opposed to Facebook ads, which of course I love you, brother, because I'm not against Facebook. I just think that it's too premature to think of it right now as far as an aspect. What VIP basically means is that if you take a 5-mile radius of your gym that you're launching for the first time and you know your avatar as far as the audience you want to hit, maybe it's professional men, maybe it's moms, maybe it's teachers, maybe it's whatever you want to hit, maybe it's athletes, whatever you're looking for. Do your R&D to find that actual niche first. Then of course, look at your database. Who in the database that of course maybe owns a chiro clinic or an athlete center or a massage place or a school, a couple schools in the local area? Like, look at the database in the area. If you can find 5 or 10 good contacts in there that lead to your niche and you have a VIP program where basically you— it's basically 3 things. It's going to be a plastic credit card with a value attached to it, almost like a gift card but a plastic card. Plastic is key, not paper, because plastic has value. Nobody throws it away in the garbage, right? You attach a value to it. Could be $100, could be $200, whatever basically you wanna have. Could be a consult, could be a free month of training, whatever you want. But there has to be a value to the VIP plastic card, right? Then a 4 by 6 inch postcard talking about the gym, like, hey, a little bend the benefits, a picture, like kind of all the emotional touchpoints that you're gonna have to kind of generate some interest. And then third piece is an envelope, a gold or white one with your logo on the back that basically is free gift inside. 3 things, right? And you will go to your partners that you kind of talk to that have niche clients of yours, and you do basically what we call a VIP push. You don't put these on the desk because they're going to collect dust. What you do is you say like, hey Jeff, you own a, you know, you're a teacher over at the school with, you know, more people that of course want to have moms in our gym, right? Can you please like take these VIP cards? Here's my SOP basically of like how I want you to present them to the people. Um, actually, I'll use a chiro, chiro for example, chiro place for example. So go to a chiro center and say they go in there, have VIP cards. Every person that buys or comes in for a session for the chiro clinic is gonna be given from the front desk basically like this VIP card as a thank you for being a client at their facility. And here's our partner, you know, John Briggs, who owns, you know, Fitness Solutions. He's an amazing guy, he's a partner of ours. He's a free gift for you. You know, have a great day. Thanks for being a client of our chiropractic clinic. All of a sudden, those 50 clients a day are going to get these VIP cards for the gym opening up with this gift card inside. See, it's done for 2 weeks straight, and you have 5 or 6 partners in the followeries of your gym. You've just spent maybe $1,000 on just creating the material. With these partnerships, But there's no distraction of other ads. There's no money spent on crazy ads. You have a person that of course believes in your business, right? Because they're a partner of yours and you're going to the exact avatar that, you know, people that of course are ripe of your clients. So you're gonna— we've already had people do this already with our gyms and they're launching massively in the green because they're doing this kind of marketing that is literally just strategically relationship building marketing that actually works like gold.

It's interesting as you say that. So a lot of people will say like, oh, to grow your wealth, use other people's money, OPM. You're like, borrow from the bank, use that to invest. Basically, you've taken other people's relationships and you're going to utilize those because you have a relationship with the one person and then you're asking him to use his relationship trust. Plus it is a value add. I go and I get adjusted. Like, great, maybe half, 80% of those people aren't gonna use the card, but those that do are gonna be like, wow, that was pretty cool for him to gimme this opportunity. And how far in advance do you do that?

I would, so usually we've been doing some testing as far as what the best timeframe is. Usually the gym opens, usually like say it's gonna be like April launch, you wanna get those cards out at least a month in advance. But also when the gym opens, almost like a 2-month push. But you want to have your partners kind of like not at the same time. You almost want to have one for a couple of weeks, you know, almost like so you measure your progress and see how it's all going to work. And basically you want to have it open for like, do this for a month before your launch and even a month during launch and a month after your launch. It's kind of a hard push. And here's the key thing is the experience. Because if I get one of these cards, I'm thinking, how do I feel when I open up this card? Like I feel almost important. I almost feel valued because I'm opening this gold card up. the free gift inside with this nice glossy 4x6-inch postcard with a plastic value-add card. And so it's almost like I feel important, you know? So now you're like, as opposed to getting a business card or like a little big brochure, this paper that goes in the garbage in the corner, you're getting an actual VIP experience for free from the person that you already went to for an adjustment or for training somewhere else. And you're like, I trust this guy because he's my chiro guy. I'm going to go see this gym because I heard about them through my guy over here. So now your return on investment is insane for like whatever you spend. It's huge.

Yeah. And look guys, I've been around the industry for a while for gyms and I'm familiar with the presale strategy, which has worked for gym owners. The idea is you run paid ads, you run 'em to a website, you have one-on-one meetings with people. You know, a month, 2 months before the gym opens, you try to get commitments so that, you know, when the day you open, you have 100 members or something. What you just shared though is very unique. I have never heard it approached in the way you just did. And I feel like that adds another level because I can totally see how that plastic, the physical plastic. Yeah. It's hard for people to want to throw that away. So it gives, it gives them a tangible feel for it. So you're increasing your chance. Plus again, as you mentioned, you're focusing on the local radius around your gym. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Thanks, man. Hope that's some value. Yeah.

So basically your own database management, use your relationships with people who have your ideal avatar and use their database. So you're, you know, other people's relationship database. It's a great way because it's so funny. I see these ads and I make fun of them now at this point where it's like the marketing company who's trying to get the gym owner as the client or the fitness professional sign up for services. We'll get you 1,000 leads per month. Like, okay, let's pretend they actually deliver on the 1,000 leads per month. which none of them ever do, for the record.

Yeah.

Who's gonna take 1,000 sales calls in a month? Who do you have to do that? Oh, you don't. That's right, you don't. But let's say you did have 1,000, like you were able to take on 1,000 sales calls. That's 1,000 new members.

Yeah.

Like, what's your onboarding process with the new member? Is it a little bit more involved? Who's gonna do those? Like, if it, if you're just one person, you have 160 hours in a week. And I'm a huge proponent of people not killing themselves working. Like, let's save ourselves, let's pace our journey. So where are you gonna find the other 840 hours to do the 1,000 onboardings of the people who just signed up? You're gonna, I mean, guys, we don't actually need, like, we need fewer clients than we think.

Yeah.

So I, at a minimum, let's stop falling for some of these crazy sexy, really well put together pieces that intrigue us and we end up paying money for when in reality, if they delivered what they're promising, you can't handle it. And again, like even at our gym, we shouldn't want to handle 1,000 new clients in a month. That would— that's crazy.

You know what, here's the thing though too, man, is say for example a person did that and they paid so much money for 1,000 people. how many people are actually like legit ideal clients for the gym? Because if you get 500 people in that gym that are like not good clients, that breaks your whole culture that you just built with your gym. So all of a sudden your gym goes down the tank because now kids are in there, you know, posing. I don't want to use this terminology, but like people are posing in mirrors with their shirt off, and all of a sudden moms go in there and they feel uncomfortable. Like, it's almost like if you do the, the marketing approach right and have the right culture, with the right price points on the gym launch. Now you're building a profitable gym launch that actually will be, you know, go to Profit First and get all your support in the background financial, but you're doing with clients actually really believe in your vision and want to be there and refer you more people.

Yeah, I, I love that point. Um, probably 4 years ago, it seems like there was a big push for these like challenges, the 6-week challenge, come in, It's, you know, $300, but it's free. And if you, you know, if you hit your goal, we'll refund your money, that type of stuff. And so these, it worked out in the short run. And then you start to have companies like, oh, these are successful. So then there was companies who would do the 6-week challenge for you. They have the sales teams, they have the call people. They teach you how to basically bait and switch people, which was a terrible approach for the record. And so they get in a bunch of people under almost false pretenses, aggressive sales techniques. And even with 50 to 100 new members, we'll have— we've had gym owners come back to us and say like, yeah, it took me 4 months or 6 months. One guy was like a year and a half. To recover the culture that I damaged from the one challenge. Because you bring in people who don't value what you do, they only value the lowest price, which for fitness professionals in this type of space, when you're building your service basically on a relationship, that doesn't work, right? Again, it's— there's nothing wrong with the model. It's just different than I think what you and I, the gym owners we deal with. the Gold's Gyms of the world where Planet Fitness is, they're renting equipment.

Yeah.

They pay a small amount, right? They're not basing it on like, I'm gonna help you in your fitness journey. That's a different model. Like some of that stuff might work for them. We have to separate these techniques that work well for other companies. That isn't what a lot of, like at least the clients we deal with, they don't want that. They're selling personalized services so that it's a higher end. higher price point. But when you do a technique that works for, you know, kind of bottom feeders, you're, you're gonna get bottom feeders and your current quality clients get pissed and want to go somewhere else, which they did and they do, you know.

Yep, 100%, man, 100%. It's funny because I had a client actually, uh, I was talking about basically like how do we get more actually like leads for her business, for her gym, right, that she has right now, um, over in Atlanta, Georgia. And she had the gym for the last 4 and a half, 5 years, and she averages about, about 40 members basically in the course of the month, which is not bad for a gym. Like, she has a pretty, pretty good-sized gym. And I was like, yeah, so based on how many members that you bring in, how many actually convert over to consults with your trainers? And she's like, 1, 2. I'm like, what, are you kidding me? Like, and you want to go mark all this marketing on the outside? I'm like, your gold is right in front of your eyeballs. Like, what's your sales process? Um, like they come to the front desk, they sign up, and then that's pretty much— we say, yeah, join the body fat testing thing and we'll go from there. But so we actually had to like spend an hour creating her like 24-hour sales process, which again is marketing, right? To basically have it take a fresh new lead coming in and give them a beautiful experience where they're like raving about you. Give them an email, give them a text, book them in for an InBody test the next day. Like give them like a wow. They're like, they're leaving, they're like, this is the— I want to be here in the family because it's so important. And then ask for the referral a couple days later. Like, hey, how was your experience? Where's the referral? So those 40 people, she might get 25 in-bodies, get 20 new clients outta that, who knows, with potentially 10 more referrals by one change. Yeah, that's marketing right there, you know, using your people.

That's right. That's great. Um, so as we wind down, are there any other things on your mind that you wanted to share with us, marketing related or? Anything that you kind of do for your clients that works well?

There's actually a lot, but I'll kind of— there's— it's funny because this is kind of fun for me. I'm having this talk right now, John, about marketing. You know, it's something that I like to debunk all the myths about advertising and ads and like all the stuff we're being taught, because I just believe it's— you can do other, other ways. So I think the biggest thing is, if you're listening right now, whether you're a fitness coach or a small gym owner or whatever you're— or you're in a company, is go back to your foundational principles and really understand— I mean, really understand who it is you're trying to serve in your gym or as a fitness coach. And then break that process down to find out who is the top client or clients in your current roster and ask the question, you know, if you had triple more of those, would you be happy as a person, you know, as a, as a business owner? And then where can you find more of those people within your database and leverage those relationships to triple, you know, your business? over the next 3 to 6 months with good quality clients that care and that are profitable for you as a business owner.

Yeah. Um, have you ever read The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz?

It's a great book.

Yeah. So if you guys aren't familiar with it, um, first of all, I am a Mike Michalowicz fan. He actually is a good friend of mine. Um, so I read all his books, and The Pumpkin Plan was the book I read that helped us focus on gym owners because we went through our database. So Just a general summary of his book, but I recommend picking it up. These guys who have these 1,000-pound pumpkins, they have a system. And what they do is they plant all their seeds, and then in the first couple weeks, they identify the pumpkins that are growing the fastest, and they pluck off all the other pumpkins. And then another week or two goes by. And they keep repeating this process until they literally have one pumpkin left. So the entire vine of nutrients is going into one pumpkin. And then they weed like crazy. So, right, keep the weeds out because the weeds take nutrients from the soil. You want all the nutrients going into your pumpkin. And what Mike did is he compared that process to what us as small business owners need to do with our clients. Who's our one giant pumpkin? And then weed our— weed everything else out and just focus on the one giant pumpkin. And so that's kind of what you're talking about. So one of Mike's techniques is start with your existing clients and grade them. And look, if you, even if you feel weird about it, we're not judging them as human beings, okay? We're grading them based on their fit to what you want to do. A lot of times business owners get in the habit and make the mistake of like letting the business grow itself without any intention. And so they end up with clients they don't really like, or maybe doing services that some clients wanted, but that doesn't give them joy. You can create the business that you want. So if you're a fitness professional, you know, like you can work with the clients you want to work with. You don't have to feel stuck. So identify them. And then take 'em to lunch. You know, I don't drink coffee, but that's a thing, right? People take, buy a coffee with them, sit down, have a conversation. And like you were saying, you can probably identify what are the gathering points, what are the congregational points that your avatar, your ideal client that you enjoy working with, where do they hang out? You may find some really interesting places that were never on your radar where you could put a marketing message in front of them. Could be a billboard. It could be as simple as finding the person, like maybe there's a book club group or something for, you know, mothers and you wanna serve mothers, just asking for an invite or, you know, there's just so many different things you can do and you'll end up finding those avatars, which gives you a higher chance of finding the clients that you enjoy working with. I love that.

You know what's funny is we were talking about that, John, is that, you know, it's, well, it goes for both you and I both actually is that Of course, you target micro gyms, right? Which kind of is more a micro gym demographic, kind of your niche, your pocket you're looking to serve. And we target more experienced fitness coaches. That's kind of like our avatar. We don't target gym owners, right? But the funny thing is our coaches that come in our program for 6 months, a year, 2 years, some eventually lead into having a small gym down the road. And it's funny because even though you target micro gyms, you still kind of— my clientele still kind of was your kind of— it's kind of funny how the things kind of work.

Yeah.

You don't actually let go of these clients. They kind of like come in naturally even though you're still targeting that, like you just said with Mike, right? Like that certain niche demographic.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a, that's a great summary because when you niche down, you're not limiting yourself on growth. You're exactly, actually just making your efforts more efficient and with the things you shared, a lot less expensive, right? All this stuff is just takes time. Build the relationship. You don't have to put money into Facebook ads first.

You gave me an idea, John. We almost had to have a book and say how to start a gym with under $1,000 for marketing. Like basically like how to launch, just record it so that I'm just, yeah, never mind. That was just a light bulb thing as I was talking here.

Yeah, no, right. But it, it's good. I think people would love to know how to do that because people have done it. It doesn't take a crazy budget. to get to where you need to go. And of course, I can't— I always have to give a plug for, you know, profitability. One of the important things about profitability, especially when it comes to marketing, you have to understand what pricing you should charge. Like, if you're marketing and you're bringing all these new clients, but you're undercharging them based on what you offer, that's not a great solution, right? You're creating other problems for yourself. So Maybe as a final advice, do you have advice that you run your fitness professionals through as far as like how to determine what they should be charging?

Oh, that's a great question, man. That could be, yeah. So I think the biggest thing is to break down their offer stack of what they're actually offering their clients first, break down how much time each offer item stack is taking them and what, of course, the, what the value of course of each stack is. and base your investment price on that first, not sessions over anything else. But there is one last thing I want to mention before we cut off. Simple word: customer experience. Because if you're a gym owner or a fitness coach and you're only focusing on just bringing leads in and you forget your client experience, you will lose clients as fast as they come in.

Yeah, the greatest, uh, strategy for growth is retention. Yeah, leads are great, but especially in the industry, um, in the fitness industry in general, this is— this goes for whether you're just a fitness professional, micro gym, or global gym. Uh, if you're not retaining these clients, um, now you're just in this game of I have to get more clients, which usually in order to keep up with clients leaving, you are having to put Facebook ads into that because you need more leads than what organically you can get. And that's just, that's hard to maintain. It's not fun. You have to, you don't want to feel like every month you have to resell your business to new clients. Keep them. I love that customer experience.

100%, man.

What's the best way if people want to learn more about you, your company, how do they contact you?

So the website actually is trainerrevenuemultipliers.com. Basically is the website. You can find my Instagram at mindset_matthew with one T or @trainerrevenuemultiplier on Instagram. It's basically where you can find me online.

Okay. trainerrevenuemultiplier.com. Uh, that's a great place to start. Uh, good info there for you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed the conversation. You, there's something you can pull away, uh, pull away from this strategy. And if you're not a gym owner listening to this, I think the general concepts we talked about marketing are totally applicable to any business. Um, always better to figure out how to grow your business without having to put a ton of money into marketing first. Yeah, that's just a general solid principle. So Matthew, thanks again for your time. And everyone remember, profit is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.

Thanks, John.