WTF Gym Talk

Paid marketing works, but for the small business owner trying to grow his gym, there are more effective, free/organic methods available.    This is the full keynote I gave at the FitPro Summit 2022 in Nashville, TN - hosted by Tim Lyons.

Having a mental block, creativity drought or simply upload intimidation when it comes to making content?  This is probably why...

In the 9th episode of Shoot The Shit, my long-form conversations with awesome people in the fitness industry doing amazing things, I got to sit down with Joey Bowen and Drew Beech - the founders of Few Will Hunt.   FWH has become so much more than an Instagramable apparel brand.  They have truly created a culture of customers that are publically displaying their intentions to restore the...

Kory Angelin and I have had different career trajectories in the fitness industry, but we have several things in common.   One of them was that we both clocked our hours inside of the globo-gym world in order to get a leg up on how to operate in the business of the fitness industry. We both also believe that the degrees of separation within the boutique/microgym space are becoming smaller and...

I had the pleasure of meeting Nicole Aucoin in person at an event in which we were both speaking, and this was special for me as I have been a fan from afar of her brand, Healthy Steps Nutrition . What interested me most about Nicole is that she had a very humble come up.  She grinded through the one-to-one, B2B model and then scaled it into a one-to-many B2B2C model.  Along the way, she...

Finding new employees is difficult. Developing them into rockstars who can operate their role and think with business acumen is even harder. Here are a few of my thoughts regarding finding new employees and bringing them into your organization in the most successful way possible.

Finding new employees is difficult. Developing them into rockstars who can operate their role and think with business acumen is even harder. Here are a few of my thoughts regarding finding new employees and bringing them into your organization in the most successful way possible. 

In Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon, he teaches us how establishing your brand's creed is one of the vital elements of a successful brand. In Microgym University, I teach that there are two types of creed:  Your internal (company facing) and external (customer facing). This podcast will discuss the external creed and how to create rules for your members to ensure they are fucking with the ex...

Let's face it, if you own a business, you're employees have pissed you off on more than one occassion. Simultaneously, if you work for someone, your boss has pissed you off to a similar frequency.  So let's talk about it..

Once you've actually created your UBF (Unique Belief in Fitness), then the next challenge is to market it.   But how do we market something that is truly unique?   It's much harder to actually execute than using the language that already exists for fitness concepts that are extremely common. Here are some exercises I took a client through recently as to how to market their UBF.  Wan...

This episode comes to you from The Gym Real Estate Company, where we help gym owners buy + lease buildings.   When talking about partnerships with clients who are aiming to purchase commercial real estate, it's common to hear the client make a statement like "I'd rather not partner with someone one this, I hear partnerships go bad, real fast." But here's what they are not realizing... Want to...

Dr. Sean Pastuch, the founder of Active Life, came on the podcast the day I released my response video to the announcement that he was going to be investing in his first brick + mortar for the Active Life brand.  Previously, Sean and his team would coach current gym owners through retrofitting their gyms into an Active Life.  But now Sean is putting his money where his mouth is and going...

Another look at what I believe will emerge as a popular business model in the fitness industry - the Hybrid gym.  A facility that caters to the open gym seeking, come when you want and do what you want type client + has a separate space and dedicated area for group classes. In this episode use an analogy I had with an individual where I used golf and driving ranges as the comparison. Let me k...

If you don't think you have enough money to hire full-time staff - you may be right...but IMO, you may be very wrong.  It's just about reorganizing your money. 

Recently, my good friend and colleague, Sean Pastuch, owner of Active Life - announced that they will be opening up with first corporate brick and mortar. Sean has been working hard with hundreds of gyms over the years to create his unique service model - but it's always been remotely. Now he's risking it all to prove that he can stand up his own facility built on the service and business principl...

Had a 30 minute drive, so figured I'd rap on how I think about the balance of hard work + smart work.   When do you need to work hard, versus when do you need to work smart?   How do you know it's time to switch? Let me know what you think. 

2021/2022 has kept me very busy with helping microgyms during a pre-sell.  For some of these businesses, they are launching the first iteration of their concept.  For others, they are relocating and need to drum up new business in this new location.  Here's how I go about my overall pre-sell strategy. 

My last podcast episode was with Stephen Hitt where we discussed his evolution of the "in-place" model.  And I was really excited for the microgym world to get a hold of it. But for some reason, there are still a high number of us that refuse to learn about new ways of doing this thing of ours. And it's going to be the downfall for most of the owners, I fear. 

Stephen Hitt is the founder of Industrious in WA, an incredible microgym with a true brand identity that's been killing it since 2011.  We've shared the stage at speaking engagements together and he was on my podcast previously for his DJ-inspired music app for microgyms. However, today we are talking about the evolution of his brand's operating system in terms of installing an 'In-Place' mod...

Members are not movers, you cheap fuck.   Listen for full context.

Somewhere along the line, I've been pegged as "Don't you hate CrossFit gyms?"  "Aren't you against all the things that CrossFit gyms do???" This couldn't be further from the truth.   Here's how I address that misidentification. 

If anyone giving you business advice has ever put down marketing + branding and made a statement that sounds like "Don't worry about marketing, we're going to teach you how to have such an amazing service that your customers do the marketing for you." These people are fucking morons.  Here's why. 

Most owners think of PT First as a business play that can only be used with barbell-based group fitness classes, but it can actually be applied to any fitness model. 

My colleagues over at Best Hour Of Their Day had a big announcement that's a pretty big deal if you're a CrossFit affiliate and I need of business help.  And since that's the world I've been playing in since 2015, I definitely wanted to share in their celebration and had some thoughts of my own.   Please note:  This is not a hit piece.   This is comedic relief mixed with the ge...

Zach Eggen + Josh Werner are the owners of a MADabolic franchise located in Jupiter, Florida.   I flew down on the eve of their first Game Day to talk all things business, converting from CrossFit to MADabolic, and how Game Day will scratch the competitive itch of their member and prove the validity of the programming.