Announcing our New Gym Growth Blast Off Program with Mark Fisher

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend today’s episode, I am speaking with Mr. Mark Fisher and we are walking through and announcing a brand new program. We have called the gym growth blast off program. And this program you’re going to hear all about in this episode. It’s all four people who are wanting to build some really robust marketing systems in your gym, either for the first time, or you’re looking to reassess your systems and make them even better.

Even if this program is not a great fit for you, Episode is because we’ve walked through some of the basics and the fundamental building blocks of creating robust marketing systems for your gym. So if you want to level up with the marketing in your gym, it’s a great episode for you. So get out your notebook and keep on listening.

Join me each week for actionable advice. Expert insights and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym, get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry. Let’s begin.[00:01:00]

Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up. Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. Before we dive in today, I want to share with you a special announcement, which is business unicorns has a brand new program that we think you are going to love. We’re calling this program Jim growth blast off.

I think it’s a great name because that’s really our focus. You are personally going to work with Mark Fisher who’s on the podcast today. What a star for 12 weeks to grow your monthly reoccurring revenue. I’m going to say that again. You’re going to personally work with Mark Fisher for 12 weeks to grow your monthly reoccurring revenue.

We’ll give you everything you need to make that happen. Nothing you don’t. It’s really focused. Get started on May. 13th, there’s only 20 spots and this is the lowest we’re ever going to offer Jim growth blast off. So if you’d like to know more, click the link in the show notes or DM us on Instagram and we’ll give you all the details.

And actually Fisher, since you’re here, anything you want to add to that? We’re super stoked. You’ve been working on this, dreaming of this for a while, so it’s getting born soon. How do you feel? And yes, yeah, [00:02:00] I’m excited. I’ve been doing. Modest beta versions of this for a little while with a number of members of the Unicorn Society.

So I’m feeling super excited to get this baby born and into the world still feels in some way like a beta round. And the great news is for anyone interested in coming on this journey, it will be priced accordingly. So I think the value will be fantastic in my opinion. So I would encourage you to sign on up if you’re interested, because it will most certainly not be offered at this rate again, but I’m really.

Excited to try this and test this out. The sort of like cohort week by week process that is focused less on to know lists and more on to do lists. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really critical that this 12 weeks is all about taking action. This is not going to be like a course where you take lots of notes over 12 weeks and leave with a big list of things you might.

Consider doing someday. This is 12 weeks of actually doing shit. So actually we’re going to talk more about this on today’s episode. We’re going to use today’s episode to walk through a high level roadmap of kind of [00:03:00] what’s going to be covered in Jim growth blast off, but we’re doing this because I think the roadmap itself is a valuable takeaway for you listeners.

So even if you don’t wind up doing the program, which you should do this, the things we’re going to talk through today are the. Kinds of things that we think all of you should be doing to increase your monthly reoccurring revenue. So if you want to start with just a high level overview of what does this roadmap look like?

Yeah it’s good questions Remember the specifics. It’s all written down somewhere. Yeah in many ways We’ve just attempted to do what we do with the unicorn society But the difference is we’re really being prescriptive about this and then this and of course one of the tensions I think of this kind of program is my You Commitment to you is to make you your money back as fast as humanly possible.

On the other hand, there are certain foundational tools that if they are not in place first, then any attempts to go out there and sell things are going to really lead into some issues because the foundation is flawed. So the messaging is not correct and or it’s not a very good [00:04:00] offer and or we didn’t do the amount of outreach we could and or we didn’t follow up to the people that we were would have been interested in hearing about it, but we just weren’t organized enough to make sure they heard the messaging.

And then we didn’t follow up enough. So then people missed it because it was in a short window or we didn’t use the channels that they wanted to hear from us in. So this really is going to be a complete soup to nuts education on everything you need to know about marketing and sales. I think the other thing that is important to note is the goal for this program is to Set you up such that there is a monthly revenue increase that certainly for this first round will correlate on a monthly basis, you should be two and a half xing your investment for the whole program.

And we’re going to be doing it without Facebook ads. And I want to speak to that a little bit because I know for a lot of individuals that feels like a bear. And I want to be very clear, a mature fitness business is almost certainly going to need a paid digital strategy at some point, right? I think that’s, I think it’s almost always going to make [00:05:00] sense.

And in practice, in our experience, a lot of gym owners are really missing some obvious, more immediate, the renumerative low hanging fruit. Again, Facebook ads are fantastic, but definitionally in exchange for the increase in quantity of leads, there will be a little bit of a dip of, quality, right? And I very much my pal, Mike RC always says, I don’t believe in low quality leads.

And I very much subscribe to that. There’s no bad leads, right? They’re all good leads, but it is true. There are relatively less qualified leads. And in practice, that’s one of the reasons why I prefer people to do this first, because at the risk of being crass, I want you to make more money first because once we make more money, then we have a lot more options to say nothing and be able to afford to pay for the digital ad strategy.

Further, until you have a very dialed in follow up and sales strategy, if you start getting a ton of digital leads coming in, but you don’t really know how to follow up with them or what to do with them or how to, what offers to make them, you’re going to really miss a lot of opportunities and not have a lot of people [00:06:00] profit convert natural memberships.

Yeah. I think it’s a really important distinction to make about this program. This is not going to be teaching people how to run digital ads, though. Some people, many people will need to know that at some point, this is about all kinds of other strategies that don’t require any really upfront spending.

It’s really about time spent on them, which is I think really critical, but let’s go back. So you mentioned one of the things that you’re going to do in the first few weeks, this program is lay some foundational things that have to be in place before the marketing and sales system can even get off the ground.

You just give a little highlight overview. What are some of the foundational kind of elements systems that have to be clear before you can even start doing really any good marketing? Yeah, certainly one needs to have clarity around an avatar. Now, to be clear, if you are. of even modest levels of sophistication.

This will probably obviously be a little bit perfunctory. In practice, listen, for brick and mortar gym, it’s not the riches and niches exactly of the online space. But it is also true that if you’re not really clear on who [00:07:00] your prospect actually is, you’ll have a hard time talking to them. And if you are clear that can work really well, I give you Exhibit A, our dear friend and Be free to coach Pete Dupuy, one of the, probably the most successful people, probably the industry’s seen as far as really going all in on a niche.

If I could say the inversion, the thing that we often see you do wrong, we say with love, is you make a thing that is completely for yourself, right? And there is a school of thought that says we’re making a, we’re always making things for a former version of ourself. But in practice, if you really love being yourself, Death metal and you love chains and you want a website that’s black and a space that’s so cool because it’s dirty and there’s no air conditioning.

It’s very hardcore. Listen, that might work if that’s the avatar you’re on fire for. If there are enough individuals in your market willing to pay what you need to make for your business to be viable. In practice, for a lot of gym owners, they’re going to be listening to this. You are dealing with, in the most situations, professionals that are looking to [00:08:00] Look good.

Feel good. Perform good. And a subset of you listening, if you work in the sports performance space, are looking to convince parents that you can get Johnny to run faster. And I think if you’re not thinking about that person and then making sure that everything from the pictures of the websites to the words that you use to the headline of the website, if that’s not all making it obviously clear who you’re looking to help, all is lost.

So that’s why for some of you, it’ll be a little bit like a bit of a review, but it’s worth doing. And not only that, this is a process I go through periodically for the business I’m involved in. Invariably, I find, Oh, it’s interesting. Now that I’m thinking through Like the words that this person is using, it strikes me that, Oh, that’s not actually the word that this person uses.

That’s like my word as a fitness professional. And maybe I should use the word that they use. Totally. Yeah. Listen, I’m so glad that you’re starting this. We’re starting this program with some foundational things like this, because we have people joining Unicorn Society all the time who’ve been Owning a gym or operating a gym for three, [00:09:00] five, 10, 12 years.

And I look on their website and it’s really unclear who it’s for. I look at their social media account. It’s really unclear who they serve. So even if people have been doing this work for a long time, their marketing materials are not always as strong as they could be if they were more clear on their avatar.

He’s got to match up all the pictures and words you use with the kind of person you’re trying to attract. It’s a fishing analogy. You got to use the right bait for the right fish. And oftentimes it’s just a real misalignment. And so they’re concerned about, Oh, we got all this traffic on our website, but no one never fills out the form.

They’re confused. And we talk all the time on this podcast that in marketing, you confuse, you lose. And if you start right off the bat with not being clear about who you attract and how you serve them, then nothing else we would do in a program like this would matter. Like you can give you, we can give you all the strategies in the world over the 12 weeks of this Jim growth blast off.

But if you’re just not clear about who you’re talking to, it’s really hard to have any of that land. All right. So there’s things like avatar and a few other things that are foundational things you’ll do up [00:10:00] front. And then if we’re not doing Facebook ads, what are the other kinds of strategies people are going to learn about or should consider through a program like this?

Yes. As I say this, I’m going to say one, these are things that long time listeners have all heard before. And two, you might be a new listener and three, you might not have done it yet. But all of marketing is a process of first people have to know that you exist. Then over time they come, particularly the service business, they come to like you and trust you enough that at a certain point they respond to some compelling offer to take some step to work with you.

It’s very high level. It’s a little reductionistic, but that’s a game. So once you have. good foundation in place. You need to make sure that people know you exist. And there are a number of different ways we can do this. And this is where full stop paid digital media is the most effective strategy. Again, you’re not going to get a lot of people that are oftentimes really willing to pull out the credit card right away, immediately, at least not at high [00:11:00] percentage, but outside of that, there are some other lower hanging fruit.

So one example that we’ve talked about a lot is the people that already know you. I always say that if you would say hello to someone in the grocery store, they should be reminded on a regular basis that you have a service that might be valuable for them. And I, as I always clarify, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be high pressuring your grandma into buying a six week transformation challenge.

But if this is somebody that already knows you, they already can trust you. They’re probably not going to mind hearing about you. And by you creating top of mind awareness for them, even if you’re not the correct solution for their needs. now, one, you might be in the future and two, they might know people that they might hear are looking for some kind of solution that feels like yours.

And they’ll think of their friendly roommate slash brother slash best friend’s nephew slash the funny kid. They used to work at the grocery store, fill in the blank of whatever that relationship was. So I think the first thing we need to do is really [00:12:00] organize. Yeah. Your existing contact database, because it’s the probably the most important asset that your business has.

100%. And I think what that’s really useful about that is that so many people forget that no one knows they even have a business. Eat, sleep, our businesses. And we think that everyone who’ve ever met or even been a one person removed from everyone knows about our gym, of course. And the reality is no one fucking knows.

Everyone is silent in their own worlds these days. So that person that you worked with three jobs ago doesn’t even know what you do anymore. And so the idea that one of the first foundational steps here is to like, make sure that everyone you’ve ever touched ever come in contact with in your life is organized.

And at least in the email database so you can start to reach out and connect with them. And I think you’re, you might need to hard sell your grandma or at the very least make sure she knows what you’re up to these days. So she can tell everyone at her bridge club to come to your [00:13:00] gym. So I think that’s super helpful.

I know the other thing you plan on focusing on in this program is really the mechanics of delivering a really great. I know we’re not going to have time to dive into a lot of the details here, but I see this as an area where people just really mess up the marketing in that they just create boring offers or they’re not compelling enough.

What are the ABCs of crafting a really good offer? Yeah. This is something that we have spent a lot of time talking about inside of business unicorns recently and I’m very happy with where we’ve landed and I’ll share something that for me is a relatively new distinction for how I think about this because I think there’s two different kinds of offers you can make.

I think they both can be valuable and I have a pretty strong preference about which one most of you should start with most of the time. So I understand the very first thing people do with you needs in most situations be either a very low committal, low cost, low barrier way for them to just try out and try out your workouts or It [00:14:00] wants to be some kind of front end offer where you’re just selling a defined benefit and there’s an end point to the program and you’re not asking to join anything.

And this would be any sort of fill in the blank, four weeks, six week transformation challenge, whatever you want to call that particular approach. I think both of them can work. I think in general, I tend to prefer most people. start with a relatively lower barrier. And if you sign up for the program, I have some very specific beliefs about the way that should be done these days, particularly after being that sharp saw being sharpened after bringing it into the dojo with a number of members of the Unicorn Science hashing out like okay.

We think this is, we think this is the best right now. Yeah. Because ultimately again, people need to have an. obvious way to get started with you and what to do next. And listen, you’ll also have to make some decisions for you. I think the higher barrier to get started, you could argue, yep, you’re going to tend to get a more committed person that is more bought in.

You’re going to have, they’re going to be maybe more likely to convert. They’ll be more [00:15:00] likely to comply. They will, you’ll be, it’ll be easier for you to give them a very curated and powerful experience. On the other hand, if you want more quantity and you really want to open up the spigot for a lot of you, if you’re stressed on capacity, I think a little bit, I think the tribe before you buy, quote, unquote, Offer is a little bit better way to go where you really want to make it frictionless.

You want to make it very easy for people to start with you as a rule. I’m usually not a fan of a free offer upfront. And again, I’m happy to go into boring detail about that. Anybody cares, but I think some relatively lower paid offer. That’s not super long that gets people in your world that again, you’re making it very clear.

Here’s exactly what to do. If you want to get started. This is the thing to do, and you make it very easy for people to do that thing so they can move through an opportunity to check you out and decide if this feels like the right fit for them, if they want to move into some sort of ongoing. Membership.

So that’s, I think the way that I think about this day. And I think maybe one other thing I’ll [00:16:00] share that is relevant to this program is you’re listening and you’re saying like, should I do this? Or should I not do this? It’s pretty prescriptive. It’s pretty prescriptive and you might not like that. And the reality is I’m not talking about literally, we’re just talking about this.

I’m not talking about anything else. I’m not going to be talking about like your leadership skills, not talking about your fulfillment. I’m not talking about anything, but getting your leads and getting your clients. You want leads and clients. This is it. This is the best thing we got. Do you need help managing your team?

Probably want to talk about the unicorn side. You probably want to talk about other things. But for a lot of you, even as we’ve shared a little tease of some of the things we’re talking about, maybe as a closing comment here, they’re not necessarily things you haven’t heard before. So I also want to, I also want to temper your expectation here.

I don’t have a magic rabbit I’m going to pull out of my hat. They’re like, Oh, here’s the secret strategy. I will say this. I actually do think there’s something relatively new that we’re doing this program. It’s not, there’s a few, there’s a few things in there. I think that people have not thought of, but you’re right.

But this is maybe not as widely marketing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But overall in practice, listen, if you’re like a super user. It’s a super business [00:17:00] unicorns fan and you listen to every podcast and you watch everyone on my YouTube videos and you come to the retreats. Yeah, you’re probably not going to be like, Oh, this is a new thing I never heard of before.

Understand the difference of this program. The value to you is I’m going to make you do the thing week by week. It’s going to be prescriptive to do list of what you’re doing in your two, three, five hours per week that you’re going to be required to submit deliverables. to submit proof of work when wheels and I will catch you and hunt you down if you do not do it.

So a lot of the benefit of this program is we’re doing this together as a group in a cohort and we’re not just learning things. We’re taking action on the things where I will personally be able to give you feedback on how well I think you’re applying these things, right? Because for a lot of you, the issue isn’t that you’ve never heard of these, that just, you’re just not doing it.

And for some of you, you’re doing it. And you’re just not doing it well, so you’re not getting good results because it’s not good yet. And that makes sense because you’ve been doing it often in a silo. And one thing [00:18:00] that we know to be true is you’re never as good as you could be if you don’t have an outside eye.

You’re always inside. The other day I actually just sent something to Keeler and Ben, another cool resource, which you’ll all find about soon, a book I wrote. And I was like, look, I’m pretty sure this is the best books ever written on this, but I don’t know. I’m sure it’s not because I’m in my own head. I just need outside eyeballs.

I think if you’re looking for accountability, if you’re looking for outside eyeballs, if you’re looking for a follow along done for you system, it takes out all the thinking work and you just run the plays. This is the program you’re going to want to sign up for. Yeah. I think that this is why programs like this are so valuable, Fisher.

You said it. Because all of you listening can go right now and Google a version of every strategy we’re going to tell you to do. Yeah. In this program. The knowledge is, that’s not the valuable part. The valuable part is we’ve curated all those strategies to make them really simple to follow. Really done for you in terms of step one, step two, step three.

We’re going to help you take action, hold you accountable to taking action consistently at a high quality level. And when you meet resistance. We’re not going to let you stop. We’re going to [00:19:00] help you troubleshoot through that resistance and keep pushing. Cause sometimes the resistance is I just, I found time for these two weeks to follow up with my leads, but then the next three weeks I couldn’t find time.

You’re not going to be able to do that in this 12 week program, right? Or yeah, we, I got all these leads, but they were all bad leads. None of them wanted to come in. Okay. We’re not going to let you rest on that excuse. We’re going to ask you to reach back out and find out what their objections are and push through those objections.

And so it’s that kind of outside nudge. I think many of Many gym owners we talked to just need because there’s no one else to do it for you. There’s you’re the boss, you’re in charge, right? There’s no one else to hold your foot to the fire and say, no, keep going. Try something else. Let’s try again.

And that’s exactly, I think the magic of a program. Let’s leave it there. Let’s leave it there. Cause we can keep talking about this, but I think the magic is in doing it. So friends, if this sounds appealing at all, go Instagram and let’s talk about it. We’ll give you all the details, tell you exactly the cost and how it works and what times require.

We’ll give you all those details. But just reach out to us and let us know you’re interested. Thanks Fisher [00:20:00] for this great conversation. I think hopefully listeners, even if they’re not doing the program, got some takeaways from what we shared today. So thanks for a great call and I’ll see you on the next one.

You will.