[00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and [00:00:10] studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert [00:00:20] 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.[00:00:30]
All right. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast. [00:00:40] I am not Michael Keeler. If you are a longtime listener, you know exactly who I am. My name’s Pete DePuy. I have been sitting in the guest chair for this special podcast [00:00:50] dating back to before I joined BFU in 2021, so probably. We’re talking 2020 or earlier, and today I am taking control of this side of the [00:01:00] table on Michael’s behalf, and I have brought my good friend Danny in here.
And Danny, I’m gonna describe our [00:01:10] relationship based on, uh, what I would call an accountability partnership, because a couple years back, our mutual friend Zach, who I have actually interviewed on this [00:01:20] podcast before, told me I had to get. Into your network, into your, I don’t know what we’ll call it, gravitational pull because you just talk all things [00:01:30] marketing and some of the things I was saying he thought could be improved by just having more interesting conversations with you and Zach proposed.
We do a standing monthly zoom [00:01:40] call where the three of us talk about what, what’s going on in our lives, what is and isn’t working. And play the game as business owners and parents of growing [00:01:50] families. And it’s been really valuable to me since, as I’ve learned a lot and you’ve helped me with projects in my own operation.
But I also, as I set off [00:02:00] air, watched you launch. Azel Studio and Azel Marketing is how I think of it. I honestly don’t remember exactly what your start date was, [00:02:10] but I feel like we watched it happen right in front of us. Yeah. Can you do me a solid and just explain to the audience where you live, how huge your [00:02:20] clan of children are now, because you’ve got a big family, and what inspired you to start as Ellie, what that is?
Sure. Sure. Yeah. No, thanks for having me on, Pete. I was [00:02:30] excited to catch up with you too, so this is good. So I live in Ohio. I am about an hour south of Cleveland, and yes, I have a growing clan of children. Uh, I [00:02:40] have, I just had my fifth child, so we are creating our own little baseball team here in Ohio, and I started a studio out of.[00:02:50]
This desire to create a little bit more freedom and flexibility in my schedule. So formerly I was chief marketing officer for an insurance firm. Spent [00:03:00] about a decade just studying, fascinated with marketing and branding really. And so when I launched my own business. I was actually [00:03:10] pregnant with my fourth child at the time and knew I needed to step out of corporate and create a schedule that was a little more fitting for our family.
The name Azel is actually [00:03:20] named after a Saint Zellie who had her own lace making business out of the comfort of her own home in the 18 hundreds, and raised [00:03:30] many kids while doing so. And so that’s the inspiration behind it. Uh. In launching Azel Studio, it was initially focused [00:03:40] around marketing, digital marketing primarily.
And what I quickly learned in that first year, and I know you remember these conversations, Pete, was that. [00:03:50] While many small businesses were thinking marketing was the key to open the floodgates to leads and more revenue coming in. What I was [00:04:00] finding in those audit processes and building the marketing strategies was really like branding.
So that when we do launch the marketing, which would be the ads that are going directly to the right [00:04:30] customer to pull in, right? When we do launch some of the different marketing tactics, the blogs, the SEO work, the, the headlines that we’re writing down to the nitty gritty of the [00:04:40] exact copy that we’re writing.
Then we know we have the messaging pillars to back it up. We know exactly like the type of work or the type of content that we need to put out there to [00:04:50] pull in the right people and the marketing dollars stretch much further versus just testing and experimenting at the marketing tactical level without having our brand [00:05:00] foundation pillars in place was.
A lot of churn. What I was seeing, a lot of businesses churn, different marketing tactics. And so that’s when I shifted a little bit [00:05:10] with Azel Studio to first say, let’s focus on branding. Let’s focus on positioning and messaging and story, and then we build a marketing [00:05:20] strategy that kind of. Dovetails off of that branding, which we’re seeing a lot more success in making the marketing work much quicker because we have that foundation and peace.
So that’s really [00:05:30] like where the business is focused on now is first laying out the brand foundation and then building a marketing plan. And then like a, almost like right now we’re doing day-to-day [00:05:40] activation plans to then. Let the brand strategy live out and execute essentially. Okay. I love that. And I feel a little bit attacked [00:05:50] because I definitely churn my approach to scaling the messaging around my brand and I know I gotta be better.
You write a pretty cool newsletter [00:06:00] and one of them grabbed my attention recently and prompted me to shoot you a text and say, I really wanted. Talk about this on the podcast if you’re open to it. So if you don’t [00:06:10] mind, I want to go down the rabbit hole today of using ai, but specifically as it relates to brand voice and authenticity.
Because you [00:06:20] touched on this stuff and it just spoke to me because my biggest hesitation in using AI for writing. Better email copy or captions for our social media posts, things of that [00:06:30] nature is that I’m terrified it’s gonna get filled up with exclamation points and m dashes that don’t match up with my tone and approach.
And [00:06:40] I really want an expert like yourself to help bring some clarity how us gym owners. And I’m gonna say gym owners and PT clinics because you did mention to me that you’re currently doing a [00:06:50] project for PT Clinic out of a fitness facility in your area. And so you’re actually in the space working with people like myself and my colleagues, and I’d love to [00:07:00] hear how you think about that as it relates to a couple of questions today.
Cool. Yep. Sounds good. Alright. So I think a lot of us. Gym owners [00:07:10] put the cart before the horse in asking ourselves how we can use AI to create our brand voice, when in reality we should be defining our brand voice [00:07:20] before using ai. Yeah, and I’m wondering, one, if you think I’m outta my mind for saying that, but assuming you agree with me, how should a gym owner be [00:07:30] intentional about defining their brand voice before we even talk about diving into chat, GPT or any other tool that you see as useful?
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And I run into a similar kind [00:07:40] of issue I see across some businesses really just getting started with chat. GPT is they’re asking, they’ll go into chat GT and maybe give it a little context and ask. Write this blog post or [00:07:50] write this newsletter or write this on a specific topic.
And if chat GBT doesn’t have the context around your brand voice, like detailed explanation [00:08:00] around your brand voice, then it’s really gonna push out generic chat, GBT and dash emoji style content. And we’re at the [00:08:10] point now where the end user, the reader. Is really catching on to when you’re using chat GPT to just push out a bunch of content and it feels inauthentic.
It [00:08:20] doesn’t feel related to the brand. And one of the things that I like to do, which yes, actually I’m inside a physical therapy clinic who operates, is embedded in a CrossFit business right [00:08:30] now. And I just went through this whole brand audit, brand strategy process with them. But is first, let’s. Let’s audit the copy that you have previously used within the [00:08:40] business.
This is getting us closer to what is the brand voice? How do we define the brand voice without just putting a couple things into Chachi pc. To give it context, let’s actually build [00:08:50] out a complete brand voice guide. And so to do that, we go and audit. All of the content that, not all of the content, but some main pieces that may have triggered a [00:09:00] stronger positive result that you’ve used in the past.
And to audit that though, we can plug that into chat, GPT or any AI tool. Claude also [00:09:10] works very well. We can attach some of those samples in there and have a prompt, ready to go to say, review some of these pieces. Help me understand why these performed [00:09:20] well, maybe share some of the analytics around it.
Share your target market, who the ideal member that you’re trying to attract to your gym or your physical therapy clinic and, [00:09:30] and AI with all of the data that it has access to, will help you really understand why some of that content performed well for your business. And then [00:09:40] what I like to do is go through.
The customer feedback, so customer feedback, customer reviews, Google reviews, Facebook reviews. You [00:09:50] might have anywhere where you’re getting it. It could be even like if you have support tickets or complaints that might be coming in internally behind the scenes, like anywhere where [00:10:00] you’re getting some like customer voice.
I like to then plug that information. In and grab the into chat GPT and grab the themes [00:10:10] that are coming out from those conversations. Exactly. Word for word. The way the customers are describing your business are describing the positives are describing the pains that they may be [00:10:20] having and the solutions that you’re offering, because that’s data as well directly from the members.
Gym or in your physical therapy clinic and pulling that [00:10:30] information and pairing it with the content that we just audited, the copy that we just audited to see if there’s any gaps or opportunities [00:10:40] in the messaging. Right? And so then once you pair that together, you’re in a good position to build this like complete messaging guide that.[00:10:50]
Is really pulling a lot of data from the actual customer voice, but is also leaning into some of the success pieces that you’ve had and how that kind of aligns. [00:11:00] Does that make sense? It’s not often that someone says something to me that I’ve definitely never heard or been advised to consider in the past, and you just blew my mind [00:11:10] with the advice that we get into the feedback piece as far as feeding it to AI to tell us who we are and what we wanna sound like, which is.
Absolutely awesome. [00:11:20] And I never would’ve thought to do that. I think I’m a little bit more compelled to lean into the critical stuff and understand where people are [00:11:30] finding fault in what we’re doing. Sure. Not that we’re swimming in negative reviews, but I. We all know. We know the positive things people say.
We like to pat ourselves on the back [00:11:40] and feel good about that stuff that’s rolling in. But the reality is a lot of the positive reviews that people are putting on the internet on behalf of these fitness businesses [00:11:50] were prompted by the businesses themselves suggesting. Can you please go leave me a five star review?
Mm-hmm. And say something nice. So those come through as a [00:12:00] little less authentic to me than the ones where people are like, I’ve always loved this business, but they did this thing and it pissed me off. Sure. That stuff’s real. Yeah. Nobody was coached up on how to say [00:12:10] those things. So it’s one thing if you’ve got like that one star or zero star type review, the maniac who’s just out there to cause pain for the business.
Mm-hmm. But somebody who’s [00:12:20] given you a middle of the road or what I’d call underwhelming review, that’s the stuff that I think is gold to feed into these platforms and figure out [00:12:30] what we’re missing. I’m wondering to build off of that, I know you do a lot of your homework on the clients that you work with before you even talk to them, do you ever find that you’re executing [00:12:40] that process before even engaging with them and you find huge blind spots in their self-awareness?
Absolutely. And I’d say most of the time I find these, [00:12:50] most of the time I find these blind spots because a lot of these gym owners or I don’t, um, in this physical therapy clinic I’m currently working with now or any small business really, [00:13:00] they don’t have an in-house marketer full-time working on the marketing.
Or maybe they do have an in-house marketer. But, or a small team, but it’s, they’re [00:13:10] churning a bunch of work as quickly as possible, so it’s really hard to get a more strategic view from a branding and marketing standpoint. When I jump in, almost acting more so [00:13:20] as a fractional marketing person inside their team.
Right. That’s when I’m finding like, oh, the messaging that is tends to be going out looks very similar [00:13:30] to maybe their competitor’s messaging. Maybe within the industry we’ve come to feel like this is the type of messaging that we need to be sending. ’cause it’s working [00:13:40] for gym, H and VGC, but really here’s what the customers are actually saying.
Here’s what is working for them or here’s what’s not working for them. And [00:13:50] so that’s where those blind spots happen, is let’s look directly at what the customers are saying and let’s pull messaging ideas from there. And the beauty of that is some of the businesses I work with have [00:14:00] hundreds of reviews.
And it’s a lot of data to mine through manually. And so where AI comes in is, that’s how I use it mostly, is like just [00:14:10] looking at the data as a whole and giving me the high level overview of what the customers are actually saying, what they’re wanting, what their problems and pain points are, and then matching the [00:14:20] messaging up.
So that’s where the opportunity really lies from a messaging and copy standpoint. Awesome. Hey there, business Unicorns podcast listeners. I’m just making absolutely sure you have already gotten [00:14:30] your free, instantly downloadable copy of my new book, the Little Book of Gym Marketing Secrets. You can find a link to download it in the show notes, or you can go to gym marketing secrets [00:14:40] book.com.
I worked super hard to make sure this is a less than a 30 minute read and is a comprehensive overview of all the things you need to do. To grow your gym, get more leads, more [00:14:50] clients, importantly, change more lives. Again, find the link in the show notes where you can download your free copy at gym marketing secrets book.com and now back to the podcast.[00:15:00]
Okay, so we’re at the stage where we’ve, in theory, established our brand voice. Yeah. Understand what our avatar actually looking for. How do we make the jump into getting AI to [00:15:10] right. Authentically in our voice. How do we take all the information you just churned and you’re sitting on this pile of meaningful data?
Mm-hmm. What are the prompts? [00:15:20] What’s the approach? So, so what I like to do then is I ask chat, GPT or Quad for a very detailed messaging guide, and this thing could be like. [00:15:30] 10 pages long. Okay. I’m not reading through line by line exactly what’s in this messaging guide, but it can include different components of the do’s and [00:15:40] don’ts of certain words that you should be using.
Headline examples. It can help with content strategy, right? There’s just a lot of information inside this messaging guide. [00:15:50] And then I build a tone of voice guide. From the messaging guide, and so the tone of voice guide could also be three to five pages, let’s say. That really gets to the [00:16:00] nitty gritty of exactly the language you should use.
And then I use those two guides to train. A chat, GPT on the messaging [00:16:10] guide and the tone of voice guide. I use what’s called a custom GPT. It’s like a AI agent essentially. Now, I should say, I, let me preface this. Say I’m not an AI [00:16:20] expert. I’m constantly experimenting and testing. Currently what I’m doing with my clients right now is we’re getting the messaging guide, the tone of voice guide.
We’re attaching it into a [00:16:30] custom GPT that we will then use that GPT. Project or a custom GPT. Every time we go to write and add [00:16:40] a newsletter, an email, email copy, like a sales email copy, any type of copy that we need to write, we use that particular thread [00:16:50] so that the language is then that the AI model is trained on the messaging and tone of voice.
You make it sound easy, but it’s a little overwhelming to me. So [00:17:00] let’s say you’re a gym owner that doesn’t have the resources to invest in an expert like yourself. I think I could get to the point where I’ve collected [00:17:10] the data we’ve talked about that seems user friendly. I’m comfortable. I could get through the messaging guide piece and then from their extractive tone of voice guide, how does the, [00:17:20] the person with minimal time and minimal.
Bandwidth and budget. Take the tone of voice guide and just [00:17:30] start. So Chachi, BT has the free version or the $20 a month version. And what you can do with the tone of voice guide and the messaging [00:17:40] guide, you attach it just like you would in an email. So it even has the little paperclip in chat. Gt click the paperclip, you attach those two [00:17:50] guides in there and you say, write me.
A advertisement or let’s say a marketing campaign, a six [00:18:00] ad marketing campaign that I can use on Facebook, or I could, or it could be a six sequence email [00:18:10] campaign that I can send. Please use my messaging guide and tone of voice guide so that it sounds authentically like me. Now when you get that [00:18:20] back, Chachi, spit it out and give it back to you.
There’s gonna be things that you’re like, that’s not really it, or That’s not, and so you wanna. I would say it would get you [00:18:30] 80% there and there you have almost a marketing campaign that’s about 80% there that you didn’t have to hire a marketer to come in and do. And you would go in and tweak [00:18:40] a little bit of the language or ask chat, GPT continue to prompt back to say, this line doesn’t sound like us.
This is also not part of the messaging guide. I don’t [00:18:50] know where you got this. ’cause occasionally it hallucinates or occasionally it throws in an emoji when you ask for no emojis, right? You continue to prompt, but you will get about 80, [00:19:00] 85% there. And then the human element, I think is still so critical today.
I think applying your human self and really reviewing the actual [00:19:10] copy that you would be sending out before it, it ships. Beautiful and perfect answer. Totally understandable. I don’t wanna minimize the importance [00:19:20] of what you do because you’re, you just saved like dozens and dozens of hours of work and tinkering and you gave it to me in [00:19:30] 90 seconds.
Oh, I, let me go on record as saying, I think people should still be spending with marketing professionals like yourself, but. Some of us need to like scratch that [00:19:40] itch and then realize this is good, but Danny could put it on steroids. All right. I have one last question. Sure. With what you’ve given me, if we were to make this like even, [00:19:50] you made it very tactical, but if we were to make this more tactical from like a weekly workflow standpoint, what would a simple weekly workflow with AI [00:20:00] look like for, let’s say a PT clinic, if you were getting started tomorrow?
Yes. So I think it comes down to which tactics, [00:20:10] marketing tactics can you systemize and operationalize in your business on a weekly basis. And so let’s say you send a weekly newsletter to your [00:20:20] patients or your clients or customers members. Let’s say you do a weekly newsletter, so then maybe you designate one morning at the beginning of the week, [00:20:30] let’s say Monday, Tuesday morning.
I’m gonna spend an hour. Polling topics that I think are relevant now because we already did the [00:20:40] work of understanding the pain points and problems that our Google reviews are telling us. If we have hundreds of Google reviews in that data pull from. I should also side [00:20:50] note mention. You can even scrape the internet and understand what the target market is saying.
That may not be patients or members inside your actual gym, but are still within [00:21:00] the target market to understand what problems they’re facing and then ask, pull a topic for this week. You pull that topic for the week. You ask then through that [00:21:10] thread where your brand messaging guide and your tone of voice live.
You ask them to help draft out the outline for the newsletter. Maybe that’s the [00:21:20] headline, the subject line, couple bullet points of what would go in the newsletter, the call to action that you might have at the end. If you like that outline, you then ask Chat GPT to [00:21:30] draft it. If you don’t like that outline or that topic isn’t sitting well.
Right, and so then once that draft is ready, you are about 80, 85% there. You [00:21:40] applied the human touch to it, and you go then and ship that newsletter. And that can be done in less than an hour, essentially. But to get [00:21:50] started, I would just start with something as simple as, what’s one thing that I can do on a weekly basis?
A newsletter, for example, that I can ship within an hour. [00:22:00] Awesome. Okay. Let me recap from the gym owner perspective, see if I got this right. We’re gonna start by collecting as much data as possible. Understand [00:22:10] both how we’ve put ourselves out on into the world, on the internet, what chat GPT or Claude can pull who we are based on our own efforts, but then [00:22:20] also who we are based on feedback from others, be it positive or negative.
And we’re gonna pull that all into step two, which is to create some guides. So that would be messaging [00:22:30] guide, and then that would be a tone of voice guide, right? And then we’re gonna use that information to inform our future requests of AI to [00:22:40] prepare our content in our voice. And your advice from there is really just break this down into manageable.
I gave you [00:22:50] a week as far as content creation goes, and you got hyper specific with if kind of, if you can’t do it in under an hour. You’re doing it wrong. Am I right there? [00:23:00] I, I think eventually over time, yes. I think that’s the advantage that we have right now in this AI era. And to your note about still hiring marketing professionals, like [00:23:10] I honest, my shift to AI is to teach businesses how to leverage these AI tools now to be able to handle the marketing in-house.
Because a lot of [00:23:20] times there’s. Small businesses, hiring these marketing agencies who are using the AI and not really getting to that authentic [00:23:30] voice that you have inside your gym. You know your customers best, and so if you’re using the tools to train on your model, like yes, you can efficiently [00:23:40] create really good marketing that attracts the right customers that you wanna bring into your business.
Yeah, you’re spot on there. But it can be done super [00:23:50] efficiently now with ai. And what I really appreciate about what you just said, and it’s why we’ve always got along, is that you’re not using fear tactics and [00:24:00] explaining from the marketing, the studio owners perspective. You’re not saying you’ll never do this as well as I can do it.
’cause I have the human voice. AI is. It’s [00:24:10] not gonna work. You’re actually doing what I think great fitness professionals do when they work with, say like a gen pop person. They say, if I do my job really well. [00:24:20] I am going to make you so good at executing the basics that I cease to be a worthy investment for you.
And that’s great. That means we did this right? I make you a better advocate for [00:24:30] yourself in the weight room or in any fitness capacity, and it stinks to lose business. But how cool is it if you help people become like their own self-serving fitness professional? Mm-hmm. [00:24:40] And it seemed to me that was what you just said.
Absolutely. I wanna help you with your marketing to the point where you need to stop investing externally. I wanna make you a marketer is basically it. And [00:24:50] that’s a lot different from, you’re my client, you’re forever my client until we hate each other, and then you’re the enemy. Sure. Yeah, sure. No, I want you the, to give you the [00:25:00] opportunity to tell people in our community or help in whatever capacity you like.
Is there any way you’d like people to connect with Azel or Danny Kimball in particular, or [00:25:10] any resources you’d like to point people toward? No. Yeah, I do have the wor a workflow that I’ve built out, that I use in my business when I’m working with other [00:25:20] businesses that I’m like handing over to you all to be able to run through this complete process yourself.
So in it, it’s just a Google Doc. It’s nothing fancy. There’s [00:25:30] no fancy like graphics or anything to it. It’s just a Google Doc of text. But it does have all of the prompts that I use to. Audit the [00:25:40] content. To audit the reviews, to spot some of the gaps and opportunities you might have to build the messaging guide and tone of voice and to [00:25:50] then create your own version of A GPT, which is essentially like a thread that you can plug those in and be able to create your own content.
So I’m gonna send that [00:26:00] to you, Pete, and you’ll be able to get that out to everybody or whoever wants it, whoever reaches out. Um, and then that I would be curious to hear. How it [00:26:10] works for you all. So if you get any feedback, I’d be curious to hear that, but I’ll shoot that over to you after we get off here.
Love that. Okay, so anyone who’s listening and wants to get their [00:26:20] hands on that guide, just shoot me an email, pete@businessforunicorns.com, and I will make sure that Danny’s information gets kicked your way. Danny, lastly on social work and they [00:26:30] find you. Social media. You can find me on LinkedIn, Kim, or you can visit [00:26:40] [00:26:50] [00:27:00] my.
Copyright 2025 © Business For Unicorns, Inc. | A KILO Website
Fill out the form below to get instant access!