45 Memberships in 10 Days of Pre-Sales with John Farkas

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business of Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the Business of Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

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This is one of those periodic moments where I go completely feral and I steal the mic away from Michael Kiore and I host it myself. This is Mark Fisher here with my buddy, Gian Farkas. How you doing, buddy? Excellent, Mark. Very good. This- I should warn listeners, if anything really dramatic happens in the world in the next couple of months , we’re putting this can now, in the now for the future.

So we’re recording this, this is, believe it or not, the end of June, but I know this is an evergreen topic, so just wanna acknowledge if something really wild happens in the world that we’re not referencing, that’s because this was recorded in late June of 2026. But I think today’s topic is all about pre-sales, which will still be [00:02:00] relevant.

Yeah? Absolutely, yeah. I would go into it assuming 75% of everything we’re gonna discuss will be, still be true. Yeah . So it’s up to you to figure out- Likely … what that 25% is. Likely. Yes, unless there’s some dr- dramatic changes in pre-sales in the next three months, which seems maybe not super likely, but obviously AI is very confusing and fast-moving.

So we’ll see how long evergreen really lasts. So today we are, as mentioned, talking about pre-sales, and partly this is because, Farkas, how m- you have… This is your fourth Alloy location you’re opening? Fourth Alloy, fifth gym, yep. Fourth Alloy, fifth gym. So you have a lot of reps now doing a lot of pre-sales.

I should note, because people are listening, certainly this is relevant for, I think, anybody opening up their next location, though I imagine some of this is gonna matter, too, if you happen to be a trainer or somebody that doesn’t have your own location yet. And I think, to state the very obvious, this will be relevant certainly for independent gyms, but also for franchises, right?

Because you’re obviously working the Alloy system. We can talk a little bit about, I think, some of the constraints that creates, as well as maybe some of the [00:03:00] things in which you have room to play. Yeah, so I’d be curious to get your thoughts on that, about how, like, being a part of the f- that franchise system has both influenced how you think about it and nudged you into certain decisions.

But all this to say, if you’re planning to open up a gym, another location in the near term or your first location, you’re gonna find a lot of relevant stuff. So I guess maybe we can kick it off, if you want to maybe just give us an update about what’s happened to you in the past week or two as of recording, because that’s why we were like, “We should, whoa, we should get on the pod and talk about this.”

Yeah. After we’ve had three, I would say two failed pre-sales and one, eh, pre-sale. One n- nothing to brag about, but one good enough pre-sale, if you wanna look at that. Mm-hmm. And so our last pre-sale was in early 2024. We kinda took a year and a half off to just get all the gyms where they needed to be, and now it’s like, all right, we’re time to open again.

And after the miserable grind of digging the gyms out of a- Mm-hmm … a slow pre-sale, I went into this with, I said, “No matter what, we are not-” Yeah … “going to bomb this [00:04:00] pre-sale.” Because when you have a bad pre-sale, it is just such a slow grind- That’s right. That’s right … to dig yourself out of that hole. And so I went into this saying, “You know what?

We are not gonna repeat the past, and let’s, let’s make sure we have a great pre-sale.” At the end of what kind of sparked this conversation was when I, we were just chatting and I said, “Mark, I think we’re onto something. We’re two weeks into pre-sale. We’re not even two full weeks. We’re 10 days into pre-sale and we’ve got 45 signups.”

Now, and that’s not 45 trials. Right. That’s 45 memberships, credit card on file. Yep. We, like, they are real members. Like I said, not trials. Mm-hmm. They’re real humans. We’ve met them in the flesh. Yes. Okay. Wow. Great. So many follow-up. So f- the first I’ll say, too, is people listening to this, w- worth acknowledging, the, we have a very, I think, dialed pre-sales playbook right now for the Unicorn Society, which we’ve created.

John, obviously you’ve been a big part of that. And because so many members of our community are now scaling to multiple locations, we are collectively, I think, as a community, getting a lot of reps and codifying a lot of things. And [00:05:00] this is interesting because it, my sense is every time another one of us opens up another gym, we just get to further test and get some more information, tweak what we’re doing.

One thing that I don’t think I’ve ever said out loud before, and then I’ll circle back to what you’ve been doing, ’cause again, that’s like coming hot out of the gate, is if you think of a pre-sale This is a very crude and hilarious specific number. You probably wanna average about two sales per day. Does that sound about right?

You– Optima- Mm-hmm … you’d have about two sales per day, right? Because- Yep … if you’re doing, let’s call it 90 days, would be unlikely, right? But if you did a full three month, you would– I– if you sold 180… S- first of all, if you’re a small group gym, that’s probably more than you can handle anyway. I should note, if you have a large group gym, then maybe you’d be targeting three per day.

But I think– And then even if you do a 60-day presale, that gives you 120 sales. Other thing worth knowing, for anybody that’s not done this before, just wanna say out loud, you’re always gonna have drop-off, right? So you don’t have 100% of those people that sign up during your presale window are gonna go into memberships.

But you’re averaging four and a half outside the gate, okay? So [00:06:00] what the hell are you doing? Tell us more. Yeah. Y- the– I think the place to begin is when anyone asks, like, “Hey, what, what do you do for presale? What do you recommend?” The question that always gets asked about is the offer. And it seems to– And don’t get me wrong, the offer does matter.

It is important. Yep. And just so people know, we’re doing 20% off for life. And so that, that is our offer. But I think we’re missing… And this is what I saw from our– based on our previous pre-sales that were not so hot. Yeah, the offer matters, but there’s so much more that goes into an effective presale, and that’s, I believe, where– what’s really made the difference for us to have such a strong start out of the gates.

And for things, we’ve got appointments booked all day yesterday, today. That number’s only growing. It was not a two-week blast, and then there’s gonna be this drought. I believe this is something we can maintain within reason. But again, a lot of it just stems from all the things outside of the offer, and that’s where I feel like we’ve really stepped things up this time, and we’re now reaping the rewards.

Okay. So [00:07:00] yeah, so the offer– And this is interesting, too. I don’t– There’s obviously debate about this, but something I’ve been thinking about recently is, I don’t know, if everybody’s doing something, it stops being meaningful, and you can’t really compare the online space or the brick-and-mortar space to online space.

They’re just, the markets are so different. But this concept of the $100 million offer, of the offer being everything, I don’t know. Sometimes I just wonder if we’re, like, past peak offer. Just like we’re- Mm-hmm … like, it’s all gone to zero, any advantage you have there, because the offers have gotten so Looney Tunes.

A- and admittedly, I don’t know that maps fully to brick-and-mortar because, of course, you’re only competing to other people that are local competitors of that sort of solution in that market. So there’s a few different offers one could rock with. And I would note, interesting, 20% off for life. If Michael Keiller were here, he would be saying– We even know Michael Keiller is pretty adamant against n- no forever offers.

Our experience in the Ally system has been a lot of people are going to that in part because the thinking is, as long as your numbers work in the first place and you have adequate margin on that, you’re getting people in the door, you’re ideally locking in some rent stabilization, where people are a little bit more reticent to [00:08:00] lose this opportunity to get this meaty discount.

But again, if pricing is set properly, you’re s- the numbers will still work, just the people that come in later are gonna be even more profitable. So that’s the offer. But tell me more about, like, how are you, how are you selling to people? Like, how– what are your lead generation channels? Maybe we’ll start there.

Yeah. As far as lead generation channels, we are, we’re definitely using Meta. I think in this day and age- Yeah … Meta’s, whether it’s, the, the results may vary. Some markets- Yeah … tend to do better than others. But our Meta advertising, like it’s n- there’s nothing special there. There’s nothing like extremely unique- Mm-hmm

or like proprietary that we’re doing. Like we’re working with a, an agency, the same agency we’ve worked with in the past. Yeah. And, and again, the, we, we are using Meta ads though. We’re also using Google Ads as well. So those two kind of like just the standard digital marketing. Mm-hmm. And again, ne- I think it’s necessary.

I think it’s the right thing to do. But where I think we’re really differentiating ourselves is with the local, like business to business work and with referrals. [00:09:00] Yes. Yes. That, that’s where I think we’re really seeing a lot of traction. Give… That’s the, I think that’s the difference between two weeks in having 25 signups and having 45 signups.

That’s right. That’s right. And it’s something we know this from, a- again, from our experience with tons of like Business Unicorn gyms, but also in the Ally system. I think everybody intellectually knows that you need to do things besides not press Meta, and I still question how often people are actually doing it, and there’s all sorts of reasons for that.

I think the typical gym owner often is very time-strapped. I’ve obviously spent a lot of gas talking about the fact a lot of gym owners have a little bit of like social anxiety. It’s if you physically don’t like the inefficiency of having to go places to places, like that cannot be, that can be a barrier.

You also have to really train your team for a certain kind of like mindset. So let’s maybe dig into this a little bit. So again, the Meta ads are going. So talk to me about how you have approached your… Let’s maybe do business partnerships first, and then tell me about referrals after that. [00:10:00] Yeah, so with the business partnerships, this was something that we’ve dropped the ball every single time prior.

It’s just- And it kind of to your point, yeah, you need to do business to business. You need to do local marketing. Everyone knows that. Everyone says that, but then the actual execution is kind of where it seems to be a little more crickets at times. Right. And so our, to try to get around that, it’s like, man, what do we do?

And the, the idea was every time we’ve tried to get people to do more business outreach, it’s like, “But I’ve got these leads coming in from Meta. I’ve got…” There’s always- Mm … like a reason, and I think- Yeah … people also don’t generally like doing the business outreach, so- Yep, yep … there’s always a reason to not do it.

Yep. And so the solution to that was we actually hired people further in advance, and we trained them up, and we actually dedicated a full month, two days a week for a full month before our digital advertising started in order to just focus on the B2B locally. And the, the thought process was, listen, if someone’s going to [00:11:00] use Meta leads as an excuse to not do the local stuff- Yep

then let’s just not use our Meta leads and just don’t turn them on yet. Right. So we s- we then problem solved. Now you don’t have- Yes … to worry about Meta leads. And so we went into it with a full month of organic, so we did some events, but mostly just business to business outreach, and we did that for a full month before Meta ads, before anything else got turned on because it’s like I didn’t want there to be any excuse for it to not get done.

Okay. So let’s, uh, maybe let’s maybe orient ourselves in time here. So you said you’re 10 days into pre-sale. When are, when is your targeted hard opening date? We started, so we turned on our… We did organic marketing only for basically the end of April, early May. Right after Memorial Day, that’s when we turned on our digital w- ads.

And so we ran digital ads along with the business outreach. We turned on those digital ads May 26th. We did those for two [00:12:00] weeks. Then June 8th, I believe was the date, that’s when we started doing our starting point sessions or assessments. Mm-hmm. So we wanted, we, so when we started on June 8th our, our in-person assessments, we had two weeks of digital leads, plus six weeks, four weeks by itself, plus two more weeks of organic local marketing.

And so we had a decent lead pool driven mostly organically when we started doing our assessments on June 8th. Two weeks of that, and then this week we actually kicked off training sessions, and we did a kind of a soft launch. Okay. Okay. So two weeks of assessments just to get to know people, and then this week we started our, like, soft opening.

W- our, we’re gonna build up to about 55 sessions per week as far as that’s what we’re gonna offer. Yep. We opened with about 30. So around- Mm-hmm … 50% of our sessions is what we opened with. And then we actually [00:13:00] start billing July 6th. So that gives people two weeks, I believe, to come in, try it out, see what you think, and just kinda get people started.

But then, like I said, our billing date is scheduled for July 6th. July 6th. Okay. So moving pretty quick here. Mm-hmm. So if I’m understand the math here- Really we’re gonna call this like a two and a half month window. Is that right? From the beginning. But, but it- ’cause this is interesting ’cause you’re really only doing…

My gosh, it looks like you’re only doing f- like basically four weeks of the SPSs. You have month one is only organic. Month one is only organic. Mm-hmm. The first… A- and keep in mind for people listening, I know it’s hard to do this if, if I, I wish I could write it on paper. So it’s 75 days, let’s call it. The first 30 days is just organic.

Two days a week we’re just hitting business partnerships. Mm-hmm. Then day 30 to day 60, we’re now into the second month, but the first, day 30, day 45, you’re now layering in Meta ads. You’re getting them in [00:14:00] addition to business partnerships. So weeks, let’s call it five and six, now you have Meta ads and you have business partnerships, okay?

Yes. Then weeks seven to eight, now we’re starting the SPSs. We’re just doing SPSs. Right. We’re still doing Meta. I presume we’re still trying to do some organic partnership. Yeah. I assume we’re doing less of that just because now we’re in there- Mm-hmm … doing the actual sales conversations. And then you have the last two weeks, you have, let’s call it weeks seven or, yeah, weeks nine and 10?

Yeah, weeks nine and 10. Yes. Now you’re doing the soft launch. You’re doing sessions in there. You’re starting with 30. You’re gonna slowly ramp that up. So you have two more weeks while you’re doing sessions, you’re still doing SPSs, you still got the Meta ads going. And then you’re gonna, at the end of that two and a half months, however we wanna talk about it, 10 weeks let’s say, now you’re charging cards, we’re open, right?

We are charging cards, we’re open. However, we are still marketing ag- Mm-hmm. We will market aggressively until the end of August. So if you wanna factor in the business [00:15:00] outreach, the local marketing, when does our founding member offer end? You’re talking four months in total. Okay. We’ll s- even though we’re billing people, we are still marketing aggressively.

Our ad spend is still extremely high. Yeah. And we’re still really focused on growing the business. So in, depending on how you wanna look at it, you could make an argument, like our total pre-sale is almost 16 weeks. Uh- That’s right. That’s right … again, you could look at it that way. Even though, you know- Yeah

we’re the last eight weeks or so, you would– it would feel like business as usual. Yep. We’re just marketing a little more aggressively than what we will- Yep … moving forward. That makes sense. That makes sense. And then I guess out of curiosity, how are you messaging that? How are you talking about that? Are you, are you still saying it’s a founder’s rate even after you’re running cards on July 6th- Mm-hmm

and just having- Yes … the soft launch? When are you done for the founder’s rate window? Is it that full four months into the end of August? Correct. Yes. Got it. Yep. And this is, I think- Un- un- unless, of course, the gym– unless we get to capacity sooner- Unless you’re sold out … and then- Then you’re just sold out.

Yes. Yep. Yeah. So I think, again, for everyone [00:16:00] listening here, the thing to understand that is really worth appreciating here is there does seem to be something unique. You get this one-time pop of the founder’s window. So to some extent, I see this a little bit as having the cake and eat it too, right?

Because the hard part we’ve seen historically, and some of our brethren, potentially even you, we’ve taken some arrows in the throat as collectively we’ve tried to do this, where you think, “Oh, I want the pre-sale to be s- as long as it possibly can to get as many people in there.” But if you do the pre-sale too long and people aren’t in the space working out, yeah, you should text them.

Yeah, you should send them an email about the spaces coming together. Yeah, you should try to do a bake-off or whatever. But your drop-off is gonna be a lot bigger ’cause people aren’t in there, and also you’re not collecting any money. This is g- having your cake and eat it too because you’re getting the benefit of this extended, longer founda- founder sale window where you feel like you’re revving up and there’s excitement in the space and you don’t necessarily need a full schedule, but you’re able to charge the cards.

And then as soon as people are buying, they’re able to come in, start having sessions instead of the old school where you would do sometimes two months before you could even get in the [00:17:00] space, two and a half months. They’re signing up for a thing, but then two and a half months later, they’ve forgotten who you even are by that point, particularly if you did a bad job of following up, which is a, a whole separate issue.

So okay, so that gives us, I think, a good shape of how this is all coming together. We talked a little bit of the business partnership piece. I- if I, if you wouldn’t mind maybe drilling a little bit more about how you’re, like approaching that. So I think most people listening, of course, the, the first thing anyone is, “I can’t do that.”

We understand you probably don’t have people to do two full-time days this far out before you open. We totally get that. We know that’s a luxury here. But even let’s just understand the strategy, ’cause I bet there’s pieces of it they could do, and it might be unfortunately you as the owner just really grinding.

Maybe you can get somebody working with you part-time earlier than you otherwise might have to help support these business partnership outreach. Talk to me through, is there like a creation of a list of some kind, and then some sort of system of like how many outbounds they’re doing in a given week?

Tell us more about how that strategy’s working. Yeah. As far as the system goes, we did, so we did hire sooner. Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] And that to me- Mm-hmm … that to me was extremely important. For if someone’s going to open their first gym, there’s a lot of other- Yeah … issues that you’ve gotta get around. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas we could train our staff in the existing studios.

Like that def- Yep. Yep … that, that absolutely gives us an advantage. And so we hired sooner. We did a ton of role playing. And one of the things that we didn’t have two years ago that we do have now, and this is something just might be easy to overlook for those established gym owners. I know when I started with Alloy, my other gym, Blue Ocean Fitness, has been around for 15 years.

We didn’t do a pre-sale back then. So pre-sales are like relatively new to me. And- Yes … one of the things that I did this time around, and it just, I would say for owners that are looking to add in that second location, something to not sleep on, is make sure your SOPs and scripts are … Like, you have SOPs and pre-sale scripts.

Yes. Again, I didn’t because I’d never… I had all these systems in place- Yep … but not for pre-sale- [00:19:00] Yep. Yep … because I had never done it. And so if you’re like, “Yeah, my systems are all dialed in and everything,” I would just like as a word of caution, just remind people like, “Hey, make sure you’ve got all your systems and SOPs for pre-sale.”

Yes. Yes. Because it is, it’s a completely different business. It’s completely… The, the systems, the execution. Yep. Yep. It just, it’s totally different. So- That’s right … make sure you’ve got your people trained up, role playing, systems in place- Yep … for the skills that they need in order to succeed with pre-sale because it is so different.

That’s right. That’s right. And as far as business partnerships go, just one thing for everybody listening, particularly even if you’re like a, and especially maybe if you’re an active gym owner, if you just have a single location. It’s interesting, we did this recently at my gym in New Jersey, where as of the time of this recording, for whatever reason, the market has been just super headwinds with meta ads.

Just really have not been able to find the right formula. However, for some reason, weirdly, business partnerships have continued to slam for us. I can’t guarantee this is gonna happen, but we’re, we’re consistently getting people win the free month offer, ’cause that’s kinda the offer I always do. It’s enter to win a free month.[00:20:00]

And then sign up for a membership. It’s very cool and very strange, and I don’t wanna guarantee it’s gonna happen. But one way I did it, ’cause I’m very lazy, is so as part of Business Free Unicorns, we have playbooks for this, like to your point, like that’s another thing that if you want somebody to do it that’s not you, or even if you wanna do it, gosh, it’s like hard if you don’t know what to say.

Like a lot of things, like I just don’t know what to say. So I have like templates. I literally just took the Unicorn Society ones. I was like, all right, I’m gonna copy-paste this. We had already had a list, like a spreadsheet made up of like maybe 30 businesses. Just gave them my executive assistant. I had her log into my email.

I had her copy-paste and send off like 30 of these like emails. And then we’ve had six or seven of those people respond, and then I would CC them with my fitness director to have her get on the call, right? So obviously, there’s more to be done there that I’m lucky because I have a fitness director I can just kinda hand the ball to, and I know she’ll figure it out.

The offer that we tend to use with our business partnerships to make it easy is always some version of, can I make an enter to win a free month offer? And of course, ideally, I’m looking for a physical plastic lead box [00:21:00] and/or one to, if I can, two or three email blasts to every email they have. And then of course, we’ll always give one winner per business, and then everybody else gets the second place offer, which is some time-sensitive valuable thing to have them come in and try out our services.

I know we said that offers were not the most important thing. Certainly you have a 20% forever offer, which has a little bit of time bound ’cause it’s gonna go away once you’re either full or through pre-sale. Can you tell us a little bit more about when you go into these businesses, are you just promoting the 20% offer, or is there anything you’re doing to try to get them to get the word out and drive you leads?

Yeah. So what we do is we started by, we went to the Chamber of Commerce website and then honestly just Google and every stretching business in- Yep, yep … in the area. Yep. And we just, we made a spreadsheet of probably 80 businesses in all the- Yep … neighboring communities or anything that made sense. Yep. So we start with our spreadsheet that we’ve got all these businesses, and then what we would do is step one, whi- what seemed to work better, and we’ve tried it both ways, is we will email first.

Yes, yes. We almost never get a [00:22:00] reply, but so we almost never get a reply, but we email first and then we visit in person second. Mm-hmm. Whatever reason, that’s been better than… And it’s, uh, maybe it’s just as simple as we walk in and it’s, “Hey, I sent you an email last week.” Yeah, some sense we were, yeah. And- Yep

and they’re like, “Oh yes, I…” When it’s you- Yes. Oh, yes, I didn’t respond … it’s like, “Oh, I’ve been…” And a lot of times it’s like, “Oh yeah, that seemed interesting. Tell me…” It’s, you’re a business owner- Yeah, you’re softening the ground … you just, you just forget. You’re busy, you know, you’re busy. Yep, yep. You forget.

And so- Yep … it hasn’t been awkward at all, but we’ll g- we’ll, so we’ll email first. Then we tend to go in three to seven days later, visit in person. Mm-hmm. And it’s very, it’s very relationship focused. We’re not- Yep. Yep … truthfully, we’re not talking about the 20% off. We’re just like, “Tell me about your business.

What do you do here?” Yep. “What do you…” Yep. We just, we wanna get to know the business just like you would a potential client. I wanna know the business. I wanna know what are their struggles, what are their pain points? Yep, yep. Like do they have any problems we can solve? Mm-hmm. And so step one is really just about building that relationship and, and [00:23:00] really, and not trying to further, not making an ask until there’s some trust built.

Yep. Once, once we have that, there’s really two different routes that we’ve went that, that we’ve had success with. One would be like some sort of a, a raffle giveaway. And so our, we, for instance, our most successful thing that we did was we got 10 local businesses in the area, and we did a small business giveaway.

We created- Yeah, I love this one … we created the landing pages for- Yep … all 10 businesses. We created the email copy, social media copy. We did- Yep … literally everything, individual links, flyers for every single business. We took them to the… And the, the agreement was we’re gonna find, we had 10 businesses, and on set dates they are to email out the offer, which is basically enter to win $1,000- Mm-hmm

in gift cards. Yep. We bought the gift cards. So we bought $100 gift card to 10 different businesses. So we’re buying [00:24:00] the gift cards for all- Yep … of the businesses. They email out, “Enter to win this raffle.” All the leads come into our CRM. We get all that, and then at the end we share the list with everyone.

And so- Got it, got it, got it … as a business, Massage Envy was one of our partners. We’re buying a $100 gift card from you, and you’re gonna get a lead list of- Yep … some are your customers, but then- Yep … nine other businesses as well. Yep. Yep. And but we really… What I found was that small businesses and marketing, it, it’s, it’s not always great.

No. Yeah. And so we wanted to… And people are just so busy now. Yeah. Small businesses, they’re dealing with 500 priorities. Yep. And so we just, we wanted to make it just copy and paste. Yep. You don’t have to do anything. Yep. Yep. And, and it, and that was, that generated, I believe it was, like, 250 leads. Okay.

Great. And so one winner gets the free $1,000 in gift cards. Yep. Everyone else, we offered 14 days free too. Great. And so it was like- Great, great, great … “Hey, you didn’t win, but we got a new [00:25:00] gym in town. We’d love for you to- Yep … try it out 14- Yep … days.” When they come in for a starting point session, when at the end of the starting point session, we’re gonna then offer, “Hey, you’ve got 14 days free.

Like- Yep … that’s all, that’s yours.” Yep. “However, Mark, after our conversation, we know it’s gonna take more than 14 days for you to reach your goals. So if you know this is a good fit for you- Mm-hmm … if you wanna commit now, we’ll actually double the discount, and instead of 14 days free, we’ll give you half off your first two months.”

Mm-hmm. So we’re getting a little less money up front- Yep … but the conversion rate’s been much high, but we’re still getting money up front and the- Right … conversion rate’s higher. They’re already… We don’t ha- we only have to sell them once, and so far, the, uh, over 50% have taken us up on that. I, I- Hmm

believe last I checked, 11 people took us up on the offer, and 5 opted to just do the free 14 days. So we’re at- Okay … like I said, it’s two out of every three are actually signing up on a 14- Okay … day free [00:26:00] offer. So- That’s right, and it sounds like the- Really pleased … and that was out of the 250 people, so out of your 250- Mm-hmm

people, you had 16 took advantage- Correct … of the two free weeks, and of them, 11 of the 16 you said did the, signed up for a membership. So far, and we’re still following up. We’re still- Yeah, I mean, n- This is brand new, so- Yeah, and listen, these are, you know- We’re still working it … hot outside the gate. I think obviously the thing will be fun to see.

It… We should actually, we should do another podcast after this one goes live, like a week later and be like, “Here’s what actually happened. Here’s what we thought was gonna happen.” So yeah. What about everything? Yeah. The thing to know, though, I think I can hear some of you screaming about, you might be right about is, “Oh, they’re gonna be tire kickers, and they’re…”

I don’t know. I think you and I have probably been in the game long enough. My- I’m just such a volume guy at this point. I’m like- Mm-hmm … listen, I’d just rather have people in there. I’d rather make a little less money up front. Yeah. I… Maybe contrary slightly to what we said before, the offer doesn’t matter as much.

We still wanna make it easy for people to try the thing. We wanna make it easy to try the thing. Listen, the challenge, particularly with SGPT, as soon as you’re north of s- north of 350, certainly north of 4 or 450 in, in, in any given market- [00:27:00] It has to become a volume game because there’s going to be a very r- relatively smaller number of people in any given market that wanna spend six grand per year on discretionary income for the two to three years to make them an optimal client for you.

So yes, I do think you’re gonna be having people come through, but that’s fine. They might refer other people. They’ll say good things. They’ll leave a Google review. Maybe they’ll come in on and off, ’cause of course, as students of this podcast, you’re gonna constantly be making offers forever, including your former clients.

Awesome. So lots of good stuff there, too. I know we don’t have a ton of time left. Do you wanna maybe just give us some rapid fire thoughts? You also said you were leveraging referrals. Tell us a little bit more about how that’s been working for you. Refer- it’s really just something that we’ve… And this is as a in response to poor meta, you know- Yes

sales over the last year. Yes. Yes. We’ve just really went all in on referrals. Yep. I believe, for this quarter as, as we’re recording it, we’ve got 45 referral- 40 to 45 referrals within the four gyms this quarter, which is more than, I think, 50% of our new clients. Yeah. And so [00:28:00] we’re- Yep … really focused on referrals.

The, the key here that we didn’t have prior was a referral system, and so we are on the phone with the lead, booking the SPS. We’re like, “Hey, just so you know, if you’d like to bring anyone with you to your starting point session, you’re more than welcome to do so.” Mm-hmm. It’s not a hard sell. Yep. Yep. And then during the SPS when they sign up, “Hey, just so you know, we’ve-” Yep.

There’s a- Yeah … there’s just cons- it goes back to Danny Meyer setting the table, constant gentle pressure. Yep, yep, yep. Just constantly we have, we have a, as you walk in the gym, there’s a giant three foot by four foot poster or A-frame outside, and on it, it says something to the extent of, “Friends don’t let friends stay weak.

Refer your-” Right, right. It’s something like that. Yeah. It’s fun. Yep. Fun and playful. Yep. We’ve got- Yep … on our TV we’ve got the referral offer. Yep. We have f- I use pictures of my dog in the bathroom- Oh … as like a fun and playful- … just like to attention getter that- Yeah … is a referral reminder. Yeah. And so we’re trying to follow up a minimum of three times within the first 30 [00:29:00] days asking for a referral.

So the– with referrals, I would say the biggest mistake I see gym owners make is just not enough volume. They’re just- Yeah, yeah … not asking enough. Yep, yep. You know, it’s… And that, that was a light bulb for me a few years ago when I asked one of my team members, I was like, “Hey, are we asking for referrals?”

And they of course said yes. And I’m like, “Who are you asking?” And it’s like, “I asked Sally three weeks ago.” And I’m like, “So you– Okay, so you’ve asked one person.” Yeah. And it, and that’s when it clicked. I was like, oh man, we just don’t have good expectations- Yeah … around what- Yep … what… And couple quick nuggets to wrap this up.

I would say expectations are so important. I tell our team, a- and they just don’t understand the volume required often. So with our phone call expectations, I can tell you that every 100 phone calls you make, 11 people are going to pick up the phone and actually speak to you. Of those 11, four of them will book a starting point session.

So if I sa- if we said as a team, “Hey, we wanna book 12 starting point sessions this week,” okay, cool, then we need to make 300 phone calls. It’s just, it’s math. [00:30:00] The lead to client, we have expectations there. We know that 25% of leads are gonna book an appointment, 80% are gonna show, 80% are gonna sign. So again, we can work backwards being like, “Well, what’s our target?”

If we want 10 clients per week, we need to book 16 starting point sessions per week, and that means we need 64 leads per week at a 25%. Yeah. So the expectations have been super helpful because of our new team members, they simply just didn’t understand. They’ve never done this before, so how would they know?

Of course. So a lot of it’s just really setting expectations on the output required in order to get the results you want. Yep. And then I think the other kind of missing piece that I definitely dropped the ball on previously was time management. And- Mm … when you’re a trainer, it’s so easy. You just show up for your session You don’t have to decide what, you don’t have to decide what to do ’cause you have clients awkwardly- Yes

staring at you right in front of you. Yes. You know what to do. You don’t forget. I did hear- Take care of the c- … not get around your session, yeah … it just magically [00:31:00] happens. And so that was a huge, that’s been a transition for me as a leader over the last couple years, was that we didn’t used to have to talk about time management- Right

’cause we only had coaches. And so- Right … as a coach, you coach. Like- Yep … that’s really simple. Yep. When you’re not coaching, especially during a pre-sale, how do you juggle your phone calls, your starting point sessions, your business outreach, nurturing your existing clients, onboarding your existing clients?

There’s a lot of things that are easy to do, but also easy not to do. Easy not to do, yep. And that’s where a, having a schedule, dedicated time for the different activities, the figuring out what is each team member’s three daily priorities. Yeah. That, to me, is probably the s- the expectations and time management are probably the two single biggest things that I think a lot of gym owners overlook when they’re trying to do this.

Yeah. There’s, again, I understand you’re used to working with trainers, and so you don’t… T- again, time management’s not a, not [00:32:00] an issue. Yep. So it just- Yeah … it’s a completely different skill set, completely different animal, and that’s where, like I said, I think the expectations, the time management, and then the making sure you have SOPs for a pre-sale.

Mm-hmm. For those existing gym owners, I would say those are the three things that you don’t wanna sleep on. Uh- Yeah … the offer matters, but to your comments earlier, I’m, I’m with you. I don’t think the offer matters as much as Alex Hormozi has led us all to believe at this stage in the game. Yeah. No, no shade on him.

Yeah. Smart, smarter man than I am, but- Smart dude, for sure … I think, again, I think we probably emphasize the offer too much, and these other things we’re under-indexing for, and we should put- Yeah … a little more focus on them. Yeah. It’s, it’s just a lot of blocking and tackling. All right, friends. Thank you all so much.

So we wanna bring this to a close here, but yeah, in, in all seriousness, it actually would be fun doing an update of this. I also think we have an entire podcast that we’ve hinted at the end there, which you and I have also talked before, of particularly helping Your team, and this, I think w- I actually did one recently with Keith about this for you as the gym owner, but [00:33:00] taking this idea of time blocking and real rigor with how we’re spending our time, and making sure your team understands that, ’cause yeah, it can’t be emphasized enough.

It’s a source of frustration for a lot of gym owners. You– And often because you have people in split positions, like you rarely have a full-time salaried biz team person that’s not on the floor at all, although some of you might. More typically, you have the persons doing some training, 5, 10, maybe 15 hours, and then that’s already taking away some extra bit of energy, and then, yeah, people will, yeah, they’ll really find a lot of things to do besides the unsavory things that are gonna move the business forward.

So making that- Absolutely … into a schedule too, just like you do with training, can help. More podcasts to come in the future. As always, thank you so much for listening. I would just say briefly, if you’ve never given us a review or just clicked that, the five-star button in whatever platform you listen to, this is, helps more gym owners find the “Biz of Unicorns” podcast.

We appreciate you much. We’ll see you next time. Thanks, John. Thanks, [00:34:00] Mark.