BFU’s Leads Engine

[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.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry

Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m here with the one and only Mr. Mark Fisher today. How are you, sir? I am doing pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. Enjoying life in my office. Yeah. You moved recently, and the office is looking great.

Congratulations. That’s amazing. Thank you. Um- I made a… Yesterday I ordered a very off-putting large photo print of Salvador Dali looking [00:01:00] crazy- Love it … that will go in the bathroom. And it’s the kinda thing where I was like, “Oh, my wife would never allow me to have this anywhere in the house.” But now that man cave, I have the cr- like the classic crazy Salvador Dali crazy bug eye that’s- With the mustache and the- That’s perfect- Yeah

to go in the bathroom down here. Fantastic. Everyone needs- Yeah … that in their office bathroom. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Some inspiration. Today, we’re actually making a pretty huge announcement of something new that Business Unicorns is launching. And so maybe before we get into that, let’s just talk a little bit about the why, about why this is coming and why we’re gonna be so excited about this announcement.

And let’s start with the, with a real pain point that we felt as gym owners, that you still feel as a gym owner- Mm-hmm … that our Unicorn Society members feel every day, which is the problem with leads, the problem of people- Yep … just needing lots of leads as a gym and really struggling to find consistent, reliable ways that fit into their busy days, that allow them to really build that machine.

So maybe let’s just start there and say a little about your experience with that, Fisher. Yeah. I think, yeah, not a secret. You [00:02:00] need leads, and a lot of my life these days is thinking about, talking about, working on leads. And There’s two different, I think, halves of the equation here, and this new service we’re launching is gonna cover both of them.

But you have these higher volume paid ads, which are a great way to get volume, but often require a lot of work and a lot of effort. It can be very expensive, and the quality of those leads can be suspect, and sometimes it’s very tedious to follow up with them, and it feels disappointing. And then often it’s very expensive, ’cause either you have to spend a lot of money on an ad agency if they know what they’re doing.

Usually they’re not gonna be cheap, understandably. Or you’re doing it yourself, which can work, but also very time intensive, and you still have to spend money on the budget, and now you’re competing against people who do this all day long every day. So that’s one half. And then of course, the other half, because we can’t rely on meta ads, something that I feel stronger and stronger about, that I’ve been talking about for, probably for six months at this point, is those same meta ads, although they generally need to be in the mix [00:03:00] and generally the numbers will work, the numbers will not work amazingly well the way they did several years ago.

And not only that, but for you to optimize for growth, depending on the volume you want or how ambitious you are with your business, you can’t just sit back. The meta ads, the throughput is not gonna be what it was. The cost per lead is gonna start spiking. The cost per acquisition is gonna start spiking before many of you hit the ceiling of which you’re satisfied with the number of new members.

So you also have to be good at this organic lead game, and that’s challenging for a number of reasons. First of all, you need time to do it, but also you have to be good at those actual strategies, right? And most gym owners understand in theory, as a, our, a, a soon to be announced BeFree friend often is fond of saying, my friend J.C.

Vakasin, that you can’t just know the map, you need to know the terrain. Mm-hmm. Right? So the issue there quite often that we saw is, okay, somebody knows they need to do business partnerships, but like it’s a little more complicated. You can say, “Go do business partnerships,” but it’s [00:04:00] okay, how do you do it?

How often do you reach out? How many do you reach out? Is it you? Is it your team? What do you say? What are you asking for them? What are you gonna give to them? What does the email look like? What– And those are all things that we have built obviously into the Unicorn Society. But until now, begin to tease what we’re gonna offer, that wasn’t really available outside of that.

Now, we did have for a long time a course called Gym Growth Blast Off, which we love and we thought was very effective for a lot of people. But the challenge for that was really only looking at the organic lead side of the equation, right? So the third and final problem that BeFree Leads Engine is trying to solve is even with the best playbooks and even with the best source of paid leads, the reality is usually you’re not gonna be able to figure this out all by yourself in a vacuum just by– Even if you read the best playbook, you need usually some help from a human to understand how we plug in for you, right?

Even if you have a lot of leads coming in, if you don’t have somebody to help you figure out how you need to titrate your follow process, how you need to maybe tweak your [00:05:00] offer if your offer is not getting the results that you want. So We have put together a program we think is going to be the solution for people that want to get paid ads, they want to have a better resource for the best possible both approaches and then ultimate outcomes for organic lead generation, and they wanna do it with the support of a coach so they’re not trying to figure it all out by themself Yeah.

I think really well said, my friend. I think, let me just repeat what I heard and then maybe add just one piece I think is worth saying, which is clearly leads are the challenge. Mo- all gyms need lots of leads, and some people have messed around with meta ads with some success, but it’s complicated. People also know they need other forms of generating leads, more organic forms like business partnerships, being three-mile famous in your community, referrals, all those things.

And figuring out both sides of the, of those strategies is tough to do on your own. Mm-hmm. It’s sometimes impossible for gym owners. So having a coach to help you build those systems, maintain those systems, improve those systems is critical, and that’s at the heart of this product we’re launching called [00:06:00] BFU Leads Engine.

Also wanted to say, for all our listeners out there for whom have never run meta ads, because everything we just said is just so damn daunting, right? I just wanna make space for all of you listening who are like, “I don’t even know how complicated it is ’cause I refuse- Mm-hmm … to touch it.” And I’ve heard lots of reasons for that.

Just one is, like, they just don’t wanna give Mark Zuckerberg any money, which is a legitimate- Sure … legitimate stance. Defensible. Yeah. Or I’ve tried it on my own and it was too complicated, or I paid an agency and it didn’t, it didn’t work for me or et cetera, et cetera. And so for those of you who have just never gotten any traction with it, I wanna make sure that you’re heard in this, and this product c- is also for you.

And for those of you who have run and had some success, this product’s also gonna be for you because it’s gonna be cheaper. That’s right. Yeah, so- That’s it … maybe let’s just get into– we, we– That’s the pain point that this thing solves. Mm-hmm. Maybe talk a little bit about how we come to building this in the first place, ’cause we have a, a new marketing guy at Business of Unicorns who really has been key to helping us make- Mm-hmm

this thing come alive, and is a real partner in this. So- [00:07:00] Yep … maybe talk about that story, that part of the story. Yeah. So not a secret. Part of how we’re able to offer this is essentially we are leveraging a tech software platform, I’ll just say in brief, allows you to automate the process of building, running, and optimizing your meta ads without you having to even log into Meta Ads Manager or know anything, right?

So again, this is not an agency, right? And we’ll talk about this in a moment, because agencies sometimes have some things that you might want to do the much heavier investment to get access to. But this essentially was if you just gave yourself a magic wand, just a couple buttons, you could do it yourself and run your own ads.

That’s what this is, right? So we are light- white labeling a software platform that was developed by a gentleman named Brandon that I met several months ago. He was a introduction made by one of our first Mark Fisher Fitness team members, Katie Kaufman. And I was going to the Health and Fitness Association show where I was speaking.

Hadn’t been in the show before, and it’s an interesting event for those not familiar. It’s like the bigger world of, like, fitness, like much bigger brands intends to be in our corner of group strength training. [00:08:00] And Katie was like, “All right. You have to meet this guy. He has this, like, platform,” yada, yada, yada.

And I went to this meeting under duress because I have done a lot of these meetings over the years, and I’ve heard a lot of things and seen a lot of promises. And, to make a long story short, I go meet Brandon in the middle of the day- We’re– we get our lunch, he pulls out his laptop, and he shows me a demo for this software, and my eyes just about fell out of my head.

Worth disclosing, I believe so much in this platform, I’m now officially involved as a founding advisor. They have come on board obviously as a Biz Futurist partner, and he works at Biz Futurist. Of course, we brought him on to work with us and help with our own paid ad and marketing strategy. So fair to say, we really believe in this human and we believe in this platform and what he’s created because it’s just the solution that everybody has been aching for, right?

Because when you’re able to bring down the price point substantially, the thing to appreciate is if you have, let’s say, 50 leads in a month, it’s not just the cost per lead. You have to amortize the full price of [00:09:00] whatever your vendor spend is. So if you’re spending, let’s say, $2,000 a month, just to keep math simple, if you get 50 leads, sure, maybe the cost per lead is $40 from Meta, but now the cost per lead is another $40 for the vendor, right?

And to be very clear, listen, there is a time and place where the agency’s the better decision. Some of them provide a lot of other resources like CRMs and websites, and if you’re doing an adequate number of volume, that probably will start to come out in the wash because, of course, if you’re getting 200 leads at the same ad spend, now it’s $10 per lead that you’re adding on top of the CPL.

But if you don’t need that kind of volume, that can be a little bit hard to stomach that big of an investment, and it’s not that it’s wrong, it just might not be the right fit for what you need. So at any rate, this platform, without going into great detail because there’ll be a demo somewhere around here I’m sure you can click on and go look at all the things, essentially it just analyzes the internet, analyzes your brand, and does a pretty remarkable first stab at not [00:10:00] only understanding your brand, your avatar, your offer, your voice, your style, your images, but importantly, it analyzes the competitors in your local geographic market that have a similar modality by analyzing their meta ads and keeping that in context when it’s proposing various messaging and marketing angles to put forth to differentiate your business from the other ads that anybody in your market is seeing Yeah.

I think that’s a great overview, Fisher, and I think it’s important for us to stress that for those of you who work with an agency and love it and are bigger or more complex, and there are certain bells and whistles you get from working at an, that agency, that might be– that might make sense for you, right?

100%. You might wanna stick that out. For those of you who haven’t really gotten the value you want from an agency or have never run Meta ads at all because of the complexity of it, and/or you just know you need more leads and you wanna try some new shit- Yeah … this is gonna be a place where you can do all of that at once.

And, and the platform that’s gonna run these ads for you, like Mark said, you have to have no experience to [00:11:00] do it. You, like Mark said, you don’t even, you don’t even need to log into your Meta Ads- Yep … Manager at all. The app does all that for you, and over time, suggests improvements to your ads, and you just click a button- Mm

yes or no to approve it, right? Which is just exactly the magic wand that we’ve all been wanting- Yep … for years to make running these ads easier. Let me just add, there’s also other stuff that we’re bringing to this. So you get that platform that’s running ads for you, but you also– and you get onboarded into that app.

You also get onboarded by a Business of Unicorns coach. So we’re gonna have a coach- Mm … dedicated to the BFU Leads Engine program. As a BFU Leads Engine member, you’re gonna have a coach who’s gonna onboard you and make sure that you’re making the most of the platform, who’s gonna make sure you have a plan for the other side of the coin, all of the non-Meta ads steps.

So great lead- Yep … follow-up system, great referral system- Mm-hmm … great three-mile famous system. And then they’re gonna– you’re gonna have access to their office hours, so you can go in and talk to them on a regular basis. You’re gonna have access to some of the tools that we’ve mentioned already on this call, like our Gym Growth Blast-Off course.[00:12:00]

You’re gonna have access to all those kinds of tools that we’ve been building for years at Business of Unicorns that are specific to you generating leads, nurturing those leads, converting those leads, and making it a system that you can replicate over time. And so this is really, we’re thinking as a, really a holistic approach to you getting leads with the support you need that’s gonna make it easy.

Make it easy. Yeah. And still work, right? Still work, but we’re taking the guesswork out of it by telling you exactly what you need to do and giving the tools to give you– that you can do both. You can get the, the- Yeah … the volume of Meta ad leads that you need, and you can also do the on-the-ground dirty work of- That’s right

building reputation in your community. Yeah. Yep. And then, of course, you’re also getting support on the actual… ‘Cause p- as part of the playbooks of Gym Growth Blast-Off and the support here is also what to do once you get those leads too, right? Yes. ‘Cause you can get leads, but really we want members, right?

Mm-hmm. The reality is, listen, let’s temper some expectations Meta still is rough in a lot of markets. This isn’t- Yep … a panacea. It’s not gonna change your life overnight, and if you wanna succeed, you’re [00:13:00] gonna have to do, you have to be good at follow-up, you’re gonna have to do a lot of follow-up, you’re gonna have to be adept at making offers.

You’re gonna need to make sure your pricing strategy makes sense in the first place. You wanna make sure that we have some ability to understand how to move someone through the process of first raising their hands into the full membership, because that’s how you both can really help the person and also what the business requires for the business to grow and to thrive.

There’s a lot of pieces here, but we wanna be clear, like in a lot of markets, and it’s all the… I think part of the reason my claim for why this is so valuable is in a lot of markets it’s still gonna be tough out there, right? We don’t wanna promise- Yeah … that like suddenly these meta ads are gonna be much easier.

We’re just saying that when you’re able to offer this price point and include this other support It all gets a lot easier, right? Yeah. Yeah, you have access to a tool that a lot of the big players have been using for a while, that many of you just haven’t had access to because of price or because of complexity.

And now the price comes down, and the complexity is wiped away for the large part, and now you have access to this tool that levels the playing field for a lot of you, which I think is just [00:14:00] exactly what we hope technology does. I think so. Yeah, I think so. And I think there’s two other use cases that I think are particularly interesting, is if you are relatively earlier stage and- Mm-hmm

you don’t need 100 leads per week, you can’t– or per month, rather, you can’t handle that kind of lead flow, then as I mentioned, it gets harder to amortize an ad, a marketing agency’s full price load over all of that. This makes it a little bit more conceivable to just run some organic stuff and just get a trickle, but a decent number of paid leads coming in to help support the adequate volume.

Related, on the other end of the rainbow, it doesn’t happen as often, but let’s say you’re a mature gym, you haven’t done much in the way of ads. You don’t need to do a lot of ads, but you just, again, you wanna get a little bit more in the way of lead flow going. This, again, makes this a little bit more reasonable because the out-of-pocket cost, which I guess we should talk about here in a moment- Yeah

is just gonna be much lower than otherwise you’d be spending. And then that’s to say nothing of all the other bells and whistles you’re getting in regards to the organic lead gen training, the s- follow-up and [00:15:00] sales training, and the office hours and support from a coach. Yeah. Do you wanna get into next steps?

Like Mark said, clearly there’s gonna be a link to a demo- Yep … and to take action around this video. Yep. We just wanna kind of talk through what that cost is and what- Yeah, for sure … their first few steps are going to be. Yep. So the cost, very simple. You’re getting all of this for $99 a week. It’s canceled any time.

It’s just like Netflix and Amazon. There’s not, there’s no, there’s no exit interviews. If you’re done, you just click the button and then you’re done if you don’t like it. You’re done. So you risk absolutely nothing. And for the first 10 gym owners that sign up, and this is going live on Monday, July 20th, the first 10 gym owners that sign up will also get an entire month for free.

So we invite you, come in, kick the tires. As we mentioned, the first thing that happens after you sign up, you’ll do your white glove onboarding with Polaris. So they’ll hook it up into whatever your existing CRM is, right? So that’s the other thing, too. You don’t need to get new software. You don’t need to migrate.

Whatever you’re using, Polaris will work with it. So in this white glove call, they’ll both hook up your meta ads account and hook it up to whatever your CRM is. And then [00:16:00] if they, usually after you launch, it’s pretty common within a few hours you’re starting to get some paid ads come in. And of course, then you have the Business for Unicorns onboarding, which is different, right?

The Polaris onboarding is really about getting that software up and running and plugging in all the technical pieces. The Business for Unicorns onboarding is to really make sure holistically when you’re thinking about how you’re approaching marketing sales, we’re assessing what you need to focus on, right?

So that we’re doing things in the right order, ’cause of course we only have so many hours in the day, and we need to make sure we’re using our time well. Full month there, uh, if you do the math of the monthly rate, it’s gonna be like a little over 400 bucks per month. It’s not a lot of clients you need to get on top of your current active member for the typical small group strength training gym or even large group class-based strength model.

Yeah. You really have nothing to lose, but I would note it’s really the first 10 people are gonna get the full month free. So- Yeah … I would, I would move quick if that sounds of interest. 100%. And y’all don’t have to remember any of that. All you do is go click the link around here, take action. Yep. You’ll be prompted to join the Polaris kind [00:17:00] of white glove onboarding, where they hook everything up and maybe even get your first campaign launched.

And then on that call, they’re gonna book your call with us and your BFU- Hmm … so that we can onboard you. And really, the BFU coach is there to make sure that you’re gonna make the most of all those ads coming through from Meta, and that you have some other poles in the water for- That’s right … for getting ads- That’s right

getting leads in other ways. ‘Cause this is something we see all the time, that we experience and we see with Unicorn Society members all the time, is that if you’re used to only having warm leads, if you’re used to only growing- Yeah … by word of mouth and by referrals, which happens in the first few years- Mm-hmm

and now all the, and you have a system that’s set up for those kind of leads, and now you’re gonna be getting very cold leads through Meta ads- That’s right … strangers who’ve never heard of you- That’s right … except for one ad they clicked on, and maybe don’t even remember when they clicked it, right?

That’s a very different kind of sales conversation and lead follow-up process. That’s also what your BFU Leads Engine coach is gonna be here for, is to make sure that you’re adapting your sales conversations, your lead follow-up systems, your automations [00:18:00] to suit this new kind of funnel that you’re building.

And so we know that doing that on your own can be daunting, so we’re gonna just hold your hand every step of the way- Mm-hmm … make sure that you’re building the right system to get the kind of leads you’re gonna be getting now that you’re using Meta, for many of you, maybe for the first time, which w- which is what we hope happens.

Anything else you wanna say about this program or who it’s right or wrong for, Fisher? Yeah. I guess I’ll just say the very last thing, that we should be transparent, this is not included. Listen, this is really just about marketing and sales, right? Yes. This is just getting leads and getting up any members.

Transparently, our hope is that you will grow your biz to the point where you need help with a full business operations suite. Mm-hmm. Because of course, the Unicorn Society, we still think is the best thing we know how to make for holistic support for your gym. And although Polaris is not currently included in that, it does include all the things, right?

So you’re getting, frankly, much more higher powered, customized one-on-one support. You’re getting the weekly live trainings. You’re getting the in-person events. You’re getting access to [00:19:00] all of the playbooks. So Unicorn Society helps you really run the whole business as a business, as a whole. The downside of this, and again, it is also why we’re– it’s priced differently, right?

This is just about leads and members, right? Yep. So if you need help with knotty issues in regards to how do I adjust my org chart as I scale, right? Or I’m having trouble firing. I keep picking the wrong people when I hire people. Or your customer service systems or finance or facility management or pre-sales on new locations or scaling.

That stuff is all amazing, and that is really more the terrain of the Unicorn Society, not this particular product. Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Unicorn Society isn’t going anywhere. That is still the product that I think best suits most of you most of the time. But some of you just haven’t scaled to that point yet where you need all that support.

You just need leads for now. Mm-hmm. And so our hope that the BFU Leads Engine program’s gonna be a stepping stone for a lot of you to keep growing your business and keep working with us. We’re here to help you, both to get leads for now, and then if you wanna continue [00:20:00] with us, Unicorn Society isn’t going anywhere, and I think many of you will probably graduate into it at some point.

At least that’s our hope. Mm. So we’ll see sitting here today. That’s the sketch we’ve designed for our future, so come join us. All right. I think we’ve covered everything we wanted to cover. Mm-hmm. Is there anything else you wanna say, Fisher? Nope. I say go to the show notes. You’ll be able to find the landing page.

Yeah. There will be a video demo. There will also be, if you wanna talk to somebody first, right? Yeah. If you wanna just, you’re ready to go, sign up for your free month, great. Get one of the 10 spots. Go with God. Alternatively, if you’re interested and you’re not sure it’s exactly a fit for your situation or your gym, that’s great, too.

There’ll be another button there on that landing page, and you can sign up for one of our 30-minute calls. We can discuss more about what the product is, even do a demo if need be to help you understand if it’s gonna be a fit for you and your situation. Yeah. Yeah. But friends, even if you’re just remotely curious, go watch the demo.

When Mark and I both first saw this software, our minds were blown. We’re like, “What?” It’s pretty crazy. Yeah. You can do that? Yep. And so I just want all of you to have that experience. So go click the button no matter what, and at least get to that step, so you can see what the [00:21:00] possibilities are. But awesome.

Thanks, Fisher. I’m excited about this next chapter. I’m sure we’ll be doing an episode soon to loop people in and share more about how it’s going. And so dear listeners, go take action now. And Fisher, have a great day. Bye.