How Stoked Athletics Fills Its Gym Through Business Partnerships with Mike Bouranis

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for 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 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.[00:00:30]

Yeah. Hello my friend. If you’re a gym owner listening to this podcast, there’s one thing I absolutely know to be true about you, which is you probably want more leads and more clients for your gym. I mean, what gym owner doesn’t. So if you want that, you’ll wanna get a free copy of our free book. It’s our little Book of Gym Marketing Secrets.

It’s honestly the book we all wish we had when we first opened our gyms. It’s, it’s [00:01:00] really a zero fluff guide you can read in less than 30 minutes. And it covers everything you know to grow and market your

Speaker 2: gym. To get instant access to your free copy, click the link below in the show notes and download it right now.

You’ll be glad you did.

Speaker: Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m here with a frequent guest of this podcast. Back again is Mr. Mike BNIs, co-founder of Stoked Athletics in Long Island, New York. Welcome back, my friend.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I’m excited to [00:01:30] be here.

Speaker: I know you’re really becoming a regular on this podcast, which I am. Pun intended, stoked about, and so I’m so glad you’re here. We’re recording this podcast just like a week or so after our retreat, our unicorn Saudi retreat in Atlanta, at which you gave an amazing cock called Three Mile Famous, which is about the idea of all gyms need to really be like running for mayor in their communities, right?

They need to like be out pounding the pave. Be a familiar face in in, in your community. And you gave this amazing talk about really specific strategies about like [00:02:00] how to become famous in your community. And I thought this would make an amazing podcast. Obviously we’re not gonna be able to go through the whole talk with like an over an hour, but I thought we at least give some of our podcast listeners some of the kind of key takeaways from your talk.

So maybe let’s start with why does this matter so much and how have you approached it in your own business?

Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So the idea, like you said, of three Mile Famous is that obviously within a three mile radius, the people that you want to know, you do know you. And I think number one, why this matters is there’s this [00:02:30] idea that the first thing that people should be doing is going straight to ads, which I disagree with.

I think ads can be very useful, but I think that without using the systems that we talked about and really building that three mile awareness and and fame within the avatar that you want, uh. The systems on the backend aren’t built, so when you run the ads, there isn’t that same return on the investment that you would get if you were a little bit more famous with your avatar, if you had the systems aligned in your business, not with just the marketing, but with your services.

And then I, I [00:03:00] think with us at the gym, my biggest thing is business partnerships and really working with communities that serve the same avatar. And that’s how I’ve been attacking it over the last year and the return on that investment. Has been way better than anything we’ve seen with paid ads.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that’s so smart.

I think so. What if I, what I hear you saying I wanna repeat back is that obviously you can get lots of great leads when just by building a great reputation in your community, including partnerships, other businesses can really move the needle if you do it well and. [00:03:30] If and when you go to run paid ads, they’ll only be more effective if you have a reputation in your community.

When someone clicks on a paid ad of a company they’ve never seen a heard of, seen before, heard of before, doesn’t look familiar, they don’t know anyone that goes there. That’s very cold lead and we want those leads from paid ads, right? But it’s a very cold lead. But if it, if you are, if you’re unmissable in your community, that if it’s almost impossible to live within three miles and not.

At least have seen your logo somewhere. Right? Driven by it. Seen it. [00:04:00] You’ve seen you at the farmer’s market. Heard of some, heard of someone that I know that goes there. Then that person who clicks on, who sees your ad is already just that much warmer and that much more likely to convert. It’s they’ve already jumped over that hump of trusting you because they’re like, oh yeah, I know them.

They’re on the street, or I know them. My neighbor goes there. And that’s just so powerful. And for most of you, if you’re in markets that are not. Major markets. If you’re not in New York City or la but you’re in a place where you actually can [00:04:30] build a three mile reputation, which is most places, then this is an important, this is an important strategy.

And then, and you said that your business partnerships have really made the difference. Can you just say a little bit about how they’ve made a difference for you?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a perfect example is I had a new person this morning. When I was like, oh, how did you hear about us? It was not just from the promotion we did with the Mooney’s Coffee Shop news where she had entered a raffle.

She did not win. But with our follow-up strategy still came in, but it wasn’t the only time she heard about us. Her hairdresser also is one of our business [00:05:00] partners, so it worked out where it’s like tarting. That avatar started to know about us a little bit more as. As far as the actual ways of going about this is the system that I put in place here is called the Fame plus model.

Mm-hmm. And it starts with what I just said, fully knowing your avatar, where they go, who they hang out with, things about them, aligning yourself with those, what we call the dream 100. So the businesses, organizations, charities that your avatar, frequents or is, has an affinity [00:05:30] towards. And then through there, it’s marketing with different plays I mentioned like giveaway.

This could be a cross promotion. This could just be setting up a table at a charity event. And then the key is having the right entry points and conversions. So knowing how to get their information from a capture standpoint, and then how to know how to convert them into an actual offer, whether that’s.

Uh, a discounted month or just a free assessment or a four week front end offer for a specific community.

Speaker: Love it. I love it. I love a good acronym. So I, I think it’s, [00:06:00] it’s so helpful when we can kinda remember what the process is. And so let’s break down each one of those, each one of those letters one at a time.

So fully knowing your avatar. What’s a quick and easy way for people to really dive in and have a clear vision of their avatar?

Speaker 2: One is plug it, join business for unicorns. And yes, the Avatar playbook. Because I think there’s a lot of things in there that people miss, but the two main things I look at.

When people think about avatar is demographic, but we need to psychographic as well. We need to understand why they’re frustrated with their [00:06:30] fitness in the past, what they’ve tried before, their fears, what is their short term and long term wants? What does life look like for them if they work with you a year from now, or if they don’t work with you.

So it’s not just like their age and where they live and what they do for work, but it’s also like why is this important to them? Because when you look at your brand and your business as a whole. You are inevitably going to be speaking to one type of person, whether you know it or not. And if you don’t know it, you probably have these little bits of time where you’re talking to one specific [00:07:00] person and then it changes, and then it changes.

So you never have this cohesiveness in your marketing. So fully knowing your avatar is the starting point for all of this.

Speaker: Yeah, I think it’s so smart and really getting clear about the demographic and psych psychographics is a great exercise. Just make a list and one of the tips I’ll give is that I think it’s really helpful to think about a specific client that you have when you’re writing your avatar.

Okay. I think all too often we try and make it. ’cause amalgamation of 20 different clients. Just think of the one person who’s in the center of the bullseye for [00:07:30] the kind of client that you help the best. They’re like the right age, the right attitude, the right set of needs, the right challenges, the right personality, the right that.

If you could have a hundred of those per those, that person, that’s who you have a hundred of. And that’s not to say you wanna attract people who are not exactly like them, but they’re at the center of the bullseye. And don’t worry about the fact that the people on the periphery who also come to your gym, that’s okay.

You really, because we have limited marketing resources, we gotta focus on talking to one kind of person and then the rest will take [00:08:00] care of itself. Other kinds of people will also be attracted to your messaging. That’s all right. But I think thinking of that one client has always been helpful to me. And just describe Absolutely.

Describing them. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And one thing I talked about in the presentation is at the end I was like, the goal unfortunately is not that you’re gonna get a hundred of that client, no, you’re gonna get a good amount of them. But a lot of people love to hang out with that person. And that’s who is that periphery that you talked about?

Speaker: Exactly. A lot of them are like them in other. Big in ways, in small ways. A lot of ’em like to be around that [00:08:30] person. A lot of ’em are just related to that person. Live near that person, work with that person, and so they, they really are like the kind of bait you’re using to catch all kinds of people. Yeah.

Okay, great. So the FAME acronym, FAME plus acronym F ary, avatar A is aligned. Aligned with what? I can’t remember.

Speaker 2: Align with where they already are.

Speaker: Yeah. So say more about that. How do you find out where they already are?

Speaker 2: Yeah, finding out is the easy part. That’s just talking to them, right? Talking to your members.

Talking to that one person. When we were really focusing on this and shaping [00:09:00] this up, we took a group of people out who fit our avatar at our gym out to lunch one day, and it was a three hour lunch and we broke down their daily lives. Where they go, where the, what restaurants they go to, what breweries they go to, what coffee shops, what charities they like to support organizations like.

For us, PTAs are big. Yeah.

Speaker: You

Speaker 2: know, we try to support a lot of PTAs, but that’s like the finding that out is crucial because I think we are so limited in our time and resources as gym owners that you don’t want to go out and hunting through a crowd of a [00:09:30] million people and trying to find a hundred that work best for you.

Instead, find the businesses and organizations that are, have already organized these people together and then work with those businesses to be in front of them.

Speaker: Love it. I think that makes so much sense and there’s all kinds of ways, as you mentioned, to do, to find out where people are, where their eyeballs are on a regular basis.

One, ask them right, either casually in conversations, train your team to ask them and record their answers. Two, take a bunch of them out to lunch, [00:10:00] coffee, dinner, brunch, whatever, and do a little focus group like, like Mike did, right? You can also do a survey. Do a survey anonymous or non-anonymous survey to try and get some more information there.

I do think I prefer your strategy. I prefer sitting down with a handful of people who really are the center of our bullseye avatar and really doing a deep dive with them and figuring out where they go and where, how do they spend their time when they’re not at the gym. I think that’s useful ’cause you can ask follow up questions, et cetera.

But if you have to, and many of you just may not have the time or capacity for that, I think a survey or even [00:10:30] a poll in a Facebook group, anything can help get you started with understanding where your avatar is when they’re not at your gym. And then those are the, that’s your list. That’s your list of places to get started.

Yeah. And so when you have that list, I know it maybe seems a little obvious, but just talk a little bit about what’s the first step, right? Because I know oftentimes we talk about you don’t wanna start a partnership by rushing to someone and the first thing you do is just ask them for a bunch of shit.

Yeah. So how do you build like that kind of rapport with a potential business partner?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the first thing if [00:11:00] it makes sense for you is to become a regular at whatever this business or organization is. So like just show face and get them to know who you’re, and that you own a business in the area.

You probably have a couple mutual clients or customers that you could start chatting about. And even if you’re not a regular, like for instance, I use the example of a hair salon, like I’m not going to that hair salon. I try to get to know them as soon as possible and, and make that connection, and definitely leveraging your members in a way to make that introduction for you is extremely helpful.[00:11:30]

And even some of your members may own a business that works for your avatar as well. And then before we really dig into anything, it’s just find out more about them and their business and how you can help them help. Because the obvious way is obviously bring them more business, but sometimes that’s not what they need or what they want.

Sometimes it’s. The coffee shop we work really well with because when we go to work with them, we handle all the social media for it and all the marketing for it, and that takes a load off her plate. That’s something we’re really good at that she just wants to focus on making the coffee so when we go [00:12:00] in there, we make videos and we take photos.

It helps boost her business in a way that she wouldn’t have that help otherwise.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Great

Speaker: example. So

Speaker 2: fi, finding out what they want and then having that ask about what you guys can do together. It makes more sense because just like our members when they walk in the door, we need to figure out what their goal is before we start trying to figure out what service is best for them.

Speaker: I think that’s so smart. I remember you saying in the presentation you gave in Atlanta before you ever are ever gonna be a partner with someone, you have to at least just not be a stranger. Or you have to at least show up and let them know who you are and be a [00:12:30] familiar face. And then over time, like any real relationship, it will grow from you just being in their presence multiple times and showing face at their events and, and connecting with your shared clients or customers.

And so I think it’s really smart. That’s a really smart way to do it. Alright, so we covered the F, we covered the A, now we’re on the M. So walk me through this one.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Market through the right plays. And this is where a lot of people start getting, it gets a little tricky here because there’s some nuance to it that we have to dig into.

But when I say the right plays, there’s a [00:13:00] ton of plays you can do. And you know what I suggest is starting small and building up. Just as if you’re dating, you’re not rushing right into marriage, right? When you’re talking with these partners, you wanna get a sense of one. Are they down to play ball? Are you gonna be going up to them and pitching them these ideas and trying to run an event that they don’t do any of the work for?

Or are they into it and they, and you learn that they are just as excited about this as you are, and then you build up to things like those events just starting out. It could be as simple as, Hey, let’s just both have signage in each of our [00:13:30] businesses, shadowing each other out, or sharing promotions that we’re running on social media.

I’ll share yours. You share mine. Like I said, having that community presence too. If they’re putting on a, an event or a 5K for charity, I can go out and sponsor that and just show good faith and be in front of their customers. And then from there you could do joint promotions. Like if we did one with the hair salon recently where their members got, I forget the exact thing, but it was like half off of color.

Mm-hmm. And then a blowout Plus they then got half [00:14:00] off our LBO. And ultimately the best one, in my opinion, is to co-host at events. When you’re just gathering everybody from both groups together and just having a killer event and everybody has a good time.

Speaker: Yeah,

Speaker 2: just makes for way easier marketing.

Speaker: Yeah, I think it’s so smart.

And one of the things that we have in our, for our unicorn site members in our playbook on this topic, we have a business partnerships playbook, is I, we encourage people to create a little menu of how you wanna work with business partners with exactly those things on it. So when you go to a business partner, you can say, Hey, here are some things we like to do with other business [00:14:30] partners.

And that way you’re not starting from scratch every time. Right. Having to like reinvent the wheel every time you talk to a business partner. It can be exactly that stuff that Baras just listed, which is one, we can share signage in each other’s places. Two, we can share social media content. Three, we could share, we could do write for each other’s email, newsletter four.

We could do a share a promotion. We could co-host an event. We could, right? And just having three to five things. These are the things we do together that we find are successful when we do business partnerships. Which one do you wanna start with? And that way [00:15:00] really it helps. It helps them have a vision, right?

Because not every business owner you’re gonna talk to that you wanna partner with is gonna have experience doing this. So in many ways you might be educating them on like how this works, what the benefits are, what the options are. And I also find that when folks get overwhelmed with business partnerships is because.

Every partnership is so unique and so different that they’ve made different promises to every single person and they do different strategies with every single person. And so I think also having a menu to choose [00:15:30] from somewhat streamlines and codifies your approach so you can scale it. You can have 20, 30 partners if all the things you’re doing with them are the similar-ish.

It’s easier to scale than having five or 10 partners with all the very different needs and promises. And so, uh, nobody, anything you would add to that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Number one is that menu is so invaluable to me. I literally have them in my backpack at all times, and one in the library. Just make a copy of it. Put your logo, your colors, change anything you want.

I walk into [00:16:00] businesses every day and I’m just like chatting with them, and if I just think it’s a good idea, it’s like I just whip it out right there. I’m like, Hey, let’s grab coffee one day and talk through this. Oh, I had another piece, but it’s gone outta, that’s my brain. So we’ll come back. If I think about

Speaker: it, that’s okay.

But I think it’s a good, that’s a, it’s, it’s a good, the MI think here is really important, right? Like marketing, using the right offers, the right channels, the right approaches, and it’s gonna be different for each person, right? But having some sort of menu you can choose from of things that you know have worked for you, that you like doing.

Also, that’s an important part, right? Don’t put things on the list that you don’t wanna do. If you don’t like writing over email [00:16:30] newsletters, don’t put that on the list, right? If you hate events, right, this might be a tough strategy for you overall because I think events are critical. But if you hate events, don’t put events on there.

Right? But also, ultimately, I think this is a really important part. So we got the F, the A and the M.

Speaker 2: Yes. But I did just remember that last part.

Speaker: Oh yeah, please. Yeah. I’m

Speaker 2: Chime in with it. Is the beauty of this is once you have all these going on, there’s a lot of these marketing plays that can be pretty passive, so you don’t have to have an event every single weekend.

For instance, the in-store raffles work really well for us. Mm-hmm. We’ve really locked down how [00:17:00] they run. So we’re collecting leads. While I was in Atlanta, I had 80 leads that week just from different raffles going on, and I have the automated workflows on the backend to then be texting everybody and following up with them.

And what I love about it is it doesn’t muddy your marketing because I think a lot of people will be. Posting about seven different things at once on their social media, on their email, and in their gym, and it just, it becomes noise where all these things can live in their own space. So you can have raffles going on at different businesses.

You can have [00:17:30] different promotions going at different businesses that aren’t on your social media, aren’t on your email, and you’re collecting those leads. And if you have the bandwidth to then do the follow up, if you have the automations to help. It just makes it so much easier to get more leads that are a little bit warmer because they’re coming from a trusted name.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that’s so smart. Brandis. ’cause it’s so all too often we have all these ideas of things we wanna do, but our email and social media channels are already full of offers we’re making directly to our lists. And so if we had to have everything we’re doing with partnerships [00:18:00] also. In those same channels, it would be overwhelming.

But many times there are marketing strategies and things you can do with partners that don’t wind up on your channels at all. And I think having those lead generation things happening in the background, especially with automations, if you have access to those, it makes all the difference in the world.

That’s awesome. All right, let’s keep going. Tell me about the fi, our final letter here. The E,

Speaker 2: we do have the E, but we also have the plus. Plus. I’ll touch on entry points that. The big mistake I used to make when I went to [00:18:30] these events or I tabled at places is either one, I wasn’t collecting any lead information, which is a waste of time or two.

I would be trying to hard sell them on something like startup for a month here, and maybe it’s a hundred dollars off, and that’s a big ask of somebody that doesn’t really know you. What I found is I like to split it into two pieces and it’s capturing and converting. So capturing is the entry point at the marketing play that you’re doing.

Something like a raffle where I’m in store, I have some sort of board. They’re scanning a QR code, [00:19:00] entering a raffle. I’m gathering their information. The convert on that would be if you don’t win, I’m now offering you something like a discounted trial, maybe a free consultation, and it depends a bit on the warmth of lead.

I’ll get into that in a second, but having these two separate pieces allows you to, one. At least set the tone of getting their information so that they’re on your list. And if they don’t convert into something, they’ll be hearing more about you and they might show up to more events. And then the conversion is there as the next step.

So if somebody is ready after the capture [00:19:30] stage, you could get them into some sort of offer that gets them into your gym. And I, me, I mentioned the warmth. This is gonna depend on the event and the person you’re working with and how well this, this group knows you. On the ES side, I would’ve something like a local street fair where there’s a thousand people, thousands if not walking around and you can’t do something.

Super high stakes there. This is a free month raffle that people can just walk by. You have conversation with them, they could scan into enter. And if they don’t win, it’s something like a free [00:20:00] consultation where it’s a very low barrier for them. They could ghost you if they want, and again, if you need to have the bandwidth for this, but at least it’s something where you could get a lot of leads for and probably a lot of conversations with new people.

That’s a opposed to something a lot warmer, which in our case is something like we are partnered with a run club that we’ve been partnered with for years and they know us because we’re every single week we’re being mentioned in their signage about us. We could go there and run the warmup. And then when we’re there, give away this free lead magnet.

Maybe it’s [00:20:30] five of the best exercises for runners. So now they’re downloading that, I’m capturing the information. And then because there are a much warmer lead and they’ve seen us so many times, we can offer something like a four week frontend offer that is two days a week at our gym running specific, and it can be a couple hundred of dollars because they know us and trust us already.

So depends on that warmth of the lead in, in terms of which entry points we’ll use. But once you figure that out, I think that’s the magic piece that allows these things to be so successful.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that’s really [00:21:00] smart. I hope our listeners are taking notes there, right? Because there’s the two pieces of capture and convert and then how you capture and how you convert.

It’s gonna depend on the style of event, the warmth of the lead, right? You’re gonna, you’re gonna try and meet each person where they’re at, meet that crowd where they’re at in terms of familiarity with you, and ease, ease of connection. Like you mentioned, if you’re at a big farmer’s market with thousands of people walking by and most of ’em maybe have not heard of you before.

That’s one strategy. But if you’re with an A partnership that’s gone on for years and everyone’s at least a [00:21:30] little familiar with you already, and you’re gonna have some face-to-face time with all of them and make that connection, that’s a whole different ballgame. And so having your offer and your capture strategy really match that, I think makes a ton of sense.

Maybe give the folks just a few quick examples of capture and convert strategies that really worked for you in the past.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So capturing, like I mentioned, is the raffles and giveaways things. People just enter their information, they have a chance to win. If you’re doing an event, the event registration itself, let me start with this.

If you’re doing an event, you should have registration [00:22:00] somehow. Yes. I hate when people have open-ended events and it’s just, please show up. Yes. Have people register even if it’s free. Amen. Yes. And then lead magnets. Is that just another great way if you’re going to an event or you’re at a sponsoring a table at something?

It’s like a very easy way to get people download. Some sort of is just to give the information as far as the conversion points we’re looking at. Again, free consultations for those colder leads. I think if they’re a bit warmer, you could get into the discounted assessments and trials. So just bringing down your [00:22:30] LBOA little bit.

And then the three to six week is where I like to put it for a frontend offer is probably the most I’ll ask of somebody, but they have to be a pretty damn warm lead for me to wanna sell them $199 package right off the bat.

Speaker: Makes

Speaker 2: sense. Uh, and one thing I’ll add there that is incredibly important that I’ve learned from BFU over the years is our highly attractive, irresistible, time sensitive offers.

So those conversions, the consultation, discount assessments, or front end offer should be some sort of. Time [00:23:00] sensitive, as in you can only sign up for this in the next two days. Or even if you’re at the run club that day and you wanna do this, you know, say I’m. A discounted trial. It’s only available today.

You have to purchase it today if you want this deal. So making sure that there’s some sort of time clock on or clock on here with the, the conversion to actually get people to wanna do it, then

Speaker: yeah, it’s a critical component. Yeah. We have to have that time pressure. Can you just say a little bit about the amount and timing of the follow up you do for these kind of EV activities?

[00:23:30] So let’s say you’ve had a, you’ve. I’ve been in a farmer’s market or you’re a run club and you’ve captured their information through whichever means, how often, and how are you following up with them after the event is over.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so e especially something like one of those raffle giveaways we just did, it’s gonna be if they do not win.

So when somebody wins, one person gets the text saying that they won. Everybody else just gets the evergreen, Hey, sorry you didn’t win, but we are offering you whatever. It’s say half off our LBO. You have to purchase within the next week or this deal goes away. [00:24:00] After that, I will call the whole list and just make sure that they’re aware of the deal and see if they wanna sign up right then.

And then from there, I’ll typically do, depending on where that time sensitive offer lies, just to say it’s a week. I’ll probably do one the following day if I didn’t get an answer just to make sure that they saw it. One, two days before it ends and then one on the day it ends. And those are just text messages typically.

Again, it’s gonna depend on how warm this lead is. If I’m getting a bunch of leads from a farmer’s market. I’m probably not gonna wanna bombard them [00:24:30] every single day for two weeks. Mm-hmm. Because you’re gonna make a lot of enemies and there’s gonna be a word spreading to not sign up for my raffle the next time I’m at that event because I’m gonna bombard them with texts.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: But generally speaking, it’ll be three to four texts and one phone call in a week span just to try to see if I can get them while they’re hot.

Speaker: Yeah. Great. I love that. That’s awesome. Alright, let’s wrap it up with, with the Plus we got the Fame plus model. So what’s the plus all about?

Speaker 2: So the plus is, is where the magic’s made, in my opinion.

This is the evergreen reinforcement. So this is what are the things [00:25:00] we’re doing for our marketing day to day, week to week that doesn’t necessarily lie in an event or some sort of a promotion, but just evergreen. So we’re looking at consistent content on our social media and email. If that’s where you go, we’re looking at sell by chat, which for those that don’t know, is another playbook in the BFU universe here, which is just making a connection with new followers.

We’re looking at seasonal promotions, so our marketing calendars, making sure that we’re touching on our never been clients, our former clients, and [00:25:30] even our current clients for referrals. With that, of course, is the referral system as a whole. So the points of contact in your business where you’re asking for that, whether it’s the point of sale when somebody’s hitting prs, if it’s in their 90 day onboarding at certain points.

And then lastly is just our local presence. So just being out in the community that your gym is in. Wearing your sweatshirt, stopping into these businesses, just having that presence so people start recognizing you. If you want, I’ll go into like why I think it’s important, obviously, but I’m not sure if you have [00:26:00] any questions on those

Speaker: specific No, I think it’s clear because the thing that we, you’ve mentioned here is that for all of these partnerships, capture comes first and you’re gonna capture a lot of folks through all these activities.

You’re not gonna convert all of them. So what you’re left with is this growing list of people’s names, phone numbers, and emails, and. You need to have some strategy throughout the whole year for engaging with that list that’s growing, right? Some strategy for making them regular offers some strategy for making sure that they’re following you on social media, and that social media account is active in some way and [00:26:30] looks like it’s alive, that if they’re on your email list, they’re getting some regular content that speaks to them and their needs.

It’s one thing to capture those information. It’s another thing to convert, and the conversion might not happen right away. You know, so I think having time throughout the whole year that you’re strategically reconnecting with these people, I think makes a lot of sense. Anything you would add to that?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the benefit this of this is insane. So if you aren’t working on these systems, one of the things I mentioned in this presentation is that marketing cannot be optional. Mm-hmm. And I know it’s overwhelming and I hope that [00:27:00] people at least take away from this presentation a couple things to start working on.

Mm-hmm. And at least prioritize the time in their week. Because when you’re doing all these things together, especially with this evergreen reinforcement, these systems being built over time, that relationship that this lead has with your gym just grows exponentially because they just constantly are learning more about you and have more points of entry.

Relationship. Relationship. And then when you’re doing events, you’re doing promotions, you just get a such a better response. And we saw it where I used the [00:27:30] example, I’ll say her real name is Kelly. In the presentation I said, Sarah, but where I saw this girl multiple times last summer, different events. And we were at a lot of events she was at because we knew our avatar.

Yeah. And she did not convert on anything. Mm-hmm. And then what worked was eventually her friend. Join the gym. Put us on her story. Kelly followed us from that. We started at Sell by Chat dm. He came in with her husband who both signed up, and since then they’ve referred more members [00:28:00] like their neighbors and coworkers.

Yeah, so it just shows that when we’re doing all these things right, even if they’re not converting, we have the systems to still have the entry points available.

Speaker: Yeah, 100%. When I think of all these systems in this kind of plus category, it is the ongoing marketing engine that you’re running throughout the year.

And in some ways that acts like a safety net, right? To catch all the folks who aren’t converting right away when you first meet them, right? At some point, they’re gonna be caught in that net and come in otherwise. Which is awesome. That’s exactly what we want to have happen, and not everyone’s gonna be ready [00:28:30] right away when they first meet us, and at some point they will be.

You mentioned before that for a lot of folks listening that have, they don’t have a lot of bandwidth to do marketing, right? As gym owners, we wear many hats. There’s only so much time, energy, money, resources to dedicate to this sort of thing. And on this call, this Fame Plus model, we mentioned a bunch of things to do.

There’s a lot of things they could tackle. And so for anyone listening to this and feeling a little overwhelmed, where do they start?

Speaker 2: You start with your avatar, you have to get, so I, I was saying obnoxiously detailed. Mm-hmm. You should know your [00:29:00] avatar as if they were a family member or a loved one. Yeah.

Where you know almost everything about them before it gets really weird and stalkerish. You start there, and then from there a lot of things happen. Naturally, you start to understand what businesses they go to and, you know. Are part of, I would start by getting the avatar and then listing out their Dream 100.

Again, those 100 businesses in your area that they would frequent, because that’s gonna get you a lot right off your plate.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: After that, if you got that stretch and you can do a little bit more, I would say set a goal [00:29:30] for the next three months. Pick one partner from that list for each. Just have the conversations with them, start to build the relationships and try to plan out some sort of marketing with them, whether it’s just sharing some signage or if you know them a little bit better and you know yourself and you have the bandwidth for it, maybe putting a cross promotion or a co-hosted event on.

Speaker: I think it’s a great roadmap. I think it’s that allows all of our listeners to do it at the pace that makes sense for you. Start with the avatar, which is an activity you can do on your own and control yourself with a handful of clients. [00:30:00] Then making that big list again with your clients on your own time of the top 100.

Gyms and then you can start to make goals, as Brianna said, for how many you can tackle how quickly, and, and you might wanna get some members of your team involved in this. If you have some trainers with some extra time on their hands and you wanna train them to do exactly what we talked about, which is go be a familiar face, go make friends with these businesses.

In some cases it’s just gonna be fun to get to know people in your own backyard. Even it doesn’t pan. I think you’ll be, you wanna be known as the nicest kids on the block. And so it’s helpful that way. [00:30:30] For example, at Mark Fisher Fitness, we did this a lot. We would put on like unicorn onesies and buy MFF slap bracelets and run around and put slap bracelets on people and give them like these neighborhood car VIP cards.

And in many cases, ’cause we’re in New York, people just roll their eyes and. Don’t give a shit and we’re not interested at all. But did people know there was this weird unicorn gym nearby, even if they rolled their eyes and wouldn’t take a slap? Yeah, they knew. They knew what we were all about. They knew we were around, and that reputation is what we’re aiming for.

People just have some familiarity with that. [00:31:00] We’re around. And even if we’re not your cup of tea, you might know someone who is.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Any final thoughts here, Baras as we wrap it up?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s just, even though this might seem overwhelming, once you get started and you start doing the little bits of work with the avatar and the businesses mm-hmm.

You will, like you said, be a little bit more in control and you’ll have the bandwidth and it only takes a couple hours a week. So if you have stuff on your plate that you can delegate, I would say do it now. Because whether you are marketing or not, you [00:31:30] are, you’re marketing in some capacity, even if you don’t know it.

So you wanna be in control of it. So start prioritizing this now?

Speaker: Yeah, 100%. 100%. If people wanna follow you online or learn more about Stoked Athletics, where do they find you?

Speaker 2: Yes. Stoked Athletics online is just at Stoked Athletics. And on Instagram, I’m at the Stoked Brohi, that’s BRGI. I, my apologies.

Speaker: Great. We’ll put those links down below. And if you wanna work with Mike bna as your business coach, you just have to join Unicorn Society ’cause he’s one of our coaches and you could work directly with him on all of [00:32:00] these things. We’ll put a link down below for learning more about Unicorn Society as well.

But thanks as always, bna. I’m sure you’ll be on the podcast again. But thanks as always for your wisdom and for this great presentation that you gave. I think this is an amazing model that helps people really understand how to build a reputation in their community, and I think that’s just so valuable in our work.

So I appreciate you, sir, and I’ll see you on the next one.

Speaker 2: Yes, sir. See you soon.

Speaker: Have a kick ass week [00:32:30] everyone.