How to Spend a Full Day with Pete Dupuis

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]

Speaker 2: Welcome to the Business Unicorns podcast. My name is Mark Fisher. I’m here with my pal, Pete DePue. Pete, how we doing today?

Speaker 3: I’m well. It’s warm out. It’s sunny. I’m in a good head space.

Speaker 2: Okay, great. Yes, it’s been warm here too as well, Juan. Acknowledge for our listeners, we are diving right in because you and I are both running around today.

But yeah, I begged Pete. I absolutely slammed my hands on my desk and I [00:01:00] threw my computer at the, I demanded, Pete, come on here ’cause we have a cool new thing that Pete is doing. Long time listeners will know that for a long time you’ve been able to buy myself and Michael K. You can just. Purchase this, and a lot of people been doing that.

And we have a lot of fun doing it. And we do these full or half day mentorship day sessions where we open up the hood of your business. We look at all of your numbers, all your KPIs, and then we work together to collaborate on a plan. For the next three to six [00:01:30] months or more, right? We think of it as we’re trying to give you a year of coaching in a day, and we think this is a great solution.

If you know you’re either not a joiner or maybe you know you have another group that you’re belong, you belong to and you’re happy with that, that feels like a great solution. But you just want some outside eyes on the business to get some fresh insight, and we’re thrilled to say, Pete, you’re joining in the fun buddy.

How you feeling about this, Pete?

Speaker 3: I’m good. I’m all in. It reminds me a little bit of when I got my MBAI did this condensed one year program. Yes. And what they did [00:02:00] was they didn’t change the curriculum dramatically. They just jammed the first year of a traditional two year MBA into this 90 day sprint during the summer.

Yeah. And I think of a mentorship day, almost the first 90 days of my MBA experience. It’s 200 pounds of shit jammed into a hundred pound bag maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But it’d be fun. I wanna do a sprint.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a robust day. I’ve made no secret, this is my preferred way these days to do coaching with people just because unless I have the full picture of what’s [00:02:30] going on and your life and your family situations and your goals and debt financing and like all sorts of stuff, it’s hard for me to really direct you where to go.

And we requested that Pete come on board for, this is not a secret. First of all, Pete, you just have a different expertise than Michael and I do, right? Your experience running Cresty sports performances. It’s pretty unique in the industry. You also have an actual business background, which is pretty rare for gym business coaches and not for nothing, but you’re a slightly different flavor.

My friend Michael and I [00:03:00] are also delightful flavors. We think people will find us tasty, but it’s not a secret. There’s a lot of people that I think feel connected with you that would love to work with you in this opportunity. I know they’re gonna be really excited about it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. What I like about this one.

I’ll acknowledge that we can do these things in a Zoom format, but my understanding is that the times you’ve done it in the past, you’ve met up face-to-face in New York and look someone in the eye and do this kind of whole day deep dive. Yeah. [00:03:30] And I just like the idea of having the opportunity to open my doors and have someone come into our gym and stand there with me and look around and be like, I have so many questions.

Yeah. And just doing so also during a time of year when I have the bandwidth to do it. Spring. We admittedly slow down a lot here by design because my business is so niche, but I just have, I have things to share, but oftentimes I think you and Keila would probably agree, we don’t know what we have to share sometimes [00:04:00] because we’ve just been through the ringer a thousand different ways in running these operations.

And not every question has been asked, and sometimes it takes stepping into the space and looking around and seeing how our team’s functioning and seeing how we’ve set the place up and. Those things, prompt questions that we didn’t even know people had.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I wanna do this.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that’s true.

I think the other thing about this opportunity I’ve enjoyed so much is, first I’ll speak to the in-person thing. Yeah. I would suggest again there, there are [00:04:30] both options. We understand. Certainly a lot of our audience these days is international, so Zoom certainly saves money. It allows you to not have to leave home.

So that can be a great way to go. I’ve done plenty of these on Zoom over the past year that we’ve been doing them. But I won’t lie, I personally prefer in person I’m, I’ve become real bull. She is really like adamant that like doing things in person, other people matters and I, I think certainly the process to my mind is a little bit more enjoyable is one piece of it.

But in your particular situation, Pete, where [00:05:00] they have the opportunity to go to Cressey sports performance. You’re right, it’s likely that will unearth, I think a whole new set of curiosities and questions and discoveries they’re gonna have that might not be available on Zoom. Now again, that’s not to say Zoom is not valuable, but I would just advocate if it’s at all possible.

To go see you in person. I think it is worth it because there’s also just something different. And again, we talk about this like a broken record, about getting out of your gym, getting out of like your office, wherever you work, and going [00:05:30] somewhere else physically to get different inputs, I think can be a particularly important and frankly pleasurable thing to do.

Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could really mix it up, you time it properly. You could come in. We could do a deep dive all morning. You could sit in on a staff in service and see how we educate the team as a whole and then we go out and get lunch and, and we talk through some of this stuff on the road. So there are just a lot of ways to attack it, but I just find that this is a really good option for performance training gyms.

[00:06:00] Because the performance training gym community, I find isn’t quite as eager to jump into the gym business consulting space as the average gen pop gym. Yep. And I understand that hesitation and our margins are tight. We have very seasonal calendars. There are things that intimidate us about making a big investment with a consulting group for a year.

And this isn’t an insignificant in investment, but it is a one day transaction where we’re going to solve. Not one, not two 90 days worth of problems that are gonna return. [00:06:30] A massive ROI on this. Yeah, this type of investment. So it’s something I’m excited to do and I won’t lie to you, I think I am better fit to do so with gym owners who accommodate performance training or youth athletes or things of that nature.

’cause that’s where I’m the fastest to identify the low hanging fruit and find out opportunities to optimize quickly. But there aren’t really any gym owner populations that are off limits, just because I’ve had. Borderline too many reps with this BAU community and

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: I’m coming up on five [00:07:00] years of coaching now with you guys, so it’s, it’s not a completely foreign concept to me to work with the gen pop gym owner.

Speaker 2: Oh boy. Happy unicorn anniversary, buddy. Yeah, I think it, it is so true that first of all, anybody listening that does sports performance, uh, again, this is a. Opportunity to work with you on this. ’cause for my own part, I’ll say same thing. I, same ZI feel comfortable working with sports performance. I’ve worked with a lot of sports performance at this point.

We have people in our world, like one of our coaches, Mickey Bruner, who’s been very patient about teaching me all the [00:07:30] things. But for better or for worse, I stay in my lane, right? And be like, okay, I know this model. While I know this kind of business, I’m so happy for us to be able to offer this. And I’m happy for people that’ll access this with you.

’cause maybe one more point I’ll make about this, and we can keep today short is. The thing that is so satisfying about this, I’m excited for you, is it is one thing to speak in maxims, right? And certainly any that follows you, Pete online knows like you are great. That’s one of your superpowers. Like you’re the Seth Godin of the fitness business industrial complex, [00:08:00] right?

You have this real skillset for just distilling this beautiful, thoughtful nugget like a zen Cohen, right? And that’s fantastic. And definitionally, you’re speaking to. All the people, right? So you, you have to, by definition speak in generalities. And one of the potential costs, I think when people are trying to learn from content online, right?

And by, by the way, I, forgive me father if I’ve sinned, I have done this too, is you’re pulling things in piece mail from what you’re hearing from [00:08:30] podcasts and different sources. And the reality is great advice, taken the wrong time. Can have some issues, right? So part of the value of this is that the advice is gonna be hyper customized to exactly what you need based on the entire gestalt of your life and your business and your goals and your finances and your family situation.

And then further gets prioritized, right? So that your help, so that we help you understand what needs to happen in one order because [00:09:00] the sequential piece does matter, right? And it’s one of my talking points. I’ll. Probably get hear sick of hearing me talk about that. I’ll probably never have to stop talking about unfortunately, which is doing things sequentially matters.

There are some things that need to be prioritized over other things, and to my mind, it’s one of the most important things about the outside eye because first of all, we just have a little bit of context at this point, just ’cause we’ve been under the hood of a lot of gyms, number one. But number two, maybe most importantly.

We’re not you. We don’t [00:09:30] have an emotional attachment to any things. We don’t have likes or dislikes. They’re gonna anchor us to maybe bias towards spending more time on the things that are fun for us, but they’re not gonna move the ball forward. So I think the ability to not only get customized advice, but for have us help you put into some order of, okay, but the end of day tomorrow, do this.

Here’s your list for by the end of next week, here’s your list for next month. Here’s your list for next quarter, et cetera, et cetera. I think is well worth its weight in gold.

Speaker 3: And to build off of that, it’s definitely worthy of [00:10:00] Note that this isn’t a show up and we’ll figure it out. Scenario. We’re gonna ask you to submit a bunch of information upfront.

I do my homework on the operator before we sit down much every time I sell a a client on an assessment at CSP, I ask beforehand, is there any noteworthy injury history I need to be aware of? Mm-hmm. Or we start working with you because I’d much rather somebody show up in a sling or recently have a surgical intervention and know it’s coming.

Yeah. Rather than have them walk in and I think it’s gonna be a completely [00:10:30] healthy 18-year-old. Yeah, I need to, I wanna know who the right staff member is. I wanna know what the right questions are to ask before they even show up. And an opportunity to look under the hood, as you’ve said. Yeah. Beforehand, is going to give me an opportunity to potentially identify some red flags.

Maybe see some massively missed opportunity, but it’ll allow me to guide a framework and a structure before we even open the doors to CSP, and then we can go from there. Yeah, but this is not a wing it scenario, thankfully. ’cause that would [00:11:00] give me a panic attack. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that’s true. I would not like that either.

It’s also just not a good use of time starting from the beginning. Again, I think another way to think about this is it’s getting biomarkers, right? Getting your lab work done and getting these blood tests in advance. So essentially we take, you can think of it as is, you can think of it as we take an extensive.

Amount of blood work, right? We’re gonna look at all different vital signs in advance. We’re gonna understand, again, subjectively how you’re feeling about the business, right? Ask a bunch of questions [00:11:30] that aren’t necessarily quantifiable, right? Understanding. Again, what are your goals? What is your family situation?

Where do you want to be in three years? What are the things that are taking energy away from you right now? And then because we come in that context, we can then essentially do further stress testing so we can go right into deeper questions around, okay. Help you understand this part isn’t clear, because of course, before we can make any.

Suggestions. The reality is like the interactive dialogue is both, for me, the most fun, but also the only way you get there, right? Because [00:12:00] here’s the other thing, it’s all well and good to look at the numbers of the business. It’s all well and good to hear you type the answers. But unless we can really ask more questions and dig down and understand the whys.

We not really gonna be able to help you because we’ve also mentioned before on this podcast, sometimes people are doing things that in a vacuum, I would say is a flat out, terrible idea they should not do and then we decide conversation based off their numbers. Nah, it’s working for you a little bit.

I’ll also say, the last thing I’ll say is sometimes you also have the fun situation. This happened recently actually. [00:12:30] ’cause if you’re in the leadership society. This is part of what we do. We do essentially a version of this twice per year as part of the things you get in Leadership Society. And I did one recently with a shout out, Chris Cuffy, if he’s listening without getting too into the weeds or saying anything I can’t speak outta turn about.

I was like. You’re doing good. You’re doing really good. So sometimes it’s also fun to look at someone’s numbers and this doesn’t happen always. So thank you for being vulnerable with us and trusting we’ll be kind and supportive and we have your best interests at heart and we won’t be mean, but we will be direct [00:13:00] and support you going the right direction.

And sometimes it’s also nice to have the outside eye be like. You’re doing good. We look under a lot of hoods. ’cause that happens sometimes too, and that’s been really fun when I have an opportunity to talk with somebody that isn’t aware how good they’re doing comparatively, to be like, you are doing great.

Keep going.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Don’t get me started on that. That’s one of my biggest complaints within coaching Unicorn society. Mark. I had someone yesterday show up. Just down and mopey. And then I found out that business owner is up 28% [00:13:30] in net profit margin year over year and just isn’t feeling it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe gym ownership isn’t enough for all of us, but

Speaker 2: yeah,

Speaker 3: we’re here to help.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and listen, and that’s worth it too. And this is maybe the final thing I’ll say, and we’ll wrap this up here, is yeah, there is a qualitative piece of this that is more than merely. The direction that actually isn’t even about. We’re the girl, you’re the client, whatever there, it’s, there’s actually a piece that’s about let’s be human together.

Because so much of running a gym can be so isolating. ’cause also [00:14:00] every entrepreneur does that. And to be an entrepreneur is to everyday wake up to a list of all the things that are going wrong, that you are doing badly, that you know you’re not doing a good job of, and you can be stuck inside your own skull.

And then when you look outside your skull, you’re seeing everyone else’s highlights, reels, particularly when you’re looking on social media. So the opportunity to work with people that. Yeah, and I think I can really say this for all of us, have a lot of care, have a lot of compassion. We’re not gonna lie to you, right?

We wouldn’t be disingenuous [00:14:30] and blow smoke, but we also get it, we’re gym owners too, right? So whether that is to support you with care and lovingly challenge you to focus on fixing some things we think are really foundational to creating the life that you might want or in some situations to really make sure you understand how well you’re doing so that you’re not just living in a bubble.

I think a lot of that is part of the value of this sort of commitment. Pete, anything else you wanna say before we bring this to a close?

Speaker 3: Now we’ll humanize these two podcasters and explain why we’re on a hard stop. [00:15:00] I, as I have said on the pod many times, I’m a father of two rambunctious young men, and those two idiots were horsing around the last couple days and one of ’em broke his thumb.

So I’m off to an ortho consult.

Speaker 2: Wait, which one?

Speaker 3: My younger one, Owen. He just, oh boy. Oh, what’s happening? I’m realizing this is a function of gym ownership. Colin has started training with us. Yeah. And the little guy’s getting strong. If I scrap with him, he is. There’s something there. It’s like he’s getting strong and now his younger brother who is not training with [00:15:30] us ’cause he is appropriate, is getting beat up trying to do what his brother does.

Careful. One of my dad’s. Yeah. Careful down. And he broke his thumb. And so we’re gonna go find out if, I don’t think we have any surgical scenarios in our future, but we’re gonna find out if he’s going in more of a permanent cast than the temporary deal he’s in this afternoon. And that’s why I gave you a hard stop.

Speaker 2: Alright, well best of luck to your child’s thumb. Thank you everyone for listening to this podcast. I, we try to be content for it. Thank you for allowing us for a study one. So presume if you’re still listening, you’re interested. And if that’s the case, [00:16:00] you can go to Instagram and dm us the word mentorship or you can email me market bi unicorns.com and just reply mentorship.

Hopefully you’re already getting our emails, if not. Oh my goodness. That’s the first thing. Go to business unicorns.com and sign up for any free thing on there. If you scroll down, you can even find a place just to put in your email address because we, again, if this is of interest to you, there’s no sales for this Last, I say there’s no sales call.

I just send you like, here’s the details, here’s the dates, and you say, yeah, or nah, right? You wanna deal it so there’s no pressure. You [00:16:30] don’t have to worry about getting on a sales call. I’ll just give you all the details, very transparent that you can decide if it’s a fit and we’ll look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks so much, Pete.

Speaker 3: Thank you Mark. Hope to talk to somebody here soon. See ya.

Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully somebody. Please don’t make me feel bad.

Speaker 3: Take care.

Speaker 2: [00:17:00] Bye.