Should You Come to our Atlanta Retreat? with Mark Fisher

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, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m back with Mr. Mark Fisher who just returned from a vacation. That’s of this recording. How are you doing? How was your vacation, my friend?

Speaker 2: It was, it was good. Wound up getting pushed back by a day.

That’s right. The flight got canceled ’cause the snowpocalypse so. We’re at the airport and then went home happily. We were fortunate. A lot of people got [00:01:00] booked two days later.

Speaker: Oh wow.

Speaker 2: So still incredibly annoying. But we released, booked from the next morning and then weirdly, I guess it’s not busy. The hotel was like, we were like, can we just like stay an extra day?

And the hotel was like, okay. Surprised. I didn’t expect that we were gonna say yes. So we just booked the thing daily and just changed the flights for one more day. And. You know, it was a little disruptive ’cause I kind of lost a extra day of work I hadn’t planned on losing. But

Speaker: sure

Speaker 2: grateful for the good people at the Hyatt Ziva Dominican Republic accommodating my request.[00:01:30]

Speaker: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Well, good for you. I think both of us took a little time away in the sunshine from living in the northeast in the midst of this brutal cold winter we’ve had so far. And for all the rest of you who live in cold places, I can’t recommend that enough. Pick some time in the middle of your winter and go get some sunshine.

Yeah, I just felt so rejuvenated afterwards. Yeah, it was. It really, it’s gonna be a routine that I keep up year after year, I

Speaker 2: think. Yeah. It’s super smart. Yeah,

Speaker: for sure. Well, let’s dive in. Today we’re talking a little bit about our retreat coming up as of this [00:02:00] podcast getting released, our retreat in Atlanta is just around the corner, and we wanna talk a little bit about our retreat, but specifically around a few things.

One is the thing we think is maybe wrong with a lot of retreats is that they are really designed for people who are extroverts. They’re designed for people who are ready to go and be social. We know that’s not all of you, dear listeners. We’re gonna talk a little bit about yeah, how we try to get around that at our retreat.

I also wanna talk just a little bit about the value of going to these retreats, right? I think that some people think this maybe just only about networking. Some people think it’s maybe only just about [00:02:30] watching, you know, smart speakers talk. But I think there’s actually a lot of like underappreciated value that comes from coming to these retreats.

But maybe let’s, let’s start with the first one, Fisher, so I know that, you know. Mm-hmm. Both of us have the ability to be a little introverted, a little extroverted at times. But on the whole, I know for both of us, it takes a lot of energy to be present at events. And so do you wanna just talk through some of the ways that we like really try to design our retreats for like the introverts out there in the world?

Yeah. There’s a lot that we do that really tries to wrap our arms around everyone. So share some thoughts.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:03:00] Yeah. I mean, I think in brief we are. Maybe overly attuned to the inherent awkwardness of the, you know, 13-year-old markets. Mm-hmm. That tray of food and you look out and you’re not sure where to sit, and then you go eat in the bathroom stall kind of vibe.

Yeah. So. The evening we should, or the, the event rather I say kicks off on Thursday night with a happy hour, which perform better, puts together

Speaker: April 2nd, Thursday, April 2nd is when it kicks

Speaker 2: off Thursday, April 2nd. Now some people are gonna start the next day depending on when you fly in. Not everyone will go and that’s fine, but perform better [00:03:30] Pon this awesome happy hour, which is always a highlight of the event.

And you know, the reality is like we realize when people come into that room, if you don’t know anybody, that can feel a little bit daunting for some people. But a few things I would add, I mean the first is I think our. You know, of course I’m biased obviously, but I think our group is maybe a little bit more extra aware of that and sensitive to wanting people to feel included and feel felt welcome.

So I think this would be one of the least weird rooms for you to sort of go and present yourself into these [00:04:00] kinds of conversations. I think it’s also worth knowing too, you know, the nature of these events for what it’s worth is it can be easy to assume, like, oh, a lot of the people know each other and mm-hmm.

And listen, we’ve been, you know, doing this a a while now. It’s true. We have a, a core group of members that have been there for a long time. The nature of the event is in any given event, probably two thirds of the people know literally no one else. Right? Yeah. So you are not alone coming into this not knowing anybody else, and people are there in part, presumably We hope to actually meet and connect with other people.[00:04:30]

We’re actually, I, we haven’t talked about this in great details on our promises, but I’m also, I’m gonna make the pitch for us of doing some periodic icebreakers throughout that first happy hour or two. Yeah. ’cause even for the people who’ve been there for a long time, I wanna. With love, you know who you are.

If you’re listening, I wanna shake you up so you meet some other people so you’re not just like hanging out with the same people all the time. So anyway, that’s, that’s how we kick off.

Speaker: Yeah. Also say this, that a lot of folks come to our retreat solo. Some folks come with a partner. Yeah, I think probably majority or team members, but I think, I think a pretty good, probably probably the majority.

Do come solo. [00:05:00] So people are walking into a room of often strangers and we try our best to really like wrap their arms around them. And we’ve have, we have had some like lightly structured networking activities of these things in the past. I’m sure we’ll keep playing around with that and make it even better.

Yeah. But just so you know, you’re not gonna be walking into some sort of like, you know, middle school dance. It’s a group of people who are interested in getting to know you and your gym. Yeah. And you already, by walking in the room, by virtue of being in the gym or have a lot in common. Yeah. And so we try to really help you ride that wave and find people to connect with.

And so yes, that’s [00:05:30] just the opening evening. Maybe I’ll, I’ll continue by saying that the bulk of the event is Friday, April 3rd and Sat and Saturday, April 4th, and we kick off that first day. First thing in the morning on Friday. Doing even more kind of networking, getting to know each other. So you’re gonna right off the bat, first thing in the morning, make at least three new friends right at the beginning of our sessions.

And then throughout the day we find ways for you to reconnect with those people from, you know, we do some round table discussions during lunch. So during we. First of all, we’re buying lunch for you. So you don’t have to leave the room. You don’t have to go eat on your [00:06:00] own. You’re gonna come eat as a community with all of us.

And then during lunch, we’ll we’re gonna organize all the tables into discussion groups so you can sit down and eat lunch with other people who are interested in the same topic. And if that topic doesn’t interest you, after 15 minutes, you can move to another table, another group of people to talk about another topic.

And so, you know, we try to like hold you throughout the day to make sure that. You can be engaged in the conversation that’s most useful to you and your business at that time, and you can connect other people who are often going through the same thing. Because I think that’s, maybe I’ll just kind of mix.

Mm-hmm. Things I [00:06:30] wanna talk about. I think it’s one of the under spoken benefits people get from going to retreats like this. Is that kind of, that really valuable sense that I’m not alone.

Speaker 2: Yes,

Speaker: but I just, I left this thing meeting several people who all have the same challenges as me, the same goals as me, you know, a lot of the same background as me.

And that feeling as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner can be just in and of itself, so valuable to feel like you’re not crazy, you’re not alone. And it’s impossible, I think, to leave one of our events and not at least meet a handful of people who, who do that for [00:07:00] you. Who do that for you.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: So, um, I think that’s right.

So I mentioned, yeah, so I mentioned icebreakers. I mentioned some of our, some of our kind of discussion round tables during lunch. We are buying lunch for you both days. So both days you’ll be able to, you know, hang out and get to know people. What else would you consider really, you know, kind of a valuable attribute?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, maybe two things. The first, just to provide a little more context, when we say like, ice springers, what that will mean is, you know, we’ll come into the room.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: Right. And usually we, we know have. Coffee’s there and you’re getting your coffee and you’re coming, you sit as part of the [00:07:30] first section.

’cause we want you to have an opportunity to meet other people early in the weekend. So you get to know people. We will quite literally ask everybody to get up and find someone they don’t know and then have a brief conversation, right? Mm-hmm. Now, I think there’s maybe a meta lesson here, because when you think about building community in your gym, which I think correctly has received a lot of attention over these past several years.

I think it’s an interesting question or, okay, well how do, how do you do that? Right? Because you can’t like make adults be friends. [00:08:00] But really what you can do is you can create spaces where people talk about things that matter to people who actually care. Right. And the nature of the beast is you’re talking about something that you will all have in common.

You have a shared interest in that you’ve taken this big risk, you’ve opened up a gym, right? But you, you work at a gym ’cause there are some team members there as well. And then you have the opportunity to, you know. Chat about what’s going, well, chat about where you’re feeling some struggles. Mm-hmm. And then ideally we’re using again that lubrication we front load throughout the weekend.

’cause if you mentioned the other thing, just logistically, [00:08:30] we’ve looked to do, particularly with this event, so we just wanna make someone as easy as possible. Right. So it’s in Atlanta, it is a travel hub for Delta. It’s relatively centrally located. I mean it’s, it’s definitely southeast, but it’s. Certainly if you’re on the, the eastern half of the country, it’s not gonna be more than a couple hours away.

Speaker: There’s a million flights per day in and out of there. Yep. Yeah. I just booked my flights just last week and there were so many options. I was kind of overwhelmed by how, how easy it’s to get to Atlanta.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and that means, listen, we’d love to have you there for the whole [00:09:00] weekend. Come in on like, you know, Thursday, make a day of it, and then go home on Sunday.

But we also understand some of you might need to come in on Thursday evening. Get up, have Friday, Saturday, and then fly back early. I think another like point about logistics are, we’re ending Saturday a little bit early. We’re ending at 4:00 PM mm-hmm. So what that means is we do know it’s a holiday weekend that some people are looking to get back for Easter.

So we’ve baked that in. So because we are. Where we are located near an airport in practice, even if people on the West coast, because of the time change will work with [00:09:30] you, you have the ability to get to a a plane and if you wanna make it in and out, that available, that option is available for you. The other community building thing that we do, which is I think another.

You know, non awkward way to like hang out and break bread, make friends is we arrange a bunch of dinners of six to eight people, mostly anchored by a bi unicorns member that I think some of the vendors may play along this year, which should be fun. Yeah. And it’s an opportunity to meet in, you know, a small enough sized group that you can really connect [00:10:00] and meet with other people if you choose to come and hang out in my group.

I’d sign up early. You can get in if you wanna hang out with me. I always will sort of lead people in sort of some group shared conversations as a table, but of course before allowing things to devolve, right as people have a, you know, their their second drink and they wanna, you know, chat with the whoever’s next to them.

So that is one more opportunity to go and meet, which again, in most situations. Five to seven other individual people that are there by themself that are looking to meet friends. And again, [00:10:30] just, it just, I’m just constantly so sensitive. I just wanna remove all the awkwardness of like, now what do we do?

Yeah. And even, I would say even the last night, although it’s not quite as. Formalized. What we almost always do, and I suspect we will for this one as well mm-hmm, is we find some sort of local marketplace food hall, so you always know what to do. Right. And again, some people have more or less appetite for social stimulation.

I realize some, if you’re a real introvert, you’re gonna go in your room and trump the lights and sit in silence. But for those of you that want to keep the party going and. Want [00:11:00] to continue to connect with people, we’re gonna structure the whole situation. So you always know where to go. You always know where people are hanging out and their people are gonna be happy to hang out with you.

Yeah. And get to know you.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that all makes, that’s all so true. And, and listen, people write rate a lot of these activities at our retreat, on our feedback surveys as being some of those valuable parts. Some of the best learning people have said has is in these InBetween moments, during these breaks, during these lunches, during these dinners, when they connect with someone and really talk about the real shit that’s going on in their [00:11:30] business.

Those can be fantastic moments. ’cause we know a lot of you out there, especially if you’re in the first year or two or three of opening your gym. You probably don’t get out much. Like you probably don’t have a ton of time to go chill and have dinner with other people who are in the industry. And so I think there’s, you know, there’s a real benefit to getting out of your regular context.

Mm-hmm. Getting out of your gym for a few days, sitting down with other people who know what it’s like to kind of be in your shoes. And being able to like have a glass of wine or your whiskey or whatever you need and, and really chat about what’s [00:12:00] working and not working and have them really get it and then maybe have some thoughts or ideas for you.

I mean, like it’s so valuable and you know, I say this at the very beginning of every single retreat that we’ve done during opening remarks, and I really mean it is that I hope people come to our retreats and learn just as much from their fellow participants as they do from the people on the stage. And I think if you really do come with an open heart and open mind and really engage in some of these social activities, I think you will.

You know, I really hope that people take as many notes talking to their peers during lunch as they do during, you know, our one [00:12:30] hour, our one hour talks. You know, because I think there’s so much to be learned. There’s much wisdom in this community that people can, can learn from. Any other kind of tips for folks out there, Fisher, if anyone’s listening and they’re still kind of on the fence about whether or not this retreat is for them or whether or not they should bring their team members.

Mm-hmm. There’s not sure what the right kind of level of investment in this is.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Final thoughts?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I’ll give you two. I mean, the first is, you know, maybe oddly we haven’t really talked about the content at all of the event, and you know, the focus of [00:13:00] this event is marketing and sales.

So most, not all, there we’re actually have a variety of different topics, but most of the content is gonna be focused on. Getting more leads. Converting those leads. Yeah, getting more clients, helping more people, making more money. So if that is something that you would benefit from, and virtually everybody listening will benefit from, we work very hard, particularly, no, not me, killer us to make sure that the content is good, to really work with our presenters and make sure that you’re getting valuable.

Actionable things you can do. [00:13:30] I think it is also important to understand anybody that’s been following my work lately. I’ve certainly had some meaningful updates lately for how I’m thinking about marketing and how I’m approaching this with my gym. And I think understanding like what’s actually working now from a group of, and you know, listen, the people in the the stage can be some pretty sophisticated people doing some very.

Interesting. I would say like advanced and cutting edge stuff that is gonna help you get the edge in your given market. So the content also is going to be a big piece of this, right? So maybe we’ve, we’ve undersold that a little bit. Yeah, I think the second and final thing I’ll say [00:14:00] is. If you like the cut of our jib, if you are, have a sense from listening to this podcast that we are, you know, the kind of people you might wanna hang out with.

I mean, like, listen, there’s a lot of vibes, a lot of vibes out there, a lot of different people that do what we do. You know, there’s just different flavors. And for me, part of what made this last event so powerful was, and it wasn’t like it did, didn’t happen before, but there was this a very clear sense of like.

I really have a feeling like the, the kind of person that’s a cultural [00:14:30] fit. Yeah. For this, I’m not saying that you have to have, you know, been slightly nerdier high school or that you have to have, you know, really like reading hard sci-fi or, or books that have maps in the front of the books. But, you know, there, I think, I don’t wanna say like, you know, we’re a slightly nerdy crew, but like, I don’t know, kind of, I mean some people I’m sure are very cool.

I wasn’t. Yeah. So at any rate, I would just encourage you to like listen to that impulse and if you’re somebody that’s been a little bit of a lurker and you know you’re interested in maybe doing the unicorn site at [00:15:00] some point, but you’re not sure now’s the right time, or you know for sure it’s not the right time, but just you know that we are for you and you’re probably gonna be for us.

We just love to meet you. Yeah, I would just say follow that impulse. The flight is gonna be affordable. The hotels are very affordable. We’re covering lunch, we’re looking to make this as affordable as this possibly can, and would love to see you there.

Speaker: Yeah, ditto to all that. We would love to meet you if you, if you, if you, if you like what this, what we do on this podcast, come get two days of it.

You know, we’d love to have you. I’ll just, I’ll share my final thoughts on this is that there’s actually two [00:15:30] new things we’re doing to our, with our agenda, with our content at this, at this retreat we’ve never done before. So this is even for you listeners out there who’ve maybe been to our past retreats, some reason to come back again.

One thing we’re doing is on day two of our retreat, we actually have a whole advanced track. There’s gonna be a whole room you can go to. For all of day two, where we’re gonna have some topics that are really for business owners who’ve been around for a while.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: More advanced topics like opening multiple locations, how to manage multiple units, like things like that.

Buying real estate. Yeah. We’re gonna have a whole track real estate, [00:16:00] et cetera. It’s gonna be a whole track for you all on day two. So that’s something we’ve never done before and we’re excited to kind of offer that for people who’ve been around the block for a while.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Speaker: The other thing we’re doing, which we’ve never done before, is we have a, a whole kind of dedicated session.

To people who come to this retreat that are not the owners of the gym. So if you can come with your GM or your, your coaches or anyone on your team mm-hmm. There’s gonna be a whole session for them we’ve never done before, which is just for teaching them how to manage up right. How to, how to be the best team players they can [00:16:30] be and how to help you become the best leader you can be if you’re listening as an owner.

And we’ve, you know, while we’ve done some things before, specifically for. For like, you know, GMs, we haven’t done one dedicated to like all staff who aren’t owners. Mm-hmm. And I’m excited because I think there’s more and more of those folks coming to these retreats. Yep. And so, so first time for that. So come and check it out.

Another reason to bring your team, if you have a team. Yeah. Alright friends, well I think we’ve talked a lot enough about this. Yeah, it’s, it’s gonna be exciting. It’s gonna be really fun. All the information you [00:17:00] need to just make this decision is down below. And also if you to reach out to Mark and I, you know, either DM us over on Instagram or reach out to our emails, just Michael and mark@biunicorns.com.

If you really want someone to talk to about whether or not this is the right fit for you. We’re all, we’re here for you. Let’s, let’s have a conversation ’cause we would literally love to have you there and meet you if it feels, if it feels right. Alright, well thanks for great conversation as always, Fisher and listeners, I’ll see you on the next one.

Have a kick ass week. Bye [00:17:30] bye.