What Successful Gym Owners Are Doing Differently in 2026 (w/ Michael Keeler)

[00:00:00] 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 for 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. Today is a little bit something different because today I’m actually sharing an episode where I’m a guest on another podcast. I recently was interviewed by the, uh, fantastic Stuart Aitken, who runs the Small Group GymPod podcast, and I’ve known Stuart for many years.

He’s been, um, uh, in the industry for a long, long time, and he does [00:01:00] such great work. I’m such a big fan of all the work he does. He mainly works with, uh, personal trainers and entrepreneurs who are just getting started in their fitness journey. He’s fantastic. And so I will put a link below, below down to his podcast.

But today’s episode, he interviews me. So I f- And he generously, uh, generously agreed to let us share it on this podcast. So, uh, in there, he asked me about what’s working and not working right now in terms of generating leads for gyms. We talk a lot about the systems I think most gym owners need to put in this, in their, into their businesses to get more accomplished with less stress.

We cover a lot of topics. I think it’s a really fun conversation, if I do say so myself. So, um, I hope you’ll enjoy it as well. Here’s my interview, um, by Stuart Aitken. Enjoy. We really recommend a, a process, you know, that is like a weekly leadership meeting. We call it a, a, you know, a weekly mission control meeting.

And I really think of this meeting as the place where you, where you, um, uh, is really your deadline every week to fill out these metrics and go and find all these numbers in your software wherever you need to find them. And then you sit down and you have a very [00:02:00] structured meeting to review those metrics, talk about what’s working, what’s not working.

Um, we, we, we maintain like an issues and opportunities list in all of our gyms, so they’re always going to this list every single week and, and trying to put out the fires and think ahead about what’s coming.

Michael Keeler, thank you for, for joining me today Stuart, I’m so glad to be here, so glad to see you again. It’s been a while since our last conversation, and so I’m grateful for the invitation to come in and chat with you again. Yeah. It was an easy decision when I was like, “Who should I talk to next?” And I was like, “Well, I haven’t spoken to Michael Keeler in a bit.”

It’s a shame I can’t do this in person with him anymore, but- I know … hey, we’ll do it over Zoom. Well- Second best … it’s an excuse for me to come to Scotland, so, uh- There you go … you know, next time may- we will be in person, ’cause I actually have never been. Never, I’ve been, never been, so, uh, it’s time for a Scotland visit.

Yes, 100%. Well, when you get that set up, we will do it in person, somewhere nice in Edinburgh with a view of the castle maybe, something like that. Ooh, great. I love it. I [00:03:00] love it. Michael, what are- What are some of the things that you think separate, at this moment in time, the gyms that you’re seeing in BFU who are doing really well, succeeding, versus maybe some of the ones that are struggling a little bit more?

Yeah. Um, I’ll say maybe kind of two things. One is just straight up lead generation, right? The ones that are doing well and really separate themselves from the pack have real systems for consistently generating and converting leads. The ones who are struggling are winging it, and I say that with love because I know it’s hard, right?

And I don’t say winging it because they don’t care. They’re winging it because they just haven’t decided to invest time and energy in learning how to do the marketing and sales piece, in part because I know most gym owners did not start a gym because they want to be marketing experts or salespeople, right?

They want to help people. And so I understand that learning that stuff is an uphill climb for some folks. But if you really want to have a long-term success in any [00:04:00] business, and, you know, and this is doubly important in gyms because we just need a steady stream of leads, you need real systems for generating those leads.

So the folks that we work with, you know, Business for Unicorns, that we see that are really crushing it, they have, you know, a consistent process for paid ads. They have a consistent process for getting referrals. They have a cons- they make consistent offers to people who were their former clients. They make consistent offers to folks on our email list who, um, are on the email list but have never bought anything from them.

We call them never-been clients, right? They have systems for generating leads from having, like, kind of multiple poles in the water. There’s not just one place where the leads come from. They’re just not closing their eyes and praying that someone gives them a referral this week. They have systems that proactively go and, and, you know, fish using all those poles in the water.

That’s one piece is systems for generating leads. The, the second thing I would say, and I think this is a differentiator more and more these days, I’m not sure if you’re seeing this in Scotland or the broader UK, but in the US, some of the gyms I see that have the [00:05:00] best retention are the gyms who have taught their teams how to build strong, sticky, deeply connected relationships with their clients, that their trainers are well-trained on how to have meaningful conversations, have coaching conversations, ask open-ended questions, ask them and check in about their goals on a regular basis.

‘Cause we know that clients stay when, one, they have a friend at the gym, someone they look forward to seeing. They stay when they have clear goals that they’re reaching toward and hopefully achieving over time. Um, and, uh, and there’s a lot of places where this is not the case, where people are giving good workouts, right, but they’re not making really deeply connected, sticky relationships.

And in part, it’s because they haven’t trained their team to do that. And so I think systems for lead generation and conversion- And systems for, um, for training the team and holding them accountable to really connecting with clients on a deeper level makes retention, you know, uh, through the roof compared to the places that don’t.

Right. So you’ve got two main [00:06:00] pieces there, right? Like, you’ve got the lead gen piece, bringing- Mm-hmm … clients in. You’ve then got the looking after clients piece. I often think of it like a, like an hourglass almost. Sure. Yeah. It’s like you’ve got the top bit, that little bit, clients fall in, you gotta look after them and make sure that they’re taken care of.

Yes. I think every gym owner knows that stuff, right? Do you also think there’s a piece here around the way they use their schedules on, like, a day-to-day- Sure … week-to-week perspective? Yeah. Let me just go back and say yes. I think just to… I think we agree on this. I think people know that they’re supposed to be doing a lot of the stuff I just mentioned, but they don’t do it consistently.

Yep. And some people just, you know, and, you know, this is a very common experience, they just don’t know what they don’t know, so they don’t know actually how bad they are at it ’cause they haven’t been tracking the results consistently. But once you start tracking your results consistently, you’ll realize there’s often a lot of room for improvement.

Um, not just in what you’re doing, but how consistently you’re doing it. Um, that being said, yes, I think, uh, how they spend their time matters here, right? Because all the things I mentioned take time, and it’s ti- it [00:07:00] takes time off the training floor. And one of the biggest bottlenecks we see for, for gym owners that come through Business Unicorns is, is that the, the owner themselves is the bottleneck to the business.

Mm-hmm. They’re the ones who are stuck on the training floor. All decisions still run through them. Uh, you know, they, they really are the gatekeeper for all power and authority and decision-making, right? Um, and that’s, that’s not, that’s not scalable, right? So we need someone on the team, and it usually starts with the owner, to have dedicated time off the floor- behind closed doors to do the lead follow-up, to have the sales conversations, to train the team on all the conversational retention things we just talked about.

And so I think you’re right. Uh, um, owners at some point have to decide that that’s gonna be them and dedicate real time to those tasks every week, or they have to decide that’s not gonna be them. They’re gonna continue to train on the floor 20, 30-plus hours per week, and they’re gonna hire other people.

They’re gonna find the talent to do those things ’cause they don’t want to. I think either path, I think, is viable, but [00:08:00] someone’s gotta, to your point, really invest consistent time in those things. Is that making sense? It does. It makes total sense. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I’ll, I’ll circle back to that in a second.

I wanna go back to something that you correctly, I think, brought to light, which is around the tracking of things- Mm-hmm … around your marketing and your sales. Yeah. And that’s something whenever I start working with a gym owner, I’m like, “Right, well, what’s your, what’s your leads list look like? How are we going- Mm

on in terms of converting people to trials that are on leads? What have we got for email lists?” Yeah. That type of stuff, right? So do you have a way to think about that or some, maybe some practical steps that somebody listening can be like, “I’m not really doing anything on that front just now. What should- Yeah

I be tracking for actually my marketing activities?” Yeah. That’s a great question. Well, I think, you know, like you, you, you probably have a bunch of tools and materials you just give people when they work with you, and that’s the benefit of working with a coach or a coaching group of any kind is that we give you shortcuts, right?

You come into Business Unicorns and become what we have called a Unicorn Society member, and we just give you a dashboard. We tell you exactly [00:09:00] what to track and w- how to track it, uh, and we walk you through that process step by step. But for anyone listening who’s not gonna be part of a coaching group anytime soon where we just hand you the answers, it’s really simple.

I would say I would start by tracking at least three or four things, which is how many total leads you’re getting every week, which w- we define a lead as someone who raises their hand and expresses interest, right? Someone who gave you their phone number or their email. Uh, and said, “Hey, I wanna learn more about your gym.”

So you track how many of those you get every week, and that can be from events in your community to people filling out a form on your website to DMing you on social media. So you have probably a few places where those leads are coming from, right? But you track them, then you count that every single week, the same time every week, so you have a consistent kinda seven-day record.

Then you wanna track of all those people, hopefully you’re following up with them, and we can talk more about that if you want. But then you track how many of them actually talk to you . How many of them actually get whatever your first step is, whether that’s a phone call or come in to the– for a tour.

Whatever your first step is, you wanna track how many people do that, [00:10:00] and then from there, how many of them become members, right? If you just start by tracking those three numbers, that’s it. Uh, there’s more numbers I think you should eventually track, right . But for starters, just those three things, you’re gonna be, you know, already learning a lot about how what we call your, you know, your lead funnel is working.

Um, and then over time you can add more metrics. If you add more steps or more complexity or start incorporating different software with automations. There’s lots more you can track, but I would start with those three, and that already gives you, you know, a, a great picture of how things are going.

Anything you would add, Stuart? No, I think at absolute basic, yes. Like- Yeah … step one, if you’re not tracking anything, just track those three. Absolutely. And certainly over time you can add other things in. Like, I mean, how many, um, follow-ups are you doing? How many- Mm-hmm … posts are you putting out? How’s your ads getting on?

Yeah. Those, those kind of things. But at least just to begin with on a weekly basis probably, would you agree? Like most- Yeah. Every single week. We really recommend a [00:11:00] process, you know, that is like a weekly leadership meeting. We call it a, a, you know, a weekly mission control meeting. And I really think of this meeting as the place where you, where you, um, is really your deadline every week to fill out these metrics and go and find all these numbers in your software wherever you need to find them.

And then you sit down and you have a very structured meeting to review those metrics, talk about what’s working, what’s not working. Um, we, we, we maintain like an issues and opportunities list in all of our gyms, so they’re always going to this list every single week and, and trying to put out the fires and think ahead about what’s coming.

And so we do think a weekly pulse of looking at these metrics is really pretty critical. If you wait till the end of the month, you’re kind of missing a lot of opportunity. All the metrics that we’re talking about here, these kind of lead funnel metrics, we call these leading indicators, right? These are indicators that you can measure in the moment and adjust in the moment to make sure that you end the month with a successful month, right?

Um, a lagging, a lagging indicator is the opposite. A lagging indicator is looking at your P&L once a month. Mm-hmm. Your profit and [00:12:00] loss sheet. Once a month when you look at that, it’s kind of done, right? Yes. The damage is done, right? It’s, it’s a final word on whether you are profitable that month. Um, they can’t do anything about it after the fact.

But these are, these leading indicators, whether we’re getting leads, talking to leads, converting leads, we can make a change from this week to next week if those numbers don’t look good. So we wanna be really proactive about looking at those numbers and making adjustments to our offer, to if we’re doing paid ads, to our, our, our ads Um, et cetera, et cetera.

Can keep, keep going, but yeah. See, when you, when you talk about this mission control meeting- Yeah … would you advise, ’cause a lot of the gym owners that listen to this podcast, Michael, are often solo operators. Yeah, great question. Maybe, they maybe, or they maybe even have only a part-time staff member who they’re not involving in this.

They might just be, the staff member might just be doing a few shifts, right? Yep. Would you still advise the gym owner to have something like this in their, their schedule each week? Absolutely. Yeah. We have a, we have a lot of folks in our Unicorn Society group who are solo operators or maybe have a few part-time folks, [00:13:00] and we still ask them to do this meeting with themselves.

Normally, we, we have a bigger team, this meeting will take, like, an hour to 90 minutes every single week, but when you’re doing it with yourself, it can be like a hot 30 minutes, right? 20, 30 minutes. But you still follow the same agenda, and what it is, it’s the discipline of learning as an owner how to sit down, track all my data, make sense of my data, right?

Really analyze it and make sure I understand what it means so I have an ongoing story I, I’m telling myself about my business. And then learning based on that analysis, what do I do differently? When this number is up, what action do I take? When this number is down, what action do I take? So even doing that as yourself, as a solopreneur, gives you the discipline to kind of what we call work on your business, right?

This is the work of working on the business, of pulling all the levers and pulleys you need to move the business in the right direction, and that doesn’t often happen- Okay. Uh, you know, uh, casually. Right? Doesn’t happen if you just only do this when you think about it or when you feel like [00:14:00] it, right? You know, or, um, or when things are really bad, right?

You have to be really proactive at the leading edge of your business to guide it in the right direction. So 30 minutes a week, if you’re a solopreneur, is really all you need to do that, you know. And over time, as, if your team grows, then yeah, then maybe might need a little bit longer. You might include at some point someone like a head coach.

You might include some, at some point someone like an, like, um, who’s running your office or admin stuff. You might include a VA at some point. Yeah. There are other people you might include over time. And, um, and certainly our, our bigger gyms have, you know, big leadership teams, or if you have multiple locations, maybe it’s a GM at each location, right?

So this definitely scales. But yeah, 100%, even as solopreneurs, you should absolutely have this time set aside every week to think about and work on your business. So when you sit down and do this- Yeah … you’re tracking your metrics. Yeah. You said, I think you said opportunities and issues where you’re- Yeah.

So I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you more specifically what our agenda is. Yeah, so well, [00:15:00] it starts actually funny enough w- with your, even when you’re doing this by yourself, we recommend you start this meeting by actually, like, noticing and naming some recent win. So you start this meeting by celebrating something that’s going well, and we do that often and, and you’re already shaking your head for those of you who are watching, because entrepreneurs never stop to celebrate things going well.

So we recommend you get the, the discipline every week of starting this meeting of asking yourself, “What’s one thing that went well this last week?” Let me just like notice it and name it out loud so I can say, “You know what? Could pat myself on the back. Good job, Michael. We did, we did that this week.” And if I have a team, I also want them to get in the habit of noticing what is going well.

So we start the meeting with that. Um, and I, I’ll summarize ’cause it, it, I don’t want to get in too much detail, but then we, we do dive in and in some cases what we’ll do is we’ll, um, we’ll review like our mission and our values from time to time in this meeting to make sure that we are still on top of, you know, what are we here to do and what are the values we wanna, we wanna show up with every day.

We’ll dive into our metrics, and people will report on, on [00:16:00] the core metrics we just talked about. Uh, and we have both weekly and monthly metrics. Every week we’re looking at the leading indicators, the marketing metrics, et cetera. And every month we will pause and also look at the monthly metrics: profitability, client churn, things that really are best looked at, at a snapshot in time once a month.

So we look at those dashboard metrics, and if anything is going well, we’ll stop and celebrate. If anything’s not going well, and we’ve turned that number red on our spreadsheet ’cause it’s… we’re not meeting our goals, then we’ll put it on our issues and opportunities list to talk about, right? So we’re going through our dashboard and identifying things that are going well, let’s give each other a high five.

Things that are not going well consistently, we, we put ’em on the issues and opportunities list to be something we have to talk about. Then what we do is we go through our quarterly projects, and we use like, um, kind of a entrepreneur operating system style quarterly planning projects. Um, you know, do y’all, do y’all follow that process?

Do you… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you talked about it? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it’s not nothing, not rocket science. It’s just every quarter we sit down and identify the three to five most [00:17:00] important projects the gym will tackle every single quarter. Uh, and these are things that, uh, if you’re a solopreneur, that means these are the projects you’re tackling as the owner.

As you have a larger team, this is, these are things that m-multiple people on your team can be the captain of these projects and be driving them forward. But in this meeting, we go through and anyone who owns a project reports on it. Uh, and if you’re a solopreneur, what you’re gonna do is check in with yourself and say, “Okay, I’m working on these three to five priorities this quarter.

These are the most important things I’m going to accomplish. Did I do the, the step I said I was gonna do last week?” So we recommend taking those quarterly projects, plotting them out week by week what you’re gonna do each week, and in this meeting you’re saying, “Did I do my task from last week? Yes or no?”

Holding yourself accountable to taking the action on your priorities ’cause, as we know, entrepreneurs, y’all wear many hats, right? You wear many hats. It’s very easy to focus on the things that give you the quick wins, the dopamine cookies, and this meeting is holding you accountable to focus, to eat your veggies, right?

To focus on the, the, the things that are really most [00:18:00] important. So we go through the projects Are we, are we doing what we said we’re gonna do or not? And if we’re not, something’s in the way. We’re stuck on a project. You guessed it, we put it on the issues and opportunities list, right? So this first part of the meeting, the first half of the meeting, we’re going through our dashboard and our projects and saying, “Are things working the way we want them to?”

If not, we list them on this big long list of issues and opportunities, and then we’ll talk about that in the whole second half of our meeting more or less. Then the whole second half of our meeting, we go through our issues and opportunities and try to solve them, right? We s- Opportunities are things like, you know, oh, this local coffee shop just opened up down the street.

Should we partner with them? Great opportunity. Issues are things like we’ve had crappy lead flow for three weeks in a row. What are we gonna do differently? Let’s solve it. And again, even if you’re just doing this meeting yourself, it’s you forming the discipline to think about your business in this way, that your business is full of issues and opportunities, and which ones get your time and attention, uh, are really structured in this meeting every single week.

And [00:19:00] then obviously there’s, if you’re with a team, there’s action steps from those issues and opportunities that we record, and we hold people accountable to finishing before the meeting next week. And so I could go into more detail, but that’s the kind of overall kind of arc of it. Um, anything you want me to elaborate on?

No, I think that is so useful and Do you know, Michael, it’s, it’s often these, sometimes these little reminders that even for me, as somebody who doesn’t have staff, I have stopped doing that kind of thing where I am sitting down each week, and I am good at quarterly planning- Mm-hmm … um, but I am not as good at setting time aside every single week and looking at the ins and outs of the business, and setting time aside to go like, “What, what am I actually focusing in on here based on what things I’ve said I’m focusing on this quarter?”

Yeah. It is so easy, easier nowadays than it’s ever been, to be sidetracked and to be, um, [00:20:00] prioritizing what you called the docu- dopamine cookies, right? Those little- Yeah … things that just give you that, “Oh, I’m actually moving forwards here. I’m, I’m getting… I’m putting out a social media post, and I’m seeing the likes come in.

I’m doing this other thing, and that feels nice.” Mm-hmm. But is it actually related to what you’re really trying to work towards? So for, even for me, this kind of reminder is so nice. So I am sure for some of the gym owners listening, this is like, “Right, I, I’m gonna s- pause this.” As you would say on your BFU episodes, I hope you’re taking notes of this.

Yes, exactly. Pause it and say to yourself, when is this meeting going to happen for you- Mm-hmm … in the next week so that you’ve got that time aside to- Yes … actually sit back and look at the business. Yeah. I, I, I’m glad it’s a good reminder, Stuart, because I- I’m just, I’m really kind of passionate about this because I know everyone wants their businesses to grow, right?

And I mean, you know, even if you wanna stay a solopreneur in a small single location, you still want some growth. I just know businesses don’t grow without this constant watering, right? You need to have this time and attention spent on actually [00:21:00] growing it in the right directions. Um, and- Uh, um, oh, I forgot what I was going to say next, but, but I think, you know, it’s just important to have it…

Oh, that’s what I was going to say, which was this meeting really should happen at the same time and place on your calendar forever, right? For example, at Biz Unicorns, our weekly mission control meeting is on my calendar, um, on Thursday afternoons on my calendar in perpetuity, right? And everyone on our team knows that we treat it like it’s non-negotiable.

That if anyone has to miss it for any reason, we reschedule it that week. We don’t ever skip a meeting. It’s never like, “Oh, well, it’s summertime. A few people are out. Let’s just…” We’ve never skipped a meeting. In the 13 years of owning Mark Fisher Fitness, we started doing this weekly meeting, I would say pretty early on.

I want to say it was year four, maybe, that we started doing a weekly, th- this kind of leadership meeting. Didn’t s- didn’t miss one for the rest of the 13 years, right? We just… It, it does not get canceled. It only gets moved, and ideally it’s the same time every week [00:22:00] because you want to be consistently looking at the last seven days of data on your, on your dashboard, on your metrics.

And so I just want to say, you know, treat this meeting like an appointment with a doctor that took you months to make, and you just, you can’t miss it. Um, and the minute it’s optional, you start kicking it around, and it becomes so infrequent it’s not even useful. And I think that’s what’s happened with, with me as a, as an example here.

Yeah. I have got busier, and I’ve said to myself, “Well, I don’t need to do this.” Mm-hmm. But actually it’s like, no, this is essential to… I love the, the analogy there of, um, watering your business. Mm-hmm. Because it is so easy to get sucked into the, the day-to-day running of it and not be stepping back and actually looking at these metrics, these opportunities, these little issues that might be little just now- Mm-hmm

but can easily start to form into bigger things that mean, wait, we’ve just, we’ve just lost 10 clients- Yeah … that we never usually do. We’ve just, we’ve just dropped the ball on lead generation. We’ve just had a message from a client saying we didn’t even [00:23:00] reply to their last message, and we never- Mm-hmm

let that stuff go. Those things can fester into bigger issues, which then become things that have- Yeah … you’re like, “How did that happen?” Yeah. Because we’ve stopped creating the space to actually look at the business as a whole. I’ll give you another analogy. Stewart, this is exactly what some of our clients say about working out

Right? If they’re not actively in pain or not actively pursuing a goal, “Well, I don’t, I don’t really need it. I feel fine. I don’t need to go to the gym this week.” Right? You know, and over time, that can catch up with people, right? Their health can really decline. They’re not making progress anymore. They lose the motivation because they’ve backslid a little bit, right?

And so, you know, this is the thing that we help our clients with all the time – Sure … in our gyms, and that’s why you and I have jobs helping gym owners, ’cause gym owners do the same thing with their gyms . You know? Yes. Yes, they do. And so I think it’s a, it’s another analogy that I think you’re, w- hopefully will resonate with your listeners.

Big time. Yeah. Michael, when it, when it comes to the, a different stage of the, the, the journey of being a gym owner, I suppose, one of the, one of the biggest [00:24:00] pieces, and you guys have a nice document on this about best offers that gyms can use. Oh, sure. What are some of the best ones that you’re seeing just now work versus maybe the ones that have stopped working as well as they used to?

Is there anything on that? Yeah, sure. I mean, I’ll say this, that our go-to, uh, well, I’ll say this. We’re a big fan of low-barrier offers, right? And I know some people prefer high-ticket offers and things like that, but we really recommend all of our Unicorn Society members have… And their, and our Unicorn Society members span the gamut from solopreneurs to excuse me-

Our Unicorn Center members span the gamut from kind of solopreneurs to multi-location owners, and all of them we recommend having a low-barrier offer. And what I mean by that is some inexpensive short-term way for people to try your service before they buy. And so our go-to offer for low-barrier offer is, is two weeks of unlimited visits for under one hundred US dollars.

And that, that formula really works for a reason, because people don’t need more [00:25:00] than two weeks to decide whether or not they like your gym. Folks who are doing a month or two months low-barrier, it’s too long. People don’t need that much time. And you don’t need that much time to making so little money from them.

Mm-hmm. You know? You don’t make a lot of money on your low-barrier offer. In some cases, you might even just break even on your low-barrier offer, and that’s fine. That’s, that’s by design. Um, but we want it to be two weeks because people don’t need much more time to feel some wins, get to recognize this is a place where they can really fit in, for you to get to know how to serve them and to get to know them a little bit.

It doesn’t take more than a few visits. So two weeks is great. Then under a hundred US dollars for us, the research shows, can be an impulse purchase, meaning I don’t need to go ask my spouse about ninety-nine dollars, right? I don’t need to go budget for that for the most part. I can just decide, “Yes, I’m gonna try this for two weeks for ninety-nine dollars.”

Uh, and it’s not so cheap that we’re gonna get people who don’t wanna spend any money at all, right? Sure. Ninety-nine to a hundred bucks is still enough money that if I’m gonna tell you now your membership [00:26:00] costs, you know, a hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars per month, you’re probably pretty teed up for that, right?

You’ve already spent a hundred dollars on just two weeks. So spending two hundred dollars on a month is not gonna be a, a big leap, right? That’s pretty in line. But it’s cheap enough and short enough. Uh, and I’ll say this. Our low-barrier offer should al-always come with a money back guarantee so that there’s no risk, right?

If you don’t like it, I’ll just give you your money back. Or if you join, I’ll apply this hundred dollars to your first month. So when you take risk off the table, it’s very easy for someone to say, “Oh yeah. Oh, I’ll try it, right? If I don’t like it and you’re gonna give me my money back, there’s no risk. If I do like it and I join-” You apply that to my first month, there’s no risk.

It’s basically like a free workout for two weeks, you know? Um, and I’ll pay you if I liked it, but just don’t join. Right? That’s– Yeah, that’s the worst case scenario is you, you liked it and you’re out a hundred dollars for, you know, whatever, four to six workouts. Yeah. So that’s our favorite low-barrier offer.

I will say that the one thing that I think was a trend here, at least in the US, I’m not sure if you saw this for a while, that I [00:27:00] don’t see much anymore, and I’m glad ’cause I don’t think it was very ethical or worked, is, um, a lot of folks doing these high-ticket offers where people had to pay up front, um, uh, and then, like earn their money back or pay nothing up front, but then pay if they don’t finish the program.

All these kind of like, uh, I don’t know, it’s so shady. Those kind of shady offers that are confusing, that they’re conditional. Like any sort of conditional offer that this is cheap if you show up for all twenty of your visits or, you know, this becomes half the price if you actually lose ten pounds. I hate that crap.

And, and I think the market hates it, too. I think people see that as, as inauthentic and shady, and I think it gives salespeople a bad name when we do offers that are conditional like that, and it feels like you’re playing this game with consumers. So– But it was a real big trend to do that kind of crap in the US for a while.

I’m not seeing any more of– I’m not seeing much of it anymore, I should say. Um, and so if any listeners have done things like that, I get it. It’s tempting to wanna do those kind of bait and [00:28:00] switch moves, but, um, I really recommend against, against it. It can really ruin your reputation. I 100% agree. And I can’t say that I’ve seen too many UK-based gyms do that, but I’ve seen versions of it that always transpire across the water and gyms are like- Yes

“Oh, well, we’ll do a, we’ll do a version of that.” Yeah. With the 14-day, Michael- Yeah … is that, do you recommend naming this trial? Is this just, like, 14 days for $99 and that’s the name of it? Is it, is it called- Yeah … a specific thing? It’s a great question, Stuart. I, I’m kind of agnostic about whether you brand it or not.

I don’t think it matters much. I think in some markets it can be really helpful. For example, we work with a lot of gyms that do sports performance, sports performance for, like, youth and teenage athletes, and sometimes they benefit from branding it because they make it sound like this assessment program, right?

That in these 14 days we’re gonna assess you as an athlete and give you a score and tell you about your, your gap in your throwing speed, [00:29:00] or I don’t know anything about sports performance, but you know what I’m saying. Yeah. Right. They, they, they, they really kind of stretch the gap in these 14 days w- from an athletic perspective.

And I think naming that, you know, like, like some sort of assessment name that speaks to the performance your athletes care about, I think there’s a value there to treating it like a program. For most adults who are doing gen pop fitness, I think 14 days for $99 is all they need, they care about, right?

Adding some sort of special branding or name to it I don’t think matters. I do think, you know, uh, one piece of the process that I think does require maybe some naming is often the first step to selling your low barrier offer is getting someone on a call All right, getting someone to call or getting someone to come in t- to have a conversation with you.

And I think branding that conversation is more important than branding the offer, right? Mm-hmm. So for example, even at Business Unicorns right now, if you go to our website or we s- we’re th- sending you ads, we’re trying to get you to come to a brainstorming call, a brainstorm call, right? So we name it that thing because we want entrepreneurs to know when they come talk to us, [00:30:00] this 15-minute call is to brainstorm ideas for improving their business.

At Mark Fisher Fitness, our low barrier offer was called a strategy session ’cause we wanted our members to know when you come into our gym, we’re gonna have this 30-minute conversation with you. We’re gonna get- we’re gonna help you develop a strategy for achieving your fitness goals, right? I’ve heard some people call them success sessions.

I’ve heard some people call them all kinds of things. So I think naming that conversation, I think can be valuable ’cause it tells people what it is. ‘Cause by default they assume it’s just like a high pressure sales conversation. But when you can name that conversation, it tells them what the value is that you hope they get from it.

Uh, and I think naming that is maybe more important than naming, like, the offer itself. Nice. I like that. So the other question on this is if there’s a gym owner listening, they maybe don’t have an LBO, a low barrier offer. Mm-hmm. And they decide, right, this one makes sense. I’m gonna go for the one that you’ve suggested, but in UK monetary terms.

If they run with that and [00:31:00] that becomes the consistent offer, how often do you guys recommend that they maybe run something a little bit different- Mm-hmm … to try and just change things up? If they’re maybe doing their weekly meeting- Yeah … um, two or three months’ time and they’re like, “Lead flow’s stopped a little bit.

Why don’t we run something different?” Yeah. “‘Cause it’s the end of the summer,” for example. Mm-hmm. It’s a great question. So I think, I think of this in kind of two buckets, two categories. So- And there’s p- a few things in your business that function the same way. I think if your low barrier offer is more or less kind of an evergreen offer, that’s, that’s the offer that’s kind of always available by default.

I’ll, I’ll give an analogy. I also think this is true for a referral offer, right? I think every gym should have a referral offer that’s something like, you know, refer a friend and they get $50 off their first month and you get $50 off your next month. That’s just our evergreen default offer that’s always available no matter what.

But then on top of that, we’re making different offers on a regular basis, right? I think at least, you know, once a quarter we want people to get a different kind of [00:32:00] referral offer. So once a quarter we’ll say, “Oh, well for the, the month of…” What month are we in? “The month of June, instead of 50 bucks it’s 100 bucks for this month.”

Mm. Right? So we’re switching up. Or, “For the, the month of May we’re doing a bring a friend day. So if you bring a friend to this day you both get 50…” But you know, you get the idea. But we’re switching it up. Same thing with a low barrier offer. The, the evergreen one is kind of always available by default.

It’s always the one on our website, ’cause frankly I don’t want you having to go and update your website all the time. Yeah. Or all of your landing pages or your ads, right? L- let the, let the low barrier offer, the evergreen one just run. But on top of that from time to time I think you do do quarterly or seasonal, you know, offers that change it up.

Uh, and you can tweak it just a little. So instead of, you know, $99 for two weeks maybe it’s $49 for two weeks. Um, instead of, um, two weeks maybe, maybe you do one that’s a dollar for a week, right? You can switch it up from time to time, uh, without, without having to go and redo your website and all your landing pages and all your ads.

So I would let that kind of evergreen one run [00:33:00] and then on top of it you wanna think of these as distinct campaigns that run in addition to these forever evergreen offers. And then once in a while if your evergreen offer is just really not performing at all I would say it’s fine to change. But if you’re finding yourself changing it like multiple times per year you might not have found one that works for you to begin with, right?

So don’t- Does that, does that happen often? Uh, that, that it just doesn’t work? Yeah. No. No, no. But people get nervous. They have, like, a slow month, a slow season. Like, “Oh, crap, I have to change my low-bar offer.” Well, it’s like, well, no, let’s look at your historical data, actually. This month is always slow for you.

Mm-hmm. Instead, let’s run a different campaign. So let’s leave your low-bar offer alone, but let’s try some other special offer, uh, that goes, that rides on, on top of it just for a week or a weekend or a one-day flash sale, you know? ‘Cause we wanna try something else. But oftentimes people tinker with the stuff that should be foundational, and I think just, just leave it alone.

That, that low-bar offer should be, should be good for pretty, for pretty long [00:34:00] term. You shouldn’t have to switch it much. So you’ve got… You d- you gave us two really nice things there, the referral side and the just, like, front-end offer side. Yeah. You’ve got an evergreen thing that is run- running constantly.

Yes. And you’ve also got maybe once a quarter- Yeah … you’re running something that’s a little bit more novel. I like to, um, I interviewed Chris Travis- Uh-huh … and he called these, like, RAD offers. Yeah. Rare and delightful offers. He loves that term. I really quite like- Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I do quite like that, though, for, like, running something that’s a little bit more…

It’s just, it’s just a shake-up for your audience- It’s special … isn’t it? It’s special. Yeah, something that you can, you can really shout about a little bit. Yeah. We always say, like, the, the, the sexiest language in marketing, right, is, like, new, first time, never before, you know? One day only, right? That’s what people get…

pe- gets people’s attention ’cause they’ve seen your evergreen offer. They’ve, uh, if they’ve been to your website, they know they can come for 14 days for s- $99. If they’re a member of your gym, they’ve seen the flyers. If I refer [00:35:00] a friend, yeah, you give me 50 bucks. I don’t really care about the 50 bucks. But once in a while, you surprise them and say, “Oh, well, just for this month, did you know it’s 100 bucks?”

Or you surprise them in saying, um, “Did you know that you could bring a friend for free for next week? We’re doing bring-a-friend week and it’s free, so just bring all your friends and family.” Right? And so you, I think that that RAD acronym is right, right? It’s, it’s rare and it’s delightful, right? You’re getting their attention with something that’s, um, a little bit of a pivot from what you normally do.

Right. So I’ve now got, listening to you talk, and I’m like, “Right, I’ll take the front end offer.” I’ve got something nice in my head, and I’m just going to take what you’ve suggested, or I’m going to use something that I’ve seen. Mm-hmm. What are some of the main… We’ve talked about a few of these anyway, Michael.

But right now, based on what you’re seeing in BFU, main marketing channels, main ways to promote this front end offer. What should the gym owners listening be using? Yeah. It’s a great question. I think, uh, when it comes to the front end offer, the main kind of poles we want people to have in the water, so to speak, are, [00:36:00] one is that referrals are always a driving force of every gym, right?

Getting, getting leads from your existing community is huge, right? And we do think, like, every quarter, you need to be spicing up with a different RAD, RAD offer. I’ll keep using Chris’s acronym. Um, every single quarter, because referrals are one of the most important parts of our marketing funnel. The other one that I think is really important that people often forget is, is, uh, f- is people who are on your list who’ve never been members.

So oftentimes, you have all of these unconverted leads, people who’ve opted into your funnel at some point and just have never purchased. I talked to a gym owner yesterday who, um, has not sent a single email to this group of people, and she looked up in her email system, and she had over 3,000 people on an email list, uh, uh, in her, in her list that was– They were already segmented in their own list, but she had never reached out to make them an offer.

So she’s got this list of 3,000 people just sitting there waiting to be made an offer, right? So I think people who’ve, who’ve, uh, who you have their contact [00:37:00] information, former leads who’ve never bought, that’s an important group to be reaching out to. Also say f- past members, people forget about. Reaching out to past members, people who’ve left but haven’t moved away, right?

And they often will come back. I think that’s an important one. And then we get into fresh leads, right? Those are all the kind of people who are already in your orbit, right? I think you need to… And I talk about them first because those are often the lowest hanging fruit that get forgotten, right? Um, but then when it comes to fresh leads, I think there’s really kind of, you know- Three main places we go: organic social, paid social, and local networking.

And so, uh, organic social is, doesn’t give you a lot of bang for your buck these days. We used to talk a lot about, um, sell by chat, which is the idea of, like, posting lots of content. Anyone who follows or engages with you, you DM them and talk to them, and drive them to giving you their name and phone number and email address, so they can become a lead.

You- I still recommend that to some of the people some of the time. We don’t see that as being as fruitful as it maybe it once was. But organic social media still has its place. I [00:38:00] do think the night- it, it needs to look like the lights are on at home on your Instagram account, maybe your Facebook or TikTok.

Um, so, uh, organic social. Paid, paid ads, right? I think still Mark Zuckerberg is still collecting most of our money when it comes to advertising, right? For, for better or worse. Mostly worse. Um, and so I think ma- paid meta ads is important. Um, I will say there’s more and more, um, AI tools to help you run your meta ads.

We’re actually partnering with one we’re about to announce soon, as of the recording of this podcast, that will help you run your meta ads, if that’s a scary endeavor for you. But paid ads still do work for a lot of gyms. And then the third bucket, I would say, is, uh, what I think of as, like, local grassroots marketing and networking.

So that’s business partnerships, hosting events, going to events. That’s your local farmers market. That’s handing out flyers at the grocery store. We call that being three mile famous, right? Mm. So that’s a whole bucket of things there really, but it’s about you getting out and making sure everyone in your town knows you, and you have a great reputation, and you’re actively getting in front [00:39:00] of strangers in your community all the time.

So that’s, that’s a, the, a long, a long answer, but it could be longer. That’s the shortest version of a long answer. Yeah. There’s some nice, like, there’s some nice pillars to, to focus in on, I think, there. See, see if there’s… I suppose I’ve got two follow-ups to this, Michael, right? Referrals are something that I think every gym owner knows are important.

Mm-hmm But they’re maybe not getting them. And that might not be because sometimes if, I think with referrals it’s like, “Well, am I just not doing my job very well?” Mm. Mm-hmm. And I don’t think for a lot of the people that listen to this kind of podcast or to BFU, that’s the issue. I think often the training side, the service side is pretty strong.

Sure. What, what would your advice be to somebody who’s maybe saying, “Well, I, I’m just, I’ve only got 50, 100 clients, but- Yeah … I’m not getting-” Yeah. I don’t know what… Do you have a good number here for if you’ve got- Mm … 50 or 100 clients, do you have a, do you have a rough? No, I, I will [00:40:00] say that generally speaking, I would say in a given month, w- I would say if you could get like, you know, five, five leads from referrals if you have 100 members, you’re doing pretty good.

Right? I think if you can get five, five, five referrals who actually, you know, show up and do something with you, right, every single month, you’re doing pretty good. But I will say the thing that people often get wrong, I’m gonna use like a fishing analogy here. I’m not a big fisherman, but it just, it’s an appropriate analogy.

That if you were out fishing and you were looking for, you know, um, to catch any sort of fish and, you know, and you weren’t catching any, the first thing you do, and I’m not even a fisherman, I know this, is you probably try some different bait or some different locations. And the mistake that folks often make when it comes to referrals is they try the same thing over and over and over again.

And it’s often, I, I, um, um, you know, it’s often the thing I mentioned. It’s, it’s money. They offer, they offer one way to refer someone with one incentive. “Give me your friend’s name, phone number, and email, and I will give you $50.” Mm. “And I will give them $50 if they sign up.” [00:41:00] And so that’s, that’s a one way to try and catch fish.

There are infinite different kinds of bait and incentives for doing this. So for example, people often forget that, you know, I mentioned bring a friend day, bring a buddy day. Those are often useful. But you could also do, uh, educational workshops You can do social events. So for example, at Mark Fisher Fitness, one of the biggest ways that we got referrals is we threw parties.

We threw parties every so often, and we did it in, in a cycle that was one of our six-week boot camps. But we threw a party, and we got everyone. We gave out, um, uh, you know, invitations to folks to bring their friends. We had a open bar for the first hour, and in New York an open bar will get a lot of people coming.

A lot of places an open bar, you’ll bring your friends if there’s an open bar. Friends who won’t come to your– to work out with you at your gym will come to an open bar, right? And so you get people to come to a party, a social outing where we just have music and we give out prizes for people who’ve made great, great progress at our gym.

And at that party, to get in the [00:42:00] door for our free open bar, you have to give us your name, phone number, and email. You have to sign up. Fill out a little postcard, put your name on an iPad. Same thing with informational workshops, right? You may not have a friend who wants to join you for a workout, but do you have a friend who has low back pain like you?

“Oh, well, come to my gym. My gym’s doing a one-hour workshop with a chiropractor or a physical therapist on low back pain. Come. It’s a fifty-dollar workshop, but I have a free pass.” Right? Uh, I could go on and on, right? But all– There’s all kinds of ways to get your members to bring their friends, family, coworkers to your space.

And when we talk about coworkers, a lot of folks that you work with are, are highly successful professionals who like to network with other professionals. Why don’t you help that, right? Have a whole networking professionals night where you have someone come in and talk about how to set up their LinkedIn profile or how to pitch yourself, right?

Um, and you can facilitate that. Takes you almost no effort to go find someone who’s going to do that. Say the workshop costs fifty dollars, give all your members a free pass and give them three free passes to give to their friends and colleagues, right? [00:43:00] So all of these are ways to generate referrals without saying, “Stuart, do you have any friends that you want to give me your, their phone number?”

Right? “I’ll give you fifty bucks.” “Well, I don’t care about fifty bucks, and no, that’s creepy. I don’t want to give you my friend’s phone number.” Right? So all the people who are not going to do that have already decided they’re not going to do that. So you need to change up your approach and find other ways that they, they do want to invite their friends and family.

Maybe it’s a family day where you barbecue outside of your gym and do something outside for kids or you bring in some live music. They do want to bring their friends and neighbors to that, right? So you get the idea. I’m beating a dead horse, but the whole point here is you got to switch it up. I love it.

I love it. ‘Cause it’s just, it’s that, it’s that thinking a little bit like rather than being like you’re just running into a wall being like, “Well, I never get any referrals,” it’s thinking, right, well, what is actually going on here? Mm-hmm. And the fishing analogy is really nice ’cause you’re like, you wouldn’t just, you wouldn’t just throw your fishing rod away and be like, “I’m a rubbish fisherman.

I’m never, I’m never doing this.” Or [00:44:00] maybe you would. I don’t know. You’d probably think about it in a way that would be like, “Well, why don’t I go somewhere else where there might be other fish?” Or, “Why don’t I improve my bait?” What do these fish want, right? Exactly. What do these fish want? Yeah. They don’t like worms.

Maybe they like this. You know, maybe they’re over here in the shade. Let me go over to the shade where they are, right? Uh, you know, I think that’s it. It’s just thinking about what do your clients want? And so, and if you don’t know, ask them. Say, “Hey, I want to do some events that, you know, would be exciting for our whole community, events you would want to invite your friends and family to.

What do you want to do? What would be fun? What would be informational? What would be helpful in your fitness journey?” Right? And, and all of those. You know, you, I, we have plenty of folks in Unicorn Society who, um, have done this, and they started like a book club- Hmm … or a running club or a bike club. Uh, you know, and some of them, their running club is a running club that meets at a local brewery afterwards, and they drink afterwards, right?

And that running, those running clubs I’ve seen go from like 10 people to like hundreds of people, right? And now you have this steady stream of, of referrals and coming through that community that you started with, you know, [00:45:00] just a little bit of energy and effort and no money. You can really create a referral machine in your community by starting things like that.

Michael, when we spoke about retention right at the start of this- Mm-hmm … you listed, I think, two things that were like building, I think it was building sticky relationships so they’ve got- Mm-hmm … a friend. Yeah. I can’t remember. Do you remember off the top of your head what the other thing was? Was it results?

Was it- Yeah. It was really th- those two things kind of go hand in hand, right? They need to have, uh, well, one, the people stay because they have a f- a friend at the gym, right? They have someone they look forward to seeing often, uh, especially in our kinds of gyms, right? People who don’t wanna talk to anyone in the gym, they’re going to the big box gyms with the headphones on, right?

But folks who come to our gyms often like having someone they, they like to see a friend, and often that’s the trainer, right? And so having that sticky relationship with someone at the gym, hopefully your trainer and others, is important. And then separate from that, people stay at the gym also because they have goals they want to achieve.

They’re being challenged to level up and push themselves to achieve something, and then they’re [00:46:00] celebrated when they do. Uh, so I think that- that’s, I think, what I said earlier. Yes, it was. Yes. And on that, on that se- on the second piece there- Mm-hmm … I think that is probably where a lot of gyms are potentially lacking because the complacency of, “My clients are happy.

They’re coming consistently”- Yes … can sometimes come in. So w- what, what do you recommend for this? One of the things that- Yeah. Retention. You go. You jump in. Yeah. I was just gonna say, we, we have a, we have a whole playbook for this for our Unicorn Center members, and we call this momentum coaching, right?

And the reason we call this process momentum coaching is because we think it’s part of your coaches’ jobs to help your clients maintain momentum. They get bored. They’re coming to the same gym, doing the same kind of workouts for two, three times a week for two, three years. What’s exciting about that anymore, right?

Are they making progress? Are they learning new exercises? Are they lifting more weight? Are they feeling better? Are they actually continuing to get any results? Maybe they came in at first with wanting to, you know, lose some weight or gain some muscle, [00:47:00] and they’ve done that. Now what? What keeps them excited to come back?

And so when we talk about Momentum Coaching, our process is simple. It’s maybe a 15-minute coaching call once a quarter- Hmm … that you make available to your clients, where you sit down and you have a very structured, simple coaching conversation where you, you know, one, celebrate some wins, something that’s gone well for them in the previous quarter.

You get clear about what’s working and not working for their current workouts, and you get clear about a goal, a tangible thing they want to achieve next. It doesn’t h- always have to involve, you know, the scale or lifting weights. It can be, it can be, “I wanna get better sleep. I wanna drink more water. I wanna get more steps in.

I wanna have better energy. I want, um, I wanna be able to go for a run on the beach during my next vacation.” It could, it could be anything. But you wanna have, find out something in this 15-minute conversation once a quarter that your clients really are, would be excited to achieve, that you can hold up as this kind of carrot on a stick that keeps them going for another three months, and then another three months, and then another three months.[00:48:00]

And we find when people have that, when they have something they’re looking forward to and investing in, and it’s clear to you as the coach and it’s clear to your client, and you remind them of that every session. “Remember that next vacation coming up. You wanna go for that run on the beach with r- for your family who goes for a run every morning.

This is the moment. Let’s push it today.” Right? It, it keeps that passion going, keeps that focus going, gives them a sense of drive and ultimately momentum, which is why we call it Momentum Coaching. Love it. Absolutely love it. Michael, it has been an absolute joy to have you on to this podcast for the first time.

I know it’s not our first interview, but it’s first time on this p- podcast. If somebody wants to reach out, say hello, follow your work- Please … what’s the best way for them to do that? Yeah, for sure. Well, you can listen to the Business for Unicorns podcast. In fact, I don’t know, maybe, maybe we’ll put this episode on there.

We can talk about that. Um, but th- what’s on all available podcast platforms, go to businessforunicorns.com. Uh, you can talk to our team if you wanna book our brainstorm call, which is truly a 10, 15-minute conversation about, you know, whether or not we’re the [00:49:00] right fit, and we’re not the right fit for everyone.

Um, and you can follow us on all the social medias at Business for Unicorns. Superb. Thank you, Michael. Really appreciate your time here. Thanks, Stewart.