What Nobody Told You About Rapid Facility Growth

None of us gym owners opened our doors with the intention of just getting by.  Sure, we got into the game of fitness to help people, but we’re also here to make a living. Here at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP), we’re very fortunate to have seen our business scale larger than any of us three co-founders initially imagined it would, or could.

This past September we introduced our 4,000th client to the CSP system. In order to accommodate the introduction of this amount of athletes in a 9+ year span, we’ve added space, added staff, and reassessed (on many occassions) our primary goals and objectives for this business.  While improving the bottom line and the visibility of our brand within the world of fitness has been fantastic, there are a handful of “deal with the devil” realities that came with rapidly scaling our business.

Here are three cold hard truths of accelerated facility growth that caught me by surprise:

1. Not all clients are dying to see you expand

Who wouldn’t want a bigger space to train in? Would any of our clients actually say no to a building with immaculate restrooms and amenities such as a cafeteria? How about more parking? They’d want that too, right?

These are some of the assumptions we made as we moved out of a grungy 2,000 square foot space, and into a shiny new “showcase” facility during the spring of 2008. We were upping our game dramatically with the intention of improving the client experience. After all, you need to spend money to make money, so that is what we decided to do.

Instead of thanking us profusely, more than one of our most dedicated clients expressed extreme disappointment in the decision. Despite the fact that we’d upgraded the training space and also positioned our business in what we determined to be a more convenient location, some people were unhappy.

We’d failed to realize that the cozy little garage gym environment we’d pulled together in our first location was one of the idiosyncrasies that some clients truly appreciated. In fact, some clients loved the authenticity of the space. They also appreciated our perceived accessibility, which they were convinced was sure to disappear as soon as we upsized our business and “went corporate.”

Moving to a larger, more professional space was 100% the right move, but dropping it on our dedicated clients as a surprise might not have been the best approach. Thankfully, we eventually proved to all of them that our values and accessibility would not change, and that you can still get strong in a gym that does not require a tetanus shot to set foot in.

2. You’ve just become the Vice President of Human Relations

Imagine you’re standing at a podium waiting to slap the big red button while Steve Harvey guides you through a live recording of Family Feud…

“Name the number one reason people choose to open their own gym.”

I’ll venture a guess that you could list the top fifty responses before coming across an individual who answered: “Because I’m excited to manage employees!”

However, just because this answer didn’t show up in any of the responses, doesn’t mean it is a component of gym ownership that can be ignored. If you want to increase your foot traffic with the intention of driving profits, adding employees is a harsh but necessary reality. Increased staff size means increased management and leadership responsibilities for every business owner.

Start wrapping your head around annual reviews focused on both performance and negotiating wage increases. Understand that you will be the disciplinarian expected to lay down the law with interns who can’t seem to show up on time for their coaching shifts. Get ready to be the bad guy when an employee asks if he can take a day off for the seminar that you’ve already granted permission for two other staff members to attend.

You show me a gym owner who claims to be excited about these responsibilities and I’ll show you a liar.

3. Your definition of an “ideal client” will change dramatically

When CSP was in its infancy we were just three guys trying to blur the lines between making a living and loving what we did. We had the freedom to hand out freebies and discounted training left and right. The goal was to increase visibility for our business, so we compensated training for athletes who were projectable, minor league baseball players willing to align themselves with our brand, and just about any friend of a friend who wanted to drop in on staff lifts.

As time passed, and business began booming, we traded a shortage of brand awareness for a shortage of training capacity. The gym was suddenly full and our limited staff could only handle so much program and coaching responsibility. The only solution was to add employees, and the increased overhead associated with suddenly having a payroll. My focus on perceived busy-ness faded into the background as I began paying far more attention to operational efficiencies and revenue-driving components of my job.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that we needed to downsize the hand-outs. Gone were the days of helping out the local high school soccer phenom who aspired to play professionally but had no money in his wallet. It was time to turn our attention to the pre-teen athlete that looked like a baby giraffe taking his first steps each time we introduced him to a new movement. After all, his parents had dollars they were looking to spend, and we needed cash flow more than we needed another body taking up resources but generating zero revenue.

Be careful what you wish for…

Building the big business of your dreams will feature far more pros than cons, but there will undoubtedly be occasional bumps in the road. These three lessons we learned by doing should stay top of mind as you make the jump from lean startup to “going all corporate.”

Retention Trumps Acquisition

Take a week away from chasing new leads and put all of your eggs in the client retention basket to see huge results.

Let me tell you a quick story...

In the fall of 2014 Eric Cressey transitioned away from CSP Massachusetts to coach in a full time format at our Florida facility for the duration of the winter. This was worrisome for us up here in the northeast because October through March happens to be our busiest time of year. One of the areas where we anticipated losing business was in the one-time consultation (OTC) category. During the calendar year leading up to this point, OTCs accounted for 17% of our revenues.

The way we saw it, if someone was going to reach out to us in search of a short-term visit of this nature, and the service would be available in both our Massachusetts and Florida locations, the combination of warm weather and the opportunity to be assessed by Eric Cressey would be enough to draw a great deal of these leads south.

We were correct. OTC numbers dropped by more than 90% during that six-month span here in Hudson, MA.  

So, after losing 90% of the leads that once accounted for 17% of our gross revenue figures, you'd imagine that we were in trouble, right? You would be wrong. The first six months that Eric was gone ended up being the most profitable six-month period in the history of CSP.

What?!?!

Here's what happened...

The first thing you need to know is that here at CSP, there is no type of client that is higher-maintenance than one who is visiting for a one-time consultation. When you bring a brand new client in for a 24 to 72-hour window of time, they are inevitably going to call for a great deal of one-on-one attention. While this isn't ideal in a semi-private training facility such as ours, we are ok with it because the price point we have in place for this service model reflects the increased coaching resources consumed. Additionally, the lifetime value of this type of client can be huge if we effectively monetize him in a distance-based program design format moving forward.

We could have lost sleep over the fact that these OTC leads were all but gone, but it didn't take long for us to realize that their disappearance meant that we'd freed up a great deal of coaching moving forward. Scheduling less coaching-intensive supervision scenarios meant that we suddenly had an additional staff member available to float on the training floor and focus purely on client interaction. We suddenly had an opportunity to over-deliver more frequently with our semi-private training clients.

Casual conversations about food consumption habits led to more scheduled nutrition consultations. Once-a-week clients who fell in love with the coaching interaction began increasing their training frequencies to a second, and sometimes third day each week. Client referrals began to increase ever so slightly.

The concerns surrounding a 90% decrease in scheduled OTC's soon got lost in the realization that existing clients were sticking around more, and spending more dollars with us. We were learning on the fly that you are dramatically more likely to increase the spending habits of an existing client than you are to recruit and convert a new one.

Here at CSP Massachusetts, we saw a 26.2% increase in revenues during October through March of 2014/15 compared to the corresponding period the year before. While some of these additional dollars were a reflection of consistent and anticipated growth, it is evident that improvements in client retention and increased word-of-mouth referrals were allowing us to survive and thrive in the wake of disappearing potential OTC clients.

Statistics from www.RetentionScience.com

You don't need to wait for 17% of your revenues disappear before getting started

The takeaway here isn't that we needed to decrease our OTC work-load moving forward; this segment continues to be immensely profitable. Instead, we chose to add an additional full-time staff member and slightly increase the size of our internship program. This ensured that we could return to accommodating the short-term clients that would inevitably return when Eric made his way back to Massachusetts in the spring without losing focus on delivering quality client interaction during our training sessions.

I encourage you to take the next week off from fine-tuning your 2017 marketing calendar and put some thought into how you can improve the training experience for your existing clients. Stop worrying about generating your next 5 leads, and start thinking about how you can ensure that you lose one less client during the coming month. You'll be pleasantly surprised to see how much improving retention will positively impact your bottom line.

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out HERE!

First-Mover Advantage Isn't Everything

(1-minute read)

So, what are you passionate about? I ask new and aspiring gym owners this question almost every day of the week.

The good news is that I’ve yet to find a fitness professional who is unable to answer this question. The bad news is that a whole bunch of them wont ever pursue their passion in any capacity because someone else arrived at that space in the fitness industry first.

An observational guest at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) recently told me that his dream is to be a thought leader in the realm of performance training for golfers. I agreed that this is a massive market and insinuated that I also saw opportunity in this segment. Instead of diving further in to the discussion, he hit me with this:

“I’ll never do it, though. The Titleist Performance Institute already owns that niche.”

Consider this: Google was the 27th search engine to pop on to the scene. Do you think that they were afraid to get in the game with the first 26?

I wont argue that TPI is doing something wrong, but I can guarantee you that they’re vulnerable just like any other brand that owns the bulk of the market share in their space. Capturing a big chunk of the baseball-specific strength training market from CSP in Massachusetts or Florida will be difficult, but if a gym comes along with better ideas or a more effective approach, it’s going to happen.

First-to-market can be a valuable advantage, but it doesn’t always equal best.

The Ideal Business Show (Podcast)

I recently had the opportunity to join Pat Rigsby in recording an episode of his Ideal Business Show Podcast. In this 35-minute conversation, we covered a variety of topics, including:

  • How Eric Cressey and I first met
  • The three distinctly different phases in the evolution of CSP to date
  • My single best piece of advice to share with fitness business owners
  • And a whole bunch more...

You can listen on your computer or download to your mobile device HERE.

Looking for Some Easy Leads? They're Right In Front of You...

Are you running a gym like Cressey Sports Performance? You know, the kind of fitness facility that drives revenues by training youth athletes?

If you answered yes, I’ve got some good news for you. I’m about to point you in the direction of so many pre-qualified leads that you could theoretically double your business with a series of properly executed simple sales pitches. Wait, it gets better…you’re going to get the chance to give 100% of these pitches on your own turf. No worrying about cold-calls or concerning yourself with creation of the most perfect Facebook ad the fitness industry has ever seen.

Instead, I want you to get up from your desk, take a step out of your office, and start up a conversation with the parent sitting on the couch in your waiting area. Assuming you aren’t too cool to coach an adult from the general fitness population, the parents of your current clients are going to be the gold mine you’ve been seeking.

Here’s the thing about parents…

Parents don’t just want what’s best for their kids – they demand it. Seeing as how they’ve already come to the conclusion that your business is the ideal place for their kids to focus on increasing athleticism and injury prevention, you can take comfort in knowing that they trust you. In fact, you’ve already banged out all four steps in the KNOW–LIKE–TRUST–BUY process with this person, so why not double down?

The parent patiently sitting in your waiting area reading an old copy of Men’s Health for the 8th time this month has already demonstrated a willingness to invest his expendable income on your fitness services. He’ll also never complain that he can’t find a ride to the gym on a given day. And, most importantly, he’s already in the damn building! Give him the opportunity to make his time more productive by mixing in some exercise.

Positive outcomes will follow

I’m not so naïve as to think that suddenly every single dad in your CRM database is going to bite on your training offer, but I am certain that converting even just a small handful will make a measurable difference in your bottom line.

By capitalizing on parents’ inherent interest and integrating them into the process, you simultaneously increase the likelihood that your youth athletes will make good lifestyle decisions outside of the gym. A dad who wants to maximize his ROI from training is more likely to fill the refrigerator with quality foods and practice what he preaches about drinking more water and getting plenty of sleep. Teenagers are anything but forthcoming with details about their lives when it comes to parent interaction, but fitness could very well be the common ground that changes their silent ride to the gym in to a meaningful discussion.

What could possibly make you feel better as a fitness professional than knowing that you’ve improved a father-son bond simply by having them hit the weights in your facility?

You’re still running a performance-training center

I understand your hesitance to focus on serving general-pop clients when your primary objective is to cater to athletes, but hear me out…

Who pays for these kids to train at your gym? That’s right, their parents do.

We all know that parents love to talk about their kids, but can you imagine how much they’ll enjoy talking about their kid’s strength-training regimen when they have a foundation of their own experience to back it up?

I’ve written about the power of word-of-mouth advertising in the past, and one of the important takeaways was as follows: If you truly want your customers to be effective brand ambassadors while outside of the gym, you need to equip them with more than just an understanding of how to execute your training material. Why not turn a couple of the dad’s standing in the bleachers in to walking and talking billboards for your gym?

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out HERE!

This Was More Fun When I Was Poor

I can’t wait until I…

  • Have an admin to do the busy work
  • Employ more coaches to pick up the programming slack
  • Have the money to upgrade my website
  • Move in to a bigger gym
  • Can afford to buy that Keiser equipment I’ve got my eye on

Everyone seems so intently focused on how big they’re going to scale their fitness business these days that they lose sight of the fact that the most enjoyable part of the process is passing them by.

Some tough news for the gym owners that are in a rush to grow up:

The first five years of building and operating Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) were considerably more enjoyable and rewarding than the next five.

Let that sink in for a second…

I’m not saying that my work has entirely ceased to be rewarding and/or enjoyable. Instead, I’m saying that once you’ve survived the emotional and exhausting rollercoaster of going from lean start-up to profitable business status, the bulk of the day-to-day that follows pales in comparison.

Sure, I make more money now. My gym is bigger and prettier than it once was. There are dozens upon dozens of professional athletes who are proud to say that they train with us. All of the perks of taking our business from unknown to industry relevance are great, but they come at a cost.

Today I have eight employees on the payroll in Massachusetts. That’s eight extremely different personalities to manage and eight people who count on me to make sure they can pay their bills. I’m also negotiating a lease proposal, evaluating alternative payroll and health insurance providers, and on the hunt for more affordable tee shirt and sweatshirt manufacturers. In short, my work isn’t limited to editing my next creative Instagram post and making small talk with Major League Baseball players.

I’m guessing you didn’t happen to notice that my list of bullet points at the top didn’t say:

I can’t wait until I

  • Get to see my health insurance costs more than double in an 8-year span
  • Have to stress about pulling together enough employees to staff the gym on a busy holiday weekend
  • Realize that heavy foot traffic leads to expensive equipment upkeep and replacement
  • Have the chance to chase revenue goals that were set before an economic downturn
  • Get to fire my first employee or uncooperative intern

Having faith in your own self to succeed is the easy part. The real stress kicks in the moment you realize that several other people have come to rely on you to earn their living. There will come a moment when the hobby-aspired-business starts to feel a whole lot more like a job. That moment may not be until you’ve finished your first lease, executed your first expansion, or cut yourself that first big paycheck. Nonetheless, you can be damn sure that day will come eventually.

Can't decide which hurts more looking at this picture...my hands, or my back?

Stop agonizing about your 5 or 10-year plan and attempt to enjoy the moment

Take pictures…tons of them; I always wish that we had more from our early days.

Throw yourself in to the tasks you resent. My fondest memories are aligned with the most physically exhausting moments of my life. You’ll know what I mean when you take your first shot at cutting rubber gym flooring with a utility knife.

Spend time getting to know your team outside of the gym. Once you’ve accumulated this social capital it will be the fuel that drives the personality of your business and brand moving forward. The bigger your team grows, the more difficult it will be for you to coordinate this type of social interaction.

In short, be present. The best part is happening right now.

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out HERE!

Your Professional Network – More Important than Any Piece of Equipment in the Gym

No matter how smart you are, clients are going to occasionally walk through the door with needs that fall outside of your current skill set. I’m not talking about someone arriving with a broken wrist and asking you to fix it; I’m speaking of the client who falls within the grey area where you think to yourself, “I could train around this issue, but what this person really needs is some quality time with a physical therapist.”

A former CSP intern recently asked me what my first objective would be if I were in his shoes preparing to begin employment at a big box commercial gym.

I recommended that he spend his time working to accumulate a tight network of qualified professionals, and refer out when faced with scenarios that fall outside of his scope of practice.  The manual therapists, nutritionists, and other specialists that receive his referrals should eventually reciprocate by sending additional business in his direction. By putting his clients’ needs ahead of his need to collect immediate dollars, he would earn trust and quickly see his network become one of his most distinct assets.

There are little-to-no barriers to entry in the fitness industry. It seems that nearly every coach in our field knows just enough to be dangerous on subjects ranging from program design and corrective exercise, to aggressive nutrition advice, and everything in between. I’d imagine that most of us know a coach with second or third-hand knowledge of PRI protocols who is capable of correctly communicating the “what” of these complex concepts without being even remotely prepared to articulate the “why”.

The problem with being simply passable at each of these complimentary skills is that any measurable initial results you show to your clients will prove to be unsustainable in the long-term.  Eventually, we are all likely to be exposed when trying to be something that we’re not. It is time to abandon your reputation of being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. 

Every fitness business owner and personal trainer in our field needs to add a collection of trusted specialists to their network if they are hoping to generate leads from an avenue other than Facebook ads and deal-of-the-day services such as Groupon. Here at CSP we have a three preferred physical therapists that get our PT referrals, an in-house manual therapist, and the contact information for some of the best orthopedic surgeons in the northeast. In short, we know that a strength coach can’t fix everything.

You have no business writing someone a diet simply because you read a blog post about intermittent fasting this morning. Your purchase of a treatment tool doesn’t suddenly make you a Graston practitioner. Your insurance provider is going to shit a brick if they find out that you’re giving back adjustments “just like the one you got from your chiropractor” on the training table in the warm-up area.

Make your list today

Sit down now and prepare a list of the professionals you know and trust. Identify your “go-to” physical therapist, registered dietician, yoga practitioner, sports psychologist, etc. If you aren’t currently aware of a candidate to populate each slot, reach out to your network for some introductions and begin extending invitations to grab a cup of coffee and discuss training and treatment philosophies with the intention of sharing business.

There’s no shame in knowing what you don’t know.

Gym Owner Musings - Installment #3

I’ve accumulated a boatload of random lessons learned in (nearly) a decade of operating a fitness facility. Some warrant entire presentations, podcasts, and blog posts; others carry plenty of value but can fit within the confines of a 140-character Tweet. 

Here are three quick insights that fall somewhere in between Twitter-friendly and ”blog-worthy”:

1. Blindly transitioning to a career in fitness doesn’t mean you’ve escaped “the race to nowhere”

Every day of the week, a whole bunch of people grinding it out in “the real world” decide to quit their job to chase the dream of a career in fitness. I get it. When your life is all work and no play, it’s pretty enticing to make your work feel a whole lot like play. The problem in this scenario is that very few of these career jumpers are prepared to answer some of the most basic questions I ask during a typical CSP internship interview:

  1. What part of the fitness industry would you like to end up in? 
  2. Is there a specific demographic you feel most comfortable working with?
  3. Do you have a preferred coaching format?

More often than not, I get one of two responses:

  1. Crickets. 
  2. “I just want to work with athletes in a place like this.”

I’ve got some bad news for you, friend. There aren’t a whole lot of places like this, and the ones that do exist are rarely hiring. Additionally, there are only so many athletes out there to work with, and very few of them are looking to spend their limited dollars on premium fitness services.

There’s a decent chance that you burned out in a corporate setting because when asked where you’d like for your career to go, your only answer was “up.” Employers aren’t jumping at the opportunity to promote the guy whose entire professional objective is to have the biggest title and make the most money. Similarly, I have no idea where to start when attempting to help an outgoing intern find employment if they can’t tell me what athletic population they are specifically fascinated by or which gender they better connect with on the training floor.

If you don’t have a feel for where you’d like to end up now that you’ve thrown yourself into the world of fitness, you’re still smack dab in the middle of the race to nowhere. The only difference is that you can now go to work in sweatpants.

2. A tip for maximizing the productivity of your charity events

Raising funds for a worthy cause feels good, right? If you do it properly, you can support a good organization while simultaneously introducing new people to your business and training environment.

We host a Charity Strength Camp once every eight to ten weeks here at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) where 100% of the donations are directed toward a specific charity. These events are open to the public, and typically serve as the perfect “bring-a-friend” scenario for our Strength Camp regulars.

As you might imagine, the best events are those that draw the most participants, as the training environment is at its best when we host larger groups (and donations are obviously higher). One lesson I’ve come to learn in roughly four years of organizing these events is that selecting a local charity to support will dramatically increase foot traffic on the day of your event.

When you pick a national organization, you immediately qualify as “small potatoes” in the grand scheme of their fund raising efforts. While they appreciate your donations, they are hardly mobilizing to put bodies in your gym on the day of the event.

October happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so we traditionally schedule a charity strength camp with this cause in mind. I could have picked one of the heavy hitters such as Susan G. Komen, but instead opted to go local. For the second straight year, we’ve pulled together to support the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden (VTHG), an organization that focuses on providing therapeutic services and educational programs to women experiencing breast cancer.

Great turnout at our october event

Since a couple hundred-dollar donation makes a bigger dent at a local organization such as the VTHG, they feel inclined to promote our event both internally (encouraging staff members to participate), and externally (sharing our flyer on their social networking platforms). When comparing your options, you can’t make the argument that supporting a national fundraising campaign carries any more merit than supporting a local cause, so I am always eager to keep our charities of choice local. In either scenario, we’re honoring the objectives of National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

3. Capturing a unique market segment requires embracing trade-offs

Michael Porter is a “strategy guru” whose name came up often during my time in business school. Of all of the strategy material covered during my time as a student, I distinctly remember his message that “a strategic position is not sustainable unless there are trade-offs with other positions.”

As I spend my non-CSP working hours focusing on delivering valuable content to other fitness professionals, I try to stay grounded in the fact that I am chasing expert status in just one place: the category of creating and running a fitness facility. My professional time allows for three things:

  1. Running CSP to the best of my ability.
  2. Learning from my experiences accumulated while executing #1 on this list.
  3. Writing about said learning experiences, and discussing them with other gym owners.

My repertoire doesn’t feature extensive experience with Facebook advertising, so I don’t pretend to be the best at that. I have no experience launching a fitness product, so I wont bite on the request for a consultation regarding product creation and design. My managerial skills are still a work in progress, so I don’t preach about leadership.

In short, I only discuss the things I know inside and out at the expense of developing a skillset which will allow me to declare myself an expert in one of the examples I’ve listed. I’m okay with that trade-off if it means that I’ve captured some decent market share in the realm of my areas of expertise.

Unless the nuts and bolts of running CSP changes dramatically, you can expect me to stay on message with topics such as improving the client training experience, systemizing your business, hiring for fit, identifying operational efficiencies, etc. 

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out here!

Why We Don't List Our Prices On the Internet

This past Sunday, as I was listening to the Patriots pre-game show in my car, Bill Belichick discussed the preparation habits of NFL teams. He explained that there are two categories into which teams can be slotted:

  1. The teams that significantly modify their approach from week-to-week to capitalize on perceived shortcomings in the opposing team’s skill-set or strategy. We’ll call these “Game-Planners”
  2. The teams that have a specific identity that they rarely stray away from. These are the organizations that say: “We’re going to line ‘em up and do what we do best…let’s see if you can stop us.” We’ll call these the “Do-What-We-Doers.”

A look at the Patriots box scores for the last two weeks will illustrate that they currently fall into the Game-Planner category: Against the Cincinnati Bengals, Tom Brady threw the ball 35 times, accounting for roughly 85% of the Patriots offensive output on the day “through the air.” Just a week later, the Patriots came out running against the Pittsburgh Steelers, handing the ball off more than 50% of the time and accumulating just a shade under 40% of their yardage “on the ground.”

They’re all but guaranteed to identify an opportunity to exploit deficiencies in your game plan and put it in to action each week. If your team has a “best player,” the Patriots are going to find a way to remove him from the equation when Sunday rolls around. In short, they’re the ultimate “Game-Planners” in today’s NFL.

When selling, I’d rather be a Game-Planner

When it comes to executing a sales pitch here at CSP, I like to think of the potential client as an opponent who could possess any one of many “best players” in their arsenal of counter-arguments against my pitch. Some are price-sensitive, others are skeptical of our skill-set and abilities relating to their unique training needs, and some just want to be made to feel like their son or daughter is our country’s next star Olympian.

By getting someone on the phone, asking a series of relevant exploratory questions, and gauging the content and tone of each response, I am able to adjust my selling strategy on the fly. This flexible and reactive selling method would fall under the category of game-plan-specific as opposed to first rolling out my list of prices and assuming they’ll convert leads on their own.

When you list all of your prices on the Internet, you are embracing the “Do-What-We-Do” approach, and missing an opportunity to effectively articulate the differentiators that your business possesses. As far as your website visitor experience goes, you are essentially declaring these are our prices and you can take it or leave it. You simply aren’t putting yourself in a position to counter any concerns of a potential client.

Many gym owners make the mistake of assuming the people they are trying to attract have done their homework on all training options. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. If everyone in our area were aware that personal training at the local Boston Sports Club is actually more expensive than our semi-private model that features 100% individualized program design, they’d be far easier for me to pitch. Instead, they get hung up on the idea that Planet Fitness just ran an ad offering a no-commitment contract for $0 down and just $10 per month.

How are you going to counter hesitation due to price-sensitivity without actually engaging with a potential client? Our services are not cheap, but they are reasonable and differentiated by the attention to detail we apply during the assessment and training process. The people that reach out to CSP possess a broad range of training needs, differing levels of expendable income, and varying levels of understanding of our training model. Some are best fit for one-on-one personal training or semi-private group training, while others are the perfect candidates for our morning strength camps. Each of these services comes at a different cost, and it is up to me to identify the best option for the person in question and then communicate the pricing structure effectively.

I can’t afford to let leads disappear due to generic sales copy or perceived high prices; I’d likely lose many leads before successfully converting them to clients if I didn’t first have the opportunity to explain what our pricing represents and why our offering is well worth the price. With this in mind, it doesn’t bother me when a caller says “I couldn’t find pricing information anywhere on your website.”

Getting them on the phone is half the battle, and they’ve called me.

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out here.

Lessons Learned While Chasing the Elusive Work-Life Balance

It seems that every time I sit on a presenter panel, or observe one in action, someone from the audience will inevitably ask the same question:

“How do you manage to be so productive while maintaining a reasonable work-life balance?”

Now I’m all for learning from the industry professionals that you look up to, but I have a major problem with any one of them declaring themselves “an expert” on managing this complex collision of personal and professional demands on your time.

Finding balance in my own personal and professional life is not a finite game. Due to the constantly changing circumstances of my life, there will never be a moment where I can say that I’ve found the permanent recipe for work-life balance. Instead, I can only tell you what has worked for me in the past, and you can go ahead and cherry-pick the ideas that bring value to your search for balance.

Here are three things I can say for certain about this topic:

1. YOU are the only person who can define balance in your own life

The “life” component of my work-life balance has shifted dramatically since 2014. For nearly seven years, I balanced work with the need to return home to my significant other early enough to share a meal together. There were more than a few nights where I didn’t pull this off, and it wasn’t the end of the world. Today I am accountable to a whole lot more than a loosely agreed upon late-dinner; my 6:00pm daycare pickup deadline is non-negotiable.

While I am thrilled to get home every night and horse around on the living room floor with my boys, there are workdays when I have to walk away from an incomplete to-do list. Like it or not, my world is structured around the calendar of my family as opposed to my own professional endeavors.

When I sit in a folding chair at the front of the room alongside a dozen other presenters from a weekend-long fitness event, and questions start rolling in from the audience, what are the odds that the person inquiring about “my system” for managing work-life balance is responsible for a gym with 8 employees, a part-time business consulting gig, and a family of four featuring two kids under the age of three?

I recently participated in this type of Q&A session in a room packed with fitness professionals I know, trust, and admire. We all shared our philosophies on this topic, and the insights could not have been more varied. I’ll never forget John Romaniello explaining that he enjoys his job so much that he hopes to “die with his fingertips on the keyboard.” That kind of passion for your craft is infectious.

Meanwhile, I told that audience that when all is said and done, I’m more concerned with being known as an awesome dad than I am for my business acumen; showing up to work isn’t as rewarding to me as teaching my son to play soccer in the back yard is at this moment in time. I know that in the not-so-distant future my boys will decide that hanging out with their friends is far cooler than rough-housing with dad, and that will likely be the moment that I feel the itch to get back to “grinding” professionally.

Do these dramatically different takes on managing a work-life balance mean that one of us is right and the other is wrong? Absolutely not. Our varied relationship with our work doesn’t change the fact that we are both making meaningful contributions to the fitness world.

We all deal with different circumstances both personally and professionally, so I implore you to be wary of strictly adhering to the advice of someone who has deemed themselves an authority on how you find peace in your combination of these two huge components of your life.

2. My employees would rather work for a good “family man” than a workaholic

Back in 2014 when my first son was born, I was constantly dealing with an anxious feeling that my colleagues had a problem with my reduction in hours spent at the gym. For years I’d spent 5-6 days each week living my business, and suddenly I was cutting staff-lift off of my to-do list and managing the company email account a whole lot more from my kitchen table. The work was getting done, but I became less of the constant presence that I once was.

That year, as we hit the mid-point of the CSP Fall Internship, I asked our intern (and current employee), Tony Bonvechio, what he hoped to learn from me during the last eight weeks of his time with us. His answer surprised me:

“I want to continue to observe how you manage to keep CSP moving and growing while simultaneously being a present father and husband. I hope to emulate your balance some day when I start my own family.”

Whoa.

Here I was thinking that my staff was resentful of my new tendencies as a business owner, while some, if not all of them, respected my decision to draw a line in the sand and declare that family will always take priority over being an entrepreneur. I’ve come to appreciate the fact that some of us live to work, while others work to live. The employees who fall into the latter category don’t want to feel like their contributions are perceived to be less valuable than those that come from people who can’t turn off their brains and exit work mode.

Being an employer or colleague who is known for placing “life” at or above “work” while still managing to do their job can be a good thing. People just want to know that they work for someone with a firm and consistent value structure.

3. Micro-managers will never find a work-life balance

If you don’t trust your team and your systems, you will forever be a slave to your work. Fitness facilities like CSP can’t function on the shoulders of a single individual. So why do so many gym owners try to oversee every aspect of their business operations despite having capable employees who are painfully underutilized and who crave more responsibility?

From 2007 through 2014, we worked diligently to create tried and tested systems for assessing athletes, designing programs, processing payments, scheduling training sessions, fielding phone calls, instructing individualized training sessions, educating our interns, providing nutrition guidance, and much more. Guess how many of the tasks I’ve mentioned qualify as my responsibility today? None of them. I could meddle in the execution of each and every one of these important components of our day-to-day operation, but I don’t; I trust my team.

Since my employees are in tune with their roles and responsibilities, I can spend my working hours focusing on business development, brand management, and marketing strategy that drive CSP revenues in the long-term. Once those hours are behind me, instead of re-checking my employee’s work, I go home and throw myself into discussions about who went down “the big slide” today and what kind of goldfish crackers were served during snack time.

For the moment, I am at peace with my work-life balance, but that doesn’t mean you would be.

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out here.

3 Steps to Fail-Proof Your Gym

Just over a year ago Tony Gentilcore made the difficult decision to walk away from CSP. After 8 years of coaching, learning, and business development, it was time to step out from behind the CSP curtain and let the Gentilcore brand loose on the fitness community.

Tony made the right move; I’m proud of him.

Here we are just one year later, and he’s flipped his world upside down…in a good way. In the past twelve months, he’s presented on multiple continents, recorded a fitness product alongside Dean Somerset, conceived his first child1, and gone from independent contractor to full-blown fitness facility owner.

I want to show you why Tony’s decision to open his own gym (one that thousands of people fail at each year) is very likely to succeed. Here are three important things he did in advance of pulling the trigger on this venture to ensure that he see a return on his investment:

This post was originally published on Tony Gentilcore's site - Read the entire piece here.

Gym Owner Musings - Installment #2

I’ve accumulated a boatload of random lessons learned in (nearly) a decade of operating a fitness facility. Some warrant entire presentations, podcasts, and blog posts; others carry plenty of value but can fit within the confines of a 140-character Tweet. 

Here are three quick insights that fall somewhere in between Twitter-friendly and ”blog-worthy”:

1. Everything works, but not everything works for you

If you’re one of the thousands of fitness enthusiasts currently in the business plan design phase of opening your own gym, this is a very important message. There are dozens of different training philosophies and coaching models at your fingertips, but that doesn’t mean that you should arbitrarily select from the buffet of options and expect everything to work out.

I recently published a post discussing tips for transitioning a personal training model into a semi-private service offering, given my area of expertise in operating the latter. My buddy, Chad Landers, a gym owner in California, was quick to point out that not only is the group training format not a fit for every gym owner, but also not always a fit for the people you intend to serve. He made a great point when he said: “I think a big mistake is for a trainer to adopt a model they aren't passionate about because it might make them more money. It's really about finding the right fit for you and then kicking ass at it regardless of how you deliver the goods.”

The takeaway? Many models may work, but not all models will work for you.

2. Marketing your gym is more about documentation than creation

I often hear other gym owners speak of intentions to kick up original content creation efforts in an attempt to drive business. While I believe in this strategy, and encourage my staff to publish content regularly, it isn’t the end-all-be-all in drawing attention to your gym. Preparing a blog post outlining a revolutionary approach to mobilizing your hips may garner social media shares and impress your industry peers, but it is unlikely to serve as a call-to-action for the housewife with a few pounds to lose living just around the corner.

We’re in an age of free and easy content publication thanks to the accessibility and creativity of various social networking platforms. Assuming you are currently delivering a service and training environment that you’re proud of, your marketing can be as simple as publishing a video of the gym during your busiest time of the day. The insightful blog posts coming out of CSP about arm care might catch the eye of heavily-involved and well-read baseball dads, but the kids who are actually in our gym on a daily basis are considerably more likely to engage with a video of their buddy doing heavy lunges with loud music playing in the background.

While documentation of your gym in action might not be the most intellectually stimulating tool in your marketing toolkit, it just may be the most cost-effective and direct path to attracting the attention of your ideal client.

3. There is no replacement for learning by doing

One of the best moves Eric Cressey made when CSP was getting off the ground was letting me awkwardly battle my way through our business pitch both in person and by telephone. Our first facility actually featured (roughly) 100 square-feet of “staff offices” where we each had a desk. Eric and Tony used their workspaces to process assessment notes and prepare programs, while I used mine to manage all things administrative pertaining to running our business. Having to work in such tight quarters meant that I had no choice but to give the sales pitch while sitting roughly three feet away from two guys with thousands more hours logged in the fitness industry than me.

Instead of compromising my credibility by micro-managing my delivery of this information in the moment, the guys let me make the occasional mistake with exercise terminology or articulation of our training philosophies. They were kind enough to wait until the conclusion of a call or face-to-face conversation to step in with a teaching moment. In doing so, I was able to craft my own selling approach while implementing their insights incrementally.

As it turns out, you can be especially effective at selling fitness instruction without ever having instructed fitness, but you won’t get there without executing a couple hundred less-than-impressive sales pitches.

In hindsight, Eric’s approach to teaching me to speak the language of fitness was no different than that which he applies to supervising a new intern on the training floor. The anxiety I felt delivering the sales pitch on the phone while my business partners listened to every awkward word was extremely similar to the level of discomfort a new intern feels when instructing a deadlift with Eric standing just feet away.

If I put all of my energy in to explaining our services exactly the way I imagined Eric would, the effectiveness and authenticity of my approach would be compromised. Similarly, our interns aren’t best served to mirror 100% of Eric’s mannerisms and coaching attributes on the training floor. We all need to be our own person as we inform and coach clients, and Eric has a profound appreciation for that. As I said above, everything may work on its own, but not everything works for you.

Do you enjoy my fitness spin on business concepts?

I publish my “Friday Four” newsletter at the end of each week featuring links to useful articles and insights on applying concepts from each to your own fitness business endeavors. Check it out here!

Having an Approach to Having an Approach

Roughly 97% of my readers appear to have stumbled upon my material thanks to a recommendation from Eric Cressey. With this in mind, I'm certain you will all appreciate the guest post he put together for me today. Enjoy!

When our twin daughters were born, I realized that – above all else – parents of newborns really need four things: diapers, wipes, prepared meals, and guest posts. Our girls were born on November 28, 2014, and I only published three pieces of original content that December – and this is coming from a guy who posted at least 2-3 times per week in the 12 years prior to that life-changing event. Fortunately, though, I got some help from a few guest authors to keep the content rolling.

Given that Pete’s blog last updated a shade over three weeks ago, I thought it was time to pay it forward – and below, you’ll find my contribution. Get some sleep, Pete.

Back in the summer of 2012, I presented at the Perform Better Summit in Chicago. After finishing up my second presentation of the day right before lunch, I stuck around to answer questions and take pictures with attendees. Truth be told, my wife and I were actually headed to Wrigley Field for the first time that afternoon, as CSP athlete Bryan LaHair was having an All-Star year and he’d left us some batting practice passes to have the “true” Wrigley experience.  As I recall, it was a 3PM game, meaning BP was going to take place around 1PM – and that was a 20-minute cab ride from the hotel after changing. So, to some degree, we were in a bit of a hurry.

Still, as I always do, I stuck around and answered every question. The last one in line was a super energetic attendee with a big baseball background, both as a player and coach. His name was Joe Yager, and his company is Perform Every Day in Illinois. We chatted about his career, the players with whom he worked, and some questions he had on arm care and weighted baseballs. It was a conversation that lasted 20 minutes or so, and actually spanned the walk all the way back to the hotel from the convention center. As the time came to say goodbye, Joe commented, “You know, I’m surprised. I thought you were going to be a jerk.”

Surprised, I asked why that was the case. Had I come across that way in my writing or presenting? Joe answered that I hadn’t, but he just assumed that it was the case because it had been his experience with a lot of fitness industry presenters over the years. Joe specifically mentioned Todd Durkin as one of the few really approachable guys he’d encountered – and commented on how Todd had become a great mentor to him in large part due to that friendly demeanor.

Since that day, Joe has become a loyal customer. He’s attended our Elite Baseball Mentorship (our highest priced offering, at $899-$999), and attended my shoulder seminar in Chicago this past July. He’s purchased The High Performance Handbook, Show and Go, Everything Elbow, Art of the Deload, Optimal Shoulder Performance, and multiple Cressey Sports Performance t-shirts. In short, he’s spent over $2,500 with me – and that doesn’t even include what he’s devoted to flights and hotels for these events. It doesn’t speak to the time he’s spent away from family to attend those seminars, or to watch our DVDs and read my articles. And, it can’t even possibly begin to quantify how many people he’s “turned on” to my work. 

Joe’s also become a good friend. In fact, he texted me earlier this week to get the inside scoop on a college baseball program that just offered one of his players a scholarship. We busted one another’s chops when Vanderbilt Baseball (lots of CSP guys) faced off against the University of Illinois (lots of Joe’s guys) in the NCAA super regional a few years ago.

Truth be told, though, Joe probably taught me more in that one conversation in Chicago than I could teach him in an entire career full of shoulder and elbow seminars and DVDs.

Think about it: he assumed that I was going to be a jerk. The onus was on me to prove that I was, in fact, a respectable human being. We can learn several invaluable lessons from both sides of this exchange.

1. You always have to put your best foot forward when it comes to first impressions. You have absolutely no excuse to not do so.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a public speaker, a coach, or the office manager of a gym. Your best bet is to assume that everyone begins your relationship with some pre-conceived negative impression of you, and that you have to overdeliver and win them over.

2. Pronounced extroverts probably have a leg up when it comes to most first impressions.

Joe cited the example of Todd Durkin being a mentor. Todd is one of the most outwardly positive and personable people you’ll ever meet. It doesn’t matter whether he’s exhausted and jet lagged, and giving his fourth presentation of the day; he is always upbeat and friendly. Dave Jack and Martin Rooney are other guys with whom I’ve interacted who always bring that positive energy and friendly demeanor on a whole other level.

Before people see any of these guys in seminar, they’ve usually seen them online in videos – so their “rah-rah” reputations precede them. And, before seminar attendees have a chance to interact with them, they’ve usually already watched the presenter deliver an enthusiastic presentation. They’ve been warmed up before the first impression.

You likely don’t have that luxury in the majority of your first impressions, and you may not be the kind of person who can put on the unconditional energy hat like these guys can, anyway. So, you’re got to just go out of your way to position yourself as a quality human being.

3. People who play the “contrarian” or “I don’t give a crap” card online are often behind the 8-ball when it comes to first impressions.

Here’s something you might not know about me: I refuse to swear in my writing. And, I won’t link to articles where authors curse. Why?

My daughters might read these articles someday, and I don’t want kids who think it’s okay to swear like a drunken sailor. Major League Baseball general managers or agents might come across them and think I’m not the right guy for their players.  There is absolutely nothing to be gained from dropping a F-bomb.

You might get some short-term notoriety from being a loud, negative contrarian, but you won’t build a lot of lasting long-term relationships. If you need proof, just try to think up how many successful companies you can name that spend a lot of time bashing their competition.

4. The people you think are jerks might just be really busy and not good at managing that stress.

Flipping the switch a bit, if you’re trying to approach someone you perceive to be an jerk – either to build a friendship or ask a favor of them – try to walk a mile in their shoes.

Sure, there is no excuse for them to be rude or unapproachable. However, try to consider why they might be that way. Perhaps they’re insanely busy and just haven’t learned how to manage the chaos yet. Or, maybe your inquiry was long-winded and unclear. Maybe they are like Pete and have a newborn and 2-year-old at home, and just need a good night’s sleep to recharge a bit.

To that end, if you really want to get in touch with someone, you need to have an approach to having an approach!

I received an 859-word random email inquiry this morning. That’s almost as long as this article! Reading and responding to it would likely take 15-20 minutes out of my day when I simply can’t spare it.

I have over 90,000 people on my newsletter list. If every one of them called our office for random advice (and some folks will do this), it would cripple our business.

The point is that you need to be succinct in your inquiries, and direct in your requests. And, be polite. I’m a firm believer in “respect reciprocity;” if you want them to do you a favor, at least say please and thank you.

About the Author

With a 3-0 record, Eric Cressey is currently in first place in the East Division of the Cressey Sports Performance fantasy football league. Apparently, he writes blog posts at www.EricCressey.com, too.

3 Tips for Transitioning Your Training Model to Semi-Private

How can I convince my personal training clients to embrace a semi-private model after years of one-on-one attention? I can’t decide where to start logistically as it relates to schedule modifications, and also as it relates to communicating the benefits of this change to my existing clients.

This inquiry arrived in my inbox earlier this week from a facility owner in England. This is far from the first time I’ve been asked this exact question.

Let me put something on the table right from the start: I’ve never taken a pure personal training facility and transitioned it to a semi-private model.

I am fortunate to have fallen into a business opportunity with Eric Cressey after he’d identified the semi-private group-training model as his training format of choice. Since July 13th of 2007, Cressey Sports Performance has operated almost entirely as a semi-private model. This being said, I have helped to create a training environment that has now seen well over 100,000 semi-private training sessions executed, with nearly 4,000 athletes having made their way through our doors. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that the group-training format can be more profitable than a personal training model while still delivering an effective and memorable training experience for your clients.

Instead of pretending to have a “how-to” guide for making a wholesale transition to a semi-private model, I’ll tell you the first three things I would do if I were the owner of a personal training business looking to make the change:

1. I wouldn’t try to do it all at once

Want to know a great way to antagonize your existing clients? Tell them that you’ve decided to no longer offer a service that they know and like with little or no notice. This isn’t a facility re-model we’re talking about; you can’t close the doors for a couple of days to give your training model a face-lift and then re-open with an entirely different identity. 

Start by selecting a single slot in your current personal training calendar and designating it as your “semi-private hour” moving forward. I would imagine that there is a specific hour in your day that you know you could fill effortlessly if your current client were to opt out. Instead of plugging in the next personal training client on your waiting list the next time this happens, begin informing existing clients and incoming leads that the slot is now reserved for groups of 3-5 athletes. Emphasize that participants will receive an individualized approach to their program design while also experiencing the camaraderie and enhanced training environment that comes from integrating additional personalities to the training space.

Selecting a high-value hour in your schedule to allot toward this cause may seem reckless at first, but you’ll soon see that what may initially appear as one step backward takes you several steps forward in the very near future. Create a great training environment during this single time-slot and your personal training clients during the hour before and after are eventually going to see it in action and realize that they just may be missing out on a better experience at a lower price point.

2. Focus on delivering value to opinion leaders

Write down the name of a client who will not shut up in between sets. You know the one – it’s the person who might as well be paying you to be their sounding board for gossip distribution instead of fitness instruction. Every gym has one (or ten), and they’re going to be the fuel that drives the news of your new semi-private model into the ears of every single person they come in to contact with upon leaving your facility feeling invigorated from a brand new training environment.

Now that you’ve identified this client, approach him to discuss your great idea to make his training experience more effective. Don’t be afraid to butter him up a little bit.

“I was thinking that you’d really thrive in my semi-private training format. You’re clearly a people person and the higher-energy training environment would both push you to work harder, and allow you to positively influence someone else’s training experience at the same time. ”

You may be thinking that adding a couple more sets of ears to the training floor will make the client that much more tolerable, but all he’ll be hearing is that you think he's a people person who would make great progress in the gym with the right boost of energy to the training environment. Everybody wins.

Your client will soon realize that the exercises executed during a semi-private session are identical to, and every bit as supervised, as they were in a personal training setting. Arguably more importantly, he’ll see that the social component of the experience has multiplied. You’re going to have a walking and talking billboard outside of your gym. A boisterous extrovert might occasionally be a headache on the training floor, but he's also your most efficient form of advertising.

3. Document the process

Don’t just tell your current clients that a semi-private training format is the change they didn’t realize they needed; show them.

Record video of your group training sessions and showcase it on your website and social networking platforms. Document a client hitting a personal record on the deadlift as their training partners cheer them on in the background. Ask a group participant to record a quick testimonial video or write down a few sentences about how impactful it is to train as part of a community of likeminded individuals and share it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Let the energy of the group setting shine through right in front of your skeptical client’s eyes.

I’m struggling through it with you…

As I was driving to work this morning I found myself thinking about how much my son Collin’s life has changed since his brother Owen was born. In a lot of ways, my wife and I have asked Collin to suddenly transition from his personal training lifestyle into a group-training format. While it is difficult for a two-year-old to emotionally process the reality that he’s now splitting the attention of his parents, I know that he’ll one day come to realize that his brother is the best thing that ever happened to him.

He now has a lifetime playmate, and someone to push him to be a more competitive and productive individual. Unfortunately, he’s years away from appreciating these perks.

Your personal training clients are likely in a similar position to my son, but they don’t have to wait for their potential training partners to learn to walk and talk. Free up that single hour in your training calendar today and you’ll be one big step closer to showing them what they’re missing.

3 Tips to Leverage Your Strengths as a Public Speaker

I’ve got public speaking on the brain.  I say this because today marks the deadline for securing a spot at our 5th Annual CSP Fall Seminar at the early-bird rates.  If you haven’t done so already, I’d encourage you to sign up now to ensure that you secure the most affordable rate for this great event.

With just 30 days sitting between me and a presentation to a room full of fitness professionals, I’ve found myself mentally revisiting some of the most impactful presentations I’ve come across during the past calendar year.  A couple of presenters distinctly stood out above the rest, and today I’d like to discuss the most important lesson I took away from each.

Here are three helpful lessons to apply from three fantastic public speakers the next time you find yourself preparing to deliver a presentation in front of an audience:

Lesson #1: A presentation is about more than information sharing; it’s a performance.

  • Presenter                   Mark Fisher
  • Presentation Title     Snatched Lessons – Creating a High Integrity Transformation Program
  • Event                          Motivate & Move LAB, Hosted by Mark Fisher Fitness – February 2016

GOOD MORNING,” Mark Fisher shouted at the audience.  “If it feels like I am yelling at you, it’s because I am, and will continue to do so for the remainder of this presentation.”

Mark proceeded to explain that, deep down inside, despite his well-documented successes as an established fitness business owner and fitness coach in general, he is a Broadway performer at heart. 

Throughout his extensive prior training in the performance arts, Mark was programmed to project his message loudly and boldly.

This experience came shining through during his 25-minute presentation discussing the creation and implementation of a high-integrity transformation program.  After roughly 30-seconds, my inner monologue stopped saying “why is he shouting at me,” and started saying “holy shit, this guy is entertaining.”

He shared wisdom, he told emotional stories, and he made the room laugh. Most importantly, however, he performed his presentation more than he delivered it.  There’s nothing wrong with taking a little pride in the theatrical component of addressing a room, even if it is “just talking fitness.”

Lesson #2: There’s no substitute for diligent preparation.

  • Presenter                   Tony Bonvechio
  • Presentation Title     Creating Context for More Efficient Coaching
  • Event                          The 4th Annual CSP Fall Seminar

There were more than 150 people in attendance on this day that “Tony-B” took his first stab at public speaking in the fitness industry.  Instead of being overwhelmed by the occasion, he took home the award for most positively reviewed presentation of the seven that were delivered that day.  He wasn’t up against a collection of amateurs, either; between Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore, there were well over 100-hours of public speaking experience on the presenter roster.

Roughly 50% of our seminar attendees chimed in with detailed presentation feedback in our post-event electronic survey, and Tony’s presentation approval rating of 96% left the rest of us a reasonable distance behind. 

As it turns out, he didn’t present any revolutionary or mind-blowing information.  In fact, the subject matter was fairly vanilla.  What set Tony’s presentation apart from the rest was the ease with which he moved through the material.  His transition from slide-to-slide, section-to-section, and lesson-to-lesson was effortless and clearly rehearsed. 

During our staff meeting the following week I asked Tony to discuss his preparation process so that we could all emulate his effort moving forward.  He explained: “I gave that presentation, in its entirety, no less than five times during the past week. I made my wife listen to it twice. I delivered the entire thing during my hour-long commute to and from work on more than one occasion. I even presented this material once to my dog Eddie.”

The takeaway is simple: you likely need to put in tedious hours of rehearsal if you want to shine above the rest.

Lesson #3: By staying in your lane, the message remains authentic and accessible.

  • Presenter                  Dean Somerset
  • Presentation Title    Can’t remember…(my apologies)
  • Event                         The Fitness Summit – Kansas City

If Mark Fisher’s animated and energetic delivery sits at one end of the presenter spectrum, I’d say that Dean Somerset’s low-key, yet authentic style is firmly planted on the other.  I’ve now seen Dean wow the audience on consecutive years at the Fitness Summit by taking complex concepts and translating them in to layman’s terms that even I can understand.

In a blog recapping the event, Dean wrote “I made a bit of an audacious goal known on the third slide of my seminar saying I wanted mine to the single best one of the entire weekend, and proceeded to crack jokes, talk about how neural aspects regulate mobility, had some live volunteers help me explain the stuff I was talking about, and generally hoped to smash brains left and right.”

When he presents, Dean’s command of the subject matter is obvious, allowing a blend of his dry sense of humor and intelligence to capture the attention of all in attendance, as illustrated in the quote above. Instead of tackling concepts that fall on the fringe of his comfort zone, Dean shares information that he knows inside and out, resulting in applicable and memorable points.

The takeaway: If you are anything but an expert in the content being covered, your audience will be allergic to your underlying lack of certainty and resoluteness.

Come watch me attempt to apply these lessons…

At the coming CSP Fall Seminar I’ll be covering a presentation titled Business Before Branding where my priority will be to incorporate some of the lessons driven by my esteemed colleagues above.  I welcome you to be the judge of the outcome!

And, hey, even if I miss the mark, you can be damn sure Tony-B will put on a memorable show.

Register here for our 5th Annual CSP Fall Seminar, scheduled for Sunday, September 25th.

Recommended Business Reading From Outside the World of Fitness

This past Friday my nice little family of three made the jump to FOUR!  We are proud to bring Owen Matthew Dupuis into the world.  Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will now definitely need to "hide" me from your newsfeeds because I'm about to double up on the cute baby pics (joking...kind of).  Seriously, though, don't block me on there if you enjoy my blog, because that seems to be the primary place where people manage to track down my content!

I've got my hands full with the new addition to my family, and an adorable little tyrant of a 2-year old running our house, so it is hard to say how much blogging I'll be finding time for this week.  One solution for this uncertainty is to share some quick reading recommendations.  Based on the size of my newsletter list, I get the impression that most of you don't realize I share a weekly list of reading materials called "My Friday Four" on, you guessed it, Fridays. 

This information features four pieces of content I've consumed during the previous week that will influence my future blog material and challenge me to think differently about how I manage CSP - as always, I'm looking to bring you some business-specific information from outside of the world of fitness. Here's a look at this past week's shared articles:

1 - Three Lessons Nonprofits Can Teach Businesses About Branding: This was my favorite post of the week because it was an entirely new concept to me.  Why aren’t more of us looking at the way that operations such as the Red Cross create urgency, inspire viewers, and create community around a cause?  Check this one out and start applying concepts quickly so that you can “connect with consumers’ hearts and their wallets.”

2 - How Under Armour is Outsmarting The Olympics' Strict Advertising Rules: There is ALWAYS a trendy discussion taking place on social networking platforms that you can align your business with.  This article points out how effectively Under Armour has leveraged it’s affiliation with athletes instead of the Olympic Games to bypass the big spend that comes with being “an official sponsor.”  You could be doing the same thing (on a smaller level) with your own brand right this moment with a little bit of creativity.

3 - SoulCycle Wants You to Join Its Tribe: SoulCycle is a business that is projected to collect $175M in 2016 in just 62 studios.  That, my friends, is a business worthy of a spot on your “Fitness Tourism” itinerary.  This piece takes you deep into the SoulCycle experience.  You may not love this form of exercise, but you’ve got to be impressed by this fast growing operation.

4 - Why Everyone Should Get Fired at Least Once: I once worked a job where I feared my boss; it was awful.  Had I come across this article way back then, I wouldn’t have wasted any time moving on to the next step in my professional development process.  While the title of this piece is certainly meant to draw significant clicks, the overarching message is that staying in a toxic employment environment is your choice.  If your gut is telling you to move on, do so.

I'd love to see you sign up for my newsletter if you enjoyed these pieces and would be interested in receiving a similar "Friday Four" each week.  You can do so by clicking here and sharing your information in the left-hand column.  You can also see archived copies of all 16 newsletters I've published to date. 

Have a great Monday!

- Pete

Fitness Tourism - An Opportunity to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

If you intend to open a gym some day, you should start your planning by visiting a series of established gyms to see how they operate in-person. If you do it right, you’ll walk away with a new appreciation for what works, what doesn’t, and how you can blend ideas to create the perfect business model for you.

Intelligent people learn from their own mistakes, but geniuses learn from the mistakes of others.

We have an open-door policy which allows for fitness professionals to visit either of our two facilities for the purpose of observing our business model, training environment, and unique gym culture.  We don’t offer this “service” because it makes our lives easier or our business more profitable.  We do it because there were a number of other fitness professionals who were kind enough to share their own insights free-of-charge both before and during the early stages of our business. 

In short, we feel an obligation to “pay it forward.” 

After years of hosting these types of guests, I’ve come to learn that there is definitely a right and a wrong way to take advantage of opportunities such as these. The worst thing you can do as an observational guest is to make yourself a part of the client training experience; instead, focus on being a fly on the wall.  On the flipside, there are plenty of ways to take away a boatload of valuable insights from this experience without overstepping.

Before I dig in to the best approach, let me save you from quickly wearing out your welcome with a few quick and easy things to avoid:

  • Requesting the opportunity to sit in on an assessment
  • Giving coaching cues to the athletes that aren’t paying for your instruction
  • Monopolizing the time of the coaches whose primary responsibility is to care for clients
  • Taking pictures and/or video without permission

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about three very important things to take away from an observational visit to an established fitness facility.

1. Observe the progression of the customer experience.

Any fitness facility that has managed to keep the doors open beyond the term of an initial lease (let’s say 3+ years) has to be doing something right, so pay close attention from the moment you walk through the door. There’s more to a successful fitness business than a good training environment; take note of how clients are greeted and how services are articulated at the “front end” of the business.

A truly efficient and profitable business will flow smoothly thanks to systems, standardized selling language, and a passion for customer service. Notice the pattern in the way they answer the phone, the way they close their initial assessments, and the way they upsell with integrity because they know that more supervised fitness instruction is in the best interest of their clients; not because they simply want to collect more dollars.

2. Take note of the training model.

Are you observing a successful personal training business? Maybe a gym packed with group training clients enjoying bootcamp-style classes? Or, maybe you’re here at Cressey Sports Performance trying to figure out how this semi-private training format that we’ve described as a “controlled chaos” works?

Wherever you are, there are lessons to be learned. There is no right or wrong training format or business model. Before you open your own gym you should attempt to see each of these types of training models first-hand and ask yourself which style is most complimentary to your skill set. 

Fascinated by the science of the assessment, program-design, and the integration of complex PRI concepts into training? Go spend a day with Mike Robertson and Bill Hartman at IFAST in Indianapolis.

Considering a model that allows for large group training for athletes with a performance enhancement focus? The guys at MBSC basically wrote the book on this one, and they’re just as willing to open their doors to fitness professionals as we are at CSP.

Maybe you’re planning on leveraging your big personality and a unique training environment to differentiate from local competition? You’d be doing yourself a disservice to not experience a class or two at Mark Fisher Fitness.

Unless you’ve conceptualized some sort of revolutionary training model that the world does not yet realize they need, there is definitely a business out there already thriving in a model similar to the one you have in mind. Identify the best and set aside the resources necessary to experience their magic in-person.

3. Pay close attention to the variety of on-the-floor coaching styles

The most innovative and cutting-edge fitness businesses employ teams featuring a broad spectrum of personalities and instruction styles. If you want to increase the profitability of your model, you need to be in a position to accommodate a wide range of people. In order to do this, you can’t employee an army of clone coaches; you probably need an “energy guy,” an authoritarian, a coach with good bedside manner, and more than one gender featured on your staff.

The closer you look, the more you’ll realize that different coaching styles tend to organically find their way to the athlete on the training floor who learns most effectively from that approach. Our team at CSP may seem surprisingly diverse as it relates to personality types and senses of humor, but it has been assembled this way by design.

Learn from our mistakes, and emulate our strengths…

Two of the fastest rising fitness facilities in the Boston area (AMP Fitness & Achieve Fitness) are owned by couples who spent multiple months training with us at CSP during the time leading up to launching their business. They were forthcoming with their intentions, and eager to experience our model in even more depth than you can as an observational guest.

Today, they operate hugely successful models that feature some components that they likely pulled from their time with us, and other entirely unique facets that I should be attempting to recreate myself. Most importantly, they took advantage of the opportunity to observe several successful facilities in action before making the biggest investment of their lives, and today they’re better because of it.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Isaac Newton

I Hired an Intern With an English Literature Degree and Zero Coaching Experience - It Was a Good Move

This past weekend I asked the Twittersphere for blog ideas and my buddy Sean came through with a question that sparked a great CSP memory. Let me tell you how Roger Lawson got his foot in the door of the fitness industry…

February 14, 2009

I’m sitting in the back of the room at the MBSC Winter Seminar minding my own business, waiting for Eric Cressey’s presentation to begin, when a smiling young man in his early 20’s approaches me holding a manila folder and a wrapped present.

Hey! I’m Roger Lawson. I’d like to submit an application for your summer internship program.

I’d been exchanging emails with Roger during the weeks leading up to this event answering questions about our application process and submission deadlines. As far as I knew, he was a college student from Michigan considering applying for our internship.

So I accepted the folder containing his pristinely formatted and printed application and asked the first two questions that came to mind. “Aren’t you from Michigan? That’s a long way to go for a one-day seminar. Secondly, what’s the deal with the gift?”

Roger’s answers to these two questions set the wheels in motion toward me selecting a candidate who, on paper, had no business even being offered an interview for a spot in our program.

1.    “I’m here today more because I wanted to hand-deliver my application than I am for the learning opportunity. When you read my resume you will see that I am entirely unqualified for this position as it relates to professional and academic experience. That’s a big hurdle for me to get over, so I’m starting by looking you in the eye and telling you how serious I am about pursuing a spot in your program.”

2.    “As far as the gift goes, I am here to fix something that is clearly broken in your life. I recently read in Tony Gentilcore’s blog that you have never seen the movie Friday. This is completely unacceptable. I just drove 700 miles in part because I needed to give you this DVD.”

I’d imagine that a few of my readers already know and love Roger Lawson. Those people are probably unsurprised by this story. The rest of you may be asking yourselves why I was willing to compromise on our “ideal” intern candidate and accept him in to our program. 

Here are two great reasons why you should occasionally step outside of your hiring comfort zone as we did with Mr. Lawson.

1. Quirky personalities make every aspect of a training session entertaining:

Our industry is full of robotic coaching styles and vanilla personalities.  There are a thousand fitness professionals who say “hips through” while coaching a deadlift, but only one who can effortlessly slip a Cinnabon reference in to the series of cues he uses to help an athlete conceptualize proper execution of the lift.

We tend to forget that the bulk of our clients’ time in the gym is spent recovering from brief bursts of training.  Filling downtime with positive experiences is far easier when you can tell people about that time you placed in the Top-10 at the 2008 World Rock-Paper-Scissors Championship (actual Roger Lawson fun-fact).

It is every bit as important that we provide quality fitness instruction as it is that we deliver a memorable training experience.  It is hard to find an intern that clients continue to ask about nearly seven years after the conclusion of their time with us; Roger is one of those rare coaches.

2. Under-qualified coaches know they have to work harder to achieve success:

In her TED Talk entitled Why the best hire might not have the perfect resume, Regina Hartley explained that in her role as a human resources professional, she often finds herself deciding between two very different types of job candidates: on one side of the candidate pool you have what she calls the “Silver Spoons,” e.g. the Ivy League graduates with the impeccable resumes; on the other side you’ll find a group she’s labeled “The Scrappers.”  Scrappers are candidates who’ve battled considerably different and difficult odds to get to the same point.  According to Hartley, the latter group deserves strong consideration because they are underestimated contenders “whose secret weapons are passion and purpose.” 

During the internship interview process I asked Roger why he deserved one of three spots in a program for which 20+ considerably more qualified individuals had applied. He told me that his comparative lack of experience meant that he would enter the program dying to learn and without any existing bad coaching habits.  He was a clean slate upon which we could create a coach that would thrive in our model. 

Charisma cannot be overvalued  

Roger also possessed the rare and valuable skill of charismatic optimism, which is arguably more distinguished than passion and purpose combined.

You can have too many shoulder specialists on one team, an excess of nutrition gurus, or more PRI enthusiasts than any single staff could possibly need.  What never becomes redundant, however, is the introduction of another charismatic extrovert to the training floor of your gym.  Most gyms could use less “Silver Spoons” and more Rogers.

A Grocery Store Won My Business by Empowering an Entry Level Employee - Here's How

My wife and I moved our family out of the city and into the suburbs in late 2014. We gave up an abundance of nearby restaurants, bars, and grocery stores in exchange for roughly three times the home and a nice big yard for our kids to run around in. As a result of the move, our weekly trip to the grocery store that was once a 2-minute ride from home suddenly became 10-20. While ~15 minutes in the car isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, it felt like an inconvenience after a decade of having amenities sitting within a mile of our home.

Once we got over the “burden” of 15-minute rides, we began to appreciate the new convenience of options…so many options.  By my count, there are no less than 6 full-service grocery stores sitting within a 15-minute radius of our home.  That’s a half-dozen locations with similar pricing, ample parking, and nearly identical accessibility. 

Until this past weekend, when it came time to shop for food for the week, we employed a completely arbitrary location selection process. We didn’t feel an allegiance to any single business.

So what changed?

“How about we try that Price-Chopper over in Hopkinton this time around?”

I was being selfish. I’d heard that there was a Starbucks located inside of that specific store and I was craving a cup of iced coffee. (Side note: incorporating complimentary services can be the differentiator that brings you new business, but that’s another blog for another day.)

My wife didn’t put up a fight, so we were off to a new store to buy the exact same stuff we’d found for the exact same price elsewhere just a week ago.

I got my cup of coffee, and we started in the produce section. As we perused our options, we noticed that the zucchini was entirely sold out. This was frustrating because “zooks” happen to be our son Collin’s favorite food.

“Collin is going to have to make do without his zucchini for the week because I’m not paying double for the plastic-wrapped organic option,” said my wife. (Please put your organic food lectures on hold, people – we’re at peace with our food selections.)

The attentive employee restocking carrots close by overheard our conversation and quickly approached the two of us…

“Sorry about that, guys. We are entirely out of the zucchini today. The good news is that there are plenty of them left over there in the organic section. Let’s remove the packaging, toss ‘em in a produce bag, and make sure that you pay the non-organic price. I want to make sure that you leave with what you came for.”

Let’s do what? Can you do that? We’re breaking a major rule here, right?

Turns out we weren’t. This employee had been empowered to make impactful, yet simple decisions in moments like this without the approval of a manager. We spent the next five minutes wandering the isles while discussing how surprised we were by the gesture.

By foregoing roughly $2 in revenue on that particular day, this employee all but guaranteed that we’d return the following week to spend another $100+ on our weekly grocery trip. At a store like this, the lifetime value of a customer can be immense (especially if that customer happens to be a growing family).

How can you apply this at your gym?

To be honest, there are a thousand ways. Maybe it is as simple as nodding your head in approval when your employee pulls a bottle of water out of the fridge and says “its on the house” to a new client. Maybe you take a break from the predictable Metallica during the busiest part of the day and allow a field hockey player to blast her favorite Katy Perry song while she tries to hit a deadlift PR because for that singular moment, she needs to feel like she owns the training floor.

The point here isn’t specifically to minimize your micromanagement of incidental costs incurred around the gym; it’s to ensure that your employees are empowered to make meaningful gestures and judgment calls in the moment without fear of second-guessing or repercussions. They know in their gut what will make for a memorable client experience.

In his book Leaders Eat Last, author Simon Sinek quotes USS Santa Fe submarine captain David Marquet as having said: “Not until those without information relinquish their control can an organization run better, smoother and faster and reach its maximum potential.”  If you find yourself buried in the details of running your business, managing the schedule, and generating leads while your employees are the ones establishing relationships with your current clients, you are the one without the information. Maybe it is time for you to relinquish a little bit of control.

Take the reigns off of your team and let them make the decisions that will allow you to enjoy the lifetime value of a satisfied client. You wont regret it.

Building Bridges: Leveraging Your Employer to Enhance Your Personal Brand

I've spent the last 6-months attempting to outline a blog discussing how a strength coach can effectively attack the discussion of personal brand development with his or her employer in a fitness business similar to Cressey Sports Performance. I sat in front of the computer screen for extended periods of time second-guessing every angle I could come up with, and then it suddenly dawned on me...

I have about a half dozen employees who've effectively created their own brands while functioning as coaches here at CSP Massachusetts. Why not approach the one who already writes far more eloquently than I ever will and ask him to take on the task?

Today's guest post comes to you courtesy of CSP strength coach, Tony Bonvechio. He's taken his own personal brand from "0 to 1" in the past two years, so he's got some invaluable insights to share. Enjoy!

“I've been battling internally with leaving full time work in a field I don't love to pursue coaching, which is what keeps me awake at night as you can tell by the time stamp on this email. I admire everything that the staff at CSP does so I know the temporary discomfort of no job will be worth what I'd learn from the internship.”

That’s a direct quote from a cringe-worthy email I sent to Pete Dupuis at 12:11 AM on April 14, 2014, inquiring about the Cressey Sports Performance internship program. Luckily, Pete overlooked my email awkwardness and the rest is history.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in two years at CSP, it’s that a surefire way to find success is to create value for others.

It can be tough to ask your employer to help build your brand and not theirs. But if you shift your thinking and focus on what you can do for them, you gain leverage. Do a bang-up job to enhance your employer’s business and they’ll have no choice but to promote your personal brand.

Eric Cressey and Pete Dupuis have gone above and beyond to help me build my personal brand, Bonvec Strength, into something I’m extremely proud of and something profitable. My brand has benefited from a two-way-street mentality: nearly everything I do to build Bonvec Strength directly or indirectly helps the CSP brand and vice versa. That goes for my co-workers too, and I’d challenge anyone to find a fitness facility that has so many viable personal brands under one roof.

Just a few of the brands that have taken shape here at CSP

What can you do to build a bridge between yourself and your employer to enhance your personal brand? It all starts with a desire to make everyone around you successful. Here are four things you can start doing right now to make yourself and your employer better:

1.    Be a Role Model

Being a part of the CSP team means being a role model. It means setting an example for the athletes we train. It means being a leader for coaches who learn from us. It means helping the fitness industry get better as a whole.

Fortunately, I had perfect examples to follow. From work ethic to training philosophy to social media etiquette, I was surrounded by people who embodied the term “role model.”

If I expected Pete and Eric to help me leverage my strengths, I knew I needed to be a reflection of all the things the CSP brand represents. I had to coach hard, train hard and learn hard. I had to learn to talk to parents and show them that their kids are in good hands. I had to have the appropriate online presence, from giving quality information to not dropping f-bombs even when the trolls deserved it.

Once the leaders of the CSP brand could trust me to represent them well, they were extremely open to helping me develop my own brand.

2.    Develop Rare and/or Valuable Skills

During my internship, I read Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and it changed my life. It helped me realize that skill, not passion, is what separates the great from the good.

A light bulb turned on in my head. I’d been passionate about fitness for years, so why wasn’t I gainfully employed yet? Simple: I hadn’t developed any rare or valuable skills.

The CSP internship took care of the valuable skills: coaching, programming, assessments. These skills weren’t rare, however. All my colleagues had these skills too. Pete said to me in one of our first meetings, “You’ve got a short window to make a mark in this industry. How are you going to differentiate yourself?” That question burned deep in my brain for months.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had some rare skills in the tank too. They just needed to be leveraged.

My background in journalism gave me a leg up in producing content, from articles to videos to webinars. Eric and Pete could trust me to put out quality stuff without too many typos and “um’s.” And my baseball playing experience gave me plenty of context to draw upon when coaching athletes and talking to parents about why training at CSP would help their son or daughter. By developing my ability to communicate “baseball-specific” concepts, I could enhance the client’s training experience and help close more sales.

Pete has often said they hire coaches not to bring on Eric Cressey clones, but to fill a personality or skill gap. I like to think I do a bit of both.

How are you different from your peers, not just in a way that makes you stand out, but also compliments your employer to make the team better? The answer to that question is the key to building your personal brand too.

3.    Do Stuff for Free

After finishing grad school, I thought a hefty paycheck was right around the corner. An unpaid internship seemed out of the question given my advanced degree. I throw up in my mouth a little when I think of how delusional I was.

Turns out, doing stuff for free led to some of the biggest payoffs.

Four months of unpaid interning led to a full-time coaching job.

Writing guest blogs for Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore led to a paid gig at MyFitnessPal, one of the most-viewed fitness websites in the world.

Volunteering with Greg Robins at an Optimizing the Big 3 seminar led to a partnership with the Strength House that jumpstarted my online training business and has taken me to cities and countries I never thought I’d see.

You’ve gotta crawl before you walk, and you gotta do stuff for free before you get paid. No one’s going to pay someone who doesn’t possess rare and valuable skills – not the big bucks, anyway. Delayed gratification sucks, but it’s necessary to build a skillset and reputation that people will pay for.

4.    Make the Most of Every Opportunity

There are no shortages of opportunities to leverage the CSP brand to build a personal brand. But as the saying goes, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.

In my first meeting with Eric, I told him I would love to start a powerlifting team. Within a month, we had an all-women’s group training three days a week in preparation for their first competition. Within a year, we have nine paying members.

When Pete approached me about bolstering CSP’s social media efforts, the idea for Technique Tuesday was born. What started as a simple 2-minute video has grown into a weekly series that’s amassed over 100,000 views and dramatically expanded my online audience. All it took was asking Pete’s permission, about five minutes of filming per week, and a year’s worth of consistency.

Had I never sought out these opportunities, knowing full well it would require some long nights and early mornings, it’s likely my personal brand would still be minimal. I also aimed to make these endeavors as hands-off for Eric and Pete as possible, knowing full well that their lives revolve around the business and their families, not me. If I could bear as much responsibility as possible, I’d have a better chance for their approval of my projects.

It’s easy to shirk extra tasks that may not have immediate payouts, but if you embrace every opportunity with the mindset that you can grow it into something valuable, the dollars will follow.

Are You Building Bridges… or Burning Them?

 Before your employer can boost your personal brand, they must see the value you bring to the team as a whole. Focus on helping the team that surrounds you, and your bridge will build itself. Then, once your value is undeniable, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Even though it’s a “personal” brand, you can’t build it alone.