Tap in to the Power of Word of Mouth Advertising with These 3 Tips

Less than $500.

That’s the amount of money we’ve spent at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) on traditional advertising since opening our doors nine years ago this month.  I’m guessing you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that our average annual advertising spend of roughly $55 was the key to taking a roster of 40 clients on day-one to just a shade under 4,000 through our doors as of today.  If that were accurate, we’d be talking about roughly a $0.12 per client acquisition fee…I’d have to write a “how-to” book on lead-generation and conversion that would change the business world.

Sure, we’ve made the occasional donation to a charity golf tournament, or even thrown some cash toward worthy fundraising efforts organized by loyal clients.  However, other than a few hundred dollars spent on Facebook ads in advance of our attempt at a transformation challenge, we rely almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising.

The key to word-of-mouth advertising is understanding that it is anything but free or effortless.  You’re going to need to spend significant funds on brand, business, and personal development long before the floodgates open and new client inquiries begin filling your inbox and voicemail accounts.

There are three specific actions that we’ve taken to amplify and accelerate the positive impact that word of mouth advertising has had on our business.

1. We focus on being unique and memorable.

It takes more than gym chalk, loud music, and a competitive training environment for your facility to thrive in the long-term.  If this describes your plan of attack, your best bet is to invest in the $3,000 annual Crossfit licensing fee and dive in to the process of attempting to differentiate yourself from the other five “boxes” that sit within a 20-minute drive of your facility (there are now 10,000+ similar locations worldwide).

The problem with owning a gym like this is rarely in creating discussion surrounding the training experience; it is, instead, the abundance of similarly priced alternatives sitting just minutes away that will cut in to your profits.  Cultivating serious brand loyalty within this environment is difficult.  While you are working hard to create loyal Crossfitters, you may not necessarily be creating Crossfitters who are loyal to your specific box.

Instead of leveraging the delivery of an environment that can easily be replicated (for short money), we lean on a rare understanding of the unique training needs of the baseball community to generate discussion outside of our facility.  Nothing would make me happier than to hear a client tell a friend on his team: “I’m pissed because my favorite coach at CSP wont be in the gym tomorrow because she’s going to observe a Tommy-John Procedure at Mass-General Hospital.”

People will travel significant distances if it means that they can gain access to unique training material. I’ve found word-of-mouth advertising to be effective at bringing the right clients in the door, while paid advertising doesn’t allow me to segment my Facebook advertising efforts to target “13 to 22 year old baseball players with a history of elbow and shoulder-related injury issues.”

 2. We worked hard to make ourselves visible.

Ever heard of “The Rule of Seven” in marketing?  This is an old adage that assumes it takes seven different exposures to your brand or message in order for a consumer to take action and begin spending money with you.  Thankfully, we knew that we could chip away at that magic number of seven simply by showing our faces in the right settings.

Back in 2007 we didn’t want to sit around waiting for baseball parents to hear about our brand more than a half-dozen times before coming in to see who we were and how unique our business was.  Instead of being patient, we put on CSP tee shirts and attended as many baseball games as we could fit in to our schedule.  If Eric and I showed up to six games in the spring, and then the catcher’s dad mentioned to one or two other parents that we’d helped his injury-prone son stay healthy for the entire season, then we’d be at our magic number of exposures in quick fashion.

The point here is both simple and cost-effective: If you rely on word-of-mouth advertising to prompt consumers to spend with you, you need to take action both inside and outside of your facility.  You can’t just hope for brand exposure, you have to actually expose it in order for word-of-mouth to take effect.

Today CSP clients get more excited to see our employees on the sidelines than me or Eric

3. We prepare our clients for the discussion we hope that they’ll have.

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.  Clients who understand “the why” behind their individualized programming are much better positioned to illustrate just how unique and valuable your service offering is during discussions with friends.

CSP coaches don’t just robotically deliver assistance with the arm-care protocols for baseball players; they articulate the reasoning for their inclusion in the programming and explain how they can be introduced to a pre-practice or game day warm-up ritual.  “Because my strength coach said so” is a much less memorable justification for doing a specific warm-up than “because it addresses the shoulder instability that was identified during my initial assessment at CSP.”

Detailed explanation of material in the weight room eventually leads to memorable word-of-mouth interactions in baseball dugouts and clubhouses.

In summary…

1. People are vocal about differentiated services.
2. Making your brand visible is critical. It doesn’t need to be difficult, but it needs to happen.
3. Don't assume that your clients are equipped to convey what makes your business unique; empower them.

Having a "Preemie" Reminded Me of 3 Important Business Lessons

My wife is 225 days pregnant with our second child.

Why so specific?

The number 225 is important to me because our (my wife’s) first pregnancy lasted 223 days.  For those of you who don’t care to pull out a calculator right now, when your due date is determined it is assumed that you’ll make it roughly 280 days.  We’re in unchartered territory. 

Our son Collin was born at a gestational age of 31 weeks and 6 days.  He spent his first 6 weeks of life in a newborn intensive care unit (NICU) before being deemed ready to go home with his parents.  During this time, we made twice-daily trips across the city just so that we could change the occasional diaper and check our little guy’s temperature in advance of his 7:00am and 7:00pm feedings.  While our presence was expected, it was anything but necessary as far as his ongoing care went.

Just 30-minutes "old"

Don’t feel bad for us.  I’m not sure we would change a thing about this experience if given the opportunity to do so.  We saw first-hand what world-class newborn care looks like every time a new NICU nurse popped her head in the room to check on our son.  We became better prepared parents because of this experience. 

There is no way of knowing if we’ll deliver earlier than expected this time around, so we’re understandably a little on edge.  With this hovering in the back of my mind as I sat down to brainstorm blog topics for the week, I realized that the way I run my business and manage my own work/life balance has changed dramatically since Collin came in to the world.

Here are three basic yet important business lessons I’ve been continuously reminded of since experiencing a premature delivery and becoming a dad in general:

1. Things don’t always go according to plan

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

My first hold...

We got punched square in the mouth.  Plans had already been made.  We’d picked out the book that would serve as our manual for sleep-training our child.  We had not one, but two baby showers on the calendar during the two months leading up to our expected due date.  We even had flights booked to visit Florida for a “babymoon” in mid-March.

Instead, my wife had the rare opportunity to enjoy her first baby shower after our child was born.  We scrapped our sleep-training plans when we realized that the whole “start from day-one” concept doesn’t apply to parents who bring their child home on day-forty-two.  We even learned that JetBlue will call the labor & delivery department at your hospital to confirm the authenticity of your story before issuing a full flight reimbursement in a circumstance such as ours.

From the moment we arrived at the hospital to deliver our first child, until the day we left, every nurse or doctor we encountered reiterated the same message: “This is just going to be a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of your life as parents.” 

What felt like the end of the world at that moment ended up being just that – a blip on the radar. 

As an entrepreneur, you can expect to be metaphorically punched in the mouth.  I have written at length about the variety of problems you might encounter during the lifespan of your business, and each scenario covered can and should be temporary.  The sooner you come to terms with the notion that the past is the past, the closer you’ll be to creating a profitable future.

2. People will never forget how you made them feel

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

NICU Nurses are among the best people on earth.

When you look at all of the fitness facilities currently in operation, all of the training models currently being implemented, and the variety of training philosophies in place, we all have one thing in common: we are in the business of customer service.  I can’t think of a better customer service experience in my lifetime than the one that the NICU nurses delivered on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, and minute-by-minute basis back in the spring of 2014.

I can’t for the life of me remember the Otolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat doctor) who checked Collin’s hearing when he was born.  I also don’t distinctly remember the face of the doctor who delivered my son.  What I can remember with absolutely clarity, however, are the faces of the nurses who put me at ease each time his heart rate dropped during a feeding.  I am forever grateful to the thoughtful ones who prepared creative images of Collin during the overnight shift so we could arrive each morning knowing that he’d been in good hands while we were gone.

The skilled doctors and technicians used their expensive equipment to perform similarly expensive procedures that I vaguely remember, but the nurses pulled together $0.50 worth of glitter and construction paper to create memories that continue to hang on the walls of my office to this day. 

Here’s the takeaway: It doesn’t take much effort or investment to make a lasting impact on your clients.  When all is said and done, they’re going to be more likely to remember the hand-written congratulatory note you gave them after accomplishing a fitness goal than the piece of fancy Keiser equipment they used to get them there.

3. Most of us have no idea how inefficient we are with our time

“Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.” – Mignon McLaughlin

"Uncle Eric" could teach us all a thing or two about efficiency now that he's got two rugrats of his own at home...

For the first seven years that CSP was in business I showed up to train around 10:00am, took my sweet time over the next two hours completing a training session designed to take 75-90-minutes, and then started my work day as clients arrived at noon.  If I had to stay past “closing time” at 7:00pm to get my work done, so be it.  My wife worked a demanding job, so it wasn’t rare for one or both of us to get home an hour or two late a couple of times each week and not think anything of it.

When my son arrived, coming home an hour or two late meant not seeing him before bedtime.  It turns out Collin didn’t seem to care about the length of my professional to-do list…I quickly realized that time spent socializing with clients, watching viral YouTube videos, and messing around in general was keeping me from quality time with my family. 

Last summer I wrote about my decision to begin training exclusively during our busiest hours of the day.  One of my reasons for doing so was to make better use of the hours leading up to clients arriving at CSP:

“Have you ever heard the saying that every hour of sleep you can get before midnight is the equivalent to two after?  Well I am of the belief that every hour of work that I complete prior to noon is as productive as two completed after.”

After changing my training time and focusing on task completion every moment that I was on the clock, the list that used to take me seven hours to complete was suddenly executable in four or five.  Instead of scaling back on my output with the addition of new family responsibilities, I was able to keep up with my CSP tasks and launch my website, publish a weekly blog, and take on the occasional speaking engagement.

I owe my son a thank-you for forcing me to realize that I had a lot more productivity in the tank.  

Many lessons to come

We are two weeks away from our 9-year anniversary of opening CSP and I still occasionally feel like I have no idea what I am doing.  Parenting is very similar to running a business in the sense that as soon as you think you know what you’re doing, the rules and patterns unexpectedly change.  I’m looking forward to the next 9 years of twists and turns.

This family is about to get bigger.

Keep Chasing Elite Athletes - I'll be Over Here Collecting General-Pop Dollars

This past December was the second busiest month in the history of CSP Massachusetts. During that 31-day window, we had 39 different MLB affiliated players come through our doors, representing 21 organizations. This number pales in comparison to the volume of affiliated players training at our Florida location, though still qualifies us as one of the more heavily-trafficked training facilities for professional baseball players in this country.

Sounds pretty cool, don’t you think?

What if I were to tell you that these guys accounted for roughly 8% of the dollars we collected during that month?

My point here isn’t to devalue the importance of having a professional athlete presence in our gym; I realize that they make a huge difference in my ability to attract the baseball-playing amateur crowd. Instead, I want illustrate the fact that there isn’t a wildly successful gym that I’m aware of that trains exclusively high-end athletes from the college or professional setting.

Youth athletes and general fitness population pay my bills, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If Cressey Sports Performance can get fired up to cater to the “normal” folks that attend our strength camps several mornings a week, I don’t see why your gym can’t do the same.

Gym Owner Musings - 5 Random Lessons Learned

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 five quick insights that fall somewhere in between Twitter-friendly and ”blog-worthy”.

1. The “start small” mentality works

There is only one scenario I can see where “start small” is a bad idea, and that is when signing a long-term lease with zero wiggle-room for expansion or lease term modification. In 2008 we moved in to a 6,600 sq-ft space with the intention of growing out of it long before the conclusion of our 5-year term. As far as I’m concerned, the goal upon signing any lease should be to find your business busting at the seams and in need of additional space before your agreement concludes.

Assuming you’re renting space, consider communicating your vision clearly to a potential landlord like we did:

“6,600 sq-ft should do the trick for now, but if we build our business the way we aspire to, we want to know that you’re open to finding us some additional space here in the building and tearing up our current agreement so that we can negotiate a new term.”

Not many landlords will say no to you asking them to consider renting you MORE space before your current lease expires.

2. Everything is negotiable at a fitness equipment retailer

In July of 2007 we walked in to a Gym Source (franchised fitness equipment seller) looking for a functional trainer with two cable columns and a whole bunch of weight plates. We learned two important lessons that afternoon:

The first was that you could save a ton of money (30-40% in our experience) by purchasing a floor model piece of equipment at a store like this as opposed to demanding something brand new. I’m fairly certain the people aren’t banging out max-effort reps of exercises on a cable column in a retail store, so wear and tear is at a minimum when you buy “slightly used.”

The second lesson we learned was that margins on weight plates aren’t too bad for chains like Gym Source because of volume discounts they get when buying on a huge scale. This particular location only had a couple hundred pounds of plates on hand when we arrived, and we were told that we could buy them at a rate of $1/pound. “So what would our per-pound rate be if we told you that our gym needed 2,000 pounds of plates and we’re also on the market for the next seated-row/lat-pulldown floor model you come across?”

All of the sudden we found ourselves paying $0.65/pound.

3. Business insurance for a gym is expensive for 25 year olds…

I vaguely remember it going a little like this:

Coverage Provider: “So you need insurance for your fitness facility…I’ll just need to know how long you’ve been in business, what experience you guys have running a gym, and what your annual revenues look like.”

Me: “About three days…zero experience…and absolutely no idea what we’ll collect in year one.”

Coverage Provider: “You may not love the quote I come back at you with.”

The cost of insuring our business in year-one ended up being comparable to what I will spend this coming August when our policy renews for the 8th time. That may not seem that surprising, until you realize that we now collect roughly four times the revenue, with four times as many employees, and more than four times as much gym space as what we were working with in ‘07.

4. Take good care of youth athletes and your business will be recession-proof

We decided it would be a good idea to start at business at the start of “The Great Recession.” In hindsight, we’ve come to realize that our model was safer from an economic downturn than a gym that is exclusively geared toward servicing the general fitness population.

More specifically, we’ve learned that when it comes time to tighten up the family budget, parents are more likely to cut out their own discretionary spending than they will be to take away the premium supervised strength and conditioning services that their kids currently enjoy. As a new parent myself, I’m beginning to understand the inclination to go above and beyond for your kid.

5. Surviving the first 12-18 months of business is not easy…

I received my annual social security update in the mail today and decided to have a close look at my taxed social security earnings dating back to 1998.  One particular year jumped out at me – 2007. 

My taxable earnings for this first year that we were in business totaled $2,846.  As a frame of reference, I took home roughly double that amount in 2000 at a time when my only income came from serving beverages at a Seattle’s Best Coffee for 10-12 hours each week while maintaining a full college course load. 

Think about this for a second…in 2007 I worked roughly 12 hours per day, 6-7 days per week so that I could ultimately bring home enough money to pay for the gas used getting me to and from the gym every day.

I’m not in search of any type of sympathy.  Instead, I’m trying to reinforce the fact that EVERY successful gym I know of had to bootstrap it a little bit (or a lot) during the early stages of operations.  We were all first-time business owners once.

No One Signed up for Our Transformation Program, and It Was a Financial Success

Two is one and one is none. 

If you have a military background, you’ve likely heard this phrase before.  The gist of this message is simple: whatever can go wrong, probably will, and you’d better have a backup plan prepared for all circumstances.  In essence, “two is one and one is none” is the solution you put in place to deal with Murphy’s Law.

So how does this apply to the business of fitness? 

Let me start with a story…

A couple of months’ back we decided to launch a 6-week transformation challenge at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP).  With roughly 80% of our clients being baseball players, the month of April is extremely quiet around the gym.  Why not try something new and see if we can help out those in the community who are interested in fat-loss and lifestyle change?

We designed the training curriculum for 18 (3x-weekly) bodyweight / kettlebell training sessions.  We prepared a comprehensive nutrition guidance component for daily distribution throughout the program.  We titled the program Fit-In-6 and had a nice little logo designed.  We even had a 90-minute Skype conversation with Brian Patrick Murphy, one of the co-founders of Mark Fisher Fitness, and also a primary influencer of their massively successful Snatched in 6-Weeks transformation program.

We’d figuratively crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s. 

Next, we spread the word.  We distributed flyers.  We sent emails.  Went live on Facebook.  Created the leads. Delivered the pitch.

I converted just 4 of those 30-ish leads into our FI6 program.  So much for considering myself an effective salesman…

“Sounds great…I just can’t afford it”

I’ve become pretty comfortable selling a premium-priced performance enhancement service out of our destination training facility over the past decade.  The problem in this case was my failure to realize that outside of the baseball community, the CSP brand doesn’t carry equal weight.

It’s a whole lot easier to say: “the price is the price” when your leads have already come to the conclusion that you’re among the best in the world at what you do.  Selling to the perpetual program-hoppers and tire-kickers of the fat-loss community is a whole different story.  If I thought diligently about my audience, I probably should have anticipated some serious push back on a high price-point .

Thankfully, I didn’t NEED this program to thrive to keep our doors open.  I simply wanted to experiment with an alternative service offering in advance of the spring sports season wrapping up and the gym suddenly getting flooded with high school and college baseball players.  When you don’t absolutely have to collect those dollars, you can make the decision not to compromise on a pricing structure that you feel is fair for the services you’re providing. 

So, we worked 4 individuals through a 6-week transformation program, and they had fantastic results.  Awesome…but how can I call this a financial success?

Two service options became one, instead of one becoming none

The FI6 program generated leads, and that’s what matters.  While most of those leads didn’t love the cost associated with the program, I still had them on the phone, and I had another tool in my kit waiting to be implemented.

“I completely understand your hesitance with the cost. Did you know that we offer Strength Camps in the mornings here at CSP that start with a $99 trial month?  The metabolic conditioning component to these classes is pretty similar to that which you’d experience in our transformation program and if you don’t love it after a month, you just walk away!”

Well, would you look at that…dead leads are suddenly converting in to business.  Add 6 new strength campers in to the mix and I’ve suddenly filled my strength camp pipeline.  When all is said and done, all I want is the opportunity for my staff to win over new clients by delivering an exceptional training experience. 

My point is this: we earned trust with a new audience and found a fit for them, even if it wasn’t what we (and they) initially thought they wanted. Ultimately, they achieved a price point they were comfortable with for a service they find valuable. May not be the end goal we initially sought with this particular audience, but certainly ended up a win-win.

Make sure to have a low barrier to entry option

Premium-priced services are typically profitable, and immensely valuable to the right kind of client.  Unfortunately, they aren’t for everyone.  If you’d like to make efficient use of the leads you’ve worked so hard to generate (and possibly invested in), it is a great idea to have a lower-priced service offering to fall back on. 

Does your premium service selling strategy have a contingency plan?  Remember, two is one and one is none.

5 Reasons We Don't Ask Employees to Sign a Non-Compete Clause

I’ve never asked a single employee to sign a non-compete clause (NCC) here at Cressey Sports Performance.

There was a time when NCC’s were typically reserved for company executives.  It looks as if this time has passed, as NCC’s appear to be the norm in the current world of fitness.  My attitude as it relates to NCC’s would qualify as “employee-friendly,” as I echo the thoughts shared by attorney Michele Grant in a recent Fast Company article:

"What started out as a scalpel for companies to protect their very valuable trade secrets and customer lists...has turned into a bludgeon that exploits all types of workers."

While I see value in NCC agreements in a number of business scenarios, employing fitness professionals here at CSP is not one of them.  Here are five reasons why we choose not to go this route:

1. Enforceability presents a problem

Can we specifically articulate exactly what is important about the trade secrets we are looking to protect here at CSP?  Nope.

We don’t have a leg to stand on if we’re going to make the argument that the lessons we teach our employees need to be fiercely protected one day, and then publish video tutorials featuring proper execution of those lessons the next. 

We’ve made a decision to help push the industry forward by frequently publishing material showcasing our knowledge and training philosophy.  Who are we kidding when trying to convince our employees that what they learn here qualifies as a trade secret after emailing these tips to the 90,000+ people on Eric’s newsletter? 

I routinely preach application of common sense to other fitness business owners, and common sense tells me that a judge would find our “valuable trade secrets” to be anything but secret.

2. There are challenges in staying up to date

Policies are constantly evolving.  At this very moment there is potential serious change on the horizon in Massachusetts.  If the suggested reform in our state happens to make it through, I would need to determine what constitutes a “low-wage worker,” slow down my current hiring protocols to allow for candidates to seek legal council in advance of signing a NCC, and ask myself if I’d really like to be on the hook for 50% of a former employee’s pay if they declared that they weren’t working because of the document we’ve made them sign.

At this moment, I can’t say that headaches such as these are worth my time.

3. Language must be rewritten as positions evolve

The roles and responsibilities of our employees are frequently shifting and evolving.  We may have initially hired Chris Howard to be a strength & conditioning coach at CSP, but he eventually became our company’s manual therapist, and also inherited the role of providing nutrition consultation services upon Brian St. Pierre’s departure to pursue a different career path (now the Director of Performance Nutrition at PN).  Had we asked Chris to sign a NCC back when he joined us in 2009, we would have had to revise and restructure the language each and every time we made a significant adjustment to his job description. 

In 2004, the trial court judge overseeing the case of Lycos, Inc. v. Jackson summarized the Material Change Doctrine Policy as such: “Each time an employee’s employment relationship with the employer changes materially such that they have entered into a new employment relationship, a new restrictive covenant must be signed.”

Again, I have to ask myself, are headaches such as these worth my time?

4. Sets the wrong tone for the initial hiring

I am of the opinion that the aggressive nature with which an employer negotiates and enforces NCC policies is typically a fairly accurate reflection of how they treat their employees throughout the term of employment.  At CSP we’re more concerned with creating a professional relationship built on trust than we are in battling through negotiations on the front end of the employer-employee agreement.

5. Semi-Private model makes bouncing undesirable

In the world of fitness, NCC’s are part of the competitive landscape in part to protect trade secrets, but also to protect client rosters.  Facility owners are often threatened by the thought of seeing an employee walk out the door and taking a considerable chunk of their clients with them.  This is an understandable concern.

The unique training and coaching model in place at CSP effectively downplays this risk.  Since clients are never positioned as “the property” of any individual coach, they’d be unlikely to feel inclined to follow a departing staff member.  As much as I believe in the individual skills of each of my coaches, the magic of the CSP experience is rooted in a training environment that emphasizes group supervision in a semi-private model.  Simply put, no single coach makes our gym special.  We are the sum of our collective parts. 

In Conclusion

I can absolutely support the use of NCC’s when the language is thoughtfully drawn up, the duration of the agreement is reasonable (a year or less), and the need to protect proprietary information and/or client rosters exists…I just don’t feel the need to integrate them in my own business model.

To each his own, right?

The Last Week of Your Internship Is the Time to Shine

I have two permanent messages pinned to the top of daily my to-do list at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP). These insights spend the entirety of every workday within my line of sight. They impact the way I go about my life both personally and professionally. They are as follows:

1. There is no luck.
2. True character is revealed when no one is looking.

The second point on this brief list applies to each and every intern we guide through our program here at CSP. Most interns fail to realize that their true employability is revealed during the last week of a several month long internship. The last week is a time when interns tend to be lulled in to a false sense of security in thinking that they’ve somehow finished their task of making a positive lasting impression.

This home stretch is like the last week of high school for the senior who’s been accepted to the college of his choice and feels entirely unburdened by the stress of exams. When intern focus is left unaddressed, attention to detail tends to slip, proactive work ethics mysteriously disappear, and one foot is figuratively “out the door.”   

Here’s what I’m looking for as you wrap things up with us…

I’m looking to see if you’re as engaged on day 150 as you were on day number 1. Do you have the same bounce in your step as you move from the foam rollers to the med ball area that we observed during your first week with us?

Are you still asking quality questions and demonstrating a desire to learn? Or, are you going through the motions and day dreaming about the next internship on your agenda or the series of college courses you’ve enrolled in for the coming semester?

Do your fellow interns like and respect you? Do our clients speak highly of you?

Have you established yourself as the “go-to” guy (or girl) the full-time staff members gravitate toward when they need a capable coach to walk a new client through our warm-up protocols? Or, are you the one they bypass on their way to that person?

The last intern who dominated her final week with us now collects a paycheck from CSP.

True coaching character is revealed during the last handful of coaching shifts…

Your actual work ethic…your ability to lead…your potential value to our business…

It’s all clearly presented to me during your last few days with us at a time when you already know what your next professional stop along the way is. Interviews have already been completed. Applications have already been approved. Schedules have already been finalized. All you need to do is run out the clock on this internship and move on. 

Can my clients tell you’ve checked out mentally? They most certainly can, and I can assure you that they let us know.

Just remember this…

When you list my name as a reference during a future job hunt, and that potential employer gets in touch, I’m a whole lot more likely to remember your mediocrity during the final week of your internship than I am to remember how impressive you were at the halfway point. 

Make sure to finish what you started with the same momentum you carried on day one and I won’t only be saying nice things about you during a reference check; I may try to add you to my payroll.

10 Lessons Learned During a Year of Blogging

Today marks a full year of existence for PeteDupuis.com and the blog I’ve somehow managed to maintain.  In 52 weeks I’ve published 48 blog posts and learned valuable lessons along the way.

Before I get in to it, let me begin with a disclaimer: I am NOT pretending to be some sort of authority on writing.  In fact, I second-guess 100% of the material I’ve prepared each and every time my mouse hovers above the “save and publish” button.  I’m simply sharing some insights I’ve accumulated since getting started on May 18th of 2015.

For those of you who have been kicking around the idea of starting your own blog, I hope this list allows you to accelerate creation of content you’re proud of.  For those of you who have a blog but temporarily abandon your mission of writing regularly, I hope this list lights the fire you need to get back in the game.  Lastly, for those of you who are already crushing it on a daily or weekly basis on your own site, thank you for inspiring me to stay consistent.

Here, in no particular order, are my ten favorite blogging lessons learned in year number one:

1. If you don’t look back on your original material and cringe just a little bit, you’re not evolving as a writer

This is a message I’ve heard Eric Cressey share with other fitness professionals when discussing the evolution of his programming strategy, and it also holds true in relation to writing.  I took an inventory of my year-one blogging output during the past couple of days and began to see the same handful of mistakes and tendencies my editor (wife) has been kind enough to point out just about every week as she reviews my material. 

There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes along the way, but failing to address them is not acceptable if you’d like people to take your material seriously.

2. Abandoning ideas entirely is wasteful

CSP Strength Coach Tony Bonvechio once told me that he knows within the first 200 words whether or not he’s got something of value to share.  As it turns out, I have about a dozen 200-word “under construction” posts sitting in my Google Drive as I write this.  While I routinely walk away from a concept, I never abandon it entirely. 

On countless occasions I have been prompted to revisit an old idea and build upon the concept after encountering a new book, presentation, or discussion that forced me to think a little bit differently about my approach on a given topic.  Some of my most popular material was conceived and temporarily abandoned several months before publishing.

Speaking of 200-word posts…

3. If your content is sound, post length doesn’t matter

When I stumble upon a period of writer’s block, my best course of action is to revisit my “Abandoned Posts” folder for ideas.  One such idea sat buried at the bottom of that folder for months until I finally decided to stop waiting for two or three more complimentary bullet points to magically appear.

Instead, I posted a 249-word blog titled Are You Sabotaging Your Ability to Convert Leads?  It was the 5th most popular blog I’ve posted to date.  I’ve yet to come across a reader who said: “The concept presented in that blog post was fantastic but damn you for not giving me more.”

4. Don’t ever stop practicing the execution of the content you’re discussing

Cressey Sports Performance is the foundation of my credibility.  In nearly nine years of running my business, I have accumulated enough memories and experiences to continue writing about my craft for weeks, months, and (hopefully) years to come.  Walking away from the fundamentals of running our business would eventually make my content stale and redundant.

I count on the evolution of our business and brand to stimulate new and unique thoughts on a daily basis.  Fresh experiences make for unique content.

5. Read. Read. Read. Then read more.

You know that nine years’ worth of ideas and experiences I mentioned in tip #4?  Accumulating this material may have been part of the job, but extracting it from memory in preparation for writing is not.  Reading business-specific books like Zero-To-One help me to connect concepts with experiences and create content gold.

The more I read, the more I write.  My cure for writer’s block is immersing myself in other writers’ material.

6. If you think you’ve got your audience figured out…prepare to be disappointed

I recently emailed my wife a first-draft of a blog post with the subject “this is garbage but I’m struggling for content this week.”  She suggested a couple of minor grammatical adjustments and said it looked good to go.  That post went on to be the most shared, liked, and trafficked post in the history of my blog.

Similarly, I’ve seen more than a few of my posts go essentially unnoticed despite my thinking that I’d finally prepared something “really good.”  I’ve come to terms with the fact that sometimes my audience consumes my content differently than I perceive it, and that’s ok.

7. Provocative gets hits

I probably shouldn’t have referred to the post “Because My Boss Sucks” is a Shitty Reason to Open a Gym as garbage.  However, I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it because the points made were not particularly new to my readers.  I guess that when it comes to gym ownership, most things worth saying once should probably be repeated!

This being said, I am almost positive that this post got attention because I used the word “Shitty” in the title.  My initial instinct was to tone it down, but thankfully my wife pointed out that it brought an edginess that complimented the message and I ultimately decided to roll with it.  Provocative blog titles (within reason) can occasionally draw just enough attention to entice new people to check out your material.  Lesson learned.   

8. Authenticity is key

I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a number of talented writers.  My business partner Eric has managed to attract more than 100,000 followers spanning multiple platforms thanks to a style that features a unique (and often scientific) take on strength training for the overhead athlete population.  On the other end of the spectrum, Tony Gentilcore successfully blends strength-training concepts with a combination of current events and stories about his cat in a style that is best described as “weight lifting infotainment.”

Both approaches have been immensely successful, but that doesn’t mean they’d work for me.  Much like I preach that gym owners should stay in their own lane when it comes to building gym culture (i.e. don’t try to appear eccentric like Mark Fisher Fitness if you’re not Mark or a part of his team), I’d also strongly encourage aspiring writers to let their true personality and strengths shine through their material. 

I will never be comfortable taking a mathematic approach to describing the nuts and bolts of operating a fitness business in the way that Eric delves into anatomy in his writing about training baseball players.  I will also never effectively tie pop culture references into my content the way Tony seamlessly does.  I will tell stories that convey messages…stories that I’ve experienced…stories that I’ve lived.  Assuming I stay the course, no one will ever be able to say my material lacks authenticity.

9. Consistency matters

48 blogs in 52 weeks…I don’t blame you if you’re you asking yourself “why not 52 in 52?”

The first week that I failed to publish was that of the 4th Annual CSP Fall Seminar.  When it comes to the logistics of putting on a 150+ attendee event, everything else gets pushed aside to make sure things get done. I get a pass on that week.

The other 3 missed weeks took place in succession during the holidays.  “Taking a week off” suddenly became two, and then three.  If I was lucky enough to have readers who looked forward to my weekly post at that point in time, I probably lost a few of them due to my unpredictable publishing schedule. 

Once I finally got back on track I decided to standardize the time of the week that I write (usually Tuesday mornings), and the time of the week that I publish (Wednesday or Thursday).  By locking in a routine, I’ve managed to lock in some consistency that has led to a bigger audience.

10. Speak to one distinct population at a time

I mentioned earlier that these lessons were in no particular order, but I think I may have saved the most important for last…

I have three types of readers: gym owners, personal trainers, and personal trainers who dream of one day being gym owners.  In hindsight, the most mediocre blogs I’ve written were attempts at speaking to all three populations simultaneously.  I got so caught up in trying to be everything to everyone, that I lost track of the importance on speaking clearly to one specific audience.

The numbers don’t lie…my three most popular posts of year-one were as follows:

1. “Because My Boss Sucks” is a Shitty Reason To Open a Gym – directed toward personal trainers who dream of opening their own gym some day

2. Three Reasons We Don’t Offer Free Consultations – directed toward gym owners

3. How To Stand Out in a Crowded Fitness Industry – directed toward personal trainers

Thank You

I want to thank everyone who has set aside time to read even just a single one of my blog posts during the past 365 days.  I’ve immensely enjoyed creating this material and look forward to another productive year of writing.  Make sure to join my newsletter and stay tuned for more!

If Your Employees Enjoy Themselves, Your Clients Will Too

A couple of months ago I had a consulting client in to CSP for an in-person consultation.  We scheduled the sit-down to take place during the hour before clients arrives so that he could transition from my office to the training floor as we were kicking off what was expected to be a busy mid-winter day.  The insight I share relating to training environment and gym culture is effectively hammered home once you can "see it in action."

We weren't ten steps in to the gym when a football came flying past our faces and into the hands of a sprinting Greg Robins.  A half-dozen professional baseball players stood just twenty yards away, nodding their heads in approval as Greg had "run the proper route."

The visiting gym owner proclaimed: "He must be mortified that you walked through the door at that exact moment and caught him messing around."

He wasn't.  As a matter of fact, he proceeded to run an even cleaner route moments later right in front of me.  Greg (and every other member of my coaching staff) knows that I appreciate the importance of relating to our clients and demonstrating that we don't take ourselves too seriously while on the training floor.

If our guys want to sling a football around for ten minutes prior to kicking off a training session, I am all for it.  We place an emphasis on professionalism around here, but not entirely at the expense of delivering an enjoyable work and training environment.  Seth Godin put it best when he described Coldstone Creamery's customer service model in All Marketers Tell Stories:

"If the scoopers aren't having a good time, why should the customers?"

Does My Gym Need an Admin?

So you’re an entrepreneur wearing many hats…

I’ll bet you’re wondering if it is time to find yourself some help at the front desk so that your business can “make the jump.”

Without a complete understanding of your training format, business model, and current team, I am entirely ill equipped to tell you when the “right time” is to hire someone to handle your administrative tasks.  What I can tell you, however, are the questions I asked myself before determining that it was the right time for Cressey Sports Performance to add an Office Manager into the mix. 

Ask yourself this…

Are my responsibilities associated with being the jack-of-all-trades within my business impeding my ability to deliver a quality customer service experience for paying clients? Are emails left unread for extended periods of time because the phone always seems to be ringing? Are those ringing calls being pushed aside in favor of responding to the needs of the clients standing right in front of me? Are the clients standing right in front of me being asked to wait as I finish giving the pitch to the unanticipated “walk-in” inquiry?

If your answer to these questions is “yes”, it’s time. 

It’s time for you to stop working in your business, and start working on your business.  It’s time for you to embrace the art of delegation.  Allow someone else to check people in and schedule training sessions so that you can start working to maintain the impressive growth pattern that is forcing you to make this decision in the first place.

But before you do…

Be honest with yourself

Don’t add payroll because you aspire to answer yes to these questions. Add payroll because you’re business is busting at the seams. Until then, embrace the art of multi-tasking, because you’re not quite ready to “make the jump.”

Internship Commencement Address - 3 Reminders for New Coaches

Last May, nearly 12 years to the day removed from our own graduation ceremony, my college roommate Kevin was tasked with the responsibility of delivering the commencement speech for the undergraduate students graduating from our alma mater, Babson College.  He put on his cap and gown, collected his honorary doctorate, and proceeded to drop some real world knowledge on a couple hundred young professionals who dream of being one of the first ten employees at “the next Facebook.” 

How cool is that?

I realize that I’m unlikely to find myself in the same situation.  I can, however, take it upon myself to brainstorm a commencement speech directed toward a whole different type of program graduate: a Cressey Sports Performance (CSP) Intern. 

We’re about to release our 130th CSP intern into the wild.  If I had to put on a cap and gown and share some insights with each of these coaches who have suddenly become an extension of my brand, these are three important lessons I’d choose to reiterate.

1. Someone is always watching. 

“It is our choices that make us who we are far more than our abilities.” 

 - J. K. Rowling 

A few years back we decided that the time was right to add an additional full-time coach to our staff.  Since it is our policy to only hire through our internship program, we had narrowed down our list of potential candidates without even formally announcing that we were “looking.”  Eric arrived at our staff meeting that week with a list of three candidates he felt might be a fit, and proceeded to announce them to the group.  Almost immediately, multiple team members raised their hand to informally “vote” against one candidate in particular. 

The intern in question was intelligent enough to thrive within our coaching format, assess and design programs for athletes effectively, and put his best foot forward when in front of a client or Eric himself.  What this coach did not concern himself with, however, was making friends with his colleagues.  He never once trained without his headphones in his ears during staff lift, avoided engaging with other team members outside of the facility, and isolated himself from the team during a time when we were developing a staff that would ultimately dictate the entire culture of our gym and the brand that represents it.  He wasn’t a fit.

As an up and coming coach, you should spend more time making friends, and less concerning yourself with making a positive impression on the boss.  You’ll find that you’re far more employable if everyone other than Eric likes you, as opposed to only having him on your side.

2. Choose employment wisely.

“The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss.”

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’d rather see a job applicant with a gap in their resume where they spent a year “finding themselves”, than a collection of short-lived employment scenarios.  There are few things that frustrate me more than seeing a former intern who I vouched for during an interview process quit on a job just weeks after starting because they decided it wasn’t the right fit.  Unless an employer blatantly lied to you during the hiring process, anything less than six months of coaching under their roof before leaving looks to me like not finishing what you started.

If you become a perpetual job hopper, you will forever be a “man who knows how.”  What you will not become is a “man who knows why”, because the truly valuable learning experiences come after an orientation or onboarding process. 

If you take your time with the job search and avoid pouncing on the first opportunity that presents itself, you’re far more likely to settle in to a position that proves to be a good fit. That’s not to say you aren’t allowed to leave a job that is making you miserable – but with proper introspection and diligence in your search, you will inevitably avoid putting yourself in positions where you repeatedly want to leave.

3. You don’t need any more internship experience. Go make some damn money.

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”

-       Andre Malraux

There are two kinds of intern candidates I encounter: those who see how an internship at our gym provides them with the skills they need to dive in to our industry head first and begin making a positive impact almost immediately, and those who see the program as a piece of a puzzle that requires a series of letters of recommendations from names like Boyle, Cressey, Robertson, etc. 

I call the latter group “career interns”, and I strongly encourage you to avoid falling in to that trap.  I am not claiming CSP’s program to be superior to any of those listed above – to the contrary: a couple of hundred hours spent learning under the roof of any one of those fitness facilities will put you in the top 10% of coaches on the staff of just about any gym in the country.  To spend additional months and years accumulating unpaid hours and bullets on your resume only delays you from pushing the industry forward with your own great contributions.

This is a serious responsibility

Training athletes, general fitness population, or even your significant other is a responsibility that requires attention to detail and an appreciation for the risks associated with bad coaching decisions.  While the barrier to entry in our field is painfully low, it doesn’t mean that we can coast along carelessly and embrace the mentality that personal training has to be a temporary fix or some sort of professional mid-life crisis.

In closing, I’ll tell you what Seth Godin had to say on a recent recording of The Tim Ferriss Show.  When asked what insight he would share with graduating students, he said:

"You are more powerful than you think you are.  Act accordingly."

"Real" Fitness Business Talk with Pete Dupuis

I'm back from another successful Fitness Summit out in K.C. and find myself buried in email, phone calls to return, and all kinds of other CSP-related tasks piling up on my desk.

It's a good thing Tony and I arranged a nice little "content swap" on our flight out to Missouri!  Those of you who enjoyed his answers to my business questions last Friday will hopefully enjoy the insight I shared on his site today.  

#TFS16 - Come for the info. Stay for the Smirnoff.

I needed a good image to sum up the Fitness Summit weekend, so naturally I went with the picture I found on my phone of Mark Fisher realizing he'd just been "iced" by David Bromberg in the hotel lobby.

Check it my pseudo guest post on Tony's blog here: "Real" Fitness Business Talk with Pete Dupuis

Business Q&A With Tony-G at 30,000 Feet

So I was sitting on the couch last night, thinking about the fact that I’d be hopping on a 3+ hour flight to Kansas City with Tony Gentilcore the following morning (Fitness Summit weekend is upon us), and wondering what I should blog about this week.

And then I had an idea…

What if I were to jot down a few questions relating to Tony’s experience in 6-months of his “I’m not a businessman…I’m a BUSINESS, man” Experiment and then simply slide my laptop in front of him once we hit a cruising altitude?  He wouldn’t say no to that, would he?

He didn’t.

Here is some awesome insight for any of my readers who are considering making the jump from employee to owner.  Tony has experience in corporate fitness, big-ish gym creation and design (CSP), and studio-based fitness instruction.  He’s seen and done a lot.  Take notes, people.

PD: Coming from a facility of the size and scope of CSP, what are the environmental and/or cultural factors you spend the most time working to recreate in your new space?

TG: There’s been a great degree of “expectation management” on my end on this front.

I guess the appropriate response here is to state that it’s pretty much impossible to recreate CSP’s culture and environment. And, frankly, it’s never been my intention to attempt to do so.

Don’t get me wrong: much of who I am as a coach – my general approach and philosophy – has its core deeply embedded in CSP’s roots.  That, I think, will never go away.

However, when I decided to branch off on my own, my goal wasn’t to try to recreate CSP.  I’m still very much interested in getting people strong, helping them move better, possibly win a fight against a grizzly, and doing whatever I can to help people become the best versions of themselves possible…but the culture and “vibe” is still being developed (for lack of a better term).

People are deadlifting their faces off, I drop f-bombs incessantly, and there’s no shortage of techno blaring between the walls; my personality is nudging the culture in many ways. But it’s important for me to keep things in check and not marry myself to the idea that I need to “recreate” anything, or that it’s about ME in the first place.

Because it’s not.

Mark Fisher discusses the concept of culture all the time. It’s kind of his bag. There are ZERO gyms in the world that do what Mark Fisher Fitness does.  Unicorns, dildos, spontaneous dance parties, and naked glitter paint whateverthef*** are par for the course there.

The thing is: he didn’t seek out those things when he and his partners opened up their gym, and truthfully, I think he’d be the first one to say he has no idea how MFF became synonymous with Unicorns in the first place. It just sorta happened.

That said, Mark has always said that the culture at MFF – via a combination of himself, his business partners (Michael and Brian), as well as the STAFF, and the CLIENTS – is what resulted in dildos and Unicorns.

It’s about the PEOPLE; everyone. Not any one person.

In short: Matt Damon should totally train with me for the next Bourne movie.

PD: You waited nearly a decade to begin truly branding “Tony Gentilcore.”  What are the pros and cons of waiting as long as you did, and would you approach it differently if you could go back in time?

TG:

Pros: I didn’t propose to my wife until four years into our relationship. We got married at year five.

You can only imagine how many times we were asked, five months in, “soooo, are you two gonna get married?” from our parents, friends, and acquaintances.

We allowed ample time for our relationship to marinate, develop, and to figure stuff out. I mean, shit got real when we moved in together and adopted a cat. But we had a lot of tough discussions about finances, family stuff, and why I suck at washing dishes before we decided to get married. We had to duke things out to a degree.

When we were ready, we were ready. We were all in. And I feel our relationship is all the better for it.

In the same vein, with regards to my career, I waited until I was truly, 100% ready before I decided to take a big leap and venture off on my own.

Mind you, I started writing/blogging/website shenanigans back in 2006.  I’ve written over 1700 blog posts, hundreds of articles for various websites and magazines, and only now, 15 years into my career, that I feel I’m kinda-sorta ready to maybe write an ebook or produce a fitness product.

I just had my first t-shirt made and there are some trainers who haven’t been in the industry more than six months who are releasing books.

I’ve spent 10 years “building a brand within a brand,” which has helped tremendously and helped to soften the thud of the “WTF did I just do” moment in the initial days of leaving CSP.

We opened CSP in 2007. Business is not my strong suit. I still have a hard time differentiating between the terms net and gross income. But I had eight years watching and listening to you and Eric talk business…I absorbed a lot.

That’s a pretty baller “pro” if you ask me.

Cons: I don’t really have any, other than having to listen to Eric play “Linkin Park” radio on Pandora for so many years. My ears can’t stop bleeding.

PD: What’s been your biggest and most unexpected challenge since leaving CSP to be a one-man show?

TG: I miss being around the staff. Part of what made CSP so valuable was the immense amount of learning I was immersed in.  The opportunity to talk shop and bounce ideas off the other coaches is what helped keep me sharp.  Sure, I know a thing or two about a thing or two, but having the day-to-day contact with the coaches and staff at CSP is priceless and something I really miss.

I don’t miss Tank….;o)

PD: What’s the most under appreciated aspect of working with athletes primarily in a one-on-one format at a time when everyone seems to be preaching the importance of semi-private training?

TG: Technically I don’t train any of my clients in Boston one-on-one, and very much still follow the semi-private format I grew accustomed to at CSP.

I assess everyone in a one-on-one format, write full programming, and typically train anywhere from 2-5 people at a time in my studio.

That said, there have been more opportunities for me to work with people in a one-on-one setting, and it’s been sorta refreshing going back to my roots.

You forget about the importance of building interpersonal relationships with people and how cool and interesting everyone is. You tend to miss out on that component when only using the semi-private format.

PD: If I told you I’d pay for you to enroll in a single business school course to help improve your business acumen, what would it be and why?

TG: Is there a course on how to build Excel spreadsheets?  If so, I'd take that.

"Because My Boss Sucks" is a Shitty Reason to Open Your Own Gym

Aggressive blog title?  Maybe a little bit.  But 100% something you'd hear me say if you spent a day hanging around CSP.  As it turns out, there are plenty of irrational justifications for opening your own space.

• “I’m sick of giving this commercial gym so much of my hard-earned money.”
• “I want complete control of my schedule.”
• “I need more autonomy on the training floor.”
• “I’m tired of people telling me what gym clothes I need to wear to work.”
• “I want to spend less time working “floor hours” and more focusing on what I do best, coaching.”

All qualify as motivations to open your own gym…just not good ones.

Just a few quick questions...

If you think that opening your own shop is the solution that will allow you to suddenly free up the time and resources necessary for you to embrace the great aspects of coaching that got you into this industry in the first place, I have a few questions for you:

Where are you going to find the time to learn about lease negotiation?  That 10-year lease with rapidly and unexpectedly increasing CAM charges seems a little dicey.

How comfortable are you reviewing a proposed business insurance policy?  Did you catch that terrorism coverage they tried to sneak in there despite the fact that you’re gym is going to be located in Nebraska? 

Looking forward to learning the ins and outs of payroll taxes?  How about educating your self on the difference between employees who should be 1099’d and those who should be issued a W-2?

Are you ready to paint the walls, pay to keep the lights on, and assemble all of the equipment?  Now that I think of it, are you ready to pay for all of the equipment?  Did you realize that every time you break an exercise band or see a client mistakenly drop a 45-lb plate on a muscle clamp that comes out of somebody’s paycheck?  Lucky you.  That’s your paycheck now.

Did you set aside a few hundred dollars to pay for your employees to renew their CPR certification?  I’m pretty sure they’re not looking to pay for it if YOU decided certification was mandatory.

Did you realize that if your gym performs reasonably well, and you choose to accept credit cards for payment, you will end up giving thousands of dollars to Visa, American Express, and any other credit providers you choose to accept?  Speaking of which, did you realize you’re going to need to open another bank account for that?

Remember the last time you walked in to your commercial gym locker room and had to work through three different bathroom stalls before you could find one without urine on the seat or toilet paper plugging up the bowl?  Well when you start “living the dream” and open your own gym you don’t get to walk past those first two stalls anymore.  Time to bust out the rubber gloves, my friend.

How much thought have you put in to the language of your company sexual harassment policy?

Is there already money set aside to have a decent website designed?  How about the $250 fee you’ll need to pay if you want to trademark your gym name and logo?  Trust me when I tell you this…you’re going to want to do that.

Should I keep going?

I could go all day long with these questions.  My point isn’t to tell the world that running a gym is an awful experience.  Instead, I’m hoping to help you make an informed decision before chasing a dream.  Opening a fitness facility because you’re a personal trainer who doesn’t want to answer to anyone but his (or her) self is kind of like buying a house without the benefit of a proper inspection or down payment set aside.  Sure, it looks great from the curb, but there are a whole bunch of headaches awaiting you under that roof – and they ain’t going to fix themselves for free.

I often tell CSP interns that I aspire to operate a business that runs so smoothly and efficiently that they can’t help but want to open their own gym at the end of their time with us…but I also want to talk nearly all of them out of doing so.  Roughly 80% of all small businesses fail inside of their first three years of operation.  Most of the gyms that find themselves on this list are there because their decision to open was an emotional one, as opposed to an informed one. Do your due diligence first. Then you can decide if opening a gym is a gamble you want to take.

Standardizing Your Training Model Increases Coaching Effectiveness

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

– Herbert Simon

When I read this quote I imagine the Nobel Laureate referring to the poverty of attention that the coaches you employ experience when asked to wear ten different hats because of the extensive list of services you offer.

You name it...we've got it!

We can help any kind of client! We’ve got one-on-one personal training. We’ve got semi-private group training. We’ve got large group training. We’ve got spin classes. We’ve got yoga. We’ve got hot yoga!  We’ve got women-only training. We’ve got self-defense classes.  There's no end in sight to what we can do for you.

Photo: www.marketingtechnologyinc.com

There are plenty of problems that come with operating a business featuring a dozen different service offerings, but the biggest of these issues is the lack of depth that results. Being seen as a mile wide and an inch deep is anything but convincing if your goal is to be perceived as “the best” fitness instruction provider in your market.

Ask less of your team...get more

Figure out a way to standardize your training model and then focus on being exceptional at delivering an amazing experience within the confines of that single coaching format. 

Roughly 99% of the athletes that walk through the doors of CSP pay for semi-private group training.  Our coaches are continually refining their ability to instruct athletes in a predictable format instead of worrying about bouncing from one supervision model to the next. There’s never confusion as it relates to expectations for coaching responsibilities or client needs.

Stop asking each of your team members to be a jack-of-all-trades. Instead, provide them with the tools they need to be a master-of-one.

Are You Sabotaging Your Ability to Convert Leads?

You insist that you can close anybody if given the chance to demonstrate your coaching skill set, but your selling strategy doesn’t reflect your attitude.

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that despite needing just a single in-person training session to establish yourself as a worthy investment, you can’t seem to stop discussing 3, 6, or even 12-month package rates before even locking in the initial visit.

I too believe that I can close any lead that happens to set foot inside of our facility.  With a couple dozen framed MLB jerseys hanging on the walls, and a training environment that features high energy and meticulous coaching, the training space effectively sells itself.  The problem is that walk-ins are rare, and I need to close the majority of our leads over the phone.

photo credit - www.carsalesprofessional.com

Guess what I don’t do…I don’t allow the conversation to revolve around the fact that it costs more than $700/month to train with us 4-days per week.  Our monthly training fees are dictated by anticipated weekly training frequency, but that really doesn’t matter before we’ve booked an assessment.  What matters is that the first step in the process of training with us is to schedule an initial evaluation, and that will be a very manageable $99 investment.

Let's not put the cart before the horse...

I’ll worry about selling you on the initial assessment.  Our facility, our training environment, and our team will take care of “convincing” you to take the steps beyond that.

Your Adjacent Possible - An Opportunity to Innovate

In last week’s post I made an argument for the importance of finding a niche within the fitness industry.  I explained how and why I would go about securing a specific area of expertise if presented with the challenge of starting fresh.  What I didn’t do, however, was explain how we stumbled upon the opportunity to capture market share within the baseball-specific strength and conditioning segment back in 2007.

I often catch people off guard when explaining that Eric Cressey became “the baseball guy” within the fitness industry without having played the sport competitively beyond little league.  How did Eric, and Cressey Sports Performance as a whole, manage to capture so much market share within this niche without having “walked-the-walk” on baseball fields at a high school, collegiate or professional level?

This summer we will celebrate the 9th anniversary of business operation here at Cressey Sports Performance.  It was on July 13th of 2007 that Eric, Tony and I set out on a mission to create a self-employment scenario which would allow for us to show up to “work” every day in gym clothes and listen to loud music.  Long before becoming “the baseball guys” within the fitness industry, we were the guys trying to identify anyone willing to give us their money in exchange for our services.

No one ever specifically told us to identify a niche and capture it.  We discovered the opportunity within the baseball community for a couple of simple reasons.  For starters, our first gym was a 2,200 square foot unit carved out of the back corner of a pitching and hitting instruction facility.  You couldn’t enter our space without walking past five hitting and pitching “cages”. 

The second reason we attracted baseball players was Eric’s unique working knowledge of the shoulder.  His time spent both instructing and playing tennis as a teenager had resulted in shoulder damage that arguably warranted surgical repair.  In the years following this diagnosis, he spent extensive time trying to identify a training approach that would allow for him to avoid going under the knife.  While not his initial intention, he accumulated a wealth of knowledge that could be immediately applied to training the baseball community.  As it turns out, throwing a baseball is surprisingly similar to the mechanics of serving a tennis ball.

This tennis-to-baseball transition is a nice illustration of how we embraced the concept of the “Adjacent Possible” in order to capture our unique niche here at Cressey Sports Performance.

A theoretical biologist named Stuart Kofman coined the term Adjacent Possible.  It is applicable to every industry or field in need of constant innovation.  Steven Johnson described it best in a piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2010: 

As we opened our doors for business eight years ago, our team included a shoulder rehabilitation specialist (Eric Cressey) and an accomplished strength coach with division-1 baseball playing experience (Tony Gentilcore).  As a result, the baseball-specific strength and conditioning niche sat well within our “shadow future” if we were to be effective in reinventing our present.

Eric realized that baseball players were an underserved population when it came to off-field training, so he took his unique shoulder assessment and programming knowledge and applied it to the adjacent community of overhead-throwing athletes.  Since that time, CSP has managed to innovate by delivering baseball-specific individualized training materials to athletes hailing from all 30 MLB organizations.

By employing a collection of strength coaches who are masters of their craft, we are able to maintain control of our niche.  Their working knowledge of the needs of the baseball community is unparalleled, and allows for us to remain at the cutting edge of our segment.  Resting on our laurels would render our first-mover advantage within this niche moot.  There is always someone willing to outwork you if you slip up.

Creating a profitable niche within the fitness industry is about more than simply identifying an underserved population and claiming a first mover advantage.  Every type of athlete has a unique set of problems.  In order to solve unique problems, you need to acquire unique skills.  You could read every single word of shoulder-related material Eric has published and cover every study he’s ever consumed during his own self-study, and still be more than 1,000 in-person shoulder assessments away from the volume of hands-on experience he has accumulated during his career.      

Before you can create true innovation by tapping in to your Adjacent Possible, you need to accrue the career capital that will allow you to differentiate yourself with a rare and valuable skill set.  Master your craft by focusing on deliberate practice.  Consume as much continuing education material as much as you can.  Work with athletes from all walks of life.  Step outside of your coaching comfort zone. 

Achieving expert status with your specific craft puts you that much closer to the opportunity to capture a unique niche.  If you’re lucky, that niche may lie within your adjacent possible.

Identifying An Untouched Fitness Niche

“The leader doesn't always win when they're playing the other guy's game.” – Gary Vaynerchuck

You may not realize it upon first glance, but this sentence perfectly encapsulates the argument for becoming as niched as possible in the fitness industry.  Our field is full of leaders, and many of them achieved that status by being exceptional at serving one or two specific athletic populations.   

These leaders have captured first-mover advantages within both their respective segments of the industry, and their geographic footprints.  As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult for aspiring competitors to successfully play the leader’s game, on the leader’s turf. 

What do I mean by this? 

I mean that it’s bad business to set up a baseball-specific training facility within an hour drive of either of our Cressey Sports Performance locations.   

It’s a terrible idea to open a gym in southern Florida targeting football combine-prep athletes and expect to avoid being trounced by the guys at Bommarito Performance Systems.  (they prepared roughly 10% of ALL guys invited to the 2015 NFL Combine according to Forbes)

It’s an especially bad idea to open a spot in midtown Manhattan featuring transformation challenges knowing that you’re just blocks away from the guys at Mark Fisher Fitness, who basically wrote the book on this service model with their Snatched in 6-Weeks program. 

Getting the idea? 

Peter Thiel put it best in his book Zero to One when he said: “Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace; they will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.”

Time to stop playing the other guy’s game 

You can peacefully coexist with the leading gym in your respective market, just as long as you’re not trying to beat them at their own game.  Next week someone could open a world-class training facility catering to dancers directly across the hall from CSP and do just fine.  The key to their success would be originality and catering to an underserved target market.    

I recently had the pleasure of joining Greg Bradley to record an episode of the Fitness Business Experience Podcast.  We covered a ton of ground in an hour, and one topic we spoke of in great detail was the idea of niche development.  Greg asked me to explain how I would go about identifying and capturing a new niche.  How would I go from zero to one if I wanted to secure my own unique part of the fitness industry? 

I told him that I’d take it a step further than simply picking a sport.  I’d go as far as targeting those playing a specific position.  Based on my own athletic background and areas of interest, I’d attempt to become “the guy” for strength training for soccer goalkeepers. 

Why so specific?  

If you want to avoid playing the leader’s game, you’d better be prepared to create a new one. 

A quick Google query told me that no one is currently publishing content relating to goalkeeper-specific strength and conditioning.  There are coaches offering positional instruction and camps that feature a strength training component, but nobody has claimed the role of articulating the unique training needs of this population in the same way that Eric Cressey did with baseball players (and pitchers in particular) beginning close to a decade ago. 

One of our current interns at CSP Massachusetts listened to this edition of the FBE podcast last week and made sure to drop by my office the next morning to see if I’d elaborate on my goalkeeper niche comment.

“Do you feel like that’s a large enough segment to target?”

I would be lying if I told you that I had investigated the answer to this question prior making the statement.  At the time of the recording, I was trying to make the point that you need to drill down beyond the sport level if you want to find an untouched population.  Scalability is the other side to the coin. If the numbers support the concept, an opportunity exists.

In 2014 (most recent figure I could find) the U.S. Youth Soccer Federation reported a registration figure of 3,055,148 soccer players.  If we are to assume that one out of every eleven soccer players is a goalkeeper, this leaves us with roughly 277,000 net-minders playing the game in just this country.   

Let me repeat: just this country. 

We’re talking about the most popular sport in the world, and the internet essentially allows any of us to speak to a global population.  This is an opportunity to become the thought leader with a very specific (and viable) population who's success is contingent upon athleticism.  Why hasn’t anyone tried to grab this segment yet?  Why hasn’t anyone taken a stab at being “THE GUY who knows how to design strength training materials specifically for soccer goalkeepers?” 

Being “The Guy” at anything leads to immense benefits 

At least once each week I field an inquiry to CSP that begins with: “I know you guys train primarily baseball players but…”

The “but” in this scenario can go in all kinds of different directions.  But my daughter is a field hockey player who needs to get stronger for tryouts.  But my son had an ACL reconstruction last year and needs to get back in to the weight room.  But I am interested in powerlifting and thought maybe you guys would be able to help me with my deadlift technique. 

What these callers are really saying is “I understand you are the go-to guys for training baseball players, so I figured that anyone who is the best at training one population is probably far better than average at working with most others.” 

Someday soon a fitness professional will earn a reputation as the go-to resource for goalkeeper-specific program design and content.  Achieving this status will inevitably lead to additional inquiries from field players, people from other athletic populations, and general fitness candidates.  If you focus on being so good in one category that a substitute doesn’t exist, you’ll soon find that your niched reputation is anything but limiting.

Become a Better Business Owner by Experiencing an Employee's Role

Once a week, on Saturday mornings, I “return to my roots” and assume the responsibilities that come with managing the front end of our business.  Clients check in, make payments, schedule future training sessions, and more.  It is the definition of a customer service job, and for the first 5 years we were in business, it was my primary role.

There was a time when I knew the name of every person who came through the door, parents included.  Now that my energy is typically directed toward business development endeavors, I seem to have lost my magic touch at the front desk.  Many faces are unfamiliar to me and I’ve lost the intuition necessary to seamlessly anticipate client needs and questions.  I’m just not as good as I used to be. 

The good news is that this isn’t a problem.  I hired Stacie to be good at running the front desk, and she is.  She’s damn good at it. 

My first 5 years “out front” were spent creating and defining the role that would ultimately become the CSP Office Manager.  I now take different value away from the experience each time I sit down and start greeting clients.  Here’s a look at three ways that running the front desk at CSP just a single day each week makes me a better business owner and manager of people:

1. I manage better when empathetic to the current demands of the role

The role of Office Manager here at CSP is probably the most underappreciated and misunderstood.  It is easy to stand on the customer side of that desk and assume that the key to success is simply incessant smiling and maintaining an upbeat attitude, but you really have no idea how challenging that is until you’ve had the pleasure of enduring a 5-7 hour shift in this position. 

There are impatient parents.  There are young athletes who continuously disregard our requests for advanced scheduling.  There are those who “forgot” to let us know they needed new programming until the moment they’re due.  There are the athletes who repeatedly ask you to reprint their programs because they forgot or lost their copy.   There’s the insufferable caller who refuses to leave a voicemail and would rather hang up and redial 15 times in a 3-minute span until you answer. 

These are all issues that you could encounter during the first ten minutes of a typical front desk shift.

It is important that I periodically expose myself to this collection of unavoidable headaches so that I have an appreciation for the daily hurdles Stacie needs to get over as she does her job.  Greg Robins once told me that the definition of true leadership is being willing and able to do what you ask of others, and I think this applies to my weekly participation at the front desk. 

2. Better understanding of my staff’s soft-skills

I have 100% confidence in each of my coach’s capacity to deliver quality training advice and instruction while on the gym floor, but their ability to sell varies dramatically from one staff member to the next.  Some of my coaches find themselves at ease while explaining to an athlete that two weekly training sessions at CSP would be far more appropriate than one, while others are terrified to ask for the additional investment from a client. 

Every time I operate at the front desk I have the chance to observe these staff members in action as they engage with parents in the office.  There’s more to excelling as a coach at CSP than being the best at program design.  Those who demonstrate a capacity to articulate our training model and pricing structure prove to be especially versatile as we continue to grow our business. 

Some staff members could stand to be better at closing a sale, while others need to improve their ability to articulate assessment findings and training objectives in layman’s terms.  In any case, I am only able to assist in personal or professional development of my team if I am aware of room for improvement.  My time at the front desk affords me the chance to identify these opportunities. 

3. Engagement with customers allows me to better understand client perspective

My understanding of “the state of the CSP family” is typically guided by what Stacie chooses to tell me at any given moment.  She’s got her finger on the pulse of our business and routinely brings me in the loop as it relates to client gossip, trends she’s seeing among our clientele, and any other noteworthy happenings in and around our gym. 

The only better way for me to go about acquiring this information is to go directly to the source by chatting with clients and their parents every Saturday.  Our clients are dying to give us feedback…we just need to remember to ask for it.  Could we be open at more convenient hours?  Have any of my employees provided a distinctly memorable service experience?  Are we doing a good job of explaining our service model before, during or after an initial evaluation?

I can’t make modifications to our systems and services if I’m unaware of our client’s wishes, and the most effective way for me to identify these wishes is with face-to-face conversation.   

Entrepreneurs should never stop wearing many hats

The key to maintaining my entrepreneurial spirit is remembering that this business we’ve created actually found its identity while I was sitting at the front desk.  My understanding of our niche, the psyche of our clients, and the personality of my team is almost entirely founded in my time spent greeting clients upon arrival, and sending them on their way at the conclusion of their training sessions. 

I am not now, and never will be, above the customer service role of running our front desk.  Wile the bulk of my time is best spent creating and executing a growth and development plan for CSP, I should never stop making time for the occasional shift "out front" in order to stay in tune with the needs of our business.

4 Things We Did Before Worrying About Brand Development

Guess who thought it would be a good idea to book a 20-hour trip to present at a seminar 1,500+ miles away on the same day that we lose an hour overnight to daylight savings?  This guy.

Despite my current sleep-deprived status, the first annual Cressey Sports Performance - FL Spring Seminar was a great success.  I’d like to extend a huge thank you to the Cresseys for (briefly) hosting me, and to all of the fitness professionals who set aside an entire Sunday in sunny Florida to focus on their own professional development.

I made my way south to deliver a presentation entitled “Business Before Branding,” which highlighted some of the most important lessons we learned nearly a decade ago while getting CSP up off the ground and running.  I was initially inspired to prepare this material following a conversation with a young strength coach at the The Fitness Summit this past spring.

Just moments after concluding my presentation, this gentleman approached me for feedback on his logo.  My first impression was that he’d created a really nice design, though my tune quickly changed when he informed me that he didn’t have a gym, clients, or a business model; he just knew that he wanted to own a facility some day. 

My message to him was fairly simple: any time, energy, or resources you have right now should be directed toward creating something tangible.  Logo modifications can wait until there is a business behind the artwork.  I wish I had delivered the feedback Gary Vaynerchuck shared following a similar question in his book, #AskGaryVee:

“STOP it. You cannot properly market something if you don’t even know whether it’s any good. You’ve got to develop it, feel it, taste it, put it out in the wild, and reverse-engineer it so you know it’s serviceable and valuable to consumers.”

That should have been my response.

Some CSP statistics that may surprise you

Believe it or not, we were open for business for 293 days before our Cressey Sports Performance website went live.  In fact, we strung together more than 1,200 days of operation before realizing we needed to get CSP up on Twitter. 

Can a new strength & conditioning facility expect to survive (and grow rapidly) for ten months without anything other than a Gmail account?  Yes!  As a matter of fact, it is possible.

Over a ten-month span, we managed to execute initial assessments with 239 new clients, coach 5,300+ individualized strength training sessions, and build brand awareness purely through word of mouth.  Most importantly, we did it all with a small team that featured “a business guy” and a pair of strength coaches. 

By the time our website went live, we’d outgrown our first space and opened a 6,600 square foot facility we were proud to showcase.  We’d also created the systems necessary to really begin scaling our business.  We were ready to start worrying about branding.

Here’s a look at four things that took priority over branding during our first 293 days of operation:

1. Solidifying Our Training Model

From the very beginning, Eric had a firm rule: under no circumstance would our business model dictate our training model.  By this, he meant that we weren’t going to pack the gym with as many athletes as possible if it meant that we were going to be delivering generic training materials.  In our eyes, semi-private group training was the optimal service model, and we continue to implement this today. 

Our ultimate success has always been driven by client results, and the key to this component of our model is individualized program design based on the findings of a thorough initial assessment.

We spent close to ten months getting the kinks out of our systems.  We worked to identify the perfect client-to-coach ratio, appropriate training session durations, and other components of actually delivering a memorable training experience.

2. Standardizing Assessment & Programming Strategy

No amount of “talking shop” is going to prepare multiple coaches to design training materials that share the same look, feel, and intent.  While Eric and Tony possessed the same basic philosophy of strength and conditioning, they still needed to spend the better part of the first year of CSP getting on the same page as it relates to assessment strategy, program design, and exercise terminology.

We knew we wanted to build our business aggressively, and the key to being able to do so was in locking down a standardized training methodology before adding additional coaches to the team.  Employing a 5:1 client-to-coach ratio is borderline impossible when multiple staff members are responsible for program design and every one of them has a different way of labeling a lunge variation.

3. Syncing of Coaching Styles

Much like exercise terminology leaves plenty of room for interpretation, coaching instruction can be delivered in a wide variety of ways.  You can get away with six different ways of cueing proper technique for a trap bar deadlift if your gym staffs a collection of independent contractors who “own” their clients and coach in an entirely one-on-one format.  You can’t, however, do so if you count on multiple coaches to deliver the same message and training experience to 100% of the athletes who come through the door.

Our semi-private group training model now allows for clients to engage with up to 10 or 12 coaches during a given training session at CSP, so delivery of effective coaching instruction is contingent upon standardization of cues.  I encourage every staff member to let their freak flag fly high during conversation between sets, but the message needs to be consistent when it comes time to supervise a coaching-intensive movement.  Eric and Tony spent much of those first 293 days deciding on exactly what that message would be and we can continue to scale the model today because of their efforts.

4. Creation & Standardization of the Selling Process

Whenever possible, I give the pitch for CSP training services.  Leads are directed to my attention and it is up to me to turn them into paying customers.  My job is to bring people through the door with cash in hand and an interest in our training model.  I leave it up to my coaches to deliver an experience that will result in us enjoying the lifetime value of a dedicated client.

In order to put my staff in the best position to create the type of experience I’ve mentioned, it is important to standardize client expectations from day one.  This starts with my articulation of the training model during the selling process.  If I fail to clearly explain the collaborative coaching strategy we employ, the nature of our training environment, or even appropriate training attire, we run the risk of clients feeling misled or confused by the experience.  The best way to avoid all of these issues is to ensure that whomever is selling your service has perfected your pitch, and more importantly, the value proposition behind it.

With zero fitness industry experience as of the day we opened CSP, I felt less than prepared to fly solo during the initial selling process.  Eric allowed me to shadow him while explaining the services and training model for about two days before throwing me in to the fire.  “You’ve got an MBA…you’ll figure it out” was essentially the extent of his motivational selling instruction from there.

Instead of spending my time and energy worrying about creating a catchy hash tag or viral marketing effort, I was more worried about making sure I knew how to sell what we would eventually be promoting the crap out of.  It probably took about 293 days to polish up my approach, but I figured it out. 

Before worrying about the nuances of each social networking platform…

Make sure you’ve established the systems and services that you’re going to be publicizing before really diving in to your branding efforts.  The beautiful thing (and arguably worst thing) about the fitness industry and gym ownership in general is the low barrier to entry.  If you can afford a power rack and some weights, you can proclaim yourself a gym owner.  With this in mind, there is no need to chase investors during your early stages, and therefore no need to lose sleep over brand management right off the bat.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’d like to discuss the growth and development of your own fitness business. I’d love to help!