Fitness Business School – Behind the Scenes with Matt Sizemore

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Hey everybody, Pat Rigsby here with another episode of the fitness business school and today I have a very special guest. I have my good friend and all things operations guru, Matt Sizemore here. So welcome Matt.

So Matt, for those of you don’t know Matt’s kind of the behind the scenes, make everything work guy in my world, he’s got a fun backstory and a really kind of robust set of experiences in the industry. And one of the things that I’ve tried to start doing here.

And so we’re doing a series on this is to showcase the star power of the people that I get to work with. And, me being the guy that, that writes the emails and. I think sets the course strategy wise in in the business, I’m the front facing person, but sometimes I think it, it goes unnoticed until people get into our coaching programs.

The strength of the team that we have the experiences. Frankly the people on our team all are probably more experienced and have a much more successful track record than most of the people doing business coaching in the fitness industry. So it seemed primetime and maybe overdue a little bit to start to tell some of those stories.

So Matt let’s start by, by doing this. Let’s talk about what your what your current role is today. That can be interesting. Yeah, just making sure that we’re moving forward on all the things that we’ve got going on, which You know I know some of our coaching clients might know the depths of what we have going on, but maybe not even to the extent that we do.

There, there’s always a lot going on, so it’s , and I think it works for my ADHD to be jumping back and forth between projects to keep the ball moving. Yeah to give the people who are watching, listening to the podcast a little bit of context.

I think that professionally we’re most known for business coaching. I, we help. predominantly like independent fitness, health, sports performance, business owners create their ideal business. We help them generate more revenue. We help them install systems. We help them move closer towards owning the business that they want to have.

And we have a few different ways that somebody can work goes to work with us through business coaching. But we do a lot of Publishing. We have a number of products, programs, courses, workshops that we’ve published over time. We typically do at least one, if not two new ones a month, we’ve got automatic members, which is the CRM that we have really loaded.

a robust set of marketing tools, a library of everything from landing pages to emails, to social media posts, to campaigns and text messages in. And you lead that. And so we have a number of clients who use that. We’ve got Nutrition OS, which is our licensing certification program for nutrition certifications that, that, I’m a partner with Justin Ewell and micro selling and you navigate a lot of the operational side of that.

We have substance nutrition, which is an early stage. Nutrition company that has supplements and neuro coffee. So coffee with a brain supplement infused. So we’ve got not only ongoing business coaching programs, but we have shorter term cohorts. We’ve got a we’ve got live events, mastermind meetings, workshops that we hold.

And, that’s a considerable number of moving parts, not to mention the front end way that we build relationships with people, whether it be advertising to connect with new people, or what I would consider like our email communities, so the relationships that we’re trying to build with the people who are aware of us, but we want to hopefully be.

build a relationship with and encouraged to do business with us over time. And I, I throw a lot out there, but for those of you checking this out, Matt is the person who all roads run through all of those things that I just touched on run through Matt. And I think that COO.

I don’t, I don’t know that I’m great at things like titles or whatever else. But if there is a CEO, you are certainly, if I’m supposedly that guy, then you’re certainly the COO. And that’s, but that’s one piece of it. And that’s what you do today and clearly you’re the, the best in the industry doing that.

And I don’t think that’s a, it’s a biased statement, but I think there’s enough evidence to, to suggest that it’s a real valid statement because you also Have, you have a business where you do a little bit of consulting work and freelance work doing some operational projects for other people.

So talk about a little bit of what you’ve done there. Yeah. So things from operations or even the tech I cringe at the word tech, but. Because I think some people think that means I can write code and all this stuff, but just getting things from out of people’s heads to completion when it comes to either setting something up in their CRM, email sequences product launches, online product launches, things like that.

Since around 2015 when you went off on your own it was about the time that I started doing some more with Others in the industry. So I’ve helped do product launches for Eric Cressy, Mike Robertson. Athletes acceleration, the NSPA Mike Reinhold, Jeremy Scott. So just a lot of people within the industry just helped them, whether it’s a product launch or just dialing in their infusion soft slash keep account.

Or any of that type of stuff really, or they might be running ads, but they don’t know how to get that Facebook integrated with their CRM platform. I might consult or help get that set up for them. Yeah I think that think most people associate you with my business and it’s certainly valid because what year did we start working together?

It was the end of 2009 part time. Yeah. Clearly that makes sense. You’ve been around here longer than my 13 year old son. But it’s. And in that role you managed a lot of the marketing operations. So you worked very closely with me even at that point, but it was more more focused on the operational side of marketing, the execution of marketing.

And then when I sold my stake in the businesses that I was involved in about the time you alluded to. I know you went out and did some of your own work that way. And then I contracted with you, Pat B contracted with you to do essentially like fractional COO work.

And because of some of the relationships that you had and the quality of the work you had done, through the, my original company I think a lot of the industry leaders, like the people you alluded to there trusted you, saw you as a viable solution to things that, frankly, I don’t think a high percentage of people in our industry would consider their default strength.

So I think that’s That’s pretty cool. So before we started doing this, I tried to estimate just under the umbrella of the things that I’ve been involved in. So not even counting, I know that we work together on some of. Like Cressey type of launch and some instances, but you’ve been involved in some of those things that I’ve had no involvement in.

And, but just under the things, the umbrella, the things I’ve been involved in, yeah, there are probably upwards of 175 product launches or program launches. Upwards of 55. Recurring revenue or subscription programs, two franchises that we owned, a couple of franchises that consulted with any number of license programs, dozens of certifications well over 125 live events.

That’s a lot. Yeah, it’s crazy putting it in numbers like that. Cause I was trying to think of how many just info products there have been that I’ve helped launch. And I was thinking it was close to 300 total. So it makes sense that well over half of them included you pretty. Pretty heavily, but that’s a lot of online product launches over the course of 15 ish years when we talk about the strength Of our team.

This is being directly involved in Nine figures were the business. Just the franchises alone would do over 50 million dollars annually in franchise wide sales that’s a being a a vital cog in a lot of people’s livelihoods. And yeah that’s pretty cool.

Especially when you think about some of the people out there running ads and talking about their business prowess or whatever else. And maybe they’ve generated, multiple six figures, one or two years or something like that. And I’m like we’ve done product launches that. that exceeded that.

So let me ask this what has been your favorite part of being the operational secret weapon behind so much of this stuff? It seems like everybody uses different technology or has different ideas going into whether it’s a product launch or just how to get a subscription program going, et cetera.

For me, it’s just figuring out how to connect all the dots because it seems to vary a little bit every time. So it’s a new challenge. Yes, there’s a lot that’s the same, but. It’s figuring out how to get the technology to work the way you want your team involved the way you want how to automate certain things, but keep certain things personalized like it’s just a for me, it’s a game each time just figuring out the best way to go about it.

And for anybody listening, I didn’t exactly prep Matt with what I wanted to unpack here. Give me an example or maybe even some just random thoughts on how you’ve seen things evolve or change since 2009. I would say If I were to estimate those first five or six years were really maybe even a little bit longer, really heavy and info products.

There was plenty of coaching going on too, but that was definitely where a lot more of my focus was on product launches, certifications, things like that. Nowadays things have gotten away from that. Yeah.

Yeah. There are still product launches. There are still info products and things like that, that are helpful, but.

It’s run its course. Everybody has their own product or course and things out there. So instead of just flooding the market with more courses, it’s what makes you stand out. And so that’s why I think like the Eric Cresseys of the world do so good. Like he. I want to say his last product launch was the sturdy shoulder product.

And there’s nobody better in the industry that knows shoulders than Eric. So it makes all the sense in the world to have a product like that. But I would say 10 years prior to that people would have products on shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, and everything else, just because they couldn’t make a little bit of money off of it.

So now I feel like it’s more expert driven than just info driven. And then I think there’s a lot more personal touch nowadays than there used to be. I feel like in the past it was just record what you could record included in your course or product. And. You paid however much you paid for it and that’s it.

And now it’s more of a, can we help you implement this? Can we help you dive deeper into it, understand it more? Maybe that’s a part of the product itself. Maybe that’s a little bit more of an add on so that you can get more coaching involved with it, but it’s figuring out how to Move people along more than just the info itself.

Have you seen changes and I mean because you’ve been in that middle space a lot of times between the creators the coaches the experts and then the clients the in so many cases fitness business owners in a lot of cases, health and fitness professionals, have you seen much in the way of changes in the businesses or the professionals themselves?

Yeah I would say, probably similar to talking about the products and courses themselves. Like I feel like the. the coaches and the business owners themselves have to be better at their game and their craft like they and maybe it was just the demographic I was working with more at the beginning versus now, maybe that’s part of it, but I definitely feel like people need to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing more.

And. I feel at the beginning it was a lot of, Oh, we’re doing this because so and so did it, and we’re just trying to follow their lead. All right. So this is a bit of a challenge because I’m going to ask you to predict the future a little bit here, but so what do you see coming down the line over the next, two to five years in, in this industry?

I still think personalization. I know you use the word relationships and I think it’s relationship driven, but anything that is personalized, whether it is a course or a coaching program or anything remotely like that, the more you can help it be understood by your customer and client, better off it is because we are far past the information overload era.

There’s so much information on YouTube and courses and everything else under the sun, that it’s more of getting it out of theory and into practice. So one interesting thing that I think I’ve got to be witness to is how your oldest daughter has been able to not only see you model this kind of entrepreneurial path but also has gotten involved and, Madeline’s come and shared some of her experiences and, spoken a little bit at some of our events and done some stuff.

So talk about that. Yeah, so she graduates high school here in about a month and she, since she was probably seven or eight years old, excuse me, seven or eight years old, she’s always said she’s wanting to be an entrepreneur and she didn’t know what that entailed, but she just knew that she wanted to be her own boss.

Now that she has worked for an ice cream shop, a go kart place, she’s also done an internship for me a couple summers. She’s definitely reinforced that. She wants to be her own boss. And she’s currently I’d say Past six to eight months, been doing more like virtual assistant type of stuff where she’s doing some stuff for people that they just don’t have the time or capacity to, and she’s able to offload that.

And she. Doesn’t want to do it full time, but she’s starting to realize Hey, maybe I could a bigger team or how can I streamline this? So it’s been really fun. She definitely likes the client aspect of it. She doesn’t mind working from home. And being able to do this stuff, but she definitely likes when she can attend a mastermind meeting and actually see people face to face and just keep that connection to realize like I’m helping an actual person that I know on the other end.

Yeah. I think that’s been one of the. The real joys of my business since 2015, since I started this iteration of things has been the kind of family aspect of it and seeing how, when we run a mastermind meeting, people bring their kids they hang out, they, the kids are at the social kind of get togethers.

Your wife Julie has started her own entrepreneurial kind of side endeavor. Yeah talk about that for a minute. Yeah, she honestly credits that to you and me. Especially during COVID she was working from home for probably six to eight months before opening her classroom back up.

And she would just overhear a lot of zoom calls. Obviously we come down there to mastermind. So she’s attended a few of those, but she just realized like she can probably do. Some coaching programs of her own to teach teachers some of the, her stuff. So she’s definitely a well respected expert in the early childhood field.

And so now she’s taken that and she’s created products courses. She’s become keynote speaker at multiple events across the state. And she uses the software too. So she started emailing out I think it’s three days a week, three or four times a week that she emails her list. She’s got membership sites, subscriptions, just her own little mastermind probably eight to 10 people.

So it’s it’s pretty cool cause nobody, at least in the early childhood field has done anything like that around here. So she she’s trying to educate people on what she’s even doing. But. It’s definitely translated very well. It’s a nice little side business to the point that she’s potentially wanting that to become her full time gig here in the next two or three years.

Yeah. Hopefully nobody that employs hers watching this or listening to this podcast. But yeah, I think that’s been some of the fun, right? We definitely have a very kind of boutique family focused. working with a lot of business owners who that sort of thing is a priority for. And you being able to be that involved in that many different sets of experiences not only has been tremendously valuable for people like me, but it’s been really useful.

In your own house, right? It’s, I think that’s one of the cooler things that we get to do. Not that our kids have to follow in our footsteps, but our kids hopefully can observe and say, Hey, you know what? I can carve out my own path and do what I want to do. That’s pretty awesome.

So all right, we’ve talked a little bit about your professional background. We’ve talked a little bit about things are headed as an industry. What are you personally excited about going forward? Oh it’s taken me a little while to really hone in on this ideal business that you teach, like for, I don’t know, three years, probably 2015, 2018, I hear you talking about it and I hear other business owners owning that, but it took me a while to jump in.

onto that bandwagon, if you will. And so recently for me, it’s just having that flexibility to do more with the family. So Madeline’s obviously graduating high school here. So I’ve got a trip coming up with her to Europe in a couple months. The ability to obviously work from my computer while we’re in Europe or schedule things ahead of time is always great.

But between doing things with the family, it’s also nice that since COVID has Over the past couple of years, I still enjoy the mastermind meetings. I think I took those for granted until COVID happened. I’m sure a lot of us did, but seeing people face to face and seeing how much we can help their businesses is just a really rewarding feeling.

Yeah, I think I know from my ideal business, there’s certainly a, a,

Substantial in person component there. Like I’m very grateful for how zoom has allowed people to put a face with a name and a voice and spend more time together that way. But everything gets better when you attend live meetings and you. Get to connect face to face. And I know for us, the nature of how we operate those, where we run the masterminds and then we do a dinner at my house, at Doug Sperling’s house, at the Airbnb where we may host a meeting or something like that.

It’s a little different than always going out to a restaurant and then you don’t have the ability to. to maybe mingle as much, get involved in as many conversations. It’s certainly not as convenient if you want to, are there, there are a half dozen kids or more playing out, in our yard or whatever else, whenever we do this.

So parents don’t always have to feel, I think part of it from my perspective is. It’s not feeling like personal and professional or like mutually exclusive things. And you with Madeline and being able to do that stuff is, modeling that it’s an example of that. But I also think that people feeling like, Hey, I can come to this meeting and my kids can have a great time and I can still be getting better at my business and we can have some shared experiences maybe the day after a couple of days after then that’s a.

I think that’s a real positive and neat thing that I don’t know too many people, if any, that do it. All right, maybe kind of practical thing that I want to talk about is, you work intimately with a lot of fitness business owners and while you have a team, you’re still very much, Probably a little bit like

I am in that you, you get, you, I think you get fulfillment from being hands on with them.

What are the one or two? Biggest needle movers that you’ve seen for business owners in the time you’ve been working on. Cause see, you just painted yourself in a corner saying, Hey, they come to advance and we see how much we helped their business. What helped? Yeah. So a lot of times the stuff that I hear about.

is tech related. But anything from sending emails, like there are so many people when they’re either new to our coaching programs that are just not used to doing it, they might know that they need to, or maybe they don’t even know. But getting in the habit of sending the emails, because I think a lot of times they’re afraid Oh, I don’t want to.

Be a nuisance to my email list. You run a business and the email list is not for fun. It is to build your business. So once they start realizing that and sending out emails and start getting leads that they’ve had for a long time, or even sometimes just a short period of time to actually convert or start conversations, you say this all the time that conversations lead to clients.

And conversions. Really does start that conversation when you can send out content on a regular basis and you never know what’s going to strike a chord with somebody and when it will Life circumstances and timing is everything. So you can even repeat this stuff that you send occasionally and it’ll hit differently with people.

So that one’s been huge. Really tracking. Your sales pipeline, as simple as that sounds there’s so many people that they might have a system, but it’s not the most Robust system and not that you need a robust system. Really simple is better. But something that you’re going to keep up with and something that hopefully your team can actually be involved with too.

The automatic member software platform we have has been extremely helpful with people tracking their sales process and then their entire team can see. where people are in the pipeline and know, you can add notes to their records and things like this. So it’s preventing people from falling through the cracks, which obviously helps build their business.

Great, actionable, useful takeaway to put a bow on this with. Matt, very grateful for your vast array of contributions to all that we do. And it’s cool that other people maybe get to peek behind the curtain and see just a quick snippet of all the impact you’ve had on the industry, because that’s really what it is.

It’s. It’s impact. So much of this stuff that gets done may not be done or it may not be done as well. Not just in, in my kind of ecosystem, but in all those other folks that you mentioned in theirs and through, through making those really substantial contributions. You’re helping a lot of people get better at what they do, build better businesses, change more lives, make more money.

A lot of stuff. Great work. And thank you for jumping on this episode of the podcast. Cool. It was fun. Awesome. All right. It’s another episode of the fitness business school, and we’ll see you guys next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

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In this diagnostic, we walk through everything and we do an evaluation and can instantly pinpoint what you need to do next to build that business that you want. I’m going to extend this opportunity to get on with either me or my team and take you through this evaluation and fix your business’s most vital needs fast.

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Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get
you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.