Fitness Business School – Optimal Trajectories with Bill Burnett

Full Transcript

Welcome to the Fitness Business School podcast, the show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Hey, Pat Rigsby here with another episode of The Fitness Business School, and I am kind of breaking things up and doing something a little bit different.

Got my good friend, Bill Burnett on, and really I wanted to interview Bill or have him as a guest. Because I think early on, when I first heard podcasting, I interviewed some other people who I thought embodied this concept of creating your ideal business and so they could tell their story. And I think Bill’s story is a pretty cool one because I think it.

In many ways, kind of is the, that kind of optimal trajectory for a lot of people who get into our industry. You come in, you work for somebody else for a while. You kind of cut your teeth, you get some reps in you learn the ropes and then you go out on your own. And then even now today, after plenty of years having success as a business owner, now Bill paying it forward and helping others develop their own career in the industry.

So. Thought he’d be a great guy to have on and talk through some of this stuff. So welcome Bill.

Well, thank you for having me, Pat. This is a great opportunity.

So, so I gave like the most CliffsNotes-esque version of your story to give the people who are going to be watching or listening this a little bit better kind of peek behind the curtain.

Would you be so kind as to talk about the origins of education, how you got into the industry up to where you are today?

Okay. So I’ve been in the industry 34, 35 years, somewhere in there. I started out cleaning equipment at a gym, and that’s how I kept my membership, and I’m the classic example of somebody who couldn’t, so they learned how to teach.

I was a wannabe bodybuilder I never really had, I don’t have the frame for it, and I don’t have the physical attributes, but I worked really hard, and gained a hundred pounds and it was like one of those things where that’s what I wanted to be. But when I, what I figured out was that teaching was the next best thing.

And so I got an opportunity to be a trainer in a gym and I did that for seven years, which was very successful. I was at a point where I was doing about 60 appointments a week. Which was a lot and but I, at some point I needed a new challenge and so I got an opportunity to run a gym where I got a I ran a goals gym for five years, which was very, I think that it taught me a lot about business and what business needed to look like and how we were going to go forward.

But there again, I am a I’m a trainer by heart. And so being in a big facility, didn’t really, it had some of the attributes that I wanted, but it didn’t have everything. So I fast forward, I got an opportunity to open my own place in 2005, and it was my dream come true. Here I had a facility that was really built around taking care of each person that came through the door.

You think about a big facility is really built around just pushing people through the door as opposed to guiding them. Somewhere and I think that’s when I got to, an opportunity to open my own place. That’s what I got to do is I got to guide everybody that came through the door and that’s been open.

This is our 19th year, which who knew? I mean, it’s been, we’ve been through COVID. We’ve been through the depression in Co A. I got sick in the beginning. I mean, we’ve been through a lot and we’re still there. And in 2020, I got to open up my second location. So I have two locations now and it just I’ve stepped away from training to a certain extent now.

My goal now is to teach the business into this to trainers, because one of the things that I realized as a trainer, there’s nobody helping you, you get your cert, you’re on your own, and you see a lot of good tra and over the years what I’ve seen is a lot of really great trainers not make it, because they didn’t understand what they needed to do to go forward and I think when I met you probably 10, 12 years ago, that concept of having your ideal business, What would you like to do when I ask trainers that they don’t know?

They don’t know what they want to do. I can train anybody. They don’t have that thought of what’s your ideal or ask them who their avatar, who their, who’s the customer you’d like to have all day. Like, I don’t know. So it’s like those things that are really difficult for people. I think I spent a lot of time learning that from somebody like you who sort of made me think about what was the optimum thing I wanted to do because I love training people.

And so. What I’m getting ready to do now is the next iteration of training people, getting them, helping people go to the next step. I’ve gotten to do with my clientele for a long time. It’s so fulfilling. I don’t know if there’s something else I could have done. That was that fulfilling on a daily basis where you could touch somebody’s life, watch them be elevated.

It just I think that’s super fulfilling. And I know you experienced the same thing when. You get to help people all the time and see their dream come true. And that has to be an extraordinary event that you get to have on a daily basis. And so I get to have that with my clientele. And now I hope to do that again with trainers.

So talk a little bit about your studio that, that really, I think got to be the embodiment of this kind of desire to help and the ability to have such an impact. I didn’t mention this in the intro, but I mean, you’re in Virginia and give them a little bit of a background on the studio you have that kind of flagship.

And you can talk a little bit about the second location too.

So in 05, I guess in 03, when I wrote my business plan, you were starting to see the environment was starting to change away from the big club and people were starting to look for a more intimate environment to work out in. And I am, I just turned 64 a couple of weeks ago.

And what I realized at 45 was that you started to age out. Are you not the crisp peacock walking around the club looking good. There’s 20 year olds in there that are like looking good. And if you’re coming in and wanting to learn, it’s a tough place to come and want to try and learn to start. And so I wanted to have a place where it was safe for somebody that was between 45 and 80 to come in and start.

Somebody could hold their hand and take them through with our goal of pushing bodies out the door, bodies that were able. If you think about getting older, the first thing people think is like, I’m going to do less, I have less ability, and it’s a lie. And then somebody needs to help instruct people that you could do more.

As you get older, you got time, you just have to put the effort into getting to a point where your body will do the things it used to do. And so, so the studio. Was built to be a place where people could come and have a safe environment to learn how to work out and how to get the most out of their workouts, like moving with purpose.

And then what you get from that, when you think about all the things that people get from working out, that we don’t talk about, like we don’t talk about the self esteem like we should, we don’t talk about the empowerment that it gives us, we don’t talk about how it elevates us every day, because you did something for you that is powerful that you can feel and see, and you can take that with you, we’re talking about six pack abs and how big your butt is after you do glute somethings.

We missed the point a lot of times. And so when you get to that 45, 50, 60 age, probably not so concerned with those things, but you want to be physical. You want to have some endurance. You want to be strong. And so the studio was built around those concepts. And 19 years later, I get to step back and look at it now.

And it’s so fulfilling to watch people come and go. And I’m going to tell you, Pat, one of the greatest things. Is to have a 50 year old mom, working out, bring their 25 or 30 year old daughter in, or son, that can’t keep up with them. That is the stuff. Because I think people don’t get it, like, they’re doing their workouts, they think, oh, this is good.

But then when their kid comes in there, and can’t keep up with them, there’s a reality check there that, like, whoa, hello. And for the child, here’s your parent, that’s kicking your butt. That’s some cool stuff, and I think we, to me, that’s what this thing is built around is, like, making it so that adults can have that moment where it’s like, oh, wait, hey, I’m still, I’ve still got it, and I think that’s really powerful and so that environment sort of sprung location number two, which is more of a hybrid because it’s inside of a industrial park.

And we tried to do the amenity to the park thing. COVID happened and the park then was empty. And so we had to pivot and go after the three to five mile radius around the building, lots of housing there. And now we’re starting to get some real traction in there, but it’s really built around training that.

People are coming in for instruction or coming in our reputation at the first location is starting to carry over now. So people are looking for that instruction, that style, those, the benefit that you get from doing things a certain way. And so it has lended itself to us understanding that we have a platform that we can carry forward now to go for that baby boomer kind of group.

And so it give them something that’s really valuable.

Well, and I think anybody watching or listening to this podcast. Can already see why you’ve been able to kind of ascend and climb the ladder and build something successful. I mean, just

the way that you talked about that clientele and how you. Got past some of the cliches of, Oh, I want to be able to get on the ground and play with my grandkids.

And it was like, no, I mean, this is about them and living their best life. And, and I think that part of being an effective business owner is you’ve got to have something valuable to offer. And you found something really valuable to offer that maybe was originally undersold or under marketed in the industry because that was about the time I left the college setting and got into the, like we opened our first facility in 2004 and was very much all the marketing, all the direct mail pieces, all the stock photos were all headed beyond young person aesthetics.

And so, so you kind of being ahead of the curve and obviously the market that you’re talking about now has become more and more of a focus for a lot of people in the industry that, I mean, you were almost two decades ahead of the trend there. So, so you’ve been able to build. A really successful business that, hard to get, like, if somebody who’s younger is listening to this, I don’t know, everybody’s an individual, right?

But I don’t know how easy it is to get people to get excited about durability and longevity or whatever else. But I mean, ideally, if you build it, like you want to build something that lasts, that it’s valuable and man, you built something, the number of businesses is in our industry, it has not only stuck around, but thrived enough to expand and over a 19 year span.

I mean, it has to be less than 3%. So, so that’s pretty amazing, but you know, now it’s kind of come full circle. You’ve got two locations. You’re having more impact than you’ve probably ever had because of that. You got more reach. I know, okay, you are turning around and kind of paying it forward with people who kind of followed some of a similar path to you and you mentioned the business stuff, but frankly, it’s different than what I, like, I know, I mean, I talk about business with business owners all the time, but.

There’s that stage that I did a little bit of before I opened my business. You did a little bit of so many of the people that we know they work for somebody else. They worked in a big box facility or studio and well, there, there’s no shortage of people out there. Whether it’s business coaches or agencies or whatever else doing some sort of fulfillment for a studio like yours There’s pretty much nothing for people who are trying to just build a career as a trainer And on the business side of things, like how do you understand how to sell better to present yourself better to clients?

I mean, yeah, they can go get certification after certification. And I’m certainly a believer in education, but at some level, you’ve got to generate clientele, you’ve got to retain clients, you’ve got to generate referral, you’ve got to somehow be able to compensate yourself well enough to have some financial stability.

So to talk a little bit about kind of the impetus for you wanting that, and then maybe we’ll dive into some of the nuts and bolts of what you’re doing.

Okay. When I was at goals. And I was managing, one of the first things I had to do with the staff was I had to teach them that they were business people inside of a business that happened to be a gym.

And I think that inherently, trainers don’t see themselves as business people. One of the saddest things I think about the training industry is probably 90 to 95 percent of all trainers have never had a trainer. Like they never experienced their own product. So they don’t even understand what the product ought to be.

And I think, like you said, people will go out and get eight certifications. There’s plenty of, they have all these search for people and I’ll tell you the truth, Pat, and I’ve been training people for 35 years. I’ve had three people ask me what my cert was. Like, and so I, and I think certifications are important.

I think that the knowledge is important, but at the day, the things that we really need to understand as business people is how do I get business? What business do I want? And then how do I keep it? It’s really simple. And a lot of times when you talk to trainers, number one, I don’t want to sell. I don’t know how you eat if you don’t sell.

And they’re just churning through people and they don’t get that you want to build something that lasts. And I think that, that. When I did that at goals, it was very eye opening to try and take a young person and try and make them understand that they’re a business person. Your clientele doesn’t have to respect that, but you have to respect it.

And if you respect that you’re a business person, they will come around. They will see you differently if you carry yourself as a business person, as you, if you pronounce yourself as that. And the gym industry in itself is like, unfortunately, we’ve been fighting this battle of being a used car dealership.

People want to come in and negotiate their price. They don’t want to do things. And then the staff is there going, well, I don’t want to charge this much because I can’t afford that. Like, duh, with that attitude, you’ll never be able to afford anything. And so I think teaching people the business end of it.

Is really important. I can, I’m into a trainer about who would you like to train? You would talk to me about what in the business, what part of the business did I want to be? Was I with the producer? Was I the talent? There were these things. That made me crazy because I didn’t really understand and now I do.

And I think that what I realized is that all the help an owner gets, trainers don’t get and their own, their own business. The club will put you out there. You’re do your name, do whatever you’re on your own. And then they are relying on somebody else to get the business. And they’re relying on somebody else to make their business work.

And they hope, and then they’re hungry and they got five clubs that they go. You could do two appointments at. And then they quit. Nobody has spent any time sort of saying, this is how your business ought to work. And I wanted to change that. I realized how much I learned as a manager and an owner about running the business that I wish I had known as a trainer.

When you’re doing 60 appointments a week, you have to understand how to coordinate that, how to make that work so that it has some legs. I was just going, hey, cool as this. As opposed to, I’ve got a business that’s working. How do I turn that into something greater? And I want to help people understand how they make their business or how they start their business, ask the hard questions of someone about how your business is going to look now five years from now.

And I think, like you said, a young person is like, nah, I don’t know who knows what I’m going to be doing five years from now, but the people I’ve known that are successful in life always have a plan. I know some people that are big time successful started in nothing like, like you and those people all had a plan.

And that’s how they got successful. And I think the trainers need that same outlook in business. It’s like, I’ve got a plan. Here’s my customer. Here’s how I’m going to do business here. I’m going to draw them in and I want some longevity. How do I create that? And so I want to teach that to people. I think that’s important.

And we can talk about the nuts and bolts, but I think that’s what the impetus of all of this is that trainers don’t have any real help. There’s no certification that teaches you how to get business. How does that make any sense? I give you all this information, but how do I get clients out of a contract so I can keep my clients still having to churn just small things that would make their business so much easier that nobody teaches them.

I don’t get it.

Well, so, so we’ve talked about this. And first of all, I have to laugh a little bit when you said, Hey, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve had three people ask me about my credential, like my certification. I mean, you’re in a college town, you’re in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It’s I mean. Education central, right? Like, I mean, university of Virginia is a wonderful school. So if people aren’t worried about it in that environment, they’re not worried. I think some of the stuff that, that you said there, it’s a little bit like they may think, well, I work for a business. So therefore that’s the business owner, the gym responsibility.

What’s been interesting in the professional sports world, they may have seen themselves when I first started watching baseball, it was the early stages of free agency. And so they just started to think of themselves as being their own kind of business and everything else, but they were just kind of the good soldier employee.

And now they see themselves. Is a business within the business. And I think that’s so true in our industry too. And I think that they’re kind of the trainers are a little bit late to the party on that too. They think, okay, well, I’ve got a 10 o’clock and an 11 o’clock and a one o’clock and a three o’clock instead of thinking, how do I go out here and re represent myself in a professional way?

How do I generate new business? How do I create the best possible experience for my clients, which creates more retention. It gets people to renew, it generates referrals, it gets positive reviews or testimonials, and there’s so much opportunity there where if you do great work as a trainer, sure, you can go do what you did or I did and parlay that into owning your own facility.

Or you can just make a whole lot of money and build a career, leveraging somebody else’s facility and invest that money in whatever it is that you want to invest in to, to build financial security or wealth. So, so let’s talk about maybe a few of the things that you, I mean, you touched on sales, like, Hey, you got to learn to sell what are a few of the other thing that you’re.

Starting to share with people at that stage of their professional life.

So there’s a couple of things that I think are really important. Trainers need to start to look at what kind of business they want to have. And I think that they don’t do that very well. And I think to your point, if I work in a big club, I’m hoping that somebody’s going to pick me up.

What I’ll say is, they wait for somebody to hit them upside the head and say, train me. And I think that’s a real fallacy there. I think we have to sort of put ourselves in a position that people are being drawn to us. And I’ll give you an example. I had a young man that I was helping.

And so I’m one of those people. I’ll look at your Facebook page to see what it looks like, to see who you are. But he had pictures of, he’s flipping people off. He’s drinking, he’s doing, there was nothing in there that said, this is a fitness professional that I want to choose. And I pointed that out to him because people are shopping.

I, and I think that’s one of those first things that a trainer needs to understand. It’s like, you have all these places that are opportunities for people to view you. What are you giving them? And is that, is what they’re getting from those opportunities, helping your business be successful.

Because they’re free, I can do all these things that would bake it so that people would view me as a professional. But instead, I’m flipping somebody off, or I’m drinking beer, or my shirt’s half ripped off, something don’t. And wondering why I don’t have any business. And I think if you start to look, start there.

It’s like, let’s clean up our act. So that what people view is a professional. And the information I put out makes me a professional. One of the things I learned from you is that What I put out there for people has real merit. It’s like when you start to recognize that people hear you, it’s a big deal.

And so what are you putting out there that has merit that people, that will draw people in? And I think that the next thing is, and this is a big thing, is understanding who your clientele needs to be. I will ask trainers, who do you want to train all day long? Who, because I’ve had some people that I didn’t want to train.

Barely wearing my book three times a week, getting on my nerves. And so, and people say that’s just part of the job. I’m like, no, that’s not part of the job. You don’t have to have somebody that sucks your energy out. It’s taking things away from you when you could have the exact person you want all day long and trying to teach them that it’s like, who would you like to have all day long in my business?

As a trainer, but I used to do mostly one on one, I did all one on one. So I hit business people and I hit moms. In a lot of ways, they were the same. Tight schedules, they were intelligent. They needed a product that was going to give them what they needed. And they had limited time. And so I had to fill those spots for people.

And that was my business. I never had anything outside of that. And in the beginning, I had all females. They were not trying to look like me. I’m 230 pound body, but they weren’t trying to look like me. They wanted to know what I knew. And so my business was built around the knowledge that I put out on the table for people.

And so getting a trainer to understand that you can choose your clientele, that you can understand them better than they know themselves and that they will buy from you and they will find you friends to put in your book. It’s like, it’s that concept of what your business needs to look like. That’s such a hard thing for trainers to understand.

And I think that unfortunately the certs don’t help. In a lot of ways, because they’re not teaching you what you need to do to go forward. And I think that holds trainers back a lot of times because they think that the cert is the end all be all. I’ve got the whole alphabet behind my name. I’m good.

And then you put your plaque up on the wall and you wait. And I can remember somebody asking me how come I didn’t have any of my certs up on the wall. And I said, because that doesn’t get you business. What I do out on the floor. It’s where my business comes from. If I’m teaching people, if people are getting the right thing, if everybody knows who to go to for information, I’m the guy.

How does that help my business? It builds it. And so trainers need to understand that. I go to clubs and I’ll scout to see what’s going on. And the trainers are nowhere to be found. Big clubs, got 20, 000 members, there’s one trainer out on the floor. How does that make any sense? They’re not even out there advertising what they do.

And so teaching them those things makes a big bit better. Makes a difference in how their business works that nobody’s teaching them the business end of it. And I think that’s where the real problem is. You told me one time that we’re always selling. If you have kids, you’re selling because you’re getting, trying to get them to buy in.

If you have a significant other, you’re selling, but you’re trying to get them to buy in to whatever it is that you’re trying to do. And so we’re constantly doing that. Then when it comes to building your business, I’m afraid I don’t know what to do. And so, and then you don’t have any business charging the appropriate price.

I was terrible about that. I would do this for free and I was broke doing it like that. And so you have to be able to charge an appropriate price for your product too. I think pricing is a big deal and being able to increase what you charge over time, not wait until disaster happens that you need to do it, but incrementally in taking your price up as your business gets more popular, notch it up.

So that you’re incrementally moving your bar up so that you’re making a living. I see trainers that aren’t making a living and they’re not charging anything. And they’re wondering why they’re broke and they’re working all the time. They got two or three clubs they go to. They didn’t build a business that had some legs to it.

When I was at my first club that I worked at, they opened a second location. And the owner said, I need you to go down to this other location. I’m like, I can’t do that. It’s like, this is where my business is. If you want me, you gotta come here to where I am. If I had bricks and mortar, you wouldn’t, I couldn’t move around.

This is where I am. And he was really not happy with me for that because I was the ATM. I was the one that made the money. But at the end of the day, I made money because people knew where I was gonna be. They could count on it. So if I’m bouncing around from club, that’s a disaster. I mean, club, no trainer makes any money do it.

And so you wanna be playing and you wanna establish, this is where my business is. If you want me, this is where I am. This, and if you want to get in my book, here we are. And I think that those are just business concepts. And I think that getting trainers to understand how their business looks, feels and works is a battle a lot of times because they think they want to train people.

They don’t understand what that means and they don’t understand how to get there so they can do that. So my goal is to help them get a grasp on how do you get a business that actually will feed you. And then how do you maintain that and grow it into something? 19 years later, I never would have thought that my business would be what it is.

I don’t have to go in. It works without me. Be the location. We’ve got systems in there. We’ve got processes. There’s a way to do everything. Trainers need to do that. They don’t have any systems. I’m going to write this program for you. It’s going to be so great. And so they’re writing up 40 individual programs that take them hours that they don’t get paid for.

And they don’t have anything to show for it. You need a system that you can work in that cuts the amount of time it takes you to get your, what you’re going to put out on the floor up there. That thought of everybody needs all this different stuff. Yeah, good luck with that. People need to bend, they need to push, they need to squat.

It’s limited as to what they, especially if you’re working with the general public. If you’re working with an athlete, sure, that’s a different ball game. But for the general public, their needs are very finite and easily accomplished. And so having a system that you can follow. Makes it work so much better.

I mean, it’s just business and they’re not taught any of that. And it hurts them badly. I think over time.

Well, I think that there, there are a few things that, that I think they’re probably beyond the scope of what we can cover in detail here, but I mean, you touched on all of these. Gaps that go unfulfilled or partially fulfilled for somebody to build a really lucrative, successful career because yeah, they think mistakenly think that, okay, I got the certification.

So therefore I’ll be able to have this career and heck their ads that run on TV and radio, that’ll say, well, if you get this cert, you can earn this much. Well, you can earn that much, but you won’t earn that much unless you can bridge the gap, right? Like, and there’s so many of the things that you talked about, right?

Like you, you need to have a structure and a plan and perhaps again, getting back to what we talked about earlier. Maybe because somebody’s early in their career, they think, well, I will entrust this, all these decisions that ultimately are really critical in how well I do. I’m going to entrust these to the club.

I’m going to let them make these decisions, but the club isn’t thinking about. Your long term kind of career objectives.

They’re not thinking about you building a livelihood. They’re thinking about solving today’s problem. They’re thinking about, okay, well, we need to make our quota for the month, or we need to replace this person who quit and or cover these hours, right?

Like those are the problems they’re trying to solve. And those things aren’t really in alignment with the career minded fitness professional, because, for you to be able to do this, you have to be able to build a schedule that pays you well. And there are plenty of things that you can do that do not offer a leverage schedule, right?

Like you can spread your session throughout the day over multiple facilities, spending more time driving to and from, or. You’re, I mean, you have a day where, Hey, I’m doing six sessions today, but they’re at the bookends of the day. I’m doing three, five or six or seven in the morning and three in the evening.

And so, so understanding that, okay, I can plan to build a schedule, the lucrative that I can actually maintain and I don’t get burned out quickly. Understanding pricing and in any environment where you have some flexibility there, understanding professionalism, so you don’t have a revolving door of clients.

And so you’re attracted to clients. I mean, all of those things there’s, I guess the way I think of this is like, there’s this potential to fast track. What you want to do and who you want to become as a professional, or you can go through trial and error and maybe some people kind of weather the storm and stick it out, but I mean, you don’t have to, like you, you don’t have to now under the model that so many of us kind of enter the industry in.

That was kind of the only option, but now with some of this stuff you’re doing, you can, it gives a trial and error and kind of avoid all the potholes and everything. So, so Bill, I know you’re kind of just starting the, this kind of coaching and mentorship stuff, like how could somebody get in contact with you if they want to start building a career?

I mean, can they contact you directly? Can they? Absolutely. So

you could contact me through our studio from Success Studio and like you could go into info at successstudiopt.com. That gets you into the club. You can do bill at successstudiopt. That’s me. And so either one of those ways you can get to me and I’m more than happy to help.

I think that one of the things that you said, Pat, that I think is really important is that. Fitness minded, I mean, the entrepreneur fitness person that has a trajectory, so often what we see is trainers that have no trajectory, like they don’t have a vision of going forward, like, oh, this will be fun.

I’m going to do this. Those people never make it. They never make it. And I think when you have somebody that this is what they want to do, it makes a big difference because they will, they’re looking for solutions. And if we think about business as being a solution for a problem, that’s what a business is, trainers need to see themselves as being a solution for a particular problem, like.

If you’re doing prenatal or postnatal, any of those things, whatever, I want to work with the elderly, I want to work with kids, see yourself as a professional in those environments, and so, I think for me, that’s one of those keys that people need to grasp, is that, we’re not fooling around here, this is business, and so for me, like, if you contact our business, we would comprehend the desk, if not, A game to us.

This is a way that we make our living. And so I want to help people do that. I want to help them do that. And so this program that I’m launching here is really built around, you said something about trial and error. It’s built around taking the trial and error out. Here’s each week. You’re going to have things to do.

And I started this In 2001, like the first time I ran this, and I did it over a weekend. So in two, seven hour or eight hour days, you got bombarded with stuff. And the likelihood of you comprehending it and actually trying it, you didn’t have an opportunity to do that. And I saw the flaw in that. And so what I really wanted to have happen was I wanted people to come in and each week they have things that they need to try.

So they got to go out on the floor and try things. And then they could come back the next week and go, so I tried this and this is what happened, or these are the problems that I saw, which most of the time are easily overcome. And I wanted that to be the way that this sort of worked because in eight weeks, you could have a business that is flourishing.

What would that look like? And I think that’s what we’re trying to achieve here is Because I think people get discouraged you go for months and you have nothing at some point you quit And so in eight weeks, can I get you to a point where you might not be at the end all be all but you have enough business now that you can pay your bills and Go out to the movies and have dinner once or twice, that would be the goal.

And then after that, there’s this follow up where we can sort of help you with the problems that you have. And then if you want to go to something bigger than that, like the bricks and mortar or something like that, then there’d be an opportunity to help you do all of those things. But I really want to see the art, the integrity of the training industry change.

I want to see it changed. And I, I’m one person, but it starts with one person and I want to see his change. I want people to look at us differently. I want traders to come out feeling like they’re professionals. And they have an opportunity to have a business that will flourish. And if I can be the catalyst for that, then that’s the goal here.

Well, it’s such a needed thing. It’s a little bit like what I think you tapped into when you started your first studio, right? Like the bulk of the business education and business support goes to studio owners at this point. I mean, I mean, almost everything that I do goes that way. And I’ve had a few people, the Justin Yules of the world that I got to connect with.

Well, they were still in the employee setting, but he was already a top performer at Lifetime. We just had somebody else recently who was a department director that just went out on his own, but again, top performer. Well, how do you become that top performer? And I think nobody’s really doing that, but there are tens of thousands of people investing in certifications every year through the various certification organizations that are missing the critical piece.

And I’m oversimplifying it saying piece, because peace is, but that’s what you’re doing. So I think I’ve had the good fortune throughout the years to either help introduce. Some people who had really cool things to share to the industry, or at least help get the spotlight on people could make a difference a number of times.

And man, I’m excited about this because I think this is a game changer in that same vein, but in frankly, in probably a much broader way, because there’s so many people that. If shown an interest in pursuing your career by getting a certification, but then are kind of thrown to the wolves and say, well, good luck.

And if you figure it out, then maybe you stick around and that whole kind of Darwinism thing, like, well, we can give you more than we’re giving you. And so that’s what you’re doing here. So we’ll be wrapping up, but what I want to do to make sure that it’s easy for people to, to connect with you is we’ll put everything in the show notes to link.

To direct access to you and obviously any and all offerings. But I mean, I’ve seen some of the curriculum stuff that you’ve been working on here, and I would encourage anybody who’s already in the industry and wants to kind of sharpen, sharpen their skills as a professional, this is. This is going to be gold, but I’d also say, I know a number of the people that listen or watch this podcast are owners.

This is the type of thing that you want to expose the team members you have to, because it is somebody who’s coached a lot of people for a lot of years and coached my own kids a lot. Sometimes it’s better to hear it from somebody else.

Right. Amen. I agree. My staff is the same way they hear from me. I’m Charlie Brown’s teacher.

And they go to somebody else and they’re like, you know what I heard? And it’s. So, I think that has a lot of validity to it and I hope that when we look at what club owners are gonna do with this is like seeing your team flourish. Training departments are tough. There’s this constant, like, in and out of people because they don’t feel like, I will tell trainers at clubs, you view us as disposable.

You’re gonna leave, somebody else is gonna take your place. Because we have to create value for ourselves inside of those environments and I think that, As a studio owner, one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is making sure that my staff understands their value. The business doesn’t run without us.

And I, I think that’s one of those things that if you take a training department and coach it up, so they’re all business people doing this business thing, all of a sudden you have a department that will outshine every department in the club. And I think that’s a big deal. And if owners start to see their trainers that have a great value and invest in them, I never was at a big club that they spent any time really investing in the training staff and you could see how it hurt that staff.

And I think that as owners start to invest in, what their training staff understands and knows about business, like I put my P and L’s in front of my staff every quarter, like they know what it looks like because I’m getting them ready for their next opportunity. But at some point they’re going to be that person.

I don’t want them to be like I was and get a P and L and go, Oh, what the hell is this? And so owners take an advantage of an opportunity to help elevate their group with, like you said, a different voice, I think will make a big difference in how our industry looks as far as training departments are concerned.

Well, and it’s competitive advantage for the owner, whether it’s a big box facility or an independently owned private studio trying to compete in a sea of franchised facilities. Well, it’s your opportunity to say, okay, how do we make our staff better? How do we develop people and whether it’s sending team to perform better, to improve their education, I mean, or people bringing stuff in house.

I mean, I’ve seen it time and time again, I’ve gone, I mean, I do, I’m doing a staff training for somebody later today as we record this, the people that invest in that type of development for their team. Invariably are the people who kind of rise to the top here. So I’m excited about it and I’m appreciative that you’re willing to come on and hang out and talk through some of this because again, this is, I think a much needed much needed kind of, I don’t even want to just call it a course or program.

It’s a much needed. Kind of laying in our industry that just hasn’t been there that goes beyond just a single course or whatever else. It’s a developmental piece that I think can raise the professionalism, create better career paths for people and hopefully move so many people in the industry forward.

So thank you. Thank you

for having me. It’s been a great opportunity.

Wow. My pleasure. And guys expect to hear more from me about what Bill doing, and then you’ll be able to catch all the access to him and what he’s got going on in the show notes. So. That’s another episode of the Fitness Business School and that’s Patton Dills signing off.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

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.

So if we take you through this, you’re gonna be able to make those vital changes that you need to finally have what I call your Ideal Business. If you’d be interested in going through this entirely free, risk-free diagnostic with us and learn what you already have in place, what you’re doing well and where are your greatest opportunities for rapid improvement are just shoot me an email with diagnostic in the subject line to [email protected].

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.