Episode 158: Your Strategic Advantages, with Josh Martin

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGES

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Chris:                                         00:26                       Debt is a tricky subject in our world. We’ve been taught by HQ to avoid debt, to accumulate cash and then when we’ve got enough money to spend it, but in the business world, the reality is that there’s good debt and there’s bad debt. Good debt creates an asset and there’s also something called opportunity cost. Meaning if you wait until you can afford something, you probably never will be able to afford it and you’ll be missing a ton of opportunity. In the meantime, let’s say for example that you were bursting at the seams and your clients couldn’t attend the 6:00 PM class anymore because there was a waiting list, so they started canceling their memberships. You’re missing an opportunity cost here. The opportunity to keep your current clients because if they’re paying for a membership and they can’t attend, they’re not going to keep that membership for long so you’re looking to expand and so you’re going to have to take on some debt or you’re going to wait until you have the $10,000 or whatever that amount is to buy the new equipment.

Chris:                                         01:23                       You can keep turning new clients away while you wait and try and accumulate this money or you can leverage the capital through guys like rig equipment requirement is a partner that we chose a two brain business because their commitment to crossfit and their commitment to helping first has been proven over several years. I got to admit, I shy away a lot from money people. It’s intimidating to work with people who understand money and finance better than I do. I’m sure you feel the same way, but these guys have shown up time and time again. They’ve offered free help. They’ve turned down business a lot of times because they aren’t sure if the person has a good working business model and to be honest, they’ve sent people to us and let us turn them down for them because they wanted to know if this person’s plan was going to work before you expand, before you start out.

Speaker 2:                               02:16                       It’s super important that you know what you’re getting into the, you have a plan to pay back the debt. They have a plan to increase cash flow that you’re going to do based on new purchase equipment has a great tool. If you go to their site rigquipment.com you can figure out if you can’t afford that expansion, should you be buying that new rig or should you be investing in something else like mentorship. These guys will even finance the Twobrain business incubator phase if you purchase it with your equipment because they understand that the incubator makes your business more viable, it’s less of a risk for them. I love working with clay and Joe from rigquipment because these guys understand what our service in life is and that matches their service too.

Chris:                                         03:00                       Hey everyone. Chris Cooper here and really thrilled to see you this year in June in Chicago at the 2019 TwoBrain summit. Every year we have two separate speaking tracks is one for you, the business owner, and there’s one for coaches that will help them make better, longer, more meaningful careers under the umbrella of your business. This year we’ve got some pretty amazing topics like the client success manager, how to change your life organizational culture or the business owner’s life cycle, how to have break
s, how to have vacations, how to help your marriage survive, owning a business motivation and leadership. How to convert more clients, how to create a GM position that runs your gym for you and leaves you free to grow your business. How to start a business owner’s group and your community and more. The point here is to do the right thing that will help gym owners create better businesses that will last them for the long term.

Chris:                                         03:52                       Get them to tinker phase, help them be more successful, create meaningful careers that their coaches and give their clients a meaningful path to longterm health. We only do one big seminar every year and that’s the two brain summit and the reason that we do that is because a big part of the benefit is getting the to bring community together and and welcoming strangers into our midst and showing them how amazing GM ownership really can be. We’ll have a link to the two brain summit including a full list of all speakers and topics on both the owners and the coaches side in the show notes. I really hope to see you there.

Greg Strauch:                        04:24                       How do we celebrate our strategic advantages? We get into this episode talking about three of the most common strategic advantages that we see. Usually they are the best coaches, the best programming or the best community. Well there it’s all three of those or maybe one or two. We definitely see that a lot. All of us have the best coaches. All of us have the best community and all of us can program better than everyone else, but if we’re all doing it seems like none of us are doing it. On this episode, I talked to Josh Martin, one of the mentors on the two brain team, and we expand on this, these top three strategic advantages that we’re always seeing and really digging into them. How can we actually market these things correctly? How can we say that we do have these as strategic advantages and not look at them from a macro standpoint of just saying the best coaches, the best community or the best programming.

Greg Strauch:                        05:12                       We break these down and we give you actual tactile cues so that you guys can build a better strategic advantage and build a better community, better programming, and better coaching. Enjoy. All right, we’re on another episode of two brain business or to brain radio better yet. I’m here with Josh Martin. How are you Josh?

Josh Martin:                          05:31                       I’m doing great. How are you this morning, Greg?

Greg Strauch:                        05:33                       I’m doing well. So I wanted to bring you on here that you made an amazing post, but I wanted, I wanted people that maybe don’t see that kind of understand where you’re coming from on this cause I think it’s something that too many of us do and that is as a, as a gym, we do look at what is our strategic advantages and it’s kind of a role playing scenario that we do through incubator. But the top three that we always hear, which I will let you talk about, is something that really comes out to be that all of us do this. So you have a unique way of, of kind of talking about how to celebrate these and kind of dig into them. So, uh, let’s kind of dig in. What are those three top three strategic advantages that we always hear gym owners say?

Josh Martin:                          06:17                       Yeah. So one of the first exercises that are new incubator clients go through is the list of strategic advantages and where we’re looking for 10 to 12 of them. But inevitably the, usually the first three that people always go to is we have best community, we have the best programming, and we have the best coaches, community programming and coaches. Those are on every list of every client’s strategic advantages that I’ve ever worked with. So my thing is, if everybody has that, then it’s a strategic advantage for exactly none of them.

Greg Strauch:                        06:54                       And I think we all do. We all say it, right? We, I have the best coaches and I have the best programming in my communities better than anywhere else. But, uh, like you said, it’s, we all have it. So none of us really have it.

Josh Martin:                          07:06                       Exactly. You know. But here’s the funny thing, while we all say that we have that, I don’t think that really any of us, if I’m being perfectly honest, Greg, do a good job or a job at all of talking about this stuff enough on social media or blog or our newsletter. And I’m sure that there are some gyms out there who do you do a good job? Maybe talking about one or two of them, but you know, if these are the most common three, then we need to do a better job of talking about them, you know? So you start with the first one community. Well, what does that even mean? First of all? You know, what does it mean to have the best community?

Greg Strauch:                        07:46                       Yeah, no, I agree. I mean for me, I would say the best community is the fact of the people within the community, right?

Josh Martin:                          07:52                       Yeah, yeah, exactly. And one of the things that we talk about as a staff at my gym is while we all want to talk about how great our community is, the reality is that prospective clients that are looking for somewhere to go, and all of the no sweat intros I have ever done, I have never had somebody come in and say, you know what? I’m really looking for some new friends. I don’t have enough friends or I need some people that are going to high five me or I need a great community. Do you have something like that? Because that’s exactly what I
‘m looking for.

Greg Strauch:                        08:25                       No, I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten somebody come in that says the same thing. Agreed.

Josh Martin:                          08:30                       Yeah. So that, you know, that’s, that’s the first one. And so what I want to do really today, and this can be done so briefly is like just give a couple of, of tips or, or actionable things that people can do to actually showcase what it means when they say they’ve got the best community, the best programming, the best coaches. So for me, the thing that, that I love about our community beyond the fact that yes, they’re wonderful, outgoing, amazing, high fiving people, is that they actually make a positive impact in the surrounding community. So I want to celebrate the things that our clients are doing to positively impact the surrounding community. So one of the things that I think all crossfit gyms and why we point to community, one of the things I think all crossfit gyms can do is actually highlights the charitable contributions that they are making from outside the four walls of their gym.

Josh Martin:                          09:28                       I think most of us have finally come around to the fact that we need to be celebrating what our clients do from a results on an individual basis, you know? But when we host a toy drive that stocks the toy closet for the local children’s hospital for the next six months, to me that’s a big, big, big deal. And that’s one thing that separates our community apart from not just other gyms, but maybe other local businesses in the area. And I’m not saying that to say that we are better because we do that, but it’s just that, hey, I think that the places that I go and frequent and visit, I want to know that they are making a positive impact in the community. And in turn, that makes me want to be a part of that. So I want to be a part of something bigger than myself.

Josh Martin:                          10:20                       So I think that that’s a very, very easy way. You know, around Memorial Day, I’m sure at your gym, Greg, I know at my gym has so many other crossfit gyms around the world. We do Memorial Day Murph and we do, it’s to honor the fallen soldiers, first responders, military, all those things. And I think it’s great that we talk about the workout and talk about why it was created, but it would also be great if we could celebrate the way that we are using this platform to bring awareness to these individuals. Does that make sense? No, that makes perfect sense because I think, and it sounds like that we really need to break down these bigger, we always like to say like the, like you said, best community, but really breaking that down to a much smaller level, a micro level. And one of these ways, like you said, is, I mean, uh, celebrating what you guys do outside of the community and the giving and giving back.

Josh Martin:                          11:14                       And I think you hit on something that was really the hits home for me because I know that’s something that I always talk about is being part of something bigger than oneself. Right? I mean that’s, that’s our staff loves to do what they do because they get to be part of something bigger than just themselves. They get to help others. And I think with one of the ways you said it, I mean like the toy drive or the Murph and Memorial Day, being able to show how much the community stands by of everyone gets to come together and do something amazing for other people. That’s, I mean, that’s something that I love and I love being part of that. And that’s, I mean, that’s part of the reason that I opened a gym, right. To help people, which now my, the people that I get to help get to help others, which is huge.

Josh Martin:                          11:55                       Yeah. And you know, it, it’s, it’s taken me a while to come around to, you know, the, the revelation that, yeah, we all do have great communities, but we need to be celebrating that. If we’re saying it’s a strategic advantage, well, you know, we need to be talking about that. And I think you know, this about me and anyone that’s heard me talk before or even knows the name of my gym knows that we’re a Christian owned and operated. I mean, our gym name is crossfit for glory. And so every Sunday, you know, we’re sitting in church and this was probably last summer one time, uh, we were listening in on a message from our lead pastor and they played a video highlights of a big, big community, really worldwide outreach thing that our church does call Christmas in July. And so throughout the spring months, so basically from like the new year up until may is a time where we can bring gifts and to the church.

Josh Martin:                          12:52                       And then the church in turn takes all these gifts over to Africa in a village that, uh, the church has basically built up and created through all the tithes and offerings that people have given. You know, throughout the course of the years, this village has been, you know, put up and all this stuff, but they ended up creating this thing called Christmas in July to where we bring all these packages over and then give the gift of Christmas to this village in Africa that has never seen or experienced anything like that. And it really made me just as a participant or member of the church crowds that my church was doing something like this. And that is the type of thing that I think people that wear our shirts are proud to see. I mean, yes, if you get somebody to lose 50 pounds or if you get them off of their diabetic medication, that’s a huge win.

Josh Martin:                          13:46                       But if they can brag on their gym for the big huge outreach things that we’re all doing, um, I think that the sense of pride just goes up exponentially. And I really think that that’s at the heart of what, what all these gym owners are talking about that makes their community so awesome. It’s not the in house parties or the potlucks or the barbecues. Like that’s a given. I, I think I even read a story that like planet fitness, you know, has donuts and coffee for you, which is hysterica
l by the way, but they have that for you when you come in to work out in the morning. So, you know, I don’t think those are the things that really make the community awesome. I think it’s the things outside the four walls of the gym, um, that really allow people to feel like they’re a part of something much larger than themselves.

Josh Martin:                          14:34                       Let’s, let’s get into the next one. Let’s, let’s talk about either a best programming or best coaching. Let’s go to a programming next. Okay. So like we said, if we all have the best programming, then none of us have the best programming. But here’s the funny part. If you were to poll, let’s say that you have a clients at your gym and you were to ask them on the day that they first came in, number one, what is programming and what are you looking for and programming. I don’t think that any of them would have any clue whatsoever what you’re talking about with regards to programming.

Greg Strauch:                        15:10                       Agreed. Nor do I think anyone Google searches best programming in whatever city you’re your businesses in.

Josh Martin:                          15:17                       Exactly what I, what I do think that gym owners want to talk about when we finally get into the weeds with programming is that really it needs to serve two purposes. Number one, it needs to deliver results. And number two, it needs to do no harm and I think the deliver results piece is probably the easiest one is because if you take somebody who really doesn’t have much of a background at all in doing anything health and fitness related, you could probably give them anything and they’re going to see results. That’s just one of the principles of, you know, exercise science. Now the more training time that somebody has under a structured program, the, the more that you, you need to maybe manipulate things, but we’re not even going to go down that road. We’re just going to say that our programming gets results and here they are.

Josh Martin:                          16:06                       Well, if we’re sharing clients’ success stories, then I think we’re doing a good job of that. The other thing is we need to show that our programming is not here to hurt people and I think the way that you talk about this, instead of saying like, Hey, come work out with us, we’re not going to hurt you. I think the better way is through education. And what I mean by that is if you are doing a workout that has combination of thrusters and pull ups and it’s in this silly rep scheme called 2115 and nine why is it that we’re doing these two things and this many reps of these things? Or why is it that another day we have row or God forbid run a five k for the workout. I think what it boils down to is we want to point to the letters and numbers that we have on our whiteboards and say come work out, lets us, our programming is the best, but the clients really have no context for that. But they do have context for am I getting results and am I staying injury free? So are we doing no harm? And I think that if we can educate them on, you know, what those components are that lead to those two, it establishes you and your gym as the authority in your area and it really creates buy in with the client that you know what you’re talking about.

Greg Strauch:                        17:23                       I agree. I mean that’s, that’s a big portion, right? Is, is being able to educate our people on why the why behind everything. Why are we doing it this way? And really getting them to understand the background. I mean we’re, we don’t have to jump into what each phase is going to be in and more of a biomechanical standpoint, but more of just the overall why, why is this good for us? Cause I know if gym is like mine, if we program a five k we always have less people and it’s always, we always know why that we have less people because no one wants to go run a five k for a workout. They want thrusters, they want the quick changement of, of all the movements we have going on and they really enjoy that. But a five k is just a five k you just got to put one foot in front of the other, but they don’t really understand the why. So being able to teach that point that, that makes perfect sense.

Josh Martin:                          18:14                       Yeah. And I, you know, I think that the more that you talk about these things, right, about these things, video, you know, it gets easier and easier and easier. I think coop probably said this in some form or fashion that you know, you’re writing and blogging and creating video content or content in general. Um, you think of it like a muscle. It’s going to be tough at first, but the more that you do it, the better at it that you’re going to become. So, you know, we’re not asking people or telling people to become novelists, but you know, even if writing is not your thing, something, especially when you first start in terms of educating your clients, something is better than nothing.

Greg Strauch:                        18:50                       Agreed. Now let’s, uh, let’s jump into the last part of this, which is, uh, the best coaches, cause I’ll say I have the best coaches and so will the gym down the street?

Josh Martin:                          18:58                       Yeah, I think I have the best coaches. But first, I think what we need to, and this is, this could be individual for every gym, we need to actually define, you know, what, what is a good coach? Or what is the best coach? What does that actually mean? Well, our coaches care, you know, are there the, you know, they’re the happiest, you know? Okay, great. You’re a, you’re a decent human being, you know, but to separate a good coach from a great coach, you know, what does that actually look like? Is it that the great coach spends more time learning? I, I would say that that’s probably, uh, a good starting points is that they have just spent a lot of time in the trenches. Now that I know people can argue against that, but I think a benefit for the affiliate owner would be to say that our coaches are great.

Josh Martin:                          19:47                       One of the reasons that they’re great is because they’re always pushing the bounds of their knowledge and education so that they can bring the best product to the client every single day. So if we have some sort of structured education program for our coaches, I would want to take some pictures of what it is that they’re studying. You know, take a picture of them going through modules on a computer or them reading a book or maybe highlighting a passage out of a book that is a part of your education program because to the the end user, right, the prospective client or even you can think of it in terms of retention for your current clients to know that their coaches are always striving to get better, I think would be huge for them. So even something as simple as that is, is posting content or sharing a snippet of a, of a book they’re reading to up their knowledge game I think would be huge.

Josh Martin:                          20:42                       Another thing, maybe taking a picture of your coach actively, even video of actively coaching somebody through a movement. You know, spotting them with a hand on the back for a ring row or teaching them, you know, elbows high and tight for a clean or a snatch or simply taking a picture of them standing at 45 degrees to the front of a client and saying, one of the things that we teach our coaches is to see from all angles and this is what Jimmy is looking at from this angle. These are the things that he can see, you know? Then maybe we take a picture of them, no coaching from the front and these are the different things that he sees from this angle. That would be, I think a solid place to start is just documenting what it means for your particular gym to have good coaches and then putting it out there and sharing it.

Greg Strauch:                        21:35                       And that was, that was going to be my final question is now that that people have these ideas after listening to this episode, what are, what do you feel like the best ways to market these ideas out there to share them? I mean, is it, I mean, do we, do we just do written, do it just do video, like what? What do you feel like it would be?

Josh Martin:                          21:51                       Yes. Any time clients ask, well, should I blog or should I video or audio or just take pictures? My answer is always, yes. Okay, first is low hanging fruit. If you are somebody who likes to write, then just start writing. If you are somebody who is very comfortable in front of the camera, then great. Turn on the Selfie Cam and shoot a couple of videos. If you are somebody who just prefers to maybe take a really well framed, are well lit picture and put a cute filter on it and then write a really compelling piece of copy for Instagram or Facebook, then start there. The worst thing that you can do is nothing. The next worse thing that you can do is try to do all of them because you’re going to do each of them poorly. Whereas if you can just find one, find your niche and really get that process dialed in.

Josh Martin:                          22:43                       Then move to another. You know, maybe go from writing to video or from photo to writing to video, but just doing something at this point is better than nothing. And then I would say having a consistent schedule of when you’re going to post what one of the things that has made the biggest impact from a consistency standpoint at our gym for social media posting is just creating a calendar. I actually, I got together with my head coach several months ago and I just threw something on too, you know, an excel spreadsheet Monday through Sunday am and pm. This is what we’re going to post. And she was asking me questions about it and I said, look, I don’t care what you post when, but let’s just follow something and stick to it because I, I feel like I’m just quoting coop this whole episode. But you know, he says consistency is greater than everything else.

Greg Strauch:                        23:36                       Agreed. And I think, uh, that’s, I mean that’s a huge, huge nugget for people to take out of this is finding whichever medium you want to post, however it’s going to be. Whether that’s written, whether that’s video, whether that’s pictures, it’s, it’s taking action on that, that lowest hanging fruit, tea, I mean knocking out what you, what you see as yours, super power if you want to say that on, on media creation and getting that done in that direction first and then maybe slowly going in getting these other things done. But I think you said it best with with having consistency, having a schedule built out so that if you’re doing this or if somebody else is doing this, they know exactly what to post. I know with me and our social media person, she actually has a a scheduler for Instagram that basically she can fill out an entire month’s worth of content and then it automatically send that to our Instagram on the day that she specified at the time she specified.

Greg Strauch:                        24:30                       And then on there we’ll actually carry over to our Facebook page as well. So it’s constant, constantly getting that information to our members, but then also our our front facing to the community, people on Facebook so that they can still have that content. They can learn about us because I think not only do we have to educate our, our current clients, but like you said, we need to, we need to educate everyone else too. Why we have the best community, why we have the best programming or why we have the best coaches. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I’m glad you brought up the automation. You know, there’s tons of automation tools where you can schedule a bank of content to go out and all it really takes is, you know, sitting down for maybe you know, an hour or two on a Sunday and you can knock out a month’s worth of posts in that time.

Greg Strauch:                        25:14                       Agreed. Agreed. Well, I think that’s a perfect place to wrap it up. Thank you Josh for jumping on and talking about those top three strategic advantages that we always hear everyone say, but really being able to break them down to a smaller level so that people can really kind of dig deep and and develop content
for their, for their businesses, for their gyms, but then also really realize that those are a macro and we need to kind of get a little bit more micro into each one of those to show why we are who we are and why we are better than the gym down the street or the business down the street. Absolutely. My pleasure.

Speaker 6:                               25:53                       As always, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. We really appreciate you and everyone that has subscribed to us. If you haven’t done that, please make sure you do drop a light to that episode. Share with a friend and if you haven’t already, please write us a review and rate us on how what you think. If you hated it, let us know if you loved it, even better. See you guys later.

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