Mike Warkentin: (00:01)
This is Two-Brain Radio. I’m Mike Warkentin. I’m asking you to please hit subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening. My guest today is none other than Matthew Becker. He is the owner of GymLawyers.com. He’s also the man on the scene in Industrial Athletics in Pittsburgh. He’s gonna help you make sure your gym contracts don’t get you into trouble with the law, because there are some things you might not have thought of. So Matthew, the membership contract says you’re gonna deliver to me a fattened cow on the first day of each month until the end of time, or I can take your car. So sign it, Matt, and let’s start working out.
Matthew Becker: (00:33)
Oh, hold on Mike. I don’t know if I like that term.
Mike Warkentin: (00:37)
No, just sign it, Matt. I mean, you don’t need a lawyer to review this thing.
Matthew Becker: (00:41)
Does this comply with the law?
Mike Warkentin: (00:43)
Well, how would you know?
Matthew Becker: (00:45)
Well, because I’m an attorney.
Mike Warkentin: (00:47)
Ah okay. Well, no, one’s actually ever read my membership contracts and come to think of it, Matt, I haven’t read it either since I downloaded it and find-and-replaced my gym name into place on this thing I got from the internet. So you’re saying there are some rules about these things.
Matthew Becker: (01:02)
Oh man, that would only be not so funny if it wasn’t true, Michael.
Mike Warkentin: (01:07)
I didn’t, did I really do that? I dunno. Let’s sort it out. So Matthew, bring us up to speed on contracts. I’m guessing it’s a little bit more difficult than find-and-replace from the internet.
Matthew Becker: (01:16)
It is. Yes, it is. Alright, so
Mike Warkentin: (01:20)
Lay it out for us.
Matthew Becker: (01:21)
I wanted to get on today to talk about it because one of the services that we offer, well, there’s sort of twofold services. One is, we review membership contracts. And the other one is that we provide form contracts customized to individual members in their individual- or gym owners in their states. And the more and more that we’re seeing, contracts that we’re reviewing, we’re noticing that almost all of them failed to comply with their individual state laws on a number of different issues. And this is also assuming that they have a written contract to begin with.
Mike Warkentin: (02:06)
So I’m gonna ask you this right off the top. What kinda penalties are people looking at for bad contracts?
Matthew Becker: (02:12)
Oh man, I was gonna hit that at the end, after I scared you through everything else.
Mike Warkentin: (02:16)
So just gimme a teaser, give me a short teaser then just so people are scared into listening. Yeah.
Matthew Becker: (02:21)
Could be anywhere from large civil penalties, meaning you gotta pay a whole bunch of money, or some states even make it criminal penalties.
Mike Warkentin: (02:32)
Seriously. Okay. So let’s, we’ll leave that til the end, but just know that like, guys, you’re either on the hook for money or other stuff. Talk to me about the issues. Let’s solve some problems.
Matthew Becker: (02:42)
Okay. Alright. So first and foremost, there’s a question as to whether or not you need to have a written contract. I, before I started doing GymLawyers, kind of assumed that every gym these days has a written contract, but turns out that they don’t. And that’s problem number one, because almost every state that we’ve reviewed minus one, maybe two, I’m still in the middle of my search, but one only one state thus far does not require some sort of written contract for prepaid memberships.
Mike Warkentin: (03:15)
Okay. Is it Florida?
Matthew Becker: (03:17)
No, it’s not actually Florida’s yeah. Actually, it’s Alaska. Alaska’s the only state thus far I’ve found that does not have these statutes. But
Matthew Becker: (03:28)
All these other states say that you have to have a membership contract if you are taking prepayments for entertainment. And then it’s like, well, what kind of entertainment is this? Turns out that all of the gyms that we run, whether they’re CrossFit gyms, or power lifting gyms or Olympic lifting or yoga, Pilates or spin, it doesn’t matter. These are all considered health clubs or health spas or health studios that are defined as requiring under the law for your state to have a written contract, if you are taking recurring- sometimes recurring, oftentimes pre-payments. So what does that mean? All right, Mike, you come into my gym and I say, okay, Mike, that’s going to be $150 a month and we take payment on the first of every month. Right? So you’re gonna pay me on September first.
Mike Warkentin: (04:20)
First, Matt, I’m gonna pay you $205. I’m paying you $205, cause I know you’re worth it. So I’m upping your ARM. But continue.
Matthew Becker: (04:30)
So you’re gonna pay me on September one to be able to come to the gym through September, right. I’m not charging you on September one for what you used in August. I’m providing you for what you’re going to be using in September. So it’s a prepaid contract. We may also see these for things like gyms that sell three month contracts, six month contracts, year long contracts. Okay. These are all considered prepaid contracts. Okay. So if your state has some variation of a health club act, chances are it’s gonna require you, because your gym is defined under the statute, to have a written contract if you are charging members up front for services that they’re then going to use. Okay, or this could even go in for a personal training studio, let’s say I sell you 12 personal training sessions up front for $60 a session. I charge you a lump sum of $720. And then we use all those 12 sessions, right? That’s a prepaid contract.
Mike Warkentin: (05:39)
So I’m gonna ask you the devil’s advocate question here, because I know this is a bad business practice that I wouldn’t actually do because I know I would lose money, but let’s say I billed at the end of the month for services rendered in the preceding 30 days or whatever. Would that get me off the hook on some of this stuff?
Matthew Becker: (05:56)
Some of it, it would. Okay. Sometimes yes. But yeah, I mean, I think the problem that you’re gonna run into there is the person’s just gonna leave and be like, I’m not paying.
Mike Warkentin: (06:09)
And that’s exactly what I’m getting at. So like, you can do that, but man, you are gonna lose some money at times. I’ve definitely done that. And I’ve made that mistake.
Matthew Becker: (06:17)
The other problem that you run into there is if you’re taking automatic repayments, other state statutes are still gonna require you to have this written agreement, because you’re taking these automatic repayments. And you know, just as a general practice note, we always are taking automatic repayments that they have at least a membership contract that says they’re allowed to take automatic payments from this person’s chequing account or debit card or credit card.
Mike Warkentin: (06:53)
Okay. Okay. So it’s likely that you need some sort of agreement. There might be some ways to weasel out of it, but they probably are gonna cost you some lost revenue. So maybe, you know, look at the agreement. So let’s get back into it. But I wanted to ask that question before we got too far.
Matthew Becker: (07:05)
All good. All good. All right. So we have to have a written membership contract. Cool. We’re all there. We’re putting it in writing. So now what needs to be in writing? So that’s where we start to look into these written contracts and we start to see massive legal holes. So first let’s cover paid in full contracts or PIF contracts. Okay. So you’re looking to open up a gym and you’re trying to get people to come in and pre-commit to your gym. Like, and this is not, I don’t wanna say this as a practice of Two-Brain Business, this is not, I’m just comparing it to the Founders program, right? That Two-Brain suggests. That you get people to try to commit before the gym opens. Now the big caveat to that is Two-Brain does not suggest you take money from these individuals before your gym opens. And this is why, right? Because your state, if they have an act like this or laws against this, are going to say that if you take money up front and you are not open yet, you are now required legally to be open. We’ve seen it as short as 60 days to as long as 180 days from the day that you take money from the member. Okay. And that creates problems.
Mike Warkentin: (08:27)
Okay. So what Matt’s referring to is the Founders club, which is a Two-Brain system that allows gyms to open with members on day one. So you’ve got revenue and it’s a whole campaign that allows you to recruit and acquire members before you open. And we’ve seen gyms open profitable with like 80 members on day one. It’s incredible. And so that system does exist for Two-Brain clients. However, if you’re taking money in advance and I’m gonna guess Matt, that this is something weird that probably happened back in the day where some gym was like, oh, pay me in full before we open, you know, and you collect all this money and then, you know, puff of smoke in the night, the gym doesn’t exist. Never existed, never opened. I’m guessing that kind of thing happened. These laws probably sprung up to prevent that.
Matthew Becker: (09:10)
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So don’t take money. You can’t, under your law, under your statute, unless you’re gonna be opening. And you know, these COVID days, we don’t know that anything is ever going to open on the time in which we try to get that open.
Mike Warkentin: (09:27)
Right. So you could do it if you were certain, like if you knew your state statutes and you knew that you had 80 days to open from the time you take money and you knew that you were gonna open in 30 days, no matter what, could you launch that ship?
Matthew Becker: (09:41)
Yes, you could. Yes, you could.
Mike Warkentin: (09:43)
Okay. There you go. But you have to know your statutes and you have to know your timelines or you’re gonna be at risk.
Matthew Becker: (09:48)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. The other issue that we run into with paid in full contracts is once you’re open, if you’re selling things like six month or year long contracts, sometimes even up to two year contracts and you’re requiring somebody to commit for that amount of time, that’s one issue. Or you’re charging them all up front for that entire year, that’s another issue. You know, you might say something like, well, it’s $200 if you pay monthly. It’s $175 if you pay us in advance for six months. It’s $150 if you pay us in advance for a year. That used to be a common thing. We encounter it every now and again, still, but that’s a problem with those paid in full lump sum contracts. Sometimes they’re gonna be violating your state laws.
Mike Warkentin: (10:38)
Really? Why is that? What happens there?
Matthew Becker: (10:41)
Well, same thing that you just said with the instance of taking money before you open up your gym, this is the same thing where if I now charge you for a year and let’s say you pay me $1,500 so that you come for the next year and six months into it, my gym closes and I’m out. There’s a big problem there.
Mike Warkentin: (11:00)
Now, is this something that came up because the fitness industry has for years been populated by sketchy individuals? Or is this something that’s common in any kind of service industry that has contracts and paid in fulls?
Matthew Becker: (11:12)
Usually the state statute is gonna be written broadly enough to be any sort of what they call entertainment. Okay. Health clubs just often get lumped in there, into entertainment. I know years ago the Pennsylvania one came about because of like, do you remember Balleys? Does that name ring a bell?
Mike Warkentin: (11:34)
Yeah, I know. Yep.
Matthew Becker: (11:35)
So Balleys would come in and they would open up all these different gyms, these big gyms, or they would tell people that they were opening. They would pre-sell all this stuff, they’d lock you into your long contract. And then, because they were so big and it was so hard to get profitable, they would all close and they would run and they would skip out with all these people’s money. So I know that’s why Pennsylvania started to enact it, but states have very similar statutes.
Mike Warkentin: (12:04)
Yeah. So what this is, is a layer of consumer protection that protects the gym patrons, just as it protects laser tag, people who prepay their sessions or stuff like that. Right?
Matthew Becker: (12:15)
Yep. Yep.
Mike Warkentin: (12:16)
OK. So you gotta be cautious with that one. OK. Yeah.
Matthew Becker: (12:19)
All right. So that’s paid in full stuff. The next element is cancellation and refund policies. And we love to say, you know, you get 30 days notice of cancellation and we don’t issue refunds. And that’s cool, except there’s likely, if your state statute says so, there’s going to be individual instances that your state says you must provide the option to cancel and the potential of a prorated refund. If one of these circumstances exists. Okay. And it’s not enough. Sorry, Mike, go ahead.
Mike Warkentin: (12:55)
No, no, I’m listening to that and thinking at the same time, ’cause I’ve got an example I think I’m gonna ask about after this, go ahead.
Matthew Becker: (13:02)
It’s not enough just to say, you know, let’s use an example. Okay. A common example is if the member is going to move and every state has different mileage, but let’s just say it’s 10 miles from the current location and any other location offering similar services, right? If the member moves 10 miles away, you have to provide them an opportunity to cancel their membership and receive a prorated refund. Okay. And some gyms are gonna go well, okay. If a member comes to me and says, they’re going to move, then that’s not a problem. I’ll just agree to allow them outta their contract. State statutes are gonna say, no, that’s not enough. You actually have to have that language in your membership contract that puts the member on notice that they have the ability to do this.
Mike Warkentin: (13:53)
So you need to have this stuff in your contract and you probably- in your state, the average gym owner doesn’t even have a clue about this stuff.
Matthew Becker: (13:59)
That’s right. Mm-hmm that’s right.
Mike Warkentin: (14:01)
It legally needs to be in your contract on pain of civil litigation.
Matthew Becker: (14:04)
That’s right. And the other aspect of these cancellations is what’s called the buyer’s remorse clause. The buyers remorse clause. Yeah. I know. I don’t like that either. Nobody needs to be remorseful because they come in and buy a membership at my gym. Right. They should be rejoicing.
Mike Warkentin: (14:22)
To get healthy? That’s right. You should be celebrating and announcing it on social media and tagging all your friends and telling them to come.
Matthew Becker: (14:30)
That’s right.
Mike Warkentin: (14:31)
But it happens. So what do we do about it?
Matthew Becker: (14:33)
The different states, again, are gonna provide different timelines and they’ll range usually anywhere between three days and seven days. And so the state statute will say that if you sell one of these membership contracts, you have to provide an automatic right to cancel and refund any money that has been paid if the buyer decides again, within three days, within seven days, from the date of signing the contract that they no longer wanna participate. The crux of it here is that not only does this language need to be in your membership contract, but most states say it has to be verbatim language. And so that means it’s not enough just for me to go typing up some language and stick it in my membership contract that says, you know, like a one sentence, “if you decide you don’t wanna be a member here after three days, you can get a refund”. It’s that, you can’t do that. There’s gonna be a multi-paragraph section within your statute that you have to literally copy and paste into your membership contract.
Mike Warkentin: (15:32)
Wow. Okay. So, you know, business owners there, the upshot of this is that the Two-Brain principles of very close contact integration from when someone signs up, getting high touch points, getting them integrated into your gym, doing all these things to ensure that they don’t have buyer’s remorse is even more important in light of what Matt’s telling you. So when you get a person to sign on that dotted line and you just assume, ah, they’re coming to the gym and it’s great. That might not happen. And you might be on the hook on that, especially with regard to this language. However, you can minimize the risk here by having the best intake program of all time. So not only do they, you know, they don’t even consider buyer’s remorse because they see so much value. You’re talking to them, you’re integrating them, you’re answering their questions. Your CSM has sent them a welcome package. You’ve booked their first session. They’re in, they’re happy. You’ve checked in with them. All those things make buyer’s remorse not a thing. So you do need to have this in your contracts, but you can prevent buyer’s remorse.
Matthew Becker: (16:32)
Okay. And then different states we’ve seen have different layers then, on top of their membership contracts as well. And I’ll just cover a couple of them because they’re a little less common that the things that we’ve talked to up to this point. Again, we’ve seen in every state except one, and that’s Alaska. Okay. Every other state has some variation of the language that we’ve been talking about up to this point, Other states we’ve seen have more individualized things. Okay. So somewhere like Texas, with little exception, requires gyms to file what’s called a surety bond with the state. Okay. And that is basically money that you have to pay the state as security, even know they call it surety, for security in the event that somebody decides to sue your gym and you can’t cover the lawsuit.
Mike Warkentin: (17:33)
OK. So how much is that?
Matthew Becker: (17:35)
It’s vague. So the state statute will often say, uh, it can range somewhere between $10 000 and $25 000, depending on the size of your gym and the amount of members that you have. And now what you can do is you can go to a surety company and you can pay a percentage of that. And the surety company will post that for you. Okay. But most gyms don’t have their surety bonds posted.
Mike Warkentin: (18:06)
Wow. Okay. I’ve never heard of that for a gym. So you would actually, in a place like Texas, you would actually have to build into your business plan for startup, this bond that you have to just give to the state and they hold it. I am assuming they give you maybe some pittance of interest on it over the course of the term or something, but they just hold your money.
Matthew Becker: (18:26)
Just hold it and you can get it back and you can apply for exceptions. But the exceptions are state specific and they’re very limited.
Mike Warkentin: (18:37)
Something no one knows about.
Matthew Becker: (18:39)
Or, if we look at somewhere like Georgia, Georgia requires you to actually have your membership contract approved by the state’s consumer protection agency. No, no. We were on the phone with the Georgia consumer protection agency a couple weeks ago. And he was very happy that we are doing what we are doing because nobody files these things and they have to hunt them down. And then again, it’s a violation of the law. The contract is then void if it hasn’t been approved by the consumer protection agency in Georgia.
Mike Warkentin: (19:15)
Wow. And I’m gonna guess my fattened calf clause isn’t gonna make it past the Georgia approval board. OK. That is really interesting. And that’s a new level of like, not a new level, but that’s a level of bureaucracy that I don’t know that a lot of gym owners know about. Off the top of your head, do you have any idea how long an approval process like that would take, like, is it gonna be like three months, two months, two weeks.
Matthew Becker: (19:40)
Oh, no no no. It’ll take a day or two.
Mike Warkentin: (19:42)
Okay. That’s good to know. So that’s a positive.
Matthew Becker: (19:49)
And one of the things that we’re trying to do right now is to work with the local consumer protection agencies of each state in an effort to say, you know, these are what your contracts say, and to draft for gyms, can you give us pre-approval on a lot of this language so that we can help gym owners get these things drafted without having to go back and forth and get each one approved all the time.
Mike Warkentin: (20:14)
Wow. You know, and up in Canada here we can’t even get the federal government to issue passports in a timely manner. So Georgia’s got it figured out if they can turn that around in a day.
Matthew Becker: (20:24)
yeah. Yeah. And then, a final layer on this that we’ve seen for individual states is, you know, like somewhere like Ohio, not only does it require that those paragraphs that I said for the buyers remorse clauses, but then it also requires a one page form notice of cancellation that you have to hand to the member that says here’s your three day right to cancel. And if you’re going to do so, here’s the form that you have to fill out and provide back to me that says that you want to cancel.
Mike Warkentin: (20:59)
You know, and I get what they’re doing there, protecting consumers, but even the inclusion of that form kind of gets them thinking. It kinda sucks. Yeah.
Matthew Becker: (21:06)
Yeah. I know. I know.
Mike Warkentin: (21:08)
So your onboarding process becomes even more important.
Matthew Becker: (21:10)
Yeah. I’ve had a few very uncomfortable conversations with Ohio gym owners about, I’m just providing you what you have to have. I understand why you don’t want to hand it to a gym member, but law says that you have to have it.
Mike Warkentin: (21:29)
Okay. So here’s my question.
Matthew Becker: (21:31)
Uncomfortable conversation.
Mike Warkentin: (21:32)
I’m going to step out of my role here and into a ignorant gym owner, which is not too far from the actual. I’m a gym owner in Idaho. I don’t know where to start. I don’t like digging up statutes and laws and contract issues. I don’t have a clue what to do about this stuff, but I would like to cover my bases. What do I do?
Matthew Becker: (21:50)
Call me. go onto our website. So this is part of the services that we provide, is we like to say that we help gym owners fill their legal holes. And this is a big one, right? And whether or not you have a membership contract and then whether or not your membership contract even has all of this information in it, we’re gonna help you plug those holes. We can review your current contract and tell you what you’re missing. Or most gym owners just ask us to completely draft a new form for them. And we’re happy to do that. So we just make sure that it complies. We do the research, we make sure it complies with your state law. We have to submit it for approval. We do that. And what we give you back is it’s an editable form that you can edit if you want, but you can also just turnkey use it right into your gym.
Mike Warkentin: (22:38)
So guys, what Matt’s selling here. I mean, you can do this by yourself. You can read the rules and you can go through the process and do all the stuff. It takes time. Matt’s offering his time and accuracy. He’s gonna save you the time and he’s gonna make sure that it’s done right. If you need help with this, GymLawyers.com is the place, Matt, what’s your email address?
Matthew Becker: (22:56)
Matt@GymLawyers.com.
Mike Warkentin: (22:59)
Is this something that’s built into your service package or is this something a la carte that people do? And if so, what kind of rate would something like this be? And you can ballpark cause there’s 50 different states, I’m sure, but just curious.
Matthew Becker: (23:12)
both. We try to flat fee all of this. All of our services are flat feed. So what that means is, you know, if you call me up and you need a contract written, whether it takes me two hours or whether it takes me one hour, whether it takes me five hours, it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna quote you the price and that’s all you’re gonna pay for it. We try to batch some of this stuff together. Like, we have a start starting gym package that takes you everywhere from LLC to opening with your various legal contracts that you need to run your gym. But we can one off, you know, we can allocate this stuff and it’s gonna range you anywhere from, some of the contracts that we do can be as low as $275. Other agreements that we do can be upwards of about $700, depending on the complexity of the contract.
Mike Warkentin: (24:04)
Gym owners, I am one of you. I understand how this works. I probably could muddle through this process in the state that I’m operating in. However, the time that it would take me to do it would be quite a bit. If you’re on the fence about something like that, do the math, figure out what your hourly rate is. And if it’s like, you know, talk to Matt and if you can save that time, pay Matt to do it and then go sell some gym memberships. In fact, sell your Founders club. You can do anything. Right, right. Cause you’ll do it properly this time. And you won’t get the government cracking down on you. So now we hinted at it. Talk to me about some penalties here. Let’s scare people straight as we’re at the end of the show here,
Matthew Becker: (24:43)
We have a fear based business, right?
Mike Warkentin: (24:45)
Fear based business. I’m kidding. You will die if you don’t lift that weight.
Matthew Becker: (24:48)
but there is some potential here for, when you’re factoring in the cost of making sure that it is done correctly, because let’s go minimum, you have a contract that doesn’t comply with your state laws and somebody challenges it. Okay. We would hear, let’s say they pay you for six months, but they don’t show up. Okay, common issue. They’ve now paid you $1,200 and they’re gonna turn around and say, I never used your services. I want my $1,200 back. And you say, no, you signed a membership contract and you agreed that it would come outta your pay or your bank account every month. And you’ve paid us for six months. It’s not our problem. You didn’t come in and use our membership contract. And they get mad and they sue you. Right? Cause they want their $1,200 back.
Matthew Becker: (25:44)
Well, first, and it’s the most basic form. If your membership contract does not comply with your state laws, then the contract is void and you’re at least going to owe that person back their $1,200. Okay. But maybe when the consumer protection stuff gets involved here, they allow for what’s called trouble damages. Plus attorney’s fees. Trouble damages is a fancy lawyer way of saying three times or triple the damages. So now that $1,200 membership lawsuit is now worth 3,600, plus whatever this person paid an attorney like myself for a thousand bucks to show up in court. You’re now gonna be on the hook for that as well. So this $1,200 fee that you’re fighting over, now all of a sudden can come upwards of $5,000, right?
Mike Warkentin: (26:41)
So you just said something that really just made me think about this whole process and its this. There are access only gym owners in the Two-Brain family. And access only gyms, if you’re not selling coaching, they’re a viable thing, right? They would just price lower ’cause they’re not as valuable as a coaching gym. But if you’re running an access-only gym, we know from industry data already that lots of people sign up in January and they leave by February, March. They’re gone. You would absolutely, in those situations beyond any else, you would need a contract there because they might come back at you. Right? So if you’re look- and this is probably where that stuff comes from, because it’s these access-only gyms where someone pays a year in advance, never comes or the gym goes outta business. And you know, that’s a really interesting situation, which I’m sure is mitigated in a coaching situation. You still need the contract and you need to follow it. But that is very important, I’m guessing for gyms that are not selling coaching and are selling access.
Matthew Becker: (27:37)
Right. It’s hard, it’s hard. It’s harder to come by this stuff in a coaching gym, especially under Two-Brain model if you have a client success manager that’s reaching out to these clients at least every three months, you know, it’s gonna be hard for them to fall under the radar. But yeah, in access-only gyms you’re not contacting all of those members all of the time, talking to them about their goals and everything else. So yeah, they’re gonna fall off the radar real fast. They’re not gonna show up and then maybe they’re gonna want their money back.
Mike Warkentin: (28:06)
Yep. So that is a big one. Guys, if you were thinking about running that kinda gym or if you were running that kinda gym and do not have this stuff in place, talk to Matt soon.
Matthew Becker: (28:14)
Yeah. The worst we’ve ever seen is violation of a state statute. And I cannot right off the top of my head remember which state it was, said that it’s a third degree criminal felony if your membership contract violates state law.
Mike Warkentin: (28:33)
So what level is third degree criminal felony? What is that?
Matthew Becker: (28:36)
So a felony is the top level of criminal. I’m sure it comes with, I mean it would come with a potential prison sentence, but most states aren’t gonna throw some first time offender into prison. But you know, a felony is the top level of criminal offense. It’s above a misdemeanor. A third degree is gonna be your lowest level of felony. But it is something that you will never be able to get off of your record.
Mike Warkentin: (29:03)
Yeah. So you had a bad gym contract and now you’re a convicted felon.
Matthew Becker: (29:07)
Exactly right.
Mike Warkentin: (29:09)
That sucks.
Matthew Becker: (29:10)
Yep.
Mike Warkentin: (29:11)
So that sounds to me like it’s worth like 500 bucks to get that one sorted out
Matthew Becker: (29:15)
and lemme throw one last point in here, Mike. So if you’re listening to all of this, I mean, first off, now you have the knowledge so you can’t make this argument. But even if you wanna plead ignorance and you go into court and you say, sorry, judge, I didn’t know. Right? Ignorance of the law is never a defense. You’re a gym owner. You are expected to know this stuff. And if you don’t know this stuff, you’re expected to find somebody like us who knows this stuff so that you actually can protect yourself. Because if you get sued or you get charged and you go into court and say, I didn’t know, it’s not gonna work.
Mike Warkentin: (29:52)
Okay. So that guys, if you have a contract, get it reviewed. Either do it yourself, put in that leg work, spend the time, which will cost you money, or talk to Matt, spend the money and get it done. Matthew, GymLawyers.com is the best place. I understand that they can email you or even text message you. Am I correct?
Matthew Becker: (30:08)
Yep. My cell phone’s right there on the website.
Mike Warkentin: (30:11)
Thank you so much for pointing this one out. I will not hold you to the fattened calf that I demanded at the beginning of the show. So you’re off the hook on that.
Matthew Becker: (30:20)
Thanks Mike. I don’t think I signed it anyway.
Mike Warkentin: (30:23)
yeah, you were really, you had buyer’s remorse there as soon as I brought that up. That was gym lawyer Matthew Becker on Two-Brain Radio. Thank you so much for listening. On your way out, please hit subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening with my thanks. Now, here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper: (30:40)
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder, Chris Cooper with a quick note. The Gym Owners United Facebook group has more than 5,600 members and it’s growing daily. If you aren’t benefiting from the free tips and tactics and resources that I post daily in that group, what are you waiting for? Get in there and grow your business. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook or www.GymOwnersUnited.com. Join today.
Menu
