Two-Brain Marketing Episode 14: Jack Wheeler

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Mateo: 00:00 – Hey, it’s Mateo of Two-Brain Marketing, and on this edition of the Two-Brain Marketing podcast, I’m talking with Jack Wheeler from 360 Fitness. Jack basically taught me everything I know about marketing, so I’m super excited about this week’s episode. You’re going to learn about how in the last year, Jack spent $52,000 on Facebook ads and generated $400,000 in new-member revenue. So you don’t want to miss this. Make sure to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio for more marketing tips and secrets each week.

Greg: 00:31 – Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by Two-Brain Business. We make gyms profitable. We’re going to bring you the very best tips, tactics, interviews in the business world each week. To find out how we can help you create your Perfect Day, book a free call with a mentor at twobrainbusiness.com. We would like to thank another one of our amazing sponsors, UpLaunch. Over the amount of time that you’ve had your business, how many people have come through your doors and never signed up for a membership? When I first opened, I remember getting everybody’s name and emails because that’s what I was told was the best way to start the conversation with potential new members. The big problem was I never knew what to say. Over many years, I spent countless hours developing plenty of emails to send to these new members or people that were thinking about signing up for a membership. This took a lot of time, probably way too long, and could have been spent on more productive things. If you’re in the same situation I was, don’t waste any more time and book a free session with UpLaunch.  UpLaunch has over a hundred pre-built emails to convert new leads into members and when your members decide to take a break, they have a whole campaign to get them back through the doors. You have the ability to text message members right from the app, and with integrations like Google Calendar, Facebook, and over a hundred more via Zapier, UpLaunch has you covered. UpLaunch was created by gym owners for gym owners. Head over to www.uplaunch.com today to get the conversation started with your future and past clients.

Mateo: 01:58 – Hello. Welcome to the Two-Brain Marketing podcast. I’m your host, Mateo Lopez. I am a digital marketing mentor at Two-Brain Business. Thanks for tuning in. This is your weekly dose of digital marketing magic. And this week we’ve got a very special guest. We’ve got Jack Wheeler from 360 Fitness over in Red Deer, Canada, and we’re going to learn a little bit about him and his gyms, learn about his online strategy, his online marketing strategy for his business. Just to give you a little sneak peek, last year from January, 2018 to January, 2019, January to January, Jack spent close to $52,000 on online ads. So that’s a lot of money. Even for even for someone like me who loves spending money on ads all the time. But he was able to generate 400,000 in front-end sales. So 400,000 I want to make sure that I made that super clear. So we’re going to learn more about how Jack’s able to do that. So Jack, how are you?

Jack: 03:04 – Good, big guy, how are you?

Mateo: 03:04 – I’m good. Coming off the Two-Brain Summit. I’m still recovering. Not quite awake yet. And

Jack: 03:13 – It’s coming out of your pores.

Mateo: 03:14 – Business and commerce and industry coming out of my pores. Jack, when did we meet?

Jack: 03:23 – What are we going on, five years, six years? Seven years?

Mateo: 03:25 – I think it was 2014. December of 2014 I think is when we went over there.

Jack: 03:35 – Yeah you came up to beautiful Alberta, cold winter.

Mateo: 03:40 – Yeah. Well I’ll tell the story real quick. I think it was John who, he was part of a different— a different mentor group. There you go. Like what’s the most politically correct way to say this? A different fitness-business mentor group. A different fitness business consulting group. And he found you because I think you posted somewhere in there. Oh, you found John?

Jack: 04:09 – Yeah, I hunted Franklin. So I was running around. We were doing kind of the metrics posts and process opening up our second location, and Franklin posted, “Hey guys, just wanted to give you a heads up of my not so good grand opening. ” It was like a hundred new members signed up in three weeks or so. I stopped him.

Mateo: 04:28 – So that’s what was, John had just opened up Bowery CrossFit and I remember that because that was a little—that was crazy because it was a perfect moment to open up a gym in Manhattan because it was 2014. So CrossFit was peaking, but there still wasn’t enough supply in the city to meet all the demand. And he offered like a grand opening founders member rate and yeah, just got flooded. He had had a bunch of signups, he had an onboarding sequence for prospects and new members. And I think that’s what you were interested in. You were like, what is this email sequence?

Jack: 05:06 – And it was all about the on-boarding. And t

Mateo: 05:10 – And then the flip side of that coin was then John was like, “Well, wait a second, who is, who is this Jack guy?” And I think you had just posted your metrics, and you, I think you were doing like 2 million in rev at Red Year, correct? At that time?

Jack: 05:26 – Yeah. We were just about to hit 2 million at the one location. Wait a minute, who’s this? Wait a minute, who are you? Let’s chat.

Mateo: 05:36 – And I remember he comes to me and he’s like, “Yo, you want to go to Canada and meet this guy Jack Wheeler?” And I was like, “Yeah—why are we going?” He’s like, “Well, the guy’s doing 2 million in revenue in a personal-training studio in the middle of nowhere, Red Deer, Calgary. He’s gotta be doing something right.” I think that was the logic there. So we went over and we just hung out, I think. U

Jack: 06:06 – Yeah, we kind of pow-wow’ed up in the office for a bit, but more or less—

Mateo: 06:09 – We did, we went to Boston Pizza. That was the end. But yeah, we did strategize on—oh, we had all kinds of grand plans. You know, like a fitness incubator and all kinds of different projects.

Jack: 06:25 – A lot of that stuff has like come to fruition.

Mateo: 06:27 – In different ways for sure.

Jack: 06:30 – A lot of it’s like, “Hey, Two-Brain’s awesome. Let’s rock these guys.”

Mateo: 06:34 – White label—but yeah, I remember we gave you, John specifically gave you the on-boarding email sequence for new members and how to get people to book intros. And I remember, I think you plugged it in as we were there and you were just getting like sheets faxed in or emailed in and coming in through, booking intros. So that was cool. And then I remember you showed us your—well this is a good segue. You showed us kind of your backend and your 21-day rapid fat loss program and your six-week, your metabolic makeover stuff.

Jack: 07:10 – Yeah, those were our two big intro offers then. We’re still running pretty similar ones. We’ve just refined both processes over and over and over and over and over and over again. It’s not anything fancy, it’s super simple.

Mateo: 07:21 – I think you’ve been doing six-week challenges for longer than most people I know personally. This is a 21-day, 90-day, these are things that I’ve talked about before. I’ve been around since the dawn of time. But in terms of who I personally know, you’ve definitely been running them the longest. So yeah, I think, tell me if I’m wrong, but you pretty much, besides what you just said, refined some things, pretty much the same offer.

Jack: 07:50 – You know what, honestly, it’s pretty much bang on. We run two intro offers. We have a time specific 21-day challenge we run in January and June. And that’s like a group, orientation group. Finales start time, end time. And those are super time-specific because we’re ramping up in the new year. Everybody starts at the same time. And then we kind of do it in the May, June seasons, so time to get ready for summer. Those are two specific intro offers that are very rigid, right? So we sell them, we have an orientation, we launch, we go through there, we fulfill, and then we do a finale and convert. Now the six-week challenge is kind of like our evergreen rolling offer. It’s something we run all year besides the months we’re selling the 21-day challenge. And people just kind of start in waves every week. So we don’t have to kind of worry about on-boarding 40 50, 60 70 people at a time. We onboard five to 10.

Mateo: 08:38 – I want to talk about those in more detail, but before we do that, we kind of skipped ahead. I got really excited reminiscing about the past. Who are you? Where are you from?

Jack: 08:50 – Random guy on the other side of the podcast.

Mateo: 08:50 – What’s your in a business, tell them about it.

Jack: 08:55 = Yeah, so Jack Wheeler, I’m CEO and founder of 360 Fitness. We are kind of a higher-end, all-inclusive personal -training studio. So we don’t do large group. We do private training and small-group personal training, kind of an all-inclusive approach. We do nutrition, accountability, all that fun stuff. We have two locations, one in Red Deer, Alberta at the big city of 100,000 people in the middle of prairies, with nothing around. And another one in Sherwood Park, Alberta, just outside of Edmonton. It’s kind of outside of a big city. It’s kind of a burb outside of a big city and that’s only about 65,000 people. And it’s on the outside of town. So we’re in two kind of big towns or small cities, however you want to do it. And we have about a team of 25 trainers and admin and support staff between the two locations. We’ve got about out 420, 430 full-time members at our Red Deer location and about 200 full-time members at Sherwood Park. And then at any given time, we have about a hundred, 250 challengers going through the system in some capacity. So we onboard them, wow them, convert them. And then that’s kind of our new-client sales system now.

Mateo: 10:03 – So it’s personal training. And then you also do maybe like a hybrid. It’s a small group, essentially. I think it’s people of four is the maximum, right?

Jack: 10:12 – Five. So you and for others. So our core offer is a hybrid service. So we see them once a week, one-on-one personal training for 30 minutes and then two to three times a week small group. So the margins are good. They still get the accountability and kind of that hands-on—our market is a little bit different. So it’s a little bit different than a regular box target market. Our average age is 45 and growing, mostly female, but most of our clients are looking to get off blood-pressure medication. You know, they wouldn’t be really good in a boot camp environment or a large group training that are usually a little bit more rehab, corrective exercise, that kind of stuff. And more weight loss. So it’s a little bit older crowd, so the small group is better for us, better for the clients, better for retention, and gives our coaches a little bit more leverage. And the nice thing about it, as soon as they get to see that client at least once a week, you know, they can talk about things that are specific to them, they can work on the big fundamental movements, the squat, bench, deadlift, that kind of thing. So our core service is a hybrid offer, combo of small group and PT.

Mateo: 11:11 – How do you incorporate nutrition into your service offering?

Jack: 11:15 – Yeah, it’s kind of a done-for-you system and then it’s education based and then nurture all the way through. So we start everybody with a full initial assessment, where we give them like calorie goals, ranges, macronutrient kind of guidelines and then recipe book when it comes down to it. And then we teach them how to incorporate it into their life so they don’t have to eat the same food for the rest of their life. And we more or less just give them calorie goals, macronutrient goals, and then teach them proper nutrition, you know, portions, food choices, substitutions, you know, how to eat at restaurants, how to meal prep, it’s more education based. And then we kind of coach them and teach them in different phases. So week one, these are the things you need to learn, week two, these are the things you need to learn. And then we have an online resource for our clients to kind of go in, super simple, like, hey, I need to know how to do this. And I may search the members page, and we have a bunch of videos, resources, free guides, thousands of recipes. So we do it as kind of a resource and teaching rather than, “Hey, I want you to eat chicken, rice and broccoli six times a day for the rest of your life,” that kind of stuff. So it’s, it’s more onboarding and education based.

Mateo: 12:22 – And this all—cause when someone signs up, they’re coming into either a 21-day or a six-week challenge pipeline, most likely.

Jack: 12:29 – Yeah, I’d say 75% of every single new member that signs up, they’re coming on board through an intro offer and then either signing up on day one for a full-time membership or by the end of their program.

Mateo: 12:40 – And when they do that, you are giving them—I just want to be clear with people—they are getting like a recipe book, right?

Jack: 12:47 – Yeah. So they get a client overview, they more or less get a one-page guide of—we take a look at their basal metabolic rate and kind of things that they struggle with and bright spots that they have. We give them pointers, give them objectives and kind of go over it that way and then give them guidelines and recipes to fit into their life. And they kind of tweak it as they go. So we teach them how to cook, how to meal prep, how to kind of have a typical day. So most of our people are working 40, 50 hours a week. They have two or more kids, you know, they’re busy, busy, busy. They’re not going to be able to eat out of Tupperware five times a day, so we just teach them what proper eating and kind of that healthy lifestyle is. And then our adherence to that program is way higher than a strict 100% super specific meal plan where it’s either 100% or zero. So we kind of ask that 80/20 rule.

Mateo: 13:35 – And all that is in the book. And then in the emails and then in the resources that you have on your online portal.

Jack: 13:43 – Yup. Yeah. So it’s really overwhelming for a lot of our members to go from, you know, eating fast food three times a day to going onto a full strict nutrition plan. So we break it down into steps, you know, we kind of have our nutrition hierarchy and we teach them, you know, it’s like phase one is eating good quality food, right? It doesn’t matter your calories yet. And then afterwards, you know, it’s calories in versus calories out, you know, kind of making sure that you’re hitting your targets, and then afterwards it’s macros and timing and nutrients. And that kind of stuff. So we don’t take them from zero to hero overnight. We say, “Hey, master these habits and fundamentals and kind of practices. And then once you have a handle on it, move to the next step, move to the next step. So a lot of people kind of skip the major topics and go to the minutia. You know, they worry about protein intake before they even worry about calorie intake and they’re worried about their vitamin A absorption rates and they’re eating six Bic Macs a day, you know. So we kind of break it down step by step and then get them to master fundamentals and the practices and then move on to the next.

Mateo: 14:44 – I should have told you to pull out one of those books before this. It would have been nice for people to see this. For people who don’t know, it’s a big book, it’s a lot of material that they get when they sign up. It’s pretty—

Jack: 14:56 – Yeah, most of it’s recipes. Super simple. And then we do a new one every like three to four months.

Mateo: 15:02 – Right. How much time and money are you investing in the content that you’re creating, the educational content that you’re creating for your client?

Jack: 15:10 – You know, what, like it’s been similar content, you know, for the last four or five years. We’ve tweaked them moderate, so the delivery sequence is pretty—it’s free. You know, we deliver it over emails. We make kind of sticky notes inside of our Facebook private groups that they kind of have to do. And then on the online resource, we kind of have like, hey, phase one, here’s a nutrition hierarchy and that kind of stuff. And they go from there. So it was a lot of time and effort and energy to get it up and running and then to implement it. But the delivery is super simple. And then the coach has an opportunity to ask that stuff once a week at least, you know, so we make sure that every personal-training session starts with, you know, how’s everything going this week? Any questions about your training so far? How’s the nutrition? Anything I can do to help you? So it’s kind of we’re eliminating a lot of the mini-obstacles just from communication. And then if they ever have any comments, questions, concerns, they can kind of fall back onto the resource bed.

Mateo: 16:04 – What advice would you have for anyone who’s trying to, let’s say they’ve been open for three years, they’ve been doing a lot of group training. They want to start implementing nutrition. They want to maybe provide a book or resource, you know, they’re strapped for time. You know, you talked to a lot of the people we work with, what’s the first step? What’s an easy win for someone who’s trying to put some content out for their—

Jack: 16:25 – You’ve got to survey your members and ask them what their struggles are. That’s what we did. And we were doing a totally different nutrition philosophy for the first five years and our adherence. You know, we were doing like, here’s a customized nutrition plan and I want you to have this and here’s your one grocery list for one week. And there was no maneuverability, it was very, very rigid. And then we started asking our clients like, “Hey, what are your problems? You know, what can we help you with?” What do you actually need from us versus trying to cram a philosophy down their throat. And they put up their arms and said, well, I don’t want to do it, so I’m not going to do any of it. So we just went the more adherence route. I’d rather have somebody at 80% forever than 100% on week one and 0% for the next 51 weeks. So we surveyed our clients like, what do you struggle with? What do you need help with? And a lot of them were like, I know what to eat, but I don’t know what to cook. I need some more recipes. I need to know what I need to do on eat-out days. I want to be able to spend time with my girlfriend, my wife, my husband, you know, and be guilt free, right. And kind of have the strategies behind it. So we developed a very in-depth meal prep guide, a restaurant survival guide, sample grocery store lists, how to raid their own kitchen and kind of clean that all out and prep it for success and then give them all the recipes and they can kind of plug and play as they go. So it’s super simple. And then we use an InBody body-composition machine, which gives us a base metabolic rate. We do a multiplier on top of that BMR depending on activity levels and say, “There’s your daily or your weekly calorie goal, make it happen.” And then a big adherence thing on that too is not even giving them just the daily calorie goal, but a weekly, you know, so if they’re eating 2000 calories a day, OK, well that’s 14,000 calories in the week, fit it in. And then their shoulders just dropped big time. I don’t have to have the same thing every day. So that was a huge thing for our clients and a huge thing for them on on-boarding day. They didn’t have to think that it has to be so strict, you know, that can go into a surplus and a deficit and a surplus and a deficit and kind of introduce that flexible dieting method and it was a huge factor. And they took a lot more responsibility onto their own shoulders because we give them the guidelines and it says, “Hey, get it together, get inside these guidelines and then it’s up to you.” So if you ate too much that day, take some personal responsibility and go into a deficit the next, versus, oh my diet’s crap by Tuesday. Might as well not start it up until the Monday. The magic Monday, right? No. You screwed up. Start over tomorrow.

Mateo: 18:48 – How else do you try to make it convenient for people in your gym in what you offer; I’m trying to allude to—

Jack: 18:56 – For nutrition?

Mateo: 18:57 – Yeah, I’m trying to allude to, I’m trying to be sneaky because—

Jack: 19:04 – How do we make it easy for them?

Mateo: 19:05 – Yeah, like with your supplements and your meal prepping that you offer at the gym.

Jack: 19:11 – I see what you’re doing.

Mateo: 19:15 – You know the way I could make it really easy for my clients is I provide protein supplements and shakes and also meal prepping solutions in my fridge. I was like, I couldn’t do it.

Jack: 19:26 – It’s just convenience. And a lot of our members are like, put in front of me. Just get it to me. I know what to eat, I know exactly what to do, but I just want you to do it for me. So we have done-for-you solutions.

Mateo: 19:35 – Tell me about those, Jack.

Jack: 19:37 – Oh, OK, good. So when someone comes in for the workout, whether it’s a private training or small group training, they go to the front desk and we have a VIP shake package where they pre-purchase 10, 25 or 50 shakes in advance. And then they get these little fancy little cards. They look like little business cards and they write their name on it, the type of shake they want and the time they want it ready. And then they hand it in. There’s kind of like a little drop box. They hand it in. And then the admin team and the front desk team has at least 30 minutes to get that shake ready. And then we take that card, put it on top of their shake, throw it in the fridge, and then that client can just come in and then on the way out, grab their shake and go. Grab their shake and go. Grab their shake and go. So we know that their post-workout nutrition is good and we know that one of the five meals is A1. They can mix up their shakes, all the fun stuff. It’s right there. And then we prepay. So we don’t have to worry about doing point of sale every single time. We don’t have to worry about tying up the front desk and we can make shakes in bulk, you know, a lot of times people are ordering the same one or two shakes. So we make five at once, generate $35 in revenue, pour it into the things, and then they’re on the way out. And it’s good for prepaid sales for us too. And then we started our own supplement company about five years ago. We kind of wanted it done right. So we didn’t a private label and we didn’t want to have fully 100% ours. We kind of met in the middle with the manufacturer and we figured out our own recipes or our own NPNs, VPNs, and kind of own our own formulas and then line time and raw ingredients in bulk and say, “Hey, get us this amount of skews” and then do it that way. So it’s good for margins. We have a lot more control over the product. And then we have that inside of our studios and we educate our members on supplements, the purpose that they have, how to incorporate them into their meal plans and then how convenient and easy to do.

Jack: 21:22 – And then also we have our supplement executive program. Again, we make it super simple, so it’s kind of like our version of Autoship. So when they first sign up, we educate them on, hey, these are the supplements and multivitamins you need. Depending on your goals. Instead of buying these point of sale every single time, you can just get a 30-day supply for a discount and then we’ll have it ready for you at the beginning of the month. So just reoccurring revenue and it’s a lot easier for them. They don’t have to remember about it. They don’t have to, you know, figure out how much they need for the rest of the month. We just have it on auto ship and it’s there for them on their first session, beginning of the month. And then we also have packaged meals, frozen meals, ready to go at the gym. So if they have any objections, like, “Oh, I just can’t, I can’t meal prep”—meal solutions. OK. You know, I go back to work and I’m having a crappy meal there after my workouts. OK, you got your shakes. OK, I need to fill in the gaps in my nutrition. You know, I’m not having very good meals all day, or, you know, low energy or what have you. My protein intake sucks. Then we have our supplements. So they’re at kind of the bottom of the adherence and we just filled the gaps as we go. So every objection that they’ve given us based on the surveys that they told us, because they told us they had these problems and we’re like, “Oh, here’s some solutions.” That’s, we did. So we’re doing about, I don’t know, between the two studios, probably about 15,000 a month in just front supplements and shakes revenue.

Mateo: 22:36 – Wow. In shakes and supps.

Jack: 22:36 – Yeah. That’s it. Shakes, supps, and meals. And it’s just to our members. The 700 people and then the challengers and stuff. So about a thousand people are generating about 15k and that pays for all of our admin. You know, the cost of goods sold, and we more or less kind of use that to leverage and have more admin availability, lead goals, which helps with scheduling.

Mateo: 23:01 – Right. So for those of you who didn’t quite catch that, basically if you’re struggling with having someone at the desk, the amount of time you need them, you know, the eight hours a day that you’re open, what Jack has done he’s using the supplements and the shakes as a way to supplement their income. Essentially to offset that cost of paying the person just to sit there and answer the phone.

Jack: 23:22 – Yeah, it covers all their costs and then gives us about a 10% net profit margin. So we always kind of have it as 25% margins on all of our supplements and shakes, and then that covers themselves. And then we actually take a look at our supplement sales and our admin payroll budget and make sure that they’re linear. And then we give them incentives to sell. Commissions on shake packages instead of individual shakes. They get commissions on the auto ship instead of the individual stuff. And that kind of stuff. And then every now and then for fun little things, they get, like kind of sales incentives for six-week challenge and 21-day challenge consults booked. Right? So like the more they can get them booked in.

Mateo: 24:00 – And how do you market this stuff internally to your clients?

Jack: 24:04 – Education based. Like over—we have a lifetime client value series that goes out to all of our members and it’s very structured. So when somebody signs up on day one, they’re going to get onboarded progressively. So not all of our members are getting the same emails and posts and texts as everybody at the same time. We do broadcasts and stuff, but on week one, people need to learn certain things. By week 52 they need to learn certain things. So we have two or three automatic emails that go out every single week with text messages that kind of educate them based on to it. And then we teach them a lot within the studio. Workshops, seminars, the trainers are really good on it. And then we just oversimplify everything. Here’s your goals, here’s your product, here’s your goals, here’s your products. You know, trying to sell creatine monohydrate to somebody that has no idea what’s going on—hey, do you want more explosive energy in your lifts and do you want to have a little bit more oomph on your big foundational movements? Awesome. Creatine. You know, and they go from there. And then we just educate them based on to it. And then we actually, over the last six months consolidated all of our supplements into 30-day supplies, you know, so instead of having one product that has 50 servings and one product that has 10 and another product that has a hundred, all of our products have 30-day supplies. And then it’s just a lot easier. Price point is smaller for them. Margins are better for us. And then we just have more frequency.

Mateo: 25:27 – So basically what you’re saying is you have all of your automated email nurture sequences. It’s all segmented and planned out based on where they are in their client journey. And that education they’re receiving no matches that. And so if they’re brand new, you’re gonna educate them on nutrition, things they might be lacking. And then, oh by the way, if you are lacking this vitamin or whatever, we have those here, just so you know. And then on top of that all y’all haven’t been at his gym, but there’s also posters in the bathrooms and things like that for some products in the manuals, too, there’s lots of little ways that people are made aware that these are things that they have available for them.

Jack: 26:05 – Yeah, we just call them internal customers. So we have external customers and internal customers. And we don’t like stop teaching them, you know, the moment they sign up and that’s when we actually just get started on solving their problems. Like that’s like, oh, we got them. Cool. Now we can give them what they want on day one and then deliver what they need afterwards. Right. So we sell the front end sexy offer, you know, we sell the vacation right on day one. And then afterwards, hey, this is what you need, this is what you need, right? So, hey, I’m going to give you a little bit of what you want. And then after, you know, like, and trust me, I’m going to tell you what you need. It’s not as sexy to sell broccoli.

Mateo: 26:44 – And so walk us through, if you don’t mind, your paid advertising system. We talked about it briefly at the beginning of the call. You know, you said you primarily use a 21-day offer and then the the six-week offer as well. You time it depending on where we are in the year and all this stuff is mapped out well in advance and I guess, let me ask you this before, you know, let’s say you have a, a six-week group challenge you’re gonna launch and start in June. When are you advertising for that?

Jack: 27:12 – Yeah, we don’t stop advertising. The six-week challenge, our 21-day challenge, started on May 26th. So I advertised the 21-day from May 1st to 24th. We sold out, boom, ads stopped, the 20-day challenge orientation kicked off that night. I started six-week challenge ads again and then launched it. And then every single month I update our ad copy to make it more scarce and urgent and time specific. So it’s not the same ad rolling, it’s the same offer. You know, in the summer it’s hey, you know, get summer ready. It’s our summer six-week challenge. We have start times in June, four spots every week, get on it right away. July, it’s like, hey, if you haven’t done anything for the summer yet, we have four spots every week. Get in there. Right. And then September it’s like, hey, back to school, six-week challenge, four spots every week, get in there. Right. So the offer’s the same, the market is the same. The messaging is a little bit different and the media is pretty similar. I just kind of roll it and then we go on season-based stuff, season theme, everything else, and then the backend, our six-week challenges is linear. It’s what we offer.

Mateo: 28:19 – Right. You’re just, like you said, you’re updating the copy to, as you get closer and closer to that start date, just emphasizing, hey, it’s coming up, it’s coming up. It’s really coming up. Only two spots left.

Jack: 28:31 – You got it.

Mateo: 28:32 – Awesome.

Jack: 28:33 – And then we mapped that all out. You’re right. We do have a marketing calendar for all year because we kind of have like a general theme, our main offers, you know, our secondary offers, everything else, what we’re doing for lead gen, what we’re doing for client events. And then I break those things down into monthly. So then I actually track it. It’s like June 6th ad 2goes out, June 9th post goes out and that kind of stuff. And then we do organic content all day everyday. So we map it out and we make it so we’re telling a story and we’re saying, a constant message rather than just like blasting ads out that don’t mean anything. We kind of build them up, you know, all the way through throughout the month. And then we do it. So they’re following a story because most of the time people see our ads or our calls to action five to 10 times before they buy. So we’re kind of building that problem up. You know, we’re telling a story all the way through and then it’s like, hey, we’re establishing ourselves as the expert on every single ad campaign we do. And then hard like go, go, go, go, go. It’s going to start this month. You know, like we’re doing big wave, get on it and now go go go.

Mateo: 29:31 – How do you do lead gen?

Jack: 29:32 – Yeah, we do three paid advertising campaigns all the time, all year. So we have our offers, our low-barrier offers that we’re constantly advertising for, whether it’s 21-day or six-week, they’re constantly going out. And then we have opt-in lead gen where they can give us their phone number, email, name, that kind of stuff for ebooks, video courses, little guides, that kind of stuff. And then we actually have—

Mateo: 29:55 – How many ebooks and video courses do you have?

Jack: 29:57 – 30? Like I’ve been doing one, I’ve been creating one every two or three months for 10 years. And a lot of them are really simple. It’s like, hey, download our eight protein pancake recipes. It’s like a three-page pdf and there’s other ones where it’s, you know, a seven day, you know, meal prep course.

Mateo: 30:19 – How to eat Thai food and stay healthy.

Jack: 30:22 – Exactly. Yeah. How to eat ramen nine times a day and get abs, all that fun stuff. But it’s just, it’s simple stuff. And then we theme our lead generation based on the time of the year, the season. What kind of clients we’re looking for, that kind of stuff. You know, it’s a Christmas themed things back to school, meal prep, summer stuff, cooking, all that, kind of go all the way through. And it’s themed, right? So every month we have kind of like, what’s our main goal? What’s your objective, who are we going for in our lead gen? Kind of goes back to it from there. Cause we have our opt-in lead gen, which, you know we get an email and a phone number and that kind of stuff. When they go to a thank you page and they download the ebook or they get access to the video course and very traditional kind of thing. And then we market them, right? And then boom, as soon as they do, we thank them, we deliver kind of a sequence and then they go into our regular funnel. So we squeeze them in to a six-week challenge or a 21-day and then that’s all theme based on the lead gen from before. So it’s like, hey you downloaded this guide. I think this is going to be a good step for you if you want more information on meal prep, nutrition and strength training going into the challenge. So it’s just funneling in. And then we actually have, what’s new this year in 2019 is we just have 100% free content. We call it consumed content, where we’re not asking for anything. We kind of like took stuff we teach our clients for free and just put it into a 60-second or less videos, branded it. Hey, you want to eliminate neck pain? Do this. If you want to, you know, work on, on this type of nutrition, do this.

Mateo: 31:46 – So you’re not even asking anything from them.

Jack: 31:49 – Yeah. So we do two ways on that. Just that video kind of content and we put a lot of money behind it, you know, so we can’t track leads coming in from it. We can just track like video views and engagement and stuff. And kind of that brand power. And then we ask members when they come on board, you know, how did you hear about us? By watching your how-to videos for three months. I came in. So it’s doing that way.

Mateo: 32:09 – That’s that top of the funnel, that awareness. You’re just getting people aware with that stuff and you know, like, hey, I’m going to spend 500 bucks pushing this video in front of people’s eyeballs and I’m not going to get anything in return. But that’s OK. I trust that what I’m giving away is valuable enough that this will pique someone’s interest and then when they do see that 21-day offer they already kind of know who I am.

Jack: 32:31 – And the quality leads we’re getting for our intro offers goes up. Like the “know, like, and trust” factor is higher. And we noticed, you know, one thing you guys teach at Two-Brian is like, track your stats. You know exactly how many leads are coming in, how many booked, how many showed, how many confirmed, everything else. And as soon as we kind of did that free consumable content, the leads and the ad spend, were kind of the same, but the amount booked, that percentage went up by like 10 to 15%. The show rate went up by like 10 to 15. And then our close rate was the same, it’s always like 80 to 90%. But people have that “know, like, and trust” factors when they got an automatic text and it’s like, “Hey, it’s Jack at 360, hey, man, I’ve seen you a bunch of times, I’ll see you on—” You know, they kind of have that relationship built in already and you know a lot of our trainers that are in these videos, they’re little celebrities in town. You know, they’re establishing themselves as the experts and we’re not asking for anything in return. You know, it’s like free: give, give, give, give, give, give them solutions, give solutions, give solutions, give your best stuff out for free. And then when people are like, I’m actually going to buy, I actually have to do a favor to 360 because they’ve given me so much in return.

Mateo: 33:37 – I think that’s so critical. You just said you’re becoming, your trainers have become mini-celebrities in your town. And I think that’s what you have to do, especially if you are in a competitive market or even if you’re not, like I just feel if you want to, like you said, get people to like and trust you, you’ve got to give them a reason to, and you got to build yourself up as an authority figure in your space.

Jack: 34:01 – And another thing is too is that we’re not spending more money on the opt-in lead gen or more money on the consumable contents. We actually just took our ad budget and took 25% of it and put it towards those two things.

Mateo: 34:18 – I was just about to ask you that.

Jack: 34:18 – Yeah, so it’s not like we have to like have an additional ad budget for this stuff that we’d go from there. It’s like, no, no, no. We know our ad budget is about $3,000 per studio per month. We took it. OK. Thousand dollars is just going to go to like giving stuff away for free and then the quality of the additional $2,000 went up. So our ROI is always the same, it’s five to six return on ad spend every single month. And then we noticed that every time we cut back on the lead generation, like giving stuff out for free, the return ad spend goes down. So we’re spending more for less. And great thing is too is that email marketing is not dead. Like it sucks compared to like 2006. But every single time that I have this big offer or I have some amazing social proof, I can blast it out. You know, so we have 10,000 people on our prospect list, you know, that are like engaging, you know, they’re opening emails and stuff and then we actually automatically delete them every 90 days if they don’t. So we know that they’re clean, ready to go kind of prospects. So we add another way to target them. So we’re not reliant just on Zuckerberg and what he wants to do that day. So we have their email address, we have their phone number, you know, we can target them from other things too. And we can build off that audience. You know, we can import that audience into Facebook and say, hey, I want to find people just like this go. You know, so it enables us to advertise a lot of different ways. We can do direct mail, we can do a whole bunch of different things. So having the prospect list is huge and just gives us another avenue of advertising to them.

Jack: 35:45 – And a lot of the time-specific advertising, the 21-day challenge, really when it comes down to it, we do a lot of email marketing before we even launch ads because we’ve got controlled traffic, you know, we own that traffic and sending out that email is free. So we try to sell as many as we can off the first week email campaign before we even start our ads, you know? So it’s free advertising.

Mateo: 36:05 – Right, I was just about to ask you, you alluded, you talked about this briefly like a minute ago. So let’s say I see your eight recipes for protein pancakes ebook, made with 360 Fitness protein powder.

Jack: 36:17 – You got it. And there’s a link to order

Mateo: 36:17 – Oh my God. That’s amazing. All right. Let’s say I see that, I’m a guy, I want to get more protein in my diet and opt into that recipe book. What happens? You were saying your sequences are specifically tailored and based on how they opted in. Correct?

Jack: 36:41 – Yeah, so we actually, we have, they go into a lead capture sequence, and then each sequence is unique to that resource. So for the first, I would say two weeks, depends on how many times we want to touch it or whatever else. But they’re automatic texts, they’re automatic emails. That’s all specific to that one resource for first two weeks.

Mateo: 37:01 – Like hey, you like the recipes or—

Jack: 37:03 – Yep. Yeah, we give like B and C kind of solutions depending on what they did. So if they opted in for our eight protein pancake recipes, it’s not like the next day, hey, six-week challenge. Right? It’s like, whoa, whoa. It’s like, hey, here’s your, here’s your eight pancakes. They’re awesome. Check them all out. You know, here’s your thank-you page. If you ever want to get it again. Let me know if you have any issues. The next day it’s like, hey, if you like those, here’s some more recipes to kind of go from there. Based on your nutrition. You have all these recipes but you probably suck at cooking. Here’s your meal prep guide, you know, here’s a sample, a 7-day nutrition plan to work that into it, you know, and like figuring out their problems and built it on that. And then after the two weeks sequence is done, on average it’s two weeks, and we’re between like three to five touches depending on the resource. Then they go into our-six week challenge funnel where it’s always there, it’s always the same and it’s, you know, answering the big problems, you know, having a coach, accountability, putting it all together, you know what to do, but you haven’t done it. Scarcity, urgency, you know, get on the list.

Mateo: 38:05 – What’s the call to action action there for the, once they move away from the specific sequence to the Ebook, now they’re in the general six-week challenge one. What’s the call to action there?

Jack: 38:15 – It’s always book a call. Or not book a call, but a book a free consultation, like an info session. Right. And they go to an online calendar where it’s like, hey, six-week challenge for an info session, 30 minutes. And they book. Because they know, like, and trust us, you know, we’ve put a ton of social proof in front of their face. We don’t need their email address again and we don’t need their phone number again. You know, we don’t need them to click onto a sales page again and go through the same process again. They know, like, and trust us, hey, get in for a call. Or you know, we do our like, what I mean by call is that a lot of times we do like a prequalification five- minute call. The six week or the 21-day challenge, we actually sell them on the phone.

Mateo: 38:57 – You sell them on the phone for the 20—

Jack: 38:57 – Yeah, if they’re calling us and they book an in, we can sell them on the phone. Because it’s a group orientation, a group finale. So it’s like we actually send them the order form and they purchase online. So almost like half of the people actually just purchase online and then we meet for orientation. The six-week challenge, it’s a bigger ticket. We want them to come in and then they have more options to what to do. Right. Are you adding private training or whatever else? So we sell them like a $500 package versus the 21-day challenge versus 250 to 350 and it’s a start time. They’re like, you don’t need to come in for a consult to have all the same questions answered at orientation. Right. And we always kind of give them like, I’m going to take your payment, come to orientation. If it’s not for you, we’ll refund you. So it’s not like—we’ve never done that. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked for a refund after orientation. But it’s one of those things like I’m going to hold you accountable, show your ass up, get to orientation, and then go. You’re going to get all the resources. We have a big PowerPoint presentation. Pretty awesome. And then you know, you learn about it and go. So they’re not thinking like, hmm, I have to buy this. Like now it’s kind of a deposit, go from there and then roll into it.

Mateo: 40:00 0 So someone’s on the sequence or gets the email that six-week challenge, they say, all right, this is cool. They book an appointment, what happens?

Jack: 40:09 – Yeah. So the automatic stuff goes out. So they get an automatic text and an automatic email like boom, awesome. This is what’s going to happen. Here’s your times, this is what you can expect in that meeting. And then if it’s a go, this is what we’re going to do. And if it’s a no, this is what we’re going to do. So we kind of clear expectations on day one and then we put a human onto it. So within like five minutes, one of our sales team or front desk team, which supplements pay for, are always there to call them right away. And we get them on the phone, try to get them on the phone as much as possible. If they don’t answer, we leave a voicemail and we send them a video message via text. Hey, it’s, you know, Jack at 360 Fitness, I just got your information on a six-week challenge. We’d love to have you in. And then we send a link into it that way as well.

Mateo: 40:55 – All right, so they show up their appointment. What happens?

Jack: 40:59 – So it depends on the studio for location, whatever else. But our admin is always there to greet them. We give them some homework to fill out. We ask them some prequalification questions. We put the big comfy chairs at the front desk, hand them a bottle of water. Ask them if they want anything and then let them sit.

Mateo: 41:13 – Right. So this is the part I want to hear because not only are they sitting but they’re also—where your comfy chairs are positioned, there’s like walls of before and after pictures surrounding them, correct?

Jack: 41:26 – Everywhere. Yeah, so it’s like a cave. Of just before and afters, all over us. We have posters. We actually just printed off more eight-and-half by 11s and just like plastered them on the wall with magnets. So it’s all together. And then they set in the comfy chairs at the front. They get a bottle of water. We ask them some questions like, why are you here? What are you struggling with? Who do you know in the gym? We try to make connections that way. And then the front desk girls, “I’ll get you a bottle of water,” feet up, be a good mindset for the coach to come chat with you. And then we have like a new to 360 Fitness binder at the front, where it’s like, new to 360 Fitness? Is this the first time you’re in these chairs? Read this book. And then they open it up and it’s a like shutter stock or Shutterfly book of just—hundreds—and then it’s like testimonials too, right? So rather than—holy crap, and then they’re all a bunch of, not just photos of before and afters, but community events or galas or charity stuff. They kind of go into it like this is not a gym.

Mateo: 42:26 – You let them sit with all of that info.

Jack: 42:32 – Yeah. Even if our coach is ready, we’ll let them sit.

Mateo: 42:35 – I think there’s even like that rubber, five-pound piece of fat or 10 pounds there too on the desk, it’s there haunting them.

Jack: 42:44 – We have a five-pounder and a one pound or so. It’s a talking piece, like as soon as our coach always gets there they’re like, what is that? Like that’s 5 pounds of anatomical fat. We could probably help you lose about four to five of those in the next six weeks. We’ll talk about that later though. And like they’re like wow. And then they’re hooked as a bait and go from there.

Mateo: 43:05 – And then your consultations are—what goes on in those?

Jack: 43:08 – It’s super simple. Like we call it our seven step process, but it’s very super, super simple. It’s like, you know, why are you here? You get the big picture out of it. It’s like, hey, you know, what have you tried in the past that hasn’t worked? What have you tried in the past that has worked? You know, what are your obstacles coming up? And we just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And then we just repeat it. We repeat it to them. So after they’ve spilled the beans to us, OK, this is what I heard from you. Correct me if I’m wrong. When we go exactly what they’ve just told us.

Mateo: 43:32 – Holding up the mirror.

Jack: 43:33 – Yep. We hold a mirror up and say this is what’s up. OK, well based on what you’ve told me, this has worked, based on what you told me this hasn’t worked. Let’s fill in the gaps. I think you need these things. I’m going to suggest this program and it’s usually our six-week intro offer. Right? And the great thing is about it too is that hey, I want you to love us, not like us. So I don’t want you to sign anything long-term until the end of the six weeks because I want us to have six weeks to wow you and I want you to do what’s right down the road. And I don’t want you to sign up a long-term package yet because I don’t know what you need yet. Give us six weeks, figure everything else. Wow you. And then afterwards we’ll talk about a bigger membership cause then at the end of the six weeks, the “know, like, and trust” factor is awesome. Like I want to do this for 12 months. And then go from there rather than kind of like have them dip their toe in the water. Oh, I went once a week, something.

Mateo: 44:23 – Right, right. Don’t try and sell them on a once or twice a week thing. Let’s get them on the front end offer. You’ve got that dialed in and then we’ll try.

Jack: 44:33 – So I should kind of explain that there’s two ways. If we don’t have them 100% when we say, you know, go on to the six week, it’s always a six week. Right. And then at the end of the six weeks we’ll wow you. But if they are talking big problems and they’re a very, very warm prospect, we say, OK, I know you’re here for the six-week challenge, you need more than this. And we flip it and say, you know, go into one of our long-term programs and I’ll give you six weeks for free. So that’s right away. So our conversion process starts on day one and that’s totally up to the coach. That depends on them and it depends on how deep they are into their goals and kind of how qualified of a prospect they are. Cause they’re always coming in for a consult or an info session on the six-week challenge. Like they’re always funneling in it. So we know that they’re ready to go from there because that’s our big sexy intro offer. And then they’re like, hey, you know that you need to be here longer than six weeks. I know you need to be here longer than six weeks. I knew you came in for it. Get started. I’m going to take the six-week value and deduct that for your first two or three months or add six weeks of sessions so you can actually go harder for the first two or three months.

Jack: 45:38 – And they go, yeah, done. And then the conversion process starts right away.

Mateo: 45:42 – That’s amazing.

Jack: 45:43 – So we kind of have two options: Put them on the program or get them into one of our long-term membership right off the bat. And about 10% of the people, so one in 10, go long-term on day one.

Mateo: 45:58 – So, you’ve been around the block, right? In personal training, you’ve been, you know, worked in all kinds of different businesses. You had, you know, all these different gyms. You have these two currently and you know, you’re selling out challenges, you’re spending, you know, you’re generating five times what you’re spending in your ads. What do you think’s been the key to your success so far, Jack? I think you’re a very impressive individual, what do you think has been—

Jack: 46:28 – I’ve learned a lot. I’ve more or less just kind of taken what you guys have chatted about and put it in action and then taken credit for it. So it’s nice. Thank you guys. I don’t know. The thing that kind of transitioned us from— cause we kept like hitting our sales targets, but we were too conservative on a lot of our sales targets and we were the only one limiting us back. I think that having the balls to scale and to like put money where our mouth is, that’s what like, oh, flooded our gyms. So that was kind of the way it was. Two things. So if it’s working, don’t touch it, put more money behind it. You’re hitting your sales targets, put more money behind it versus hey, this is my ad budget and this is all I have. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Keep spending, keep spending it. If it’s working, keep spending and don’t be scared of the money leaving initially. Just be excited for the money coming back in. So trusting that process and not being scared about giving $100 away in ads and then like, oh that’s never going to come back. No, expect that five to $600 is going to come back. So having the balls to scale, that was huge. And then having the balls to like understand how the landscape has changed. So five, six years ago we had people just call for a free consultation. You know, it was like, a crappy little opt-in form on a website that was not mobile friendly and you did four or five Facebook posts a month and you had 20 or 30 personal-training clients come in like banging on your door.

Jack: 47:57 – Cause micro gyms and boutique fitness was all the rage. You know, we were first to market, you know, we were the iPhone right when it first came out and then all of a sudden boutique fitness, micro gyms, you know, kind of the small-group atmosphere, they are on every block. Now we’re a commoditized region, so it’s like OK. That environment has changed. Getting people in for a $3,000 front-end offer, they can go around the block and ask for something different. So kind of having that hook and kind of getting them in there, we had to evolve with the landscape and going all in on our intro offers and our low-barrier offers as our massive funnel, that was a huge step for us. Going away from like, “Hey, just come in for a free consult.” That’s not sexy. Right? And then going into it where we can compete on the offer, compete in the marketplace and going hard into it. So not doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It’s like everything is going towards our low-barrier offers and put all of it, all spouts facing the same angle. And then having this one wicked funnel.

Mateo: 48:59 – All the messaging is consistent and the same then, too.

Jack: 49:02 – Yeah. Because every time we throw up social proof, it’s like there it is, grab our intro offer, here it is, grab our intro offer, here it is, grab our intro offer. You know, versus changing up the offer every seven days and just confusing the person. I remember, you know, even a couple of years ago, they’d come in for a free concert and our sales team had to be like, why are you here? What program did you hear about? What do I do need to sell you? I’m here for the 21 or the 26. So a lot of the sales team, like what offer did you hear and what, what do I have to sell you? Nope. 21 day, January and June. OK, starts on this day. Six weeks. That’s our intro offer, go. And then it’s two simple options. You have option A, option B, option A, option B, option A, option B and it’s just super simple and then we can educate them on there all the way through so there’s no stones unturned and all expectations lead towards that one thing. They know exactly what they’re going to have to commit to you.

Jack: 50:07 – They know kind of the investment ranges. They know exactly what we demand from them and they go from there and they know that at the end of the six weeks we’re going to talk to them about continuing on.

Mateo: 50:16 – So this has been lovely. If people want to talk to you more, where can they find you?

Jack: 50:21 – Yeah, so if they want to kind of hunt our pages, it’s super simple to do that way. 360 Fitness, Red Deer personal training and 360 Fitness Sherwood Park personal training. And they can find me on the interwebs, Jack Wheeler, and then on Facebook there too. I’d love to be your friend. Go from there. And then jack@360Fitness.ca if they have any specific stuff, but yeah, go check it out.

Mateo: 50:43 – Awesome.

Jack: 50:44 – And I’m always hanging out with the cool Two-Brain kids.

Mateo: 50:45 – You can see him in the Two-Brain groups as well. All right, well thank you, Jack, and we’ll talk to you soon. Good luck.

Jack: 50:54 – Adios, amigos.

Greg: 51:00 – As always, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. We greatly appreciate you and everyone that has subscribed to us. If you haven’t done that, please make sure you do drop a like 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.

Thanks for listening!

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