Mateo: 00:02 – Hey it’s Mateo of Two-Brain marketing. On this edition of the Two-Brain Marketing podcast, I’m talking with Kevin Wood from CrossFit Moncton. You’ll learn all about his experience and what it’s like to own and operate a CrossFit gym for over 11 years. You’ll also learn about his advertising system and how he spent $500 on ads and generated $4,000 in front-end 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: 00:27 – 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.
Chris: 00:44 – This episode is brought to you by Incite Tax. Incite Tax is founded by John Briggs, a CrossFitter, a great big tall guy with a fantastic sense of humor and John is like a coach for your books. These guys are not just pencil-pushing number crunchers. These guys will actually help you get towards your Perfect Day. If you’re a member of our Growth stage part of the mentoring program, you’re familiar with John’s videos on 1099 versus W2 contractors. See John used to work for the IRS. He’s seen the other side of labor law and he knows exactly where the line is drawn. Don’t believe everything you read, but on the tax side, John can actually help you plan to take home more money every year and save more money on taxes because John is a certified Profit-First accountant. If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know that I’m a big fan of Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First system and John at Incite tax and his staff can help you plan backward from profit to get to where you need to go. He’s helped members of the Two-Brain family buy houses in the first year that they’ve implemented Profit First. It’s helped people save more money, take home more money and make the business do what it’s supposed to do, which is pay you.
Mateo: 01:53 – Hello and welcome to the Two-Brain Marketing podcast. I’m your host Mateo Lopez, one of the digital marketing mentors at Two-Brain Business. Thanks for joining us. This is your weekly dose of digital marketing magic and today’s episode we have a very special guest, Kevin Wood, owner of CrossFit Moncton and you’ll learn about his experience and how for his first campaign with us, he spent around $500 in ad spend and was able to generate $4,000 in front-end sales. So we want to learn all about that and how Kevin was able to do it. So, Kevin, how are ya?
Kevin: 02:27 – I’m not too bad. Thanks for having me.
Mateo: 02:29 – Thanks for hopping on. Kevin, for those who aren’t familiar, tell us a little bit about you, where you’re from, little bit about your business and how and what life is like operating a CrossFit gym in Eastern Canada, I guess. I don’t know how else to call it.
Kevin: 02:50 – Yeah, that’s what we call it. Whenever people ask where I’m from, I just say Eastern Canada. Cause if I say new Brunswick, people say, where’s that, I say east of Maine, and they go, there’s something East of Maine? So yeah, Eastern Canada is good, man.
Mateo: 03:03 – I thought you were talking about being someplace in Jersey because I think there’s a Brunswick New Jersey too.
Kevin: 03:10 – So yeah, a little bit about me. Going way back, I used to be a phys ed teacher way back in the day, was at a parent-teacher interview one night and a parent came in and told me about CrossFit. He said I should do it with my students. I was like, OK, I’ll check it out. So I’m on the website and I thought that would be crazy, you know, that would kill everybody if they did it. So I put it off for a few months, tried it, been hooked ever since. Started including it in my classes as kind of like an intramural program for our schools. And then one thing led to another and I just ended up opening my own gym based on the recommendation of one of my friends. So they’re like, you should really do it. Open up the gym. Like, that’s crazy. OK, let’s do it. They’re like, no, it’s you. Like, OK, I’m going to do it. So that was back in, I started CrossFitting myself in 2006 and I opened the gym in July of 2008.
Mateo: 04:03 – Oh wow. So we’re almost, we’re past the 10-year mark.
Kevin: 04:07 – Yeah, I’m 11 and a half years in.
Mateo: 04:09 – Wow. Are you still a phys ed teacher?
Kevin: 04:13 – No, but now that I have some time off from the gym, I’m actually on the supply list, so I’ll get in and do some supply teaching here and there just to kind of keep my hands in it. I like it.
Mateo: 04:23 – That’s amazing. I mean, I’ve always, like, once I found CrossFit, I was like, man, I wish I had this in high school. Like was the thought. So, what was that like integrating into the intramural program at the school?
Kevin: 04:38 – So the kids loved it. We’d do it a couple of times at lunch hour. It was open to the whole school, so we’d have staff come in as well and kind of test it out. I’d take them through a warm-up, a little bit of skill, like, you know, teach the movements. It was never anything complicated. We didn’t have like a weight set or anything like that. So it was mostly like sprints and body-weight stuff. I would teach some lifts with all the hockey sticks. Like we had nothing there. It was a rural school. So yeah, the kids loved it. And there’s actually a few kids that I taught that have since opened up their own CrossFit gyms. So to see that reach and how that’s expanded from just my personal experiences is very rewarding. And like I love seeing that.
Mateo: 05:18 – Oh yeah, that’s amazing. That’s an amazing little story there. Cause that’s the dream. I mean I think that’s probably Glassman’s dream, for it to disseminate that way and yeah, I think that’s awesome. OK, cool. So then you’ve been around for a while, so tell us a little bit what it was like in those early days, cause those are early days of CrossFit, too, when you opened up.
Kevin: 05:38 – Yeah. Like, I think we were like the 376th CrossFit gym in the world. So we were one of the, I’ll call us one of the originals, like there were guys way before me and you know, I give mad props to them for sticking around this long. You know, I just got back from the ten-year gathering in Whistler, so to kind of talk with all those owners that have been around that long, it was kind of cool taking a stroll down memory lane. So, for my gym, we started in a playground. I had a trailer that I towed behind my truck and we’d just pull out the equipment and then hit a workout in the playground. My rent back then was a $50-per summer playground admin fee. That was it. So I think I charged like $5 for a little punch card.
Kevin: 06:24 – And it just spread the CrossFit love, that’s what it was all about. And then it started getting dark and cold as it does in Eastern Canada very early. And in middle of October, I found our first indoor location, I think it was like 900 square feet, our max class size was six people that’s the most we could fit in that room. And then I really just built it up from there. I’m so glad—I’m very glad I don’t have to start a gym now because I find this starting, if you start one now, you can’t start with basketballs filled with sand and bumper plates that are legit tires. Like you can’t do that anymore. So back then it was fine and we kind of slowly integrated all this new stuff as we went on. So it was a very nice gradual process, especially weaning off of teaching.
Kevin: 07:15 – So I was still teaching at the time and just doing this on weekends and evenings. And then I gradually weaned off teaching and this is now my full-time gig.
Mateo: 07:23 – What was the vibe at the 10-year meet-up? Like what was kind of the attitudes of those people who had been around for, like you said, 10 years, who are veterans essentially in this game? So what was the vibe like? Any insights that you took away from hanging out with that group of people?
Kevin: 07:41 – That we’re all in it for the right reasons. That was kind of the biggest thing. None of us really went into this whole thing for profit, like that wasn’t the point back then. It was, I love CrossFit so much and I want everybody to do it because I know how much it’s changed my life and I know how it can change their lives as well.
Kevin: 08:01 – And I found that was the overwhelming majority of the people there, that they had that same sentiment. Now, now that it’s my full-time job, I have to make a living out of this. And it does have to be a business, but that’s not why we started. And it’s not necessarily why we keep going either, but it’s still in the background. So a lot of people that I talked to and some were old friends that I met from like nine or 10 years ago at my Level 2 cert back in, you know, 09 or 2010, they all kind of said the same thing, you know, the whole shift of CrossFit, kind of going away from the Games as the centerpiece and more along the lines of CrossFit health, you know, as, as a former phys ed teacher, that’s why I got into it. Like that was my passion, is creating health, creating fitness. And that’s kind of the same vibe we still have that at our gym to this day.
Mateo: 08:56 – I mean, I think that’s why everyone gets into it. I mean, at least for me, that was why I got into it, too, the same thing you just said was you just want to spread—you know, for me when I got into it, it was I just want to make America less obese by just teaching people how to squat and telling them to eat grass-fed steak and kale. Like just that was it, you know?
Kevin: 09:21 – Our province of New Brunswick has a longstanding stat of we’re number one when it comes to obesity in Canada. Like that’s a sad fact and it’s something that, you know, one person at a time. If I get one person to the door, that’s great and I’ll change their lives. But it’s the spreading of that. Like it’s not just one person and we know that. We know if we affect one person, it affects somebody else and then they’ll affect somebody else. And it’s a big snowball effect. And I’m really proud of the quality of our CrossFit gyms in the Maritimes. We have a really solid group of people here that are all in it for the right reason and I’m really proud of them for that.
Mateo: 10:05 – That’s awesome. You mentioned how, yeah, we all got into it for the reason of helping others. And we all got into it to spread health through this methodology that I think we all think is probably one of the most effective to do that. But there is that tension right between that and as you said, it does have to be a business. I think that’s a lot of, that’s a lesson that it’s been tough for some of us to learn. What was that process like for you and you know, was that still something that you saw when you went to that ten-year meet-up, was that tension still there or were other people, did that come up at all?
Kevin: 10:41 – Yeah, so I’ve seen a lot of like after-action reports basically of that Whistler event and you know, people that yell the loudest tend to get heard first. So, you know, there were people that were upset with the way it went and the way it was structured and I was like, man, I’m just here for the ride. I love being around all these people, like the scenery, like the vibe. I loved it all. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t have anything bad to say. It wasn’t structured. We weren’t there to learn. It wasn’t an educational thing. It was just bring all of these like-minded people together and let’s celebrate. Let’s just celebrate what’s kind of happened over the last 10-plus years. So I was very grateful to be part of that small, small group of individuals. So yeah, kind of going from a passion to a business.
Kevin: 11:28 – I learned a lot of tough lessons over the years. Can’t lie, I’ve made a ton of mistakes. I’ve tried to help other local businesses around with as much experience that I’ve had and I don’t want to see anybody make the same mistakes that I’ve done. And I know, you know, Chris has said that as well in pretty much every everything he writes, he talks about making all the mistakes. So I kind of have that local knowledge and I’m just willing to help any of our local businesses around to make sure that they don’t make those same mistakes. A lot of it boils down to knowing that you cannot make everyone happy. Like that’s it. You can’t, and if you try, you’re going to cause yourself so much anxiety that it’s not going to be fun anymore. It has to be fun for you as a business owner.
Kevin: 12:17 – Otherwise you’re going to stop doing it. So you know, be confident in your decisions. And you know, like I said, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and you’re going to hear from people that aren’t happy with some of the decisions you make. And that’s fine. They don’t have to like it. But you’re making that decision for a reason and it’s probably to keep your business open. And if you don’t have a business, then nobody can talk about it. And it defeats the purpose. So it kinda all comes around.
Mateo: 12:47 – I love that perspective. Yeah. You’re going to make a decision whether it’s to offer this class or take away this offering, raise this price here or not or whatever it is. And yes, some people will not be happy about it, but if the decisions are the ones that you know are the right ones to keep your business moving forward, that’s the one you have to make. Cause otherwise you’re right, there won’t be a business for people to complain about. So I think that’s awesome. All right, cool. So then in your words, what is it that you sell and how do you sell it and has that changed over the 10-year period? You know, your vision on that.
Kevin: 13:25 – It has. So before it was kind of like, I want to make people really good at doing thrusters and I want to make them the best pull-up people that exist. And while that’s cool and all, and you know, some people that walk through the door, that’s their goal, as I’ve refined my intake process and I basically, I got the script down now like that, the whole marketing process that I’ve gone through, I really love doing No-Sweat Intros. Like if that’s all I can do for the business, I’d stick to just doing that.
Kevin: 13:58 – I kind of have like a—in University, I have a guidance counseling background as well. So I really love digging into people’s, like what really makes them think and move and like all the wheels. I love figuring people out. So now that I’ve refined that process and really understand why people walk through the door, that’s changed how I view my business kind of from a bigger perspective. It’s not just a place to get fit. It’s a safe place. I’ll just say that, like when people walk through the door, no matter what’s going on in their life, they feel safe in our walls. And I love providing that for people. So whether it’s, you know, they’re having issues at work or at home or whatever with their kids, when they walk through the door, they know that for one hour they don’t to think about any of that.
Kevin: 14:52 – And so that’s our goal is to make it the best hour of their day. And how do we do that? Well we have a bunch of systems in place to make sure that things like that happen, like using their name three times in a class and making sure they smile. And you know, there’s all these little things that we’ve kind of added into our system or our classes to make sure that that happens.
Mateo: 15:11 – Amazing. I mean, you’ve been around for such a long time. What set you off on thinking about making the decision to join Two-Brain and pursue some mentorship help?
Kevin: 15:21 – So I’m very new into Two-Brain, but I’ve been following Chris since 2009 on his old website “Don’t buy ads,” like, so Chris and I go way back. I only met him a couple of I think it was two or three years ago when he had the summit in the Sioux.
Kevin: 15:39 – So I went and that was kinda my first time meeting him face to face, but it felt like we’ve known each other for years. So I’ve kind of been doing or putting into place bits and pieces of what he’s kind of gone through. So I’ve only started in August or the end of August. So this summer was one of our toughest summers, I guess, of our business. We had been forced out of our last location just at the end of last year. Our lease came up. Somebody else bought the building. They wanted us out. So we didn’t have a choice. We had to go, we had to, you know, retrofit a new place, bring it all up to code. We had to cover everything, we had to put in a $15,000 ventilation unit just because the city told us to. So all of my savings, like everything was bottomed out.
Kevin: 16:28 – I literally had nothing left. I was like, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. So we had free rent as part of our lease agreement for a little while and that just came back on. And August was a really tough month for us. I said, screw this. I can’t, like I got my wife to talk to, but I needed some legit help. Like I can coast here for a little bit longer, but it’s not going to work. So in August I signed up, I said basically, find me a mentor that will tell me what to do and then I’ll do it. Like, I’m like, I don’t care. Like aim big, I’ll do it. And then this September, so just this past month was our best month of the entire year. So August was our worst month of the year. And after doing Two-Brain and the marketing plan, September was our best month of the year, and that’s not only for revenue, but for our ARM went through the roof. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Mateo: 17:28 – That’s amazing. What was the first lesson? Or first piece of advice from your mentor that you implemented where you really saw, oh wow, this is really gonna, this moved the needle or this changed the way I used to do this and has really opened up the door to you know, the next thing.
Kevin: 17:45 – It was something that I didn’t expect, and this came from the Incubator. It was the roles and tasks assignment. I was, you know, I always just thought of it as like an overarching like I need this job, like this role filled and not so much as these are the tasks I need done, so now I can basically spoon feed somebody or multiple people with these different tasks to unload those for me instead of dumping it all on them at once. It was an eye opener, but it’s so simple, like it’s crazy.
Kevin: 18:17 – Everything that’s in the Incubator and the marketing thing, it’s all simple. There’s no, you know, it’s not complicated stuff. It’s just a matter of how it’s implemented. So you know, I was all in, I would do the Incubator pretty quick. I went through that Facebook marketing really quick as well, and the, you know, the results kind of paid off. Regards to the marketing side of it, I had done zero paid advertising leading up to this point.
Chris: 18:42 – Hello my friends. It is Chris Cooper here. Since 2009 I have been writing daily blog posts, producing podcasts, videos, all kinds of stuff on social media with one mission in mind: to make gyms profitable. I came to that mission because I was an unprofitable gym owner. It almost ruined my finances and almost ruined my career, my marriage, everything. And since that day, since I made my recovery, I have wanted to help other gym owners become profitable, too. It’s part of my mission to the world because if you’re profitable, you’ll be here changing lives of thousands of your clients for the next 30 years. I think together we can have a tremendous impact. When we started mentorship, I did every single call myself. I was doing up to a thousand free calls a year and I was doing 10 calls with people who signed up for our early mentorship program, but the Incubator has been updated and improved a dozen times since then. Now the Incubator is really the sum of all of our experiences with over 800 gyms worldwide. In the Two-Brain mentorship program, we can now learn from everybody. We can collate data, we can see what’s working where and when and what the new gold standards are as they emerge. When somebody has a great idea, we can test it objectively and say, “Will this work for everyone or will it work for people on the West Coast or on the East Coast?” We can do that with little things like Facebook ads. We can also do that with operations and opening times and playbooks. All the questions that you have about the gym, we can answer them with data and with proof now. That’s the Incubator. It’s more than what I wrote about. It’s more than my experience. It is the best standard in the fitness industry, period. And I hope to see you in there.
Kevin: 20:24 – And it’s changed how we run things tremendously. So it’s even changed how we onboard our clients. So now if I have, like I taught my other trainers how to do the No-Sweat Intros and if they’re successful in that sale, they follow that person through the whole process. They created a relationship them and they follow them through the entire process up until 60 days. And we only started this and only have people in the whole program for about, I think we’re just finishing up our first six weeks of when we had our first few people come in. So they haven’t even come close to that 60-day period yet. But we’ve retained everybody so far that has walked through the door and made an up-front sale.
Mateo: 21:12 – That’s awesome. Yeah. And I think having that, empowering your coaches to do the No-Sweats and then what’s cool is you’re also teaching them how to fish in a way. Cause now they have this client that they can take through, whether it be through one-on-ones or goal-setting sessions, you know, this is someone now that they can also have a little bit of ownership over and make sure they have an awesome experience. So I think that’s great.
Kevin: 21:31 – We’ve had one of our trainers kind of stuck with somebody and then after they were done their onboarding, they told them what classes that they were going to be coaching. And now that that athlete who is like, that was a hard sell. Like it was really hard. So like she was really scared and apprehensive about starting and now she’s right into it and she’s like, yeah, I can’t wait. I’ll see you Tuesday and Thursday at five, like it’s amazing to see the mind shift. I guess I want to say one more thing about—our trainers were not, they didn’t buy into this easily. When I told them about the sales process, they were very, very skeptical. And the way I sold them on the idea was I said, think back to the time when you walked through the doors. What were you like before and now what are you like now? Like think of that, the difference. It was a fork in the road for you. You could have went one way and you went another way because you made a decision to join our gym. So you know personally the impact that we can have on somebody’s life. You will change their effing life if they join the gym. So you should do everything in your power to make sure you make that sale. It’s not to make the sale. That’s not the point. The point is that you will change their life if they sign up, but it’s your job to sell them that, it’s your job to show them the value and to create those emotional points. Right? It’s not sales–from the outside in, it kind of looks salesy, but it’s not. It actually comes from our heart, right? We feel so much power and you know, we want them to feel that. We want them to feel the change and the new direction of their life. I just met with one of our clients this morning and she said she wants to get to the point where it feels like a routine and she just part of her life, she’s like, I’m getting there. Like I think I can see that. And that just, oh, I felt so good when she told me that. Like, it’s those moments that I live for.
Mateo: 23:34 – I was going to ask you next about the sales process. You basically answered the question. I think that’s a great way of putting it. You know, because this is a question I ask a lot of people who come on here, like what it like getting your staff on board, whether it was the roles and task thing, whether it was the way you’re gonna approach the sale from now on, you know, what was that process like? And I guess I’ll dig in a little bit more. What was the piece that they had resistance about?
Kevin: 24:00 – Just that it was a sales-y process. I basically said don’t let them leave. Like if they have a reservation about, you know, oh, I’m going to have to talk with it or I’m going to have to think about it. Like don’t let them leave until they legit say like, no.
Mateo: 24:17 – Yeah, get a yes or no.
Kevin: 24:19 – Right. Like make sure that that comes out of their mouth. So I went over these like different scenarios, I was like, well if they say this, here’s some options that you can come back at them with. Right. So they were like, oh, that sounds really pushy. I can’t do that. And then as soon as they said that’s when I tied it into that emotional piece. Like it’s really, I’m not trying to take their money. That’s not the point. The point is, I know I can affect them. I know I can change the course that they’re currently on. And you know that because you’ve been here for however many years. And I gotta put this out. My staff are fricking amazing. Like I have a solid staff, we have two that just came on, but a lot of my trainers have been with me for eight and nine and even 10 years.
Kevin: 25:07 – Like that’s a long time to be, you know, a part-time trainer. We don’t have any full-time staff. They all have full-time jobs. They all do their own thing and they just come in and help out whenever they can. And we pay them for it. But it’s not their full-time gig. But they have passion for our facility. I shouldn’t say that, they have passion for our community. That’s a different thing. Right? The gym is anything, I can build a gym anywhere. But it’s the people that are in those walls that make the difference. And they get that.
Mateo: 25:42 – Yeah. And I think the other piece, too, is where it’s tough, is like think about the way you and I joined and probably it’s similar to the way you know your coach has gotten into CrossFit too. Like the way we got into it, it’s going to be a little bit, at least I think different from the average Joe, right? Like at least for me, I sought this out, you know, after like, you know, for a lot of the CrossFit gyms, like you said, it was like, you know, basketballs filled with sand and like, you know, doing crazy things. Like there was no sales process when I joined. It was like, try a free class, if you don’t die, we’ll see what happens. And then I did and the endorphins were so high at that point, my body felt so sore.
Mateo: 26:19 – I was like, I gotta do it again. Right. But for the average Joe, that’s not a great way to expose someone to your service or your product the first time. And I imagine for at least a lot of the owners who’ve come on here too, it’s like they were in the military and someone showed them or you know, they heard about it online, they watched some crazy videos and they were like, I’m just going to Google the closest one and go, you know, but the average person, they’re not finding it the way we found it. And so it’s our job to make sure that we can explain it to them and get to that emotional piece that you were talking about and explain how this is going to help solve one of their problems.
Kevin: 26:55 – Right. That’s 100% true. And I told this to my trainers the other day, like the type of people that are coming through the door are a lot different than what the types were when I first started. A lot when they first started, you know, it was the hardcore group, like the early adopters, right? Like they’re going to try anything new. It’s the first thing and you know, it’s underground. Like our first doors were, there were no windows, it was completely black doors and when you opened the box you didn’t know what you’re getting into. And now we have like windows all along the front. It’s bright and welcoming, like it’s totally different and people are coming into it for different reasons as well. I put out a survey to my entire membership and I think I had about, it was close to 50% of them return results for that.
Kevin: 27:40 – And it was why, I think the question was why do you keep coming back? Like what keeps you coming back? And it wasn’t, you know, I thought it would be one of the top three. I thought it would be like weight loss, strength gain or like skill or mobility or something like that. The number one reason people keep coming back was stress relief and that blew me away. I did not expect that to be in the top three and it was the number one by far. Like the others weren’t even close to it. So I’ve kind of changed my, we’ll call it my marketing, but branding I guess as a result. So it’s less about getting big muscles and growing an ass and like, getting pull-ups and stuff like, while that’s cool and that’ll happen, it’s just about, you know, again, like I said, making it the best part of their day where they don’t have to think about the problems in their life.
Mateo: 28:36 – Yeah, I think that’s something I, anyone who’s listening, that’s something you can do tomorrow, you know, survey your clients and ask that same question and I think you’ll be surprised. You’ll be surprised cause it won’t be the same as maybe Kevin’s, but it it will probably surprise you on what the answer is to that survey. Ryan Levesque, he’s a pretty big marketing guy. He has a whole book about this. So yeah, ask your clients what they love about your service and then take their language and put that into your marketing. Put that into your ad copy. Put that on your website. Awesome. So you mentioned that you’ve had people with you for eight years. That’s a pretty amazing feat in and of itself. You know, what advice, do you have any advice or lessons learned for people who are struggling to retain staff or looking to hire someone new, any pieces of sage wisdom for them?
Kevin: 29:26 – You know, when it comes to members, you have to create a relationship. Like they say, I get it, some people say don’t be friends with your clients, but I say, screw that, man. The better you can become friends, the longer they’re going to stay. Like we have members that have been with me for—my mom is actually a member, so her 10-year anniversary is today. She started 10 years ago. But we have people that have been with us longer than that. Like they’ve been with me literally since we were throwing sand-filled basketballs in the park. I really think it all boils down to relationships. Like if you can build one with your clients, then you’re good to go. If you don’t, if you just treat them as, you know, cogs in the wheel and they’re paying you money and all that, you’re gonna lose them real quick, man; that’s not how you keep people. So, you know, we talk about an acronym, I call it FIRE, get to know and talk to them frequently about these, but family, interests, recreation and education. And you can get those four things and understand them. Like ask somebody how their kids are doing or you know, like we know Karen or she’s kind of upset because her son David’s at university and you know, like it’s stuff like that. So we ask, how’s David doing? She loves it. She’ll talk about him for ages, right? So it’s those things that keep people coming back. It’s not, hey, if you come to 500 classes, you get a T shirt. Like, while that’s cool, it’s nice and it’s flashy, that’s not what keeps people coming back. It’s that relationship you build with them.
Mateo: 31:00 – And so is that how you retain your staff for so long or, you just use that on them?
Kevin: 31:06 – Yes. You have to be involved with your staff and their life. Like we do trainer retreats and that’s a great time where we can get everybody together. So one of our newer trainers has a cottage out by the water. We had everybody over. We stayed the night, we played, you know, lawn games, went swimming. It was great. So I would love to be able to do more of that. Timing and schedules are always an issue cause we have 13 part-time trainers kind of on staff. But yeah, kind of allowing them to be part of the process as well. So while I’m like the CEO or the decision maker, I always ask for their input because they’re the feet on the ground.
Kevin: 31:50 – They’re the ones that are, you know, doing the work. You know, I’m still in there coaching. I’m doing like, you know, anywhere from 15 to 25 classes in a week. But they’re there for the majority of it. So I want to hear from them. And oftentimes our members will tell them things that they wouldn’t tell me as the owner. So having that kind of connection with them as well, I get a lot of info from them and that kind of helps me make certain decisions as well.
Mateo: 32:19 – Awesome. So the last piece here I want to ask you about, you’ve touched on this a little bit, but you mentioned you had a background and then the guidance counselor and you’re really, you know, interested in getting to know what gets people, you know, what makes people tick, what gets them motivated and what they’re for and how to help them. So, you know, can you walk us through your No-Sweat process, what happens when they walk in through the door, that prospect, and you know, what do you and your staff do when they walk in through the door and how do you approach the sale?
Kevin: 32:54 – Yep. So it kinda starts beforehand. So through our scheduling system, they’ll get notification emails reminding them of the meeting. I’ll send them a text, at least a minimum 12 hours but usually 24 hours before just to say that, you know, I’ll be there or somebody will be there waiting for them at the door so that they know there’s a person there and it’s not just this automated message coming through. We will always meet them at the door and greet them by name when they walk through. We know they’re new, we know, you know anybody going into a new thing, could be dance, yoga, doesn’t matter, right. It’s going to be scary the first time you walk through. So we want to take that fear and apprehension out of them right away by greeting them with a handshake, a smile and their name. You got to do those three things or you’re not going to make the sale, period, no matter how nice you are. We kind of show them around a little bit, our main lobby area kind of doubles as a warm-up room as well. So kind of walk them through there and then we’ll take them right down into the office, have them sit down. We’ll close the door and then I basically start out by saying, all right, thanks for coming in. I just have a few questions for you. It’s kind of like an interview, but really I just want to get to know you and figure out what it is that you actually want here and if we can help.
Kevin: 34:11 – And then at the end I’ll open it up for questions and you can ask me anything you’d like, how’s that sound? And then some of them are usually taken back. You’re like, oh, they didn’t expect me to ask them questions like, so they kind of get a kick out of it a bit and I just go through question by question. And it is, the point of it is to be inquisitive. You want to figure out the deeper reasons. So I’ll ask them what do they want? And they kind of, some of them sit back in a chair and it’s like, no one’s ever asked them that before. So what do you want? And then they’ll tell me these things. I want to lose weight or I want to get stronger. I’m like, OK cool. Why? And then they pause cause they don’t know how to answer it, and then they’ll think about it and I’m OK with silence.
Kevin: 34:57 – Like that’s part of the process. And I tell that to my trainers that do these as well. Sit on it. Do not interject, do not say anything, wait until they answer you. And then they’ll come up with something. Well I want to keep up with my kids or I want, you know, my dad died of heart disease when he was 45, whatever it is. Right. OK, cool. Yeah. Now what difference would that make? And I just keep asking deeper questions until we find out the real reason. What is it that brought you through the door? It wasn’t cause you saw a pretty picture on Facebook. You see those every day, right. There was a deeper reason why you walked through the door and I want to know what that is. So I’ll keep asking why and how and all that jazz until I come up with that deep reason.
Kevin: 35:43 – And then we use that kind of like a tactic I guess if they start slipping down the road. Hey, remember when you came in, you told me that this was important. Is that still true? Like is this still an important reason for you? Yeah. Yeah. OK. It is. So why don’t you come in, we’ll have another little chat. We’ll get you started going again. Right. So we use our No-Sweat Intro not just to make the sale, but it’s also for retention. Like we want to keep people coming back for the main reason why they walked through the door.
Mateo: 36:14 – Yeah. I wanted to just make sure for those listening, every month when that auto pay email shows up in that person’s inbox, like you’re selling again. Like just cause you got them last month doesn’t mean they’re going to continue to stay. And so at every point like the client journey, you have to be conscious of that and like continue to provide value and checking in, like you just said. Because also their reasons change, right? They may have come in for weight loss, but they lose 20 pounds in the first three months, that fourth month, now maybe they saw someone do a muscle-up, they want to do that. And if you don’t know that, you can’t tailor their experience to fit their new goal. And so every month like you are doing a mini No-Sweat Intro, a mini sale every month when their membership’s up for renewal.
Kevin: 37:00 – We just had somebody recent, just hired as kind of our CSM. She does all of our back-end stuff. So we just created a whiteboard that I threw in the office. You see it every day we walk in, it’s all the new members that have signed up recently. We just basically started it since we started the whole Two-Brain process. So we have their names, what type of program they did, whether it was our six-week program that they found on Facebook or our regular fundamentals program. Check them off as they go. And then it’s class one, five,15, 30, 45 and 60, and we just kind of have little check-ins kind of along the way. So she’ll reach out to them, she’ll get a notification when they’ve attended that number of classes and then she’ll reach out to them and say, you know, she has scripts for each one basically. But basically finding out if everything’s good and if they need anything, if they want to talk about nutrition, like whatever it is. But that’s just to show that we actually care about them and what they wanna do and how they want to get there.
Kevin: 38:04 – It’s not just we got ya, now you’re in, you can’t get it until you say you I want to cancel. Like we want you to stay because we know how much we can help you.
Mateo: 38:13 – All right. So you’ve mentioned you’re asking questions to get to the deeper why, right? And this is what I like to call the discovery phase of the sale. And it sounds like you guys take a lot of time to get through that and really establish the why. I also like how you mentioned the silence piece, silence for those listening and want to get better at sales, don’t be afraid of silence. It’s a very effective sales tool.
Mateo: 38:36 – And don’t, like Kevin said, don’t be afraid to sit back and wait. Let them, you know, as long as you’re comfortable with it, most likely they are not, and they’ll end up spilling what it is that’s really on their mind or what really is motivating them to walk in there. All right, so you’re digging and drilling down. You get to the why, what happens?
Kevin: 38:56 – I wouldn’t say often, but it happens occasionally where people start to cry. We have boxes of Kleenex on the desk so they really open up and it gets deep, like real deep and sometimes dark. And you just gotta sit there and take notes and write it down, you know and say, yeah, you know, I’ve heard that before. It’s, you know, it’s not new to us. It’s new to them to share it with a perfect stranger. They just met me. They don’t know who I am and they’re sharing all their deepest, darkest secrets. Like that’s crazy, man. Like I don’t know any other business that it’s like that. I really don’t, other than like a legit counselor or therapist. Right? Nobody comes in and shares that with a perfect stranger, especially a gym. What? It doesn’t make any sense.
Kevin: 39:41 – Right? So just doing that kind of sets you apart from everybody else because you can go to a Good Life; they’re not asking you these questions. If you go to any other gym, they don’t do that, right? So that’s already setting you apart. And then just kind of from that point, we find out what they’ve done in the past that’s worked for them, what they liked about it, what they didn’t like about it. And then we’ll kind of answer any reservations that they have about that or reassure them that, you know, we’re nothing like that. We’re not going to sell you steroids here. Right? Like that’s not what we do. Right. And then we figure out if they like working in a group or a private setting, ask them if they have any reservations about signing up today. If they say yes, what are they? We’ll address those. If no, here’s our debit machine. That’s basically it.
Mateo: 40:32 – And that’s it. That’s all they wrote. That’s it. Amazing. Well, we’re just about wrapping up, but that was, you know, again, that was really, really insightful stuff. I mean, again, I want to reiterate, silence is your friend. Don’t be afraid of it. And, yeah, the most important part of the sale is drilling down to the why, because not only will it help you make the sale there, when they’re there for that initial consultation, but also it for retention, right? You need to be able to circle back to that on the six-month part of their journey when they’re, you know, getting a little antsier or if you haven’t seen them in two weeks. You can always circle back to that why, it’ll help you out in the long run. So, Kevin, this has been amazing. If people want to talk to you more, learn more about how to survive in CrossFit for 10 years or how to throw amazing staff retreats, where can they find ya?
Kevin: 41:35 – Yeah, they can, you know, search me on Facebook. Kevin Wood. You can email me kevin@CrossFitMoncton.com I’m on Instagram, I think. I don’t know. Anywhere, man. It’s pretty easy to reach me, and I’m open to helping anybody that needs it. I don’t necessarily have all the answers, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through all the mistakes so I can tell you how to avoid those.
Mateo: 41:57 – Awesome, brother, thanks so much.
Kevin: 41:59 – Thank you.
Greg: 42:03 Thank you for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Make sure to subscribe to receive the most up-to-date episodes wherever you get your podcasts from. To find out how we can help create your Perfect Day, book a free call with a mentor at twobrainbusiness.com.
