Cabel

Hey guys! Stoked to be invited back to the blog to share my experiences with you all. In case you missed my last post, I’ll reintroduce myself. I’m Dallas Wicker, and I own Santa Rosa Fit Body Bootcamp with my partner, Katie Switzer.

In my last post, I shared some of our business experiences that led to developing the strategies we’ve used to cultivate a tribe-like following of clients who are genuinely excited to be affiliated with us. My hope is that in this new post you’ll find a few useful nuggets of information to help you move from a sublease into your own permanent location. This post may also prove to be helpful for you if you’ve got plans to open a second, third or forth location.

So, a little background. When we started our fitness boot camp, we subleased space in a karate dojo. This was a difficult arrangement for us because our growth was restricted by the constant competition for use of the space during prime-time hours. After 3 months, we made the decision to move so we could expand our training schedule.  We chose a large public gym that also rented to freelance trainers. While our scheduling limitations were pretty much solved by moving to the gym, we realized that our growing business was infringing on the territory of some of the long-time trainers who also called this gym “home”.  As tension built, we moved yet again to sublet space from a CrossFit studio. But unfortunately, we again found ourselves competing for use of the space during prime hours.

It became abundantly clear that running our business in subleased space was creating a huge bottleneck. Being the optimists that we are, we decided to start looking for our own space to allow for the huge expansion we were forecasting for our business. We knew that renting our own building would create an increase in overhead, but we also knew that we could afford to make that leap by effectively removing the restraints that had been confining business.

So, in October 2011, we employed the services of a commercial real estate to begin looking for suitable locations to house our boot camp. Surprisingly, he found only a few that fell into our rather broad search of spaces ranging from 1800 square feet – 3000sf. And most of which were cost prohibitive due to their location or cost per square foot.

Shocked that there were so few options to choose from, Katie and I decided to do a little searching of our own. We spent a weekend driving up and down every street, dirt road and back alley in town (I highly recommend doing this – many commercial spaces are not listed on the internet) and we found a couple possible spots that we decided to look into.

One of the spaced we found was a large retail space, smack dab in the heart of downtown Santa Rosa. In the front window we saw a hand written “For Lease” sign hanging. Clearly the space was being advertised directly by the owner – this was likely why the place didn’t come up in the search our agent performed.

After meeting the owner for a walk through, we learned that the space was only $1.00/sf, which was approximately half of the cost per foot of the space we were comparing it to. And not to mention, the downtown location of this less expensive space was far superior. I have to admit, the size of the space made me pucker my behind a little since (it was almost 4000sf ) we’d be signing a lease to rent a space that was $3000 more per month than what we had grown accustomed to paying for our sublet.

With the advice of our business coach, Bedros Keuilian, we made a full price offer with the caveat that we needed a $10,000 tenant improvement allowance and 6 months of free rent so we could get up and running. (My advice: don’t do that – you’ll likely piss off the landlord and they’ll either tell you to get bent or not respond at all).

But, we did get a call back from the landlord. By the tone of his shouting voice, I could tell just how absurd he found our terms. Nonetheless, we were able to negotiate back and forth until we settled at 4 months of free rent. Unfortunately we were not granted the tenant improvement allowance, but we were able to sign a lease that allowed us enough time to ramp up our revenue to cover the expense.

Moving out of the sublease and into our own spot is a decision we’ll never regret. In fact, being in our own space has allowed us faster growth in the last 12 months than we’ve had in all the rest of the time we’ve been in the industry.  So much so that we’ve recently began negotiations on a second location in Petaluma. Needless to say, the experiences we had during the search for our first space have proven useful in procuring the space needed for this second location.

So if you’ve hit a sticking point in your business, figure out what you want and make it happen, don’t let your fear hold you back.

If your business is evolving into something new, believe in yourself, dive in headfirst and make it happen.

If you see a roadblock looming, don’t procrastinate on finding a solution. Figure out what ideal circumstances look like for your business, then reverse engineer the process to get you there. Move the puzzle pieces one at a time until you get it right.

It required a few stepping stones for us to finally end up with our own space, but it was the solution our business needed in order to continue rapidly growing. And I’ll reiterate, there were definitely times (like right after closing the deal) where we wondered if we’d bitten off more than we could chew. We were a little apprehensive signing a lease for a 3700sf of commercial space that added over $3K to our monthly overhead expenses, but it’s like Cabel always says: the magic happens just outside your comfort zone.

Hey guys! I’m Dallas Wicker, and I own Santa Rosa Fit Body Bootcamp with my partner, Katie Switzer. I’m so freaking excited that Cabel asked me to write a post today, I hope that you’ll be able to find something here that will help you with your business.

So, how do I start?

…Well, in the beginning, we sucked. We started out 5 years ago (under a different name before we adopted the FBBC model), and in the beginning, our intake process was totally disorganized. We all know that first impressions are everything, and we quickly realized that we had to systematize our process.

If you’re great at marketing, that’s a huge plus, but like Bedros says, at some point, you’re actually going to meet people. If you’re not delivering an A+ experience from the onset, you’re going to have a hard time retaining clients. There’s far too much competition for you to give anything but your best performance – every single day.

Marketing these days is easier than ever. Now we’ve got dozens of platforms to broadcast our USP (unique selling proposition). And as fitness pros, it’s easier to drum up new clients than in years past.

Now, if you don’t mind having a continuous stream of new people filtering in and out of your program, this might sounds great. But for me, I’d far prefer having a steady client base to build on and not have to worry about getting 40-60 new sign ups every month.

So how do you go about building a tribe of athletes who live and breathe your brand? It all boils down to the experience you deliver. If you’re part of an organization with a prescribed format, you might feel like you’ve got “client experience” dialed. But following a system doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re delivering an experience that people are going to want to write home about.

Going above and beyond with every client is what’s going to set you apart from your competition. Have you ever had a client tell you they are considering discontinuing your program to join the local gym because they offer a similar “class”? If so, you’re doing it wrong – you’re not delivering “the experience”.

It’s human nature to reciprocate positive behavior, so when you have an upbeat client who’s referring their friends and posting about you on Facebook, it’s only natural that you’d go out of your way to give them an outstanding experience. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the client who comes to you clearly displaying their reservations and apprehensions to exercise – that’s the client you really need to “wow” if you want to be successful. At SR-FBBC, we refer to our members at Athletes – because if you have a body and you work it out, you’re an Athlete. Our clients feel a sense of pride when our coaches refer to them this way.

So, like I was saying, you can’t cater to only the friendly, hardworking people. You’ve got to find a way to key into the grumpy, overweight and not-so-hardworking client. This will clearly demonstrate to everyone in your program that you care and that you’re going to go the distance to ensure that every member gets the support they need to reach their goals.

Half the people in our program started because they hated working out so much that they gained dozens of pounds. Almost everyone has had some sort of failure with fitness. No wonder some people are grumpy when they get started. They’re in an uncomfortable situation with people they’ve never met and they’ve committed themselves to being put up on display (or so they feel) and be judged. They feel overweight, sluggish and more out of shape than anyone in the room. That’s why it’s important that you clue them in to the fact that everyone has been there.

Building a strong community of likeminded individuals is tantamount to keeping people committed to your program. There MUST be a strong sense of camaraderie in the group or people aren’t going to stick around. Your clients must be programmed to be supportive and encouraging to new members. Here are a few ideas on how we do that:

• Introduce first timers to one or two of your veterans and ask them to keep an eye on them during the workout.
• Call out for them to high-five their “workout partner” before switching workout stations and after the workout.
• Get the group to give a round of applause to the “newbie” after the workout.
• Use color-coded shirts or wristbands to establish certain levels of accomplishment within the group and have a ceremony when people graduate to the next level.
• Do partner workouts
• Reward a hard working athlete by allowing them to train the coach in front of everyone for 5 or 10 minutes of “pay back”.
• Put up a Rock Star board or designate an entire wall to athletes who’ve done something spectacular. This could be a list of the current record holders for certain exercises, (longest plank, most pushups in 2 minutes, most Burpees for time, etc.)
• Take photos of your athletes and their accomplishments (I’m Jody and I lost 28lbs since I started in February!) Post them on Facebook and start covering an entire wall with these types of success stories.
• Print out certificates for every challenge. When athletes complete the challenge, award them a certificate of completion. Frame the cert and cover a wall with these.
• Ask athletes what muscle group they want to work or what specific exercises have they been missing. Helps them feel like a bigger part of the organization.
• Bring a DJ in to mix up the music every few weeks.
• When you complete a Transformation Challenge, throw an “After Party” at a local nightclub or restaurant. Most local establishments will welcome you bringing all of your clients in to patronize their spot. See if you can get them to offer a skinny drink branded with a variation of your business name or get them to offer a shot that requires a certain exercise to be done when it’s ordered (example: floppy Burpee shot, gotta do 5 floppy Burpees to order). We were able to put a slide show up on their tv screens with before and after photos with our logo. They even did wristbands for drink discounts for all of our clients.

So, these are just a few of the ways we’ve worked to build culture into our program. People want to be a part of something bigger. If you can introduce even one of these types of culture builders, people will take notice and you’ll feel a higher sense of camaraderie within the group. Build on that success and continue improving. As entrepreneurs, we MUST be continuously innovating and creating. Don’t get comfortable and rest on your laurels because before you know it, your clients will move on to the next big thing.

#Boom