Barbell Shrugged - Everything You Need to Know About Creating Content w/ Stuart Brower. Business of Fitness Episode 64

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Stuart Brauer is a 15-year student of strength and conditioning, and he was fortunate to find CrossFit in 2006; his journey consists of humble beginnings,making three figures and running park workouts to owning a million-dollar gym—Urban MVMNT.In 2015, his gym business was self-sustaining so he ventured into helping other micro-gym owners and built the media handle WTF Gym Talkto help provide solutions for the WTF!#%! moments we all have in our business. Today Jason sits down with Stuart Brauer (Stu) to lay out tangible toolsgym owners and business owners alike can use to boost their engagement. Having similar backgrounds and much exposure to the fitness industry, Jason and Stuart, provide helpful insight into areas of marketing, community development, and how to stay relevant in the ever-evolving fitness space. Minute Breakdown: 0-5 –Bootcamp for Business 5-10 –Referrals, Guerilla Marketing, and Operational Decisions 10-15 –Community Connection and Networking 15-20 –Tracking Your Efforts and ROI20-25 –Capitalizing onLocalism 25-30 –Hacks for Creating Great Content 30-35 –Depth vs. Width and Capturing Moments Work with Stu and see what he’s got cooking at https://www.wtfgymtalk.com/ Find Stuat @wtfgymtalk Find Jason at @jasonkhalipa Referenced Tools: Magisto: www.magisto.com Anchor.fm: https://anchor.fm  

Alright everybody and welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. I'm Jason Kalipa and on today's episode we have Stuart Brower. Now some of you may know him from either his podcast or his different vlogs he does for WTF Gym Talk. But what I was really curious is what has he learned in the industry being in it for so long and owning and operating a gym called Urban Movement. Now, Stu kind of takes a little bit of a different approach to marketing, advertising, and I really enjoyed our conversation because he seeked to do things a little bit differently.

I hope you guys enjoy this episode as much as I did. Before we dive into it, just want to remind you, if you're a gym owner, if you're a coach out there, and you haven't at least checked out the NC Fit Collective, our session plans, programming, coaching development tools that we use for our locations worldwide, I'd highly, highly recommend it. Please go ahead and email in to collective at nc.fit for a free trial. And I look forward to hearing from you guys. Let's keep raising the bar. Let's dive into the episode.

All right, everybody, and welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. I'm Jason Kliepa. And on today's episode, we have Stu from WTF Gym Talk which uh stands for uh there's an expletive in there is it this isn't this is this a swear friendly park podcast yeah we'll tone it down but from uh exactly as you'd imagine what the fuck gym talk but it was just originally created because those are moments every gym owner has a wtf moment every day like what the hell like the toilets overflowing why did you do it this way? We just all had those. And that just was a very common, uh, quick and click baity way for me to get people's attention. I get it. Well, we're out here in Portland, Oregon. And what I was most intrigued about with Stu is, is primarily,

he's always walking around with the camera always and it's intriguing to me because he owns a gym i know he owns a gym he came out to california spent some time with us and but i know he's always creating content and we started talking about different things there was a few things that i was picking up on but perhaps where we could start with this conversation is how did you get into owning uh your own gym sure and what did that background look like because it's it's similar to mine. It's not very CrossFit. No, it's not.

It's a little bit more conventional. Yeah. So I was in college. I went to school for exercise physiology. And in 2005, 2006, I find CrossFit. I discover it. I see the bear complex like anyone else. You have that aha moment.

The bear complex? The bear complex, yeah. That's how you found it? Yeah. Camacho's in it. Oh, dude. Jolie is in it. Jolie? Yeah. Oh, that's's such a good, that's the first one. But it's like, that was a very dude workout. You're like a barbell. I'm going to do all this stuff with it.

That's how I'm going to, that's my cardio. I move, I lift weights fast. Right. Yeah. So that was very much my first entry to it. I was also doing internships with a velocity sports performance in Nashville, Tennessee. So I'd go from Ohio and college. I'd go do my internship and my internship. They were the first CrossFit Nashville and they would literally, it was like kind of like hazing. They're like, we're going to put you through the steps of this CrossFit thing. So I'd go from Ohio in college. I'd go do my internship and my internship, they were the first CrossFit Nashville. And they would literally, it was like, kind of like hazing. They're like, we're going to put you through the steps of this CrossFit thing. So that was my entry into it. I, uh, I got to be the, do the strength and conditioning for a couple of different sporting teams at my university. I went to school. They allowed me to do that. It was to work off some community service hours I had got for some disciplinary issues in college, you know, but it

was a great, you know, great practical app. And then I graduate, I moved to Nashville and I start working for an affiliate there. Great dude, gave me my first shot. I'm pretty much helping him run his gym. And I know I don't know anything about business. I know I can do this one day, but I need to get schooled in business. I went to school for exercise phys, never took any business courses. So I go, I sell out at the time and you sell out. And back then like CrossFit in 06, like Globo gyms were the bad guy. Like it was us versus them. Oh, yeah. So I go Globo gym and I did that for a little over two years and I did it very well.

Great mentors taught me how to sell, taught me how to hire, taught me how to leadership, you know, personality traits, how to find the right people and how to, it made me a little more cold and calculated. It makes you respect math sometimes a little bit more than the actual client, which I didn't like that aspect of it. So how did you know when you're, you knew you wanted to open up some boutique fitness center, how did you know that like you didn't have the business acronyms, you went and you seeked it out at Gold's Gym and had these other mentors because those guys are all about business.

Yeah. They're less about the service, more about the business. They want the, excuse me, the client that comes in and never, you know, pays and never comes in. Right. And I don't want that. But I was reading the E-Myth Revisited on the couch of the gym I was coaching at. We would sleep on the couch in the afternoons before the evening classes. It was that scene, right? Like old school CrossFit. And I remember writing it down, the date, the time, and I highlighted it where I had what Michael Gerber, who wrote the E-Myth Revisited, he calls this your entrepreneurial seizure. And that's when I looked around the gym. I'm like, I'm doing really good at this coaching thing. I've got a lot of years under my belt now. Like I really started in the fitness scene when I was 15 years old. I was 145 pounds soaking wet as a ginger at an all boys school

playing lacrosse. Like I lived, I lived for fitness and strength and conditioning. I really did. Mel Siff and all these guys. And, um, but I, at that point I was like, I need to go somewhere where someone's going to teach me the stuff that he's having a hard time. I mean, looking at the owner, he can't sell, he can't retain. We talk about things like advertising. We have no idea what we're talking about. We're talking about flyers and shit. I'm like, who does that the best? Gold's Gym. Urban Active was the subsidiary or the version of Gold's Gym in Nashville at the time. So I go there, I get hired as a personal trainer. I work my way up to personal training director.

I get recruited by a company in Nashville or Charlotte, North Carolina to be the district VP for their, you know, their, their Kentucky locations and their Charlotte locations. So I climbed that really well. I did very well once I had the weapons and I look at my two years at global gym, like that was bootcamp for business for me. Right. I've had a very similar experience as you know. And so you come out of that and then you decide, obviously you, you back up, you have the coaching experience, the business experience, which is a perfect recipe to start off a business. Yes. Right. And then you start your gym. Yeah. Now what I'm curious about is you start your gym and you bring some unique perspectives to the gym that other people don't. And I think that

there's people that listen to this podcast. Major majority of them are coaches and owners for sure. But there's also people who own other style of service-based businesses. I know for a fact, you know, like a hair salon. Massage, all that. Yeah. Coffee shops, things like that. They listen to this and, but they're all in the same industry. Correct. My wife owns a salon. So we, I mean, I understand it. Yeah, exactly. And so one of the things that you and I were talking about that I really found interesting was some of the things you do for marketing. Sure.

And how they're a little bit outside the box, a little bit unique. So I think when most people think about marketing, they're thinking about, you know, Facebook ads, landing page funnels. Exactly. And I think you do some of that as well. Sure. Facebook ads landing page funnels exactly and I think you do some of that as well sure but what do you think knowing your background coming from golds or the active I think sure yeah urban active yeah and then starting your gym and kind of growing it what have you found as unique marketing

opportunities that you think other owners could take advantage of that are kind of low-hanging fruit sure so I did it like we were talking about the podcast earlier, right? I think an internal podcast is something I even did a whole podcast on why a micro gym needs a podcast and how to set it up and all that stuff. And I'll even shoot you a link if you guys want to dive deep into it. Like there's an entire podcast I did on this, but an internal one is one because again, I believe I know that two thirds of all the business we're going to get is going to come from some sort of a referral source. Now it doesn't mean referral like what

Glassman always talked about, dragging your friend in by the ears. You got to come in here. But what I call passive referrals. How many people ever hit you up and ask you, Hey Jace, what do you use for podcast equipment? That's a passive referral. They know you have some kind of equipment for podcasting. I get people hit me up all the time. Stu, what kind of camera are you using? They see my AirPods. Well, you like those AirPods? Like, are they comfortable? And I give them a referral. Crossfitters, the day of Crossfitters walking into the break room at work and be like, what are you guys doing? Put it down. I need to tell you about paleo and CrossFit and AMRAPs are over. They're not doing that. It's kind of,

for better or worse, it's kind of a little bit douchey. It's kind of elitist. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know all those jokes about, hey, how do you know a CrossFader when you meet him? Yeah. 100%. Those memes made it really hard for people to talk about their obsession with your fitness model, but if you give them an opportunity to talk about it. So like one of the things we do before I go to the podcast, we do a photo shoot with our clients and we get a top end photographer and we take them out to the city.

They wear really nice branded clothes and they go out there and we take photos that rival like a Nike shoot and we give them out to the city. They wear really nice branded clothes, and they go out there, and we take photos that rival like a Nike shoot, and we give them to the clients, and they can share them. So when you're launching a new t-shirt, for example, instead of putting it on your coach or whatever, you just put it on members. So we'll do that, but with the brand for Urban Movement, all of our photo shoots are outside, and we embody Charlotte.

And in whatever cities, because I plan to open up another city, we would embody that city. You saw my tagline, probably the best workout in Charlotte. If I moved to Cleveland, it'd be probably the best workout in Cleveland. And I want to embody that city. That's part of Urban Movement's brand mission is to breathe life into the city reciprocally. And part of all that, we take them out, we do these photo shoots in urban settings. They're hanging from whatever, they're doing burpees over the tracks, they're doing a plank on the edge of a building

on a parking deck, whatever it is, we get these really cool shots, we give them to the clients. They feel and look amazing. They feel great. You ask them to be a model for you and they know that we're not Nike, they know we're a small one-time gym kind of scenario

but it is an honor and they completely, what are you doing Saturday morning? I'm doing a photo shoot. Really? What are you modeling now? My gym asked me to do it. And then we give them the photos. And what do you think they use them? They share them.

And they see them. If you walk into Urban Movement, you see their photos. You go into my restrooms, we have them on huge canvases all over the place. That Urban Movement and what they're doing embodies so much. So that is one way we do some guerrilla marketing. To kind of hone that in, there's really two advantages to that. I mean, obviously, you're going to provide them the content so they can share it on social, right? Yep.

Which is really cool. Yes. But then, and you're highlighting your members. Now, I have a question for that, though. How do you determine who's going to be it? We use thick and thin. We use dark skin and white. We use tall and short.

And we literally are you available that weekend. I be it. We use thick and thin. We use dark skin and white. We use tall and short. And we literally are you available that weekend? I want it. I believe. So there's a really good book called talk triggers and they use these operational decisions that business uses, you know, USPs, unique sales propositions or things that come cheaper or bigger or better. Those are unique sales propositions. And the only, someone is only just a little bit away from getting a bigger facility or, you facility or dropping their prices or claiming they're better where they can just meet your marketing. If you say I'm bigger,

I'm less expensive, I do this, anyone can match that. But an operational difference changes it. And the best thing, and this is actually in California, you should look this up, go to Skip's Diner. Look up Skip's Diner.

You go to Skip's Diner, it's a burger joint. Who owns the burger joint? What's the burger name in California? In-N-Out. Of course. 100%. Skip's Diner has never spent a penny in marketing It's a burger joint who owns the burger Joe like what's the burger name in California in and out of course 100% Skip's diner has never spent a penny in marketing and what they do when you walk up to the front counter you place an order And then the person working the front counter takes a deck of cards Fans out an entire deck of cards in front of you Jay if you go ahead and you pick the Joker out of this deck of

cards Everything you ordered is free Everyone there's a line out that door every day. And when people get the Joker, they go ape shit. They lose their mind. They call their mom, they put it on Instagram and it's about two meals a day. They get to whatever. And sometimes it's, you know, for an entire soccer team at 20 kids. And sometimes it's just one person getting a burger, but they eat that cost. That's their marketing cost, but that's an operational choice they made to stand apart. Cause when you're making burgers, in and out is dope. But listen, how much better is one burger than the other?

How much better is fitness than the other? Little things we do. We give our members at the end of the class an aloe-scented towel. Everyone gets a cold, damp towel. It's either eucalyptus, tea tree, or lavender. At the end, it's supposed to feel like a spa when you're done. Every class ends. It's an hour class.

It ends at the 50-minute mark. We do a deep stretch recovery, and everyone gets a cold towel brought out by the front desk girl or another coach, whatever it is. And that is just a talk trigger. That's just something. When someone comes back from a class and they're like, how was your workout at SoulCycle? Great. How was your workout at Barry's Bootcamp? What's one thing that's different? We just do this one little thing. And we've played around with guerrilla marketing things like that to make operational. I've always thought about it. We did $10,000 in Facebook ads last year. I'm like, man, I really just don't like spending $10,000 to Zuckerberg. I just don't like it.

What if I bought $10,000 of, I got two Panthers tickets, season tickets, four tickets to the carrot, to the Hornets, the Charlotte Hornets. And I got four tickets to our minor league baseball team, which is in downtown Charlotte that everybody loves going to. And I went ahead and, you know, Sally's walking out the door. I'm like, what are you doing tonight? She's like, nothing, just hanging out. You want tickets? What do you mean? And do you not think that she would, are you serious?

She would call her friends. I'm like, my gym gave me tickets. Who gave you tickets? Do you not think I would get tagged in every photo they took when they were at that game? I think about things like that in a guerrilla marketing sense of doing an, making an operational decision that makes me different. Not relying on being the best or the biggest or the whatever because I can't day trade on it, which is why we have

probably the best workout in Charlotte because I can't guarantee we're the best. I can't. I mean, workouts are workouts. But what I can do is I can create operational choices to give you an amazing different client experience. Like my coffee shop. It's not. We already have three gyms that copied it.

We have three gyms that put coffee shops inside. Like big outfits that went ahead and done it. Yeah, just because it was different and unique. And so you do these outdoor photo shoots, which obviously you get a variety of members. They share it. But what I'm really also interested in is that you utilize this podcast.

And so would you say that any owner of a gym needs to provide tools to their members to then basically ammunition to go and share? 100%. If you're not giving it to them, then they don't have anything to go share, right? And so the podcast is a really interesting way. So basically you pick somebody.

How do you pick them? You just kind of walk up to them and say, hey, would you like to be on the podcast? Yeah, I think it looks like this. I think literally you could think about it. You could do it very infrequently. I would tell gym owners, start infrequently. Start doing it just one time a month, right? Because you and me both know gym owners get really excited about an idea and they just don't follow through. So come up with a goal, maybe do one interview a month or one every other week and literally just go ahead and pick a member at random that you think would

be a good conversationalist, someone that you think would be excited to be on. And that's a very subjective thing, but just pick somebody, and it's maybe a 10 to 20 minute interview, and all you're interested in is that person. It's like I coach people in sales. The first 10 minutes of a consultation, you don't talk about fitness,

or why they're here, or anything. You talk about them. You talk about like, oh, like that awkward little small talk kind of thing. Like, what do you do? You got kids, you got a dog? Like all that stuff, because gyms are also, because for you and Like, what do you do? You got kids, you got a dog, like all that stuff. Because gyms are also,

because for you and me, they're businesses, they're revenue centers. But for gyms, for a lot of people, it's where they go to meet a mate maybe or a best friend or roommate. And you not think that the guy who thinks the girl's cute in the gym and then she's on the podcast, you don't think he's going to listen to it?

Are we going to want to learn more about that person? Or maybe you hear something like, I didn't know he was an architect. I'm looking to hire an architect. There's so much networking, like so much amazing ROI that is long tail and not even measurable, available with this stuff. I really like that idea. I think that that's a really good point.

You guys could turn it on in a second. Oh, we could totally turn it on. So I think that any boutique fitness owner, boutique business, it's really interesting the way you look at marketing dollars. So you look at Facebook, spend $10,000, but instead maybe I go buy tickets to a whatever game. That's a super different way. But what I think you're doing that I'm intrigued on, I mean, how much success have you actually seen by creating this content? So you give the member of the podcast, they share it on, let's just say Facebook. They might have, I don't know, who cares? 500 friends, but that's 500 friends. Maybe the majority of them live in your area. It's great marketing, but what have you actually seen come from? Let's just say the tickets, the photos, the podcast,

what have you actually seen? Have you actually had people come in the door because of these things? So I'm really big on the first line of questioning at Urban Movement that you ask someone. The very first word vomit I tell people is, how did you hear about us? And then there's only four sources of what we call origins of procurement. There is search engine, social media, physical location. I drove by or walked by. And then I was actually physically just referred by a friend. Those are like the main.

I saw something. I search engine you, I social media you, those are the four. There's two follow up questions each one of those but on the, to cut to your question, when somebody tells us they came in and they found us via like oh my friend, he does whatever, we literally record it and write it down. It goes into our CRM and we make a note so that at the end of a month we can sit back and we can actually have a conversation. Like alright guys, we signed up, let's say we signed up nine people this month. Great.

We netted nine. Out of those nine that we netted, where did they come from? What was their origin of procurement? And then give me the qualitative, not quantitative, but qualitative data that tells me that it's somehow through seven degrees of connection connects to this thing potentially. Now, there are some that's just a dead end. It's just like, no, they just drove by and sauce, right? That kind of thing. And that's perfectly fine. But on a long enough timeline, it literally like we start hearing like, I know my favorite is when a gym tells me, Oh, I had people come in now. They're like, Oh, you're the gym that has the podcast. She listens to all the time. And they're referring to the member that referred them. She said, she's always listening to your podcast. And, and that podcast can not only be

interviewing members. Would it not be great, just like you guys do in video format, for two coaches at a micro gym to sit down and talk? Hey, guys. So it's Stu and Jason. We're talking about our programming for this week. We want to talk about what you've got looking in your face, what's going to be facing you this week, and how you can tackle it just like you do for the NC Collective. Right. So you're making it for members by the owner, by the coaches.

Correct. But, like, I mean, realistically, I mean, you're tracking these metrics. It sounds like- Sure, as close as you can to qualitative data. But I mean, let's just put it this way. For the time it takes you to interview somebody, which is, let's just say 30 minutes, plus setting it up,

let's just say a total time, an hour. Yeah. And the podcast gear we're talking about, I mean, but the podcast gear we are using right now is probably, I don't know, a thousand bucks total, right? You're going to make back that investment with one new member.

With one new member. And I think it's honestly, I am such a branding over marketing guy. It's to a fault too. Honestly, it's to a fault. I am so much more what people think of us as a company versus the actual transaction. And I think also when you get into, and it's hard for gym owners listening to this. I know a lot of you guys who are like, I need transactions now, dude, I need money now. This branding stuff that me and Jay are talking about, this is long

tail ROI. You have to have a very, you have to be a zoomed out gym owner. Like we talk about zooming in and zooming out all the time on calls. Zooming out is like when you really are playing chess, not checkers. And if you can wrap your head around playing chess and you're like, man, but the branding plays here are really where I'm going to win because in a world where we are no longer going to be able to afford Facebook ads soon enough, we will be priced out so quick. And you're able to control the content. You're able to control who sees it because of the algorithms. So, and it doesn't take much, I think the answer.

You could commit to once a month. Yes. And if you're not very good speaking on microphone, you could have one of your coaches potentially do it with them. But I think what's really cool is you're bringing up a new source to give ammunition to our people to share. And I think that's something that we frankly have thought of. We just haven't done it for our actual gym members and we need to.

Yeah. So in addition to that, one of the other things that you and I were talking about earlier that I felt like any owner can contribute to is this idea of networking, connecting with local businesses. And you were talking about how in Charlotte, basically these urban areas are trending over from warehouses to now trendy coffee shops. Yeah. Economy's great.

Old warehouses are turning into new stuff. So what are you doing? Again, we're pinpointing specific items for owners, right? We're thinking about how do we, these are longer tail items. I agree with maybe some short benefit, but long tail. And the thing I love about what you're talking about, both the things you're about to share, is that they're completely in your control.

Sure. The podcast is 100% in your control. You don't have to worry about any algorithm or any boosting capabilities, right? So tell me about what do you do for the local companies and what byproduct have you seen from that? Because it's a little interesting. 100%. And one thing I'm going to say, you and me produce so much content, we take it for granted.

Do you know how much fun it is? The gym owners that tell me when they start doing this, I actually have a lot of fun doing it. Like I probably should be doing more of something else, but I really like editing the podcast. Now we're not trying to give owners a bunch of busy work on something that doesn't pay, but I find gym owners get very excited. And anecdotally, like there's a gym I work at CrossFit Morai up in Canada. They started a local one. Guess who they got on it by episode seven, Austin Maliolo, who you know really well. And that's for a CrossFit gym, having Austin come on your podcast is a cool thing to do. Like that is amazing. But it was just an organic little CrossFit Mirai. They did a couple episodes

and they reached out. They said, hey, we started this little podcast and we made an episode where we talked about this thing you had talked about on yours. Would you mind coming on ours? Now, do you know how many members are listening to Austin Maliolo? Because a lot of other CrossFit members at their gym are also fans of Austin. It's just like that little, but it's fun for them too. It's marketing that's fun because you know what's not fun? Creating a Facebook ad. Not fun at all. But going to the B2B, I'm a huge fan of, again, Long Tail ROI on making friends with all the other businesses in town. I know you are a huge proponent of walking by, shaking hands, handing a flyer out, and as am I. I like to invite them in.

I think you can get them in the coming for the podcast. And I think everyone here does an open. They do a Friday Night Lights, or they do what we call sweat socials. We do it every single month. DJ, vendors, it's a good time. You can biz dev and bring people in. And then how can you help them too?

So like, for example, we will go ahead and say, listen, coffee shop, and I've got one in-house, but we will go to other ones. Like Like we sure you probably have early morning traffic, right? We'll literally go ahead and put free class passes right here on your front desk, whatever it is. Would you love, but like, tell me how you started this. You know what, as human beings, we love doing more than anything else. Talking about ourselves. Yeah. And share. Talking about ourselves. So like, well, I started off, my dad owned a coffee shop,

then I did this, or I own a food truck and a turn to this. Like, great. I love this. Would you like to share this on our podcast? And again, most people have never been interviewed on a podcast. I think this is things like you and me, we almost take for granted because we do this all the time, but people like it, you kind of have like that 15 minutes of fame moment where you feel like, no, I would love to. Thank you so much. Like that's, yeah, it's be an honor. They show up 10 minutes early. They're super nervous. Like, and this is on the same podcast you do. Yeah, correct.

I think it needs to be right. So let's just say when we start our, we have our collective, which is for gym owners and coaches. Then I have Amrap mentality, which is a little bit mindset, whatever, but this would be like,

let's just call it NC fit. Yeah. And so it'd be members, but then also be like, Hey guys, we have a local gym. Yeah. The local microbrewery,

the local sandwich shop, whatever. Let me tell you the story about that and now, I think what's interesting that you're going to bring up is that now they share that with their community.

Correct. Of course. They're going to. And it's all local. A hundred percent. It's all local. Like literally, it's why I trademarked

Sweat Local. Like I want to sweat local, drink local, lift local, live local, drive local, everything. And that's how you're going to capitalize and get people in your gym, right?

100%. And for most of us who don't have franchise aspirations, we're going to be a one and done shop. Most micro-gyms will be one and done. If you don't own your local community and be hyper local, I tell, somebody asked me, what's the goal of being a micro-gym owner? To walk in the grocery store, this is my opinion, walk into a grocery store and see people wearing your shirts that you don't know.

Right, right. That you don't know. That is my, that is the goal for any business owner here that's listening, that owns a gym. You walk in, you see people wearing your brand that you don't know. That's really interesting. You know, because when you talk about like Facebook ads, social ads, obviously you centralize them towards your demographic, your area, but the reach is, is smaller because you're just kind of condensed in an area. But instead of going primarily on social through paid ads, you're saying, well, dude, just go knock on the door and tell stories about local companies because those are the people that live nearby that are driving to the local brewery who

are now going to be your potential customer. I mean, it's just another way of looking at this. When people tell me it doesn't work, that's literally why I'm sitting here in front of you. I literally was the guy in 2006 when I found this and I found it like I was literally the guy who looked up the guys like James Fitzgerald and Jason Kalipa and JP. And the only reason I'm sitting in your hotel room right now is because I put out content on content on content, 440 or 30 some videos now over and over and over again. The first video didn't do anything for me. The seventh video, the 27th, the 57th, but doing it consistently over and over is seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, like that game. Like itth, the 57th, but doing it consistently over and over is seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, like that game. Like it's, it, that's how this whole thing works.

And that's how the whole world works. Now, tell me this though, if you're a gym owner or any type of owner out there and you're spending, how much time is too much time because you know, you, you, you probably have systems and procedures in place. What if you're owner-operator, right? But you want to use these. When I'm talking to you, the reason why I'm intrigued is because I look at this as a supplemental additional component to market your business. But they shouldn't, just like retail, like t-shirts. T-shirts are awesome. You can't spend 20 hours a week doing t-shirts.

No, designing it and figuring out 100%. So here's the two tools. Number one is Anchor for your phone. It is a free app. Anchor.fm is a free app for your phone. You literally, I could call you, Jason, on the Anchor app, just give you a phone call. You and me could have the podcast over the phone. It would record it to Anchor, instantly uploads it to iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, anywhere

where there is a podcast. It will upload it for free, 100% right there from your phone. Anchor. Anchor.fm, people. It is amazing. And can you edit it on there as well? You can edit it on there. You can trim it.

Your guys probably, I guarantee your guys know about Anchor. They literally just got a huge round of funding about two years ago. It is an amazing product, okay? So Anchor.fm. Number two for video editing is Magisto, M-A-G-I-S-T-O. Everyone's probably familiar with Vimeo. It's like YouTube's little brother, right? Competing companies, but Vimeo created Magisto, which is AI-based video editing.

A gym owner can randomly take their phone haphazardly, and they could go ahead, turn it sideways, and they could just capture random scenes of the gym. And let's say they end up capturing four minutes of footage, and they're like, I just want to create a cool little montage clip. They could upload all those clips to Magisto. Tell Magisto, I want out of the four minutes, I just want a 30 second video. The AI will go ahead and it will condense everything down. You will pick a theme with different graphics. You will pick music that is copyright free. You can get some hood trap music in there, or you can get something subtle and chill. Maybe if it's a

really nice testimonial about Sally losing 40 pounds and it will AI edit it in under six minutes from the time you upload to the time you select the graphics to the time, whatever in under six minutes, you have a video. I literally, the vlog, two vlogs ago, I went all in on my G. So told everyone about it. It is insane. I should have had some referral link in there, some affiliate link. Yes. So you could take, let's just say you're, you're, and again, I hate only talking to gym owners because there's other people, but you're a gym owner. And you're taking these clips, right? Yes.

And you're shooting with your phone. Yep. You're just capturing it. And you're not a videographer, guys. I know that whatever business you have, I know you don't get it, but you could get enough. If you can take a decent selfie, you can do this and upload it. And the AI will cut the pieces. It'll even cut the cuts, like boom, boom, boom, to the music of whatever you select.

It's 2019, baby. It is. There's no excuse anymore to not be making content. Wow. And so, okay. Well, then pitch, you know, if I'm sitting here sharing, I think some commitments that I think owners can think about, you know, we talk about building your business and people don't just walk in the door anymore.

And you're right. One of the things you said that I'm really resonating with is back in the day, man, everybody preached the CrossFit, I mean, hard. Yes. And now it's a little bit more subtle. People are doing it, but it's a little bit more like. And they know their friend might be committed to Orange Theory or whatever. They're just like, whatever.

You do fitness. I do fitness. We don't need to intertwine. We're good. And I think what you're sharing, though, is even if it's once a month for this podcast that's just another tool in the toolbox to get more people aware of what you're doing and it takes maybe a total of your time a couple hours tops yeah and that information that data stays forever so you could always have as your podcast grows you get more episodes you'll see the episodes in the past start to grow and then they're going to continue to share and whatnot.

You want some growth hacks, guys? Here's some growth hacks. When you're interviewing people for your podcast, members ask about their personal life. So who's your roommate? Tell me about your roommate. Oh, her name's Carol, whatever. Because guess what happens as soon as she leaves the podcast? She's going to text her friend. Oh my God, I totally talked about it. Yeah. And guess what Carol's going to do? She's going to listen because she wants to know if she talked any shit. That's exactly what's going to do? She's going to listen because she wants to know if she talked any shit. That's exactly what's going to happen. Very, very interesting.

I'm so intrigued. The podcast and the video thing that you brought up, very, very cool. Because what we're talking about, I hate using the word hack. Sure. But simplifying. Correct. I'm not a very technical guy. Yeah. And we have a great team at NC Fit that helps me with all this because basically I just record and just send it off.

Yeah. And I don't even know what happens to it after that. But it sounds like to me there's systems and there's – Very simple ways that you can solo one man do this. And listen, guys. I know you're listening. I know you're like I can't – I'm doing enough as it is right now. And I'm here to tell you I don't know what other option you have.

I know I'm not trying to give anyone another hat. I'm here to tell you, I don't know what other option you have. I know I'm not trying to give anyone another hat. I'm really not, but I don't know what other option you have. If you're not going to storytell in the form of video, photo, and then audio. And even anyone listening, if anyone's listening to this and you're not even posting, if you're not even posting a photo a day to any of your social media handles, I would probably recommend you start there. Right. Like I like to get people up to a consistent AM and afternoon and a PM three times a day. Right. Nice and steady. I like it. You're saying before we even

talk about this longer format podcast, you'd like to see photo because it's the simplest, like a couple of photos a day on what? Correct. Yeah. So I generally, I like both. I like both platforms. I talk to people what I call a tagging campaign. A lot of gyms have someone in membership that recreationally or professionally does photography. And they're generally able to create a barter out system. Or you could professionally go ahead and just pay the $150 for a two-hour shoot. Have someone come in and generally the instructions I give, and this is what I was doing in our small groups over the weekend. You tell the photographer, I need 150 photos from you before you leave here today.

And what I need you to do is let's say you have a 15 person class. I need 10 photos of each person, 10 photos of each person, 15 people in class, 150. You're going to go ahead and send those to me. I've got them. And now it's what I call a tagging campaign. When you're uploading to Instagram and Facebook, guess what we do kids? We tag the client. When you tag Sally in it, her friends, family, and coworkers have a higher likelihood of seeing that NC fit tagged Sally. here's the scenario me and Jason we were talking about passive referrals earlier right they're not as direct and aggressive anymore Sally is at work and Tom comes up to her go say listen did you hear the meeting I changed the boardroom 7 by the way your gym I swear to God every time I

open up my phone I see a photo of you uploaded by your gym what they're just blowing you up were Were you climbing a rope? What was that? Where's that gym? Where do you go to now? They have opened the conversation and now Sally can actually make that passive referral because she's not having the kick in the door. Like, Hey, Jim, what are you eating for lunch today? Check out my gym. Like, and now that's how that conversation gets started. Cause I will tell you, people are always trying to figure out their stew. What should I write in my ads? I'm like, honestly, the best thing we could ever write in our ads is if we could secretly mic up our clients when they go home and we listen to how they talk about us.

The language they use when they describe us is the best marketing language because it's authentic, it's not incentivized, and it's generally truthful. Truthful in the eye of the customer. I consider urban movements the best this, but if the customer's like, it's kind of like CrossFit urban movement, but it's just not as elite. I don't know. I just don't feel that vibe. Like I got a CrossFit. Like if that's the marketing language, a client of mine is using to describe to their friend and that's what gets them to come in. I should also be using that marketing language as well. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, that's, that's good. I mean, I think,

yeah, it's really, it's really a different way of looking at it. You know, when you look at building a social channel, I think oftentimes people are thinking about how many followers can I get? What you're really saying is you're trying to dive deeper with the followers you already have to get the network a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger,

because having 10,000 followers is going to help you if 9,000 of them are outside the area, unless you have a digital product you can sell them. And so what you want to focus on is you only need, hell, 500 followers as long as all those are members to your gym 100% a yes getting gym owner what do you have more of followers on facebook or members they'll say followers on facebook 100% those are what we call lurkers yeah your grandma follows you too like

take out your relatives or whatever right you have people who lurk i have people that literally will send me a message. Compared to what Jace has, my Instagram following for WTF Gym Talk is minuscule, but what I have is complete depth. I literally get any day, I'll get 10 to 30 DMs from the 3,000 people that follow me on Instagram. So if I can get 1% of them messaging me on an average basis with good context, like, hey, I'm coming to the Self made summit, dude. I'll see you at, you know, in a Portland, that kind of thing. It is depth versus with people. It is depth versus when you sound like Gary Vee right now. Yeah. It's for a micro gym where you're only going to be effective to in a four to seven mile radius. If you're in the city and maybe a 10 to 12 mile radius, when you're a world, you know, kind of country town,

why, like what, what does 10,000 do for you? Yeah. What does it do for you? You know, so start with pictures, tagging them. I think that's a really, that's a really key, key, key, key thing. Correct. And a quick thing on that, you gotta be careful though. There's a lot of, uh, if they have their privacy settings set accordingly, you won't be able to tag them. So maybe you guys, when you have that photographer come in, obviously give your members a heads up, right. Ask them to wear some branded gear, you know, kind of thing. And here's the thing is always elongate the programming that day in the coaching and the warmup, because we all know what people look like. Once that three, two, one go looks, it's not an attractive look. It's

not drools hanging out. You look like Dan Bailey with your tongue out kind of scenario. It's not good. So you elongate the parts that are going to allow you to capture. And I'm stealing this from tire net moments, not movements. The goal is to capture, and I'm stealing this from Ty or Nat, moments, not movements. The goal is to capture a moment. A place, think of a picture like a girl holding a barbell in the front rack position. She's laughing because the coach said something funny. That is what you want to capture. You know, I would recommend, there's two gyms that I think do it well.

Mine and then Shenandoah Fit is one of the first gyms I've worked at out of Virginia. Any of you guys who are looking, when I say moments, not movements, go check out Sean Ryder's gym. It's called Shannon Doe Fit. I think his photographer, who he got when CrossFit HQ did a huge firing of their media team, he got someone to come in who does amazing photography and videography for him. And he captures moments, not movements, over probably better than any gym I've ever seen, in my opinion. So guys, go creep on his page and you'll see exactly what I mean. But yeah, I think you start with the photographs because it's the lowest barrier to entry for these guys to just get warmed up to the idea of consistent content. You get warmed up. Then you transition onto these podcasts we've been

talking about, outdoor photo shoots. And yeah, you kind of build up this foundation. If you're not doing this well, but I like the longer format. I like the fact that you could dive deeper with this member. And to your point, I think I sometimes underestimate it. People, there's value in people feeling like kind of like a little celebrity ish by being on a podcast. And sometimes I take that for granted and I think that's a big deal.

So I'm super stoked that we got a chance to talk with this. There are a number of different things we haven't really talked about much on this show. We kind of dive into a lot of different subjects. If people want to know more about you, WTF Gym Talk. Surprisingly enough, guys, that handle was not taken. So it's just WTF Gym Talk on anything. YouTube is where the vlog goes, Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, nobody had that originally. Weird. So that was all mine. And if they're ever in Charlotte, come see you. I'll come down to Urban Movement. I'll buy you a cup of coffee. We'll sit down and talk shop. It's just probably going to be on camera.

Okay, hopefully everybody can go ahead and go have Stu buy you a cup of coffee. I'm going to regret that. Yeah, thousands of people are going to show up. Hey, guys. Well, hey, I hope everybody has a phenomenal day. And Stu, thank you very much for taking the time. Absolutely. Thank you, dude. We'll talk to everybody soon.