Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Matt Wilber: An Inside Look - 044

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

When is it time to open another franchise, business, or practice? In this episode, Bedros Keuilian speaks with franchise entrepreneur Matt Wilber, the owner of 5 Fit Body Boot Camp businesses. Matt explains how to implement the business systems that replicate your success—without having to do all the work yourself. Watch or listen now to find out how you can develop team leaders that live and breathe your core business values. “Systems, processes, and people are the three big levers that build empires. ” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 4:47 - Why you should learn—or hire for—the stuff you suck at. 6:51 - How to duplicate your business’s tight-knit culture. 11:45 - How to groom your employees into superstar team members. 20:11 - How to zero in on the tasks that create momentum for your business. 23:24 - How to attack your mornings and guarantee your productivity. “Great organizations have a bench of leaders ready to go” - Matt Wilber

Where did this resiliency come from? Because obviously you dealt with adversities, challenges, setbacks. How did you overcome them? My mindset is no matter what it takes, I'm going to do it. There's a lot of struggles and failures and things that you have to be able to go through. And you need to have the cahones to go through those things and then just keep going. Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of the Empire Podcast show, The Inside Look. And in this special episode with The Inside Look, we are going to interview an Empire Builder.

So I've got with me, Mr. Matt Wilbur. He is a Fit Body Boot Camp owner out of beautiful Michigan. Matt, welcome. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic. How long have we known each other now? We've known each other. I mean, I've been in the Fit Body realm for about four and a half years.

So you've been in my realm for about five years. So when I started my journey, I was looking for fitness advice. I started my own fitness business that wasn't a FitBody, and I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. So went on Google and I typed in, like, fitness marketing, and you were the top person on there. and then started watching all your YouTube videos. And then from there, you were my mentor. And then obviously now we've known each other for almost five years. Almost five years.

So in this, and by the way, those of you watching this or listening to this, this is not an advertisement for Fit Body Boot Camp. This is not us claiming that every Fit Body Boot Camp location makes a million dollars per year, like some of Matt's locations do. We're going to talk a lot about a Fit Body Boot Camp locations because, Matt, you have now, you're opening your fifth one. So I have five open, and then we're going to be open. opening two in the next two to three months.

Exactly. So Matt is a shooting star. He's amazing at what he does. And what I want to do is expose empire builders on the inside look portion of the show. And so as we talk about the Fit Body Boot Camps that you own, this really, the message transcends to every type of business, dental, online business,

chiropractic. Craig Ballantyne has a coaching client who's a billionaire who owns a bathtub business. And the guy just bought out the jacuzzi brand. So this also transfers into his world as well. So in four and a half years, you've grown like a shooting star. And I remember when we first met and you bought your first Fit Body Boot Camp location. You kind of didn't have the financial resources to jump right in.

How did you piece the money together? So I started my own fitness business and I had enough for the buying. At that time, I was $10,000. And that was literally the last cent that I had. And then from there, honestly, I don't even know how I got into. the commercial building that I was in right now. They didn't want any financials, they didn't want any background. Every place that I've gone into now literally wants a blood sample for me to be able to go in there.

So I was living in my grandma's basement. You know, I couldn't afford rent anywhere else. I had a lease payment and I had student loans. I opened my first location on credit cards. It was one of those things that I was going to do whatever it took to get open. So we pieced together about $30,000 on credit cards. I didn't even have enough money for dumbbell So the dumbbells sat on the floor, the kettlebells sat on the floor, all the equipment was on the floor.

You know, today we have about a $12,000 sound system. My sound system when we first started was a black rocker that looked like this attached to an iPod. And then I just yelled at people all week. By Wednesday, I couldn't talk. But, you know, it was a passion business. And now we've obviously scaled. We opened locations and they're mega locations and they're absolutely amazing. But it was definitely a grind from the beginning living in my grandma.

was basement, working from 4 a.m. to midnight, rinse and repeat every single day. I had zero employees. It was just me. And honestly, I really didn't know what the heck I was doing. We've learned along the way. But as we grew, now we have a team of 50 people, and I do none of the day-to-day operations anymore. And so as I'm hearing you describe your journey for your first Fit by the Boot Camp location, it's kind of fascinating how what I'm really hearing is you didn't have resources, but you chose to become resourceful and piece together credit cards. living grandma's basement. You don't have the resources to hire a team to help you out. So you're working from 4 a.m. to midnight, rinse and repeat. So it's really resourcefulness

and resiliency because there had to be times when you're grinding it out in this first location, not really knowing what you're doing. Because location 2, 3, 4, 5, now you can go, okay, I know what's going to happen because I've opened one, I've opened two, I know what's about to come. But this first time around, where did this resiliency come from? Because obviously you dealt with adversities, challenges, setbacks. How did you overcome them? The biggest thing is going into it going, I'm going to do whatever it takes. Going in like failure is not an option.

And obviously with resources, whether it's mentor, coaching, Google, I mean, you can figure out whatever you need to figure out. Too many people just go put up their hands go, I don't know. And that's their excuse, right? Year one, year two, year three, there's been people who have been at it for years that still go, I don't know and aren't figuring it out. But for me, it was like... Let me stop you there.

Why do you think that is? the people that have been in it for two, three, four years, almost as long as you have, and they're still struggling with their first business, first location, first dental practice, first chiropractic practice, and not opening up a chain like you have. Why is that? They don't have the right mindset. It's not, my mindset is no matter what it takes, I'm going to do it. No matter how many hours I have to put it in, I'm going to figure it out. I don't care if it's something I freaking hate doing, I'm going to learn it if I know that is a skill that I need. and it's really about having the resiliency to learn the skills that you need to be successful.

So if you suck at something, but you need that skill to be successful, either you need to learn how to do it or you need to hire somebody who can do that skill for you. That makes total sense. And that's honestly the resiliency because there is going to be ups and downs. I don't care if it's a Fit Body Boot Camp. Anyone who's ever built a big business has built an empire, there's a lot of struggles and failures and things that you have to be able to go through. And you need to have the Cajonis to go through those things and then just keep going.

Okay, so where that's concerned, now you go, you know what? I figured out all the chinks in the chain for location one. I've hired a staff, and I said, well, how did location one do? He said, it did great. And then when I opened up location two, this is, this failed, and that one's failing now. And you were able to parlay into location two. So what are the things that causes location one to fail when people go to a second location? and what did you do to reinforce location one

so that it could thrive while you're building location two? You know, it's been a, if I could go back, I would be actually a lot more successful going from the next location and next location. Because what you're trying to ultimately do, especially in a people business, is recreate the culture that you set in location one. What I find is so many people,

when they open their first business, no matter what it is, they're 100% invested. They are the culture. They're in the trenches. is they're taking care of the clients, they're taking care of their team, and they're not quite the bottleneck inside of their business at that time. And they can literally stop what they're doing, take care of every single problem that's occurring inside of their business, and make sure that the clients are getting the service that they need, the team has what they need. Then you go to

location two, depending on your systems and your cultures and how you decide to duplicate and grow, you know, you might lose that focus. So depending on what your systems are, depending on what your people are. One of the things that we focused on is really growing our people and growing our culture and then duplicating our people and duplicating our culture. What I find is when they go to location two, they're not able to duplicate their culture and not able to duplicate the systems and the processes that had in location one because it was so dependent on them as the entrepreneur. Yeah. And that was exactly the conversation we had. I said, let me guess. You thought you had the systems in place. He goes, yeah, I go, but then you realized that you were the system. Yeah.

And so when you left, the team wasn't running it the way you were. Nope. And that is the biggest problem that so many entrepreneurs face is to have this false illusion that, man, location one or business one is running. Let me now shift gears of business too, and the bottom falls out. And so now here you are, now you're looking at scaling two at a time. What have you done? What systems have you created?

What processes and how do you train and coach to people? I know I'm asking three big questions, systems, processes, and people. But those are the three big levers that build empires. What is your philosophy on systems, processes, and people to be able to scale quicker now? You know, so one thing I'm here to actually talk to new fit body owners. One of the things I'm actually going to talk to them about is systems and processes. And I feel like most people don't spend enough time up front setting those up. They kind of, as they go, where when there's a problem or when something falls through the cracks,

then they're like, oh, I need a process and a system to deal with that. So for me, it's literally looking at every single aspect of your business and being able to have clear expectations for every single aspect. So no matter what it is, when a client or a prospect walks in your door, how are they greeted? How are they led through the sales process? What is the follow-up and indoctrination process for that person when they come on your program? You know, what's the sales process? How do you funnel them through there from somebody inquiring all the way to them becoming a member? Once they become a member, what's that process look like?

What's the expectation, the results? Are they going to give you referrals? If they're not getting results, probably not, right? You know, when I first started, it was like, hey, I'm going to work my ass off. I expect everyone else to do the same thing, right? Sure. Follow my lead. There wasn't really any expectations.

It was just kind of like, hey, let's do a good job. But it's like, what does doing a good job mean, right? What does it take to win inside of your position? All the way to what is a perfect 30-minute workout session look like? hey, give them a good workout. What does that mean? What does that mean? How do you call? Every single workout, we're trying to elicit a certain experience for every single client. So every single client, no matter if it's 1, 20, or 60 people, they're getting an amazing experience when they walk through our doors. And they leave feeling loved, appreciated, and cared for it every single time because we've

systemized that process. When we first started, it was like, hey, we're just going to go give a bunch of energy and have a good time. But now we actually have a dial-in system and process that we can coach and now that we have a system process we can duplicate that right and we can teach our team how to run that system and process so before we shift gears into team what i'm hearing you say is most people are reactive where systems are concerned yes something falls through the cracks a client is upset a an employee or team member quits or steals clients or steals revenue that's happened to me i've i've actually there was a theft that took place six hundred forty thousand dollars in revenue had gone missing and so a

system had to be created. I was a reactive leader at one point and I've chosen to become a responsive leader. We all know that systems aren't sexy. They're just not. But now I look at the word system as an acronym. And if you break it down, it's save yourself, time, effort, and money. So if you create the systems now by anticipating what are the cracks, what are the setbacks, challenges, what experiences do I want my clients or my customers, my team to have, you can account for that ahead of time instead of being reactive. So you've created the systems and the process. Now, how do you find people to duplicate the same energy, deliver the same experience, passion, especially in the fitness space where we have to wake up early to serve our clients?

And, you know, people don't necessarily want to be super high energy and enthusiastic at 4.35 in the morning. So how do you coach up your team? Right. So, I mean, definitely in fitness, it's a passion business, right? So for me, you know, as you grow your empire, one of your number one jobs is actually to recruit and hire amazing talent and then obviously have the systems, the processes, the expectations, and grow and develop them. So we bring in people for who they are, their character, right? Are they super passionate about fitness? Do they have the potential to do the job? And then we will teach them the skills. But we can't, you know, if we get somebody, somebody can have the skills, but they truly don't have the passion and love for people,

they're never going to work in our culture and they're never going to be rock stars, right? The other aspect is you have to really grow and develop them. I found that no, even if they have the skills, what we do inside of our business is very unique. In the training skills and the people skills and the things that we do, they need to be taught how to do those things. So we've really created a culture of growth and development and feedback. A lot of people are too afraid to give people feedback. So we've actually had to build in a system of feedback. So no matter what location that they're at, they're still getting the growth and development that they need to grow from in amateur.

trainer to a professional trainer inside of our team, right? But before, when somebody comes on board, we have a 90-day feedback process that that person goes through because typically we hire an intern, who is an intern with us. You know, they get 12 to 16 weeks of coaching, which they're going to be further ahead than most trainers are going to be. But even then, they have 90 days of aggressive feedback and coaching that they get to really build them up. And then we have reviews every single 90 days where we make sure that they're getting the coaching and the development. that they need. You know, so for me it's really setting the expectation, but then it's growing and developing them. And it's not just growing their skills. It's growing them as a person

and as a human being. So we've really tried to create a personal development company inside of our company. Yes. And I know you preach that all the time, and that's really where I took it from, but it's not just growing them professionally. It's growing them personally as well. And that's where the secret sauce comes in. Yeah. You know, it's funny you say that. So for those of you watching and listening to this, here we're in the filming studio, but just across the hallway is our learning center where we have about 60 Fit Body Boot Camp, brand new 60 Fit Body Boot Camp owners. And the thing I told them Tuesday morning on day one of the Fit Body Boot Camp University, owners university was, hey, welcome aboard,

welcome to the family. You've all signed the seven-year franchise agreement with us, and over the next seven years, I'm going to develop you personally as much as we're going to develop you professionally as an entrepreneur. And a lot of them had a kind of a, wait, what, what are we talking about? And I said, you're going to be mentally tough. You're going to get rid of all the crabs and time vampires in your life. You're going to have higher expectations for the people around you. You're going to change your thoughts that occupy your mind. And all of a sudden, they started to get it, as I explained.

And I said, by the way, you have a responsibility to pass that down to your clients. We don't just train. Right? We don't just train people through an exercise program and give them a nutrition program because, okay, that's maybe one hour a day. What do they do the next 23 hours that can sabotage their goals? And so they have to be mentally tough, emotionally resilient, be able to surround themselves with strong. people who are like-minded have higher expectations and standards self-image self-confidence and if they have that they can turn away when the idea fairy comes and says hey you know

what let's just have one glass of wine which leads to two bottles of wine right and we later find out that it was some kind of self-sabotage or it was because of emotional eating or stress eating and so you know we have that responsibility it doesn't matter the industry that we're in you have that responsibility to make the people that you're working with better. So emotional resilience and feedback is important. And you've got this process that you take new coaches through, but ultimately some of them can become future leaders. So let's talk about how you replicate yourself as a leader through these coaches, because we never hire leaders from the outside. They don't know the culture. They don't know the tribe. They don't know the experience

and expectations. And they typically think my job is to manage people and make sales. I don't hire managers, I hire leaders. Right. You hire leaders. So how do you groom these leaders and what do you look for them to go, aha, they've got that leadership thing. I'm going to begin to spin them up into leadership. What do you do?

Right. So, I mean, the biggest thing for us is, first, they need to be a great coach and be a great team player and they need to live and breathe their core values. Right. So that's how you get on our radar. One thing that we're actually starting this year as a mentorship program where it's a nine month coaching process, teaching them exactly how we want them to be leaders inside of our organization. Before it was kind of like, hey, congratulations. You've shown the ability to be a

leader. Here's your promotion, right? Now it's nine months of coaching and growing them. So for us, like, we're only going to grow as much as we have leaders inside of our facilities. If you put a leader in a non-leadership position, which I've done multiple times, and, you know, at the end of of the day, it's caused me a lot of heartache and a lot of, lots of no sleep and me getting back into the trenches, which I didn't want to do because I have. had to replace them with myself because I didn't have a staple of leaders. Now we have a stable of leaders that if, God forbid, one of our facility leaders were to quit, get fired, get sick, we have, you know, who's next, right? So we call it building our bench. So great organizations

have a bench of leaders ready to go. So if you think about great teams, think about the Patriots, like they're in the Super Bowl or in contention to win the Super Bowl every single year. They have turnover with their team. People get hurt. People get injured. It's who's, who's, who's, next, right? And that's what we're trying to build inside of our organization is that deep bench. So the way that we build our leaders, A, we build them into great coaches, great people. They live and breathe our core values. And then we coach them up, get them ready to be a facility leader. And then they take over our next facility. And what's amazing is they already live and breathe our culture so then they can go and duplicate that culture. We don't have to teach them what our

culture is. They already live and breathe it. Now they have to go and duplicate it. Which is a lot easier to duplicate something that you've already have had factory installed in you versus trying to teach you and then go, hey, here's how we do it, go figure it out. Right. So many people put like, hey, this is our culture on paper. You need to be able to live it, breathe it, feel it, and know it to be able to duplicate it. Yeah. And that's how we've been able to replicate.

Now we're going to open two facilities. And, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of this year, we could open seven the next year because we're being able to build our leadership team. Sure. So, well, moving on to our last two questions. Now, obviously, as an empire builder, your purpose isn't just to make money. And I know your financials and you do extremely well. Like I said, you have several of your locations do a million dollars a year. I mean, no one ever thought that a three, four, five thousand square foot fitness boot camp,

most people thought, oh, you're a personal trainer. Gee, you must, you know, wear tights, train your clients and periodically have sex with your clients. Like, I had, years ago, when I was a personal trainer, I had one of my, I had a girlfriend, and when she introduced me to her mom and dad, the mom goes, oh, you're a personal trainer, so you have sex with your clients, right? I said, no, I don't, actually. I train them. I inspire them, I motivate them, and sometimes we have tough talks when they fall off the wagon and don't show up. And she looked at me like I was a joke.

And I remember thinking, like, man, this industry really has a bad rap to it. But my whole thing was, this is going to be my career. This is my purpose, my passion. And so I treated it as though I was like a brain surgeon of fitness. And it's funny because you run your business the same way. It's not a hobby. It's a career. It's a passion.

It's a purpose. And so really, an empire builder isn't just in it for the money. You're in it for the legacy that you're building and the impact that you're making, right? I really truly look at it as through you and all of our other hundreds of fit body boot camp owners, I'm helping impact lives. Like you periodically send me pictures of clients. they've lost 50 to 100 pounds or more. And I get as excited as your coaches would. It's like a holy cow, like I've had a hand in that impact that was made.

And so we know it's impact. We know it's income. And as a leader, you have a lot of plates in the air in addition to opening up two more. So how do you structure your days? How do you structure your mornings? How do you structure your life to be able to also be married and build a house and do all this things that you're doing? Right.

Honestly, it's being focused. And this is one thing that you preach all the time to us, especially in the Empire Mastermind, is focus on the most important things. What are the levers that move your business, right? I could get preoccupied with a million different things. There's a ton of fires that need to be put out all the time, but I've also built a team around me that now puts out those fires. So that I don't have to worry about if a trainer shows up late or if there's this issue or this is happening or this drama is happening inside of the business. Somebody else is taking that that allows me to focus on the things that I need to focus. on, right? But it is really prioritizing your time and going, where do I need to spend my time

every single day to move my company forward? Going back to your legacy thing, there's a guy named John Gordon. He wrote a book called The Power of Positive Leadership, and he shares a story about the Atlanta Falcons. There was a coach, and he took them all the way to one game before the Super Bowl. Their whole focus was on the culture and the process and doing all the things that they needed to do to get to the Super Bowl. As soon as they, almost reached the Super Bowl. Their whole focus was getting to the Super Bowl. They lost focus on the culture and all the things that actually got them there. So his whole concept is if you want the fruit, focus on the root, right? So the root is the process, the culture. So for me,

especially inside of a fitness business, our route is our team and our route is our clients. If I take care of my team and I take care of my clients, we're going to get the results. We're going to get the client's results. We're going to make money. We're going to be able to donate to charities. So for me as a leader, all my time and focus is really on the process of growing and developing our business. The other stuff will come. Like the numbers come. You know my numbers. They grow every single year, but I don't care about those things.

I literally, honestly, never talk to my team about our numbers. And the reason is I focus on the process. I know the numbers that are affected by the process. So if there are certain numbers that are off, I know there's something wrong in the process. I go fix the process. That's my job. So from a higher level view, I need to know the numbers, but I need to know what actually drives those numbers. And if the numbers are off, what is the problem that needs to be fixed?

So I do focus some of my time on that as well. Sure. But ultimately, you know, we focus on the process inside of our business. So my whole job is the process. As I grow from a higher level of view, honestly, one of my jobs is the recruit and hire great talent and give them the tools and the resources that they need to succeed and then let them do their job. Yeah, makes total sense. You know, and what I'm really hearing you say is as a leader, as a boss, CEO, president, you've got so many irons in the fire.

And it's easy to start focusing on the trivial stuff if you don't have lower level leadership in place. And we always talk about in that Empire Mastermind group, focus on your 5%, which is really the little hinges that swing the big doors or the levers that create the big momentum in your business. And you've done amazing with that. So last and final question, all empire builders, all effective leaders have a very dialed in morning routine. And I've talked to many of them. And while all of them have a dialed in morning routine, I've also noticed their morning routines differ. What is your first three hours of the morning look like? What time do you wake up and what happens within your first three hours of your day?

Yep. So I get up by 6 a.m. every single day. I even have a nighttime routine as well. I feel like, you know, sleep in recovery is incredibly important. So your morning routine actually starts with your nighttime routine. Because if you're not sleeping, you're not taking care of yourself, you're not getting good sleep, then I don't care if you get up at 4 a.m, 5 a.m., 6, 8,000, you're not going to be productive. You're going to be tired.

You're going to be dragging. So for me, the morning routine actually starts at night, but it also is dialing in your to-do list before you go to bed. So before I go to bed, I make sure I have my to-do list so that when I wake up in the morning and know exactly what I need to do. My routine does change depending on what is happening. So if I am trying to dial in, say, my physique a little bit, my morning routine might actually start with, you know, maybe cardio versus my to-do list. But my first three hours are honestly butt in the seat getting my work done, trying to get it done before everybody else gets moving. Because about 9, 10 o'clock, everybody wants you, right? And one of the things I've been focusing on is really dialing in not letting anybody get to me.

So I actually just bought an iPod, which sounds really funny. but with the iPod I have my alarm on there. There's no Facebook, there's no email, there's no, but my music's on there, whatever it may be. So literally I have that, I protect my first three hours of the day, nobody can get to me. Like the world can be burning down and nobody can get to me. So I get those first three hours in,

I know it's very similar to what you do, and attack my morning, get my things done, the things that need to get done that only I can do. And then, you know, if the world decides to fall apart and I need to go take care of it, of those things, I can take care of those, but knowing that I took care of the things that only I could do that moves my business forward. Exactly, which is super powerful. And what you guys are hearing here is you, and I hope you're able to, I mean, I can literally feel the intensity and the

ruthlessness in your voice. And you might go, man, that sounds pretty intense. That sounds pretty relentless and ruthless. Let me tell you that Dan Kennedy always says that you must ruthlessly protect your time, because if you don't, others will take a piece of it and just erode away at your time. And so you really get the most amount of money-making, impact-making stuff done in the morning before the rest of the world wakes up so that as a leader, as an entrepreneur, empire builder, when the rest of the world is up by 9, 10 o'clock and they want a piece of you, you've already gone through your to-do list and focused on the small hinges that move the big big doors. Excellent. Well, Matt Wilbur, thank you so much for joining us here today.

You are an absolute stud. And thank you so much for joining us on the Empire podcast and Inside Look. If you liked this episode, if we were able to add value to your life, please do me a favor and share this episode. Leave a comment on iTunes and Stitcher and SoundCloud and give us a five-star rating and we appreciate you hanging out with us. See you later.