Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Devan Kline - Founder of Burn Boot Camp

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

In this exciting interview, Ryan sits down with Devan Kline, the unstoppable force behind Burn Boot Camp. Be prepared to be inspired as Devan shares his personal journey in health and fitness, and how he's transformed the lives of countless families through purpose, passion, and community.We dive into Devan's energetic and enthusiastic approach to health and fitness. Discover how he's created a one-of-a-kind fitness franchise that focuses on building strength through consistency, discipline, and dedication. But that's not all - Devan's incredible success with his franchise units is just the beginning. Tune in to hear about his exciting plans for growth, with a "people first" mindset. He's all about making a positive impact and ensuring a return on investment for his franchise partners in new areas. Listen and learn!Devan is an entrepreneur whose passion for health and fitness led to the success of his fitness franchise, Burn Boot Camp. (02:13)Devan provides an enthusiastic approach to health and fitness, focusing on creating a differentiating product and helping people become stronger through consistency, discipline, and dedication. (08:28)Devan has seen huge success with his franchise units, and is looking to grow even further with a "people first" mentality, focusing on distribution and expanding into new areas to return an ROI for his franchise partners. (16:02)Devan and Ryan share their strategies for scaling a business and building brand recognition, emphasizing the importance of investing in growth, setting big goals and creating equity through smart tactics. (21:20)Burn Brand strives to engage its customers through an energetic, enthusiastic voice, inviting them to share their stories and become the best version of themselves. (27:45)Ryan and Devan discuss the franchise process of Burn Boot Camp, encouraging potential franchisees to validate themselves and providing mentorship opportunities for young entrepreneurs. (30:55)If you want to learn more about Devan Kline, follow him on Instagram @devan.kline, YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/BurnBootCamp/videos and his website https://burnbootcamp.com/.Learn more by visiting our website at www.theradcast.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/RadicalHomeofTheRadcastIf you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, Like, Share, and leave us a review! If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

I said hallelujah to the 16th oil fields. You're getting down on your knees. He said it's time for you to get down. Cause I'm not doing what you need now. You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We say if it's radical, we cover it. And you know, we're talking burn, baby burn. We're talking with Devin Klein, CEO and founder of Burn Bootcamp. What's up, Devin? What's up, everybody? What's up, everybody? Hey, Ryan, good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Pumped.

Literally, figuratively, there's going to be so many puns on this episode. I'm pumped up. I figured you were hitting the gym based on your energy levels, number one. I don't even need to see you to know how much energy you have to know that you're hitting the gym. And then I see you, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. He's jacked up. Keep it going, man. 46 strong.

I don't know. I'm sure for you, probably some of your passion, I know I've read about you, but it's once you get the bug. And I mean, I've been like this. The all-fords, I think, are naturally wired this way. My dad worked out all the time when I was growing up. And my sister's the same way. It's just like oxygen for us.

Even if it's 20 minutes, just getting it in. Yeah, I think having something that is the anchor to your day. It's one of the most challenging things you can do in a day is physically move your body. We all know. We've all felt it before, right? You go physically move your body. You feel the emotion, the energy, the endorphins that are coming after that.

Runners know it well from runner's high. When you do a burn bootcamp or you get like a great lift in the gym, you just feel that energy. So we really lead with that, right? We're not just a fitness company. We're a lot more than that. Obviously, working out is the anchor

to all the things, the mind, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual, the relationships even. You can anchor yourself inside of that every day. We try to teach our members that and heck, I had to do it too. That's right. I know we could probably cut it up. We'll probably have parts one, two, and three of this.

We'll get into the functional exercise parts of life and maybe I'll have you on my vacay podcast to talk some of the more specific things around fitness and wellness. There's so much there with how it's all tied together. But let's back up a second, Devin. Burns certainly becoming a fairly household name. I think if anyone's heard of fitness and studios, they know that, especially around the Southeast and elsewhere. And I know you're based close to out of Charlotte, but Devin, let's just tee it up for everybody on your background and get into where and how and why we started Burn Bootcamp. Yeah, so I'll take you back and I'll make it quick, but I'll take you back to the beginning. So I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan.

My mom and my dad were like doing this, button heads. They're chaotic and abusive relationship. Dad ended up in jail. Mom ended up leaving when I was a teenager. And unfortunately, he ended up passing away. My mom was still, unfortunately, I forgive her. She's out there somewhere. Just come back. We can talk. And I had this entrepreneur DNA kind of growing up. It's either out of, what do they say? It's either out of desperation that you start something, right? Or it's out of the ambition that you start something.

And mine was really out of desperation. And I just didn't want to be the broke kid anymore, right? I didn't want to be the kid that was on welfare that had to, couldn't get the chocolate milk in the line, like the rest of the kids. And so that was ingrained in me from a very early age, 12 years old, a classic DNA as a kid of an entrepreneur, shoveling driveways.

That was my first franchise. Slaying in CDs, burning CDs, all the things. And moving into, I found out that I had a good arm. I was a pitcher. And so I kind of set all of that down. My last venture was, in my teenage years, was eBay arbitrage. So I was flipping cars on eBay,

buying them with cash, marking them up 50%, flipping them, driving cars to Detroit to meet people at the airport to flip cars. And then boom, I got this college baseball scholarship. All that went away. I set it down and I just focused solely on baseball. I always wanted to make the big leagues. And so anyways, six years, I'm playing college baseball, professional baseball, ended up signing a pro baseball contract with the San Francisco Giants. And then out of nowhere, I had a little injury, but I didn't think it was going to derail my career. Out of nowhere, I just get released from the Giants. And this is when I'm

23 years old. And I've worked my whole life to be a professional baseball player. I remember since I was a kid, five years old, this is all I wanted to do. And so if anybody out there is an athlete, that void or a part of a club or a team or anything where you share a common mission and a common language and a common bond, and then that all of a sudden is removed from you and you're taken out of that culture, if you will, there's this huge void. And I wanted to fill the void with, I wanted to make money, but I also wanted to make money doing something that I love to do. And I wasn't ever the most talented ballplayer, but always worked the hardest.

I always said I was the best teammate and really had a great attitude, great effort, really believed in myself, had to. If no one around you believes in you because who your family is and where you come from, then there's two people, there's two entities. It's you and whoever your maker is. And so for me, it was God and I. I was like, dude, it's you and I. We just do this together. And we bet on ourselves and I bet on myself.

And after I got released, I'm like, I'm just gonna, I had a little stint at Lifestyle Family Fitness. Being a personal trainer schooled me to the game. And then we can get into that later. But I stopped doing that. We moved to Charlotte. Morgan, my wife, CEO, who I've known since we were 12 years old. She's my rock growing up. She gets a job from Southwest Florida up to Charlotte and I follow her. And I'm like, when I get there, I'm going to see you're going to go work for Kellogg's. I'm going to start my own company. We started in a parking lot in 2012.

I had 600 bucks to my name. Morgan was paying my cell phone bill, our rent. She's paying all the things on her pretty decent Kellogg's salary. About eight months in, she saw what I was doing. She was helping me out in the evenings and in the mornings, like working two jobs. And Morgan ended up about eight months in, she saw what I was doing. She was helping me out in the evenings and in the mornings, like working two jobs. And Morgan ended up about eight months in joining me full time. Then fast forward to 2015, we have five locations, two licensees, one in Durham, North Carolina, one in Concord, North Carolina. And we had seven gyms going into 2015.

And by the way, just real quick, Bird Boot Camp is 45 minutes. And you have pretty much a camp every hour on the hour led by certified personal trainers. Morgan and I have done over 20,000 camps ourselves. And then we ended up catching fire and we ended up franchising that model. We have Child Watch at all of our facilities, which really differentiates us. But to me, the fitness product is the differentiator. And we've really focused in on that. Like product sells itself

that we never have to be competing with other... We don't have to compete. We get a chance to dominate. And so 2015 rolls around. We hang a banner up in one of our gyms now awarding franchises in all states. We did 200 units in the first 18 months of all of our members that were just raving fans of the brand. And they jumped to the next city and then eventually to the next state and so on.

The whole time, Morgan and I are, you know, seating locations in Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina. And yeah, next thing it's like, boom, burn is one of the biggest fitness concepts on the planet. And we're doing it in what I believe to be a really sustainable, really long-term focused way. So I'll stop there, but I wanted to give everyone a quick little background of myself, the business, everything we're into. I love it, man. I think it's fascinating. I've had a few guests recently that have had that kind of transformation. They've been an athlete, they've played professionally or at a high level. I went through the same thing playing basketball from sixth grade to 12th grade. D1 athlete, shattered my ankles. My last playoff game of my senior year, never played again. but channeling the energy and grit and what it took to work hard to get to there generally translates into business or elsewhere.

So it sounds you were really able to do that with the passion of health and fitness. Yeah. And you know, yourself, you felt the same thing I did. And so many athletes feel that, your guests included that you mentioned. And what I've seen is that it's actually really extreme, right? There's a few of those athletes that are able to take what they learned in sport, the leadership qualities, the qualities of teamwork and really ownership, like in, especially in baseball, like stats, like there's a direct translation of finance from baseball because everything is measured by numbers and you don't get to just pretend that

you're good because you throw hard or look good and pass the eye test. Doesn't matter. Like you, my walk to strikeout ratio was one of the reasons why I think I got released. Walking too many guys, throwing too many balls. And, you know, what we look for now is those, that's my number one recruit. Like, I don't care what your resume says. I don't care whether you've got a high school diploma or you graduated college or not, or whether you came from the Wharton School of Business or Harvard Law, it doesn't matter. If you've got that grit and I can see that you've got this void from being an athlete and you need a home for that, man, I'm telling you, I think there's probably

a near 6,000 employees in our system now between myself and the rest of our franchise partners who employ them. And there is a lot of athletes. I don't have the exact numbers. People are attracted to this culture because they can see the parity in their former team. They can see it here. And it's very rare in business to have it be so similar. What's the... What developed the protocol? You about bootcamps got huge. I don't remember what it was. I've been a fitness guy myself for a while and have done different bootcamps. And I never got into CrossFit, but like CrossFit or whatever, but like, how did you develop your core approach to building the product of your business, which is the bootcamp itself?

Yeah. Answering that question through the entrepreneur's lens, right? I've always believed that, and you can see this in modern day products like Tesla, for example, there's not a lot of marketing needed there because the product is the differentiator. You don't see Tesla commercials often, if ever, they likely will get pressure from stakeholders at some point and begin to market and to commercialize their product. But up until this point, the product's the differentiator and it's the same for us. And if I was going to lead the company, then I was going to lead it to where we really want to go, which is 10,000 units across the globe. What you're going to need to do is create the best product that is second to none to anyone else.

that is second to none to anyone else. And that takes a lot of work because there's a lot of great concept and products and different opportunities. It's everywhere. In today's society, you almost have to be not looking for health and fitness if you're not healthy and fit. It's because it's just going to knock on your door regardless of whether you want it or not. And so that's a competitive environment, probably one of the most competitive environments out there in terms of a business sector, because the barrier of entry is so low and it's sexy, right? To be a trainer, to be in fitness and to be inspiring people, impacting people, changing their lives. It's a business that gives you a ton of purpose. So I put those two things together, right? How do we create, how do we make a lot of money and how do we help a lot of people? And the number one philosophy is that the product is the differentiator.

And so to this day, as the visionary, my wife is the CEO. I'm not the CEO of the company, technically. I'm the visionary. She's the CEO. She integrates it. She's got all the VPs that rule to her. I'm up and out. I'm net new territory. And part of that net new territory is staying number one. And it's at least our perspective that our fitness product is the reason why we're here today. It wasn't our operational prowess, our experience, our C-suite team that had 27 years experience. It was because we were fitness people. And I was a trainer and I did 15,000 camps and Morgan did 10,000. We spent the first half perfecting it. We spent the second half of those camps teaching other people. And I'm still training today once a month, maybe once every other month,

because I think it's so important as a fitness engineer to continue to focus on the craft that got us here. And we lose that and you lose the essence of the brand. You lose the core focus of the brand and everything starts to break down from there. So the only, if you, if I look around and I observe companies that begin to maybe crumble or go the opposite way, the first thing that goes is the leadership's oversight on the actual product itself and they let it go too far. And that's just the beginning of the house of cards. Interesting. Yeah. How. Differentiate. How did you differentiate? My advice. How did you differentiate? So you differentiate your product

by not giving the competitors a seat at your table when you're building it. Don't do things because they do it or against what they do or trying to fill the market that they don't fill. I didn't even know of an Orange Theory or an F45 or whatever when we first. And I just did what I thought

would empower families in my community and provide the solution that was the problem. So the original days of it were really a combination of a couple of things. Number one, what got me thinking about it was P90X. I saw Tony... I did the whole P90X program and I saw Tony Horton just like crushing it as a trainer I'm like this guy is so freaking cool like I want to be like him how do I help people like this and how do I do it in a way that's like his type of attitude right hey we're here to work hard when you work hard you're going to get results when you get results you're going to gain confidence when you gain confidence you gain character and life is all about who you're becoming, not what you're getting. And I saw that inside of myself, inside of him.

And so there's a lot of P90X-esque conditioning body weight moves that are a part of the program. Then you got professional and collegiate strength and conditioning. You got myself and the football team and the basketball team and the baseball team at Central Michigan University, all just playing and banging weights in the weight room, right? Like that type of cheering each other on. You know what it's like. You're in the weight room and you're with your boys. Guys, you're getting after it.

You're trying to win a championship. It's load them up, load the barn up. Let's go see what Klein's got today. You got it. And that guy's spotting you and 10 guys behind you cheering you on. So we brought that type of culture, mix it with P90X. And then you take pitching specifically, and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of, we really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't be, we couldn't have our product be

our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right? We tell people like, this is going to be long, hard, and difficult. And it's going to take consistency and discipline and dedication. You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. Likely, you're not going to wake up one day and it'll be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years. And are you in for this ride? Do you believe that you're worth it?

And so we have that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying really in the macro sense of, hey, come do this fast. Oh, you're not okay? That's okay. Let's come in any way, do it fast, join the membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's okay. That's flat. You get companies that say one day it says they're signed on their building. The next day it says for lease. And you're like, why is that happening? So, yeah, I think that's, yeah, that's a combination of.

Sounds like. You sprinkle a little bit of bigger. You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days too. If anybody's ever heard of that program. Oh, yeah. I remember. I was sitting here thinking as you were talking, ICR, Intensity Community Recovery.

That's what I thought. Dude, I'm gonna... That is right. That's it in a nutshell. My answer was real long-winded. I simplify for a bit in marketing geologics. I like acronyms and simplicity. It's great. I mean, but that sounds like the building blocks of a long-term program and not, like you said, a gimmick because everybody gets that fire when they're ready to,

okay, I need to lose some weight. I've got an event coming up, whatever. They get fire in their belly, but then it dies if you don't have the building blocks of something broader. You need the community to keep you in it. You need the recovery because if you're chilling yourself and not recovering at all, then they get down and out, like you said. So I can see, and all I know is the periphery. And I've heard, I've had people many times,

you do burn, whatever. So I'm going to make a promise to you that I'll go, I'm going to go hit burn up here at Greenville eventually. But what's it been like growing the business, man? Just that kind of scale is incredible. What's that roller coaster been like? Definitely one, right? In 2015, when we announced that we were going to franchise in all 50 states, we thought heading to all-run might be awarding 10 units in our first year and really getting

those stood up. And we were always concerned with unit economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months. And Fran did this article out of Franchise Times Magazine. It was one of our first earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of. And it said that we're in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises of any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in and I'm like, okay, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open? We got to focus on, we call it ULEs, unit level economics. You had a guest on, Jeff Duden,

who's from this area. He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine throughout the years. He taught me validation and franchising. And that's in validation really in any business. It's not a franchise particular concept, but it's the stakeholders of your business being happy. It's your debt promoter score. How likely are they to recommend this business or doing business with you to somebody else? And number one thing is,

number one box to check, if you will, is are they making money? And what type of money are they making? So I'm always looking for a, this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Let's say the investment is at $500,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one in order for that investment to be considered an A-plus investment for me. So it's a two-to-one investment cash

to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done, having that expectation, is we've aligned clearly and early with our franchise partners

who are really driving the unit-level economics. We've learned that when we have that expectation, they start higher, they start with more members, they start better off. And getting to that when we have that expectation, they start higher, they start with more members, they start better off. And getting to that place of having world-class economics and boutique fitness was a long road, but definitely a doable one because that was our focus the whole time from the very beginning. The big, what the hell are we going to do moment was when we had 200 and we had 10 open. In franchising, it's similar to

fitness, what we were just talking about. Everyone wants to just go fast, fast. It is a vehicle for scale. I love the vehicle for scale, but you can also scale yourself right into the ground. And you see that happen all the time in this industry, particularly the industry that I'm in, the boutique fitness franchising industry. It's a, think about it. It's logical, right? Like I care about my people so much. This isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners

who invested their 401k, who invested their life savings, who liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to, sold their house and moved across the state, who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri and stayed in a hotel room

for three months away from their children so they could go chase their dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them. And with that type of mindset, that real people first core value, we're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise partner network, translate that into an HQ culture.

Now we're on the East Coast or on the West Coast, by coastal headquarters, operating the business that way. And where economics are better than they've ever been. We use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising, how much each individual gym makes on average. And we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year, which is top three in our space. So people first, like people first. And I'm going to preach that to the day that Morgan and I hang them up, which we're in the big leagues now.

So I'm going to stay as long as we can. You take care of people, they take care of you. That's how, that's usually. That's right. Reciprocation is powerful just when you're trying to do the right thing. What you said you started, I heard licensing in there.

I talked to Jeff about this a little bit. Licensing versus franchising versus the thought process there. And you mentioned it. If you aren't serving your franchisees, then what are you doing as far as growing the business? Because again, if you're servicing them, they're making money, they're happy. You get more franchisees and you grow. But what's it like? Truly, what's been some of the secret sauce to scaling like that? Now that you've done it, was there stuff that you would have gone, damn, I wish I had done that sooner? Or what are some of those learning lessons? Definitely, the number one thing is that you're going to scale your business fast. You want to invest

ahead of that growth curve. You've got to anticipate that. I heard Tony Robbins once say that anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur. And if you're able to see over the hill before anyone else can, you can see the horizon over the horizon when no one else can. Your ability to navigate your way there is geometrically enhanced. And so what I always try to do is set big goals for the system, starting with unit economic goals, and then set more broad range targets. So I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021, and I said, we're going to build 10,000 units to the moon. And half my system was like, because we're a competitive culture, they were like, let's go. They're all pumped up.

And the other half was like, how the hell are we going to do that? I don't know. I trust you. That's a lot of units, right? It's like, how are we going to do that? The beauty is I don't need to know how we're going to do it. I just need to know that's a big enough why, there's a big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also in other countries and they deserve the same thing.

They deserve a people first business product. And, but we're only going to do that through you guys. How we're going to do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee, you're able to get those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand. So for us, just to give you a lay of the landscape, like Byrne Brands, that's Byrne Bootcamp and that's the front runner. That's the spearhead. Franchising really is about distribution. So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activewear business underneath, a real estate business underneath, an investment company underneath that takes non-passive, non-controlling stakes and companies that

we're partnered with. And you start to think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure and the distribution. And that makes the return on investment for the franchisees even more important and putting more chips in our basket. So our opportunities get bigger as we go forward. Yeah. That's what it is. Just for anybody listening, Bird Bootcamp as a brand or Bird as a brand, the way you grow brand awareness isn't always just advertising. When you have 200, 400, 500, 1,000 locations and the signage and the in-market marketing and word of mouth, it grows the brand. It's rich in frequency at the highest level with that distribution there's a lot of way to grow brand recognition and brand awareness that's not always just

advertising in its truest sense because every new location that throws up a sign and community for bird builds the bird brand yeah i love i love your marketing mind. And if I had to pick a... I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident in, definitely be branding, I think as a more specific term than marketing. And when I say branding, what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity. Pier 1 Imports is a good example. Pier 1 Imports went out of business and then their logo sold for 50 million and they were just burning cash, right? If your real estate portfolio is burning cash, unless you have some brand equity, some recognizable logo or something that's going to sustain it, it just crashes. There's nothing, there's obvious that owning your own business,

number one, a brand, or number two, real estate portfolio, arguably are one of the two best ways to build the wealth initially. And I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something, I've got a logo that means something to people, even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore.

And so for me, it's always been about when marketers try to measure this, but I think it's just them trying to be smart. It's like smoke and mirrors. And I said, try to measure like brand lip. It's okay. Yes, what you're talking about, right? Is okay, all the impressions from the signage,

all the impressions from social media, all the impressions from word of mouth or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim then takes his family in Seattle, Washington. You can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift. So I don't know if anybody is ever confused by brand lift. I'm a branding expert and I still don't get it. But that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective

eyeballs on your brand, Gary Vee says attention is currency, right? And he's so right. What he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency. And once I got all of the different units up, rocking and rolling, you'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork. My buddies from from my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that logo. It said, my wife just joined. So yeah. And then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the contemporary marketing

stuff on top of that, like we did. And I think that's the recipe. So you got to have the layer over the top. You've got to have the brand lift elements and then the hyper local community where you're in the field. Our FPs are in the field with their team, shaking hands, kissing babies, running for mayor, just making sure that they're the conversation when it comes to fitness in the town. Yep. We call it, you got to drive brand and demand. It's those two things. That's what we preach to clients. And sometimes our clients, they just want to drive the demand. I'm like, you got to invest in the brand, baby.

That's what's going to pay over time. Everybody wants sales overnight, but brands built over time. And so it takes a bit down that brand line. So what's the burn brand? What's the mantra? What's the, when I say, and you, what do you want people to think, feel, and do when they think about the burn brand? We thought, we think a lot about this, right? And how we frame how we want our brand to come across starts with this. It's not what we think the brand is. It's the millions of different interpretations of what the brand is. We call it the coffee table brand. When you're sitting at the coffee table with your team and you're talking about this podcast,

we're a different brand to you than we are to maybe your wife or maybe your sister that goes to the gym in a different state or somebody in Southwest New Mexico that goes to the gym. They have a different perspective of what our brand is and what it means to them. And in effect, there's millions of different interpretations of the brand and all of those things make our custom to people. And we give our brand a spirit, a life,

something that people can universally connect to called inspire, empower, and transform. So it's these three particular words that should evoke a certain emotion in people. We want them to feel excited slash nervous. We really like that. We want them to feel, because if they're nervous, they care about it. If they're nervous to go, that means there's something there that is really just another way to say excitement. And as soon as you start to feel the confidence from the workout you go or the confidence from the product that you bought, now that anxiety about

the purchase becomes excitement about the purchase. And what we try to do is take those people right away. As soon as you feel that they felt your business, and we try to rope them in right away and do what Jay Abraham used to say, and that's conditioned people to do business with right away as soon as we possibly can so that we can help dictate some of the, or at least dictates a bad word, bad choice of word, so that we can help enable a healthy conversation around the coffee table about what our brand really is and give our members and our readers, listeners, viewers, followers, an opportunity to have a narrative to speak about this business with their friends. And so in effect, we're a marketing company more than a fitness company. And in fact, I would say that we're not a fitness company at all. What we do is fitness, but who we

are is a marketing company whose product is confidence. And if that's the narrative that we're putting together, a bunch of coffee table talks start happening about our brand. Ooh, now they're all kind of echoing the same thing in a different way, shape, or form. And now what the people say about the brand then becomes the brand. And then we listen to the people. Morgan and I went to 80 gyms this year. We're going to 30 in the back half of this year. We spend almost every single one of our gyms. It's a bit hard to keep up. That's for sure. It is a blessing and the curse. But we're out there as much as we can

listening to what people are saying, bringing the problems back in. Number one thing in our company is called the issues list, the 15 top issues. And we tackle both one by one. And that's all found from reverse engineering

what people are saying about us and not getting too fancy on who we think we are. Who we are is our core values. That's who we are. We're our principles. We're people first. We're authenticity. We're pride of results. We're integrity. But who we are to them is their interpretation of those things that we... What are your goals this year, next year? Where people that are listening, that sounds like an interesting franchise.

Like, what's that process for becoming a franchisee and where are you guys looking for growth and things like that? So we have 13 markets, starting with the major metros like Chicago, Houston, LA, New York. We're really getting into the bigger cities. We're in the suburbs in 41 states. We're going to really start getting into those more urban markets. But listen, to be a Bird Bootcamp franchisee is not just like a normal application process. It's a recruiting process. It's just like I'm putting together... I think about it just like this. I'm putting together a championship team, right? Let's take the Golden State Warriors, for example. They have the best record ever, what, 71 and nine or something like that. 71 and nine. So you're going to take losses. You're going to take at least a few of them.

So you're recruiting people that can take the loss. You're recruiting people that believe in the brand so deeply that they don't really want to do a different business in a sense. This is their calling. This is their passion. And you have a validation process. And I would expect any franchise or anybody that's running a business to run it like you're recruiting a championship team. Listen, if I take myself back to the startup days and I'm like, hey, Ryan, let me be honest with you for a minute, brother. And did I have the same mentality when we first started? No, I couldn't believe that 200 people wanted to buy a franchise. I couldn't believe it was, I was just, I said yes more than I should have, you know, and

I learned a lesson from that. We had a location, we had a major metro and we had eight units in the major metro. We opened one, they had seven more to open. And it just was clear to all of us that it wasn't going to happen. We did not do a good job validating. They bit off more than they could chew. We should have stopped them from doing that. And so we made it right.

We basically closed down their gym, reacquired the territories, and made it right financially with those franchise partners so that we could leave in a win situation. And we learned our lesson. And we never did any knucklehead deals after that where we were all about how many locations we could grow and how fast because it immediately came back to bite us. And so from that moment on, I was like, Hey, validate, validate, validate, and make people earn it in a sense, make them like go jump over some hoops, show that they can follow this process. Like the best running backs in the NFL. They look in the playbook, right? And they run the plays.

They run the plays. And so if you're a true entrepreneur, you're a true entrepreneur, you've got to follow the playbook and you get that itch scratched inside of a franchise by your ability to scale things. But most of our franchisees, they're entrepreneurs. They're people that don't want to go out

and risk it all like Morgan and I did to just eat dirt for five years before you're ever getting there and but they also want to have that freedom and control so they're entrepreneurs inside of something entrepreneurs we've all heard of that before i love it man but doesn't have to have a part two i think you got yeah you and we can get into some of the future stuff and maybe a little more personal stuff for what motivates you to the guy to add something that's pushing you. So I appreciate that.

And I would love to do a part two as we move forward. Where can everybody learn more about Burn Bootcamp? There's a, yeah, go on Devin. YouTube is probably our best channel to go interact with the brand and experience the product from your couch at home. Can't be on your couch technically, but and then all the social media platforms,

Instagram, people can come hang out with me on Devin Klein, D-E-V-I-N-D, J-L-I-N-E. And always keeping people up to date with what's going on. And I'm getting ready to start a YouTube channel as well. Just I'm doing like 10 minute videos a couple of times a week, just talking about stories of burn.

And I've been like head down building the health and fitness audience for 10 years and building the business. And so I've learned a lot along the way. Part of me getting out, reaching out to you and being on your incredible show is just to start talking about it more. I've got some cool stories to share.

People tell me it's pretty rare. I look around, it's pretty rare in fact. And so I think I have an obligation to share out with young kids like me, who didn't have a mentor, who want to look up to somebody who's been there, done that, and somebody they can, such as yourself, who they can lean on for great advice and just mentorship. So that'll be coming soon, this October. Good. Then let's do a part two in the studio. We'll talk more about that and when that gets kicked off. I got to come see you.

I'll come see the Greenville gym. We'll do a workout. We'll do a podcast. We'll hang out, maybe an extended one in person. We'll bring the camera crews and we'll get it fired up. We'll make a little move.

I love it. I love it. Cool. Really appreciate you, Devin. Everything Byrne's doing, really inspiring and respect the hell out of it. Really appreciate you coming onvin. Everything Byrd is doing, really inspiring and respect the hell out of it. Really appreciate you coming on.

Hey, likewise, Ryan. Thanks, man. Keep it going. Radcast is awesome. Hey, guys, go find us at radcast.com. Search for all of today's highlights. Search for Byrd Boot Camp.

You'll find all the highlight clips, the full episode, everything, all the links to Devin. Go find me at Ryan Alford. I was verified before you can buy it. See you next time on the Radcast. To listen and watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us

on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.