The Game with Alex Hormozi - #1 Mistake I'm Seeing Gyms Make Right Now | Ep 178

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

"Whisper it first. Then tease it. Then shout it." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the importance of creating hype and positioning when promoting new programs or services. He outlines a framework for building excitement and addressing potential customer pain points, and emphasizes the need to follow a deliberate and strategic approach to marketing.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:50) - Don't just promote, address beliefs and information.(3:58) - Send follow-up emails addressing pain points every other day.(7:43) - The last 48 hours are for sign-up links.(11:16) - Rules of selling don't change.(13:52) - Even with marketing, there will be missed opportunities.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

I see so many gym owners make the exact same mistake again and again, and it's forgetting how to position stuff to sell. Welcome to the Jim Secrets podcast where you talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons that we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. Feeling excited for going into 2020. So obviously in the gym industry, 2020, January, New Year's Eve, New Year's resolutions is a time that there's a lot of things. talk now a big picture uh typically the biggest months for service-based facilities is actually like february and march um and i think that's just kind of the compound effect of post uh new year's resolution uh for big box gyms where they actually sell memberships uh january which has to be the biggest month because usually what happens to someone goes there they fail within three or four

weeks and they realize they need more help and that's when uh you know pt sales etc uh pick up february and march now that being said does not mean you should not absolutely dominate january so what I want to go through is the number of mistakes that I'm seeing gyms make right now. And it's kind of, I don't want to say it's cute because it's not cute, but like, I see so many gym owners make the exact same mistake again and again. And it's forgetting how to position stuff to sell. And so what I do is kind of give you a little bit of a countdown of how to create hype that's going to allow you to sell more people into your gym, more people in your programs,

et cetera, it's kind of give you the framework for how I've done it, right? And so the framework that I have is the same framework that I used last year. And right after we did this kind of launch hype framework for prestige labs, the supplement company, we did $2.4 million in five weeks, right? And so, and everyone that I was who's doing that with us, all the different ones who are doing it, or modeling the exact same process, all right? So the big mistake that I see everyone make is they just post and they're like, buy my shit. Hey, sign it for my shit. Hey, sign it for my shit.

And it's really ad hoc. It's not deliberate. And there's no questions or information or belief that are being addressed. It's just like, hey, buy my shit link. Hey, buy my shit link, right? It doesn't work. So the process you have to go through. I heard this recently. I don't know who it's from, but whisper tease shout. And I actually just really liked the way that that sounded in terms of how to promote stuff. right and so uh like we just launched meals right and so if you were if you were trying to launch a new program a 42 day shred a new year new you whatever right you're going to start a little further out and you're not going to be marketing nearly as much it's just enough it's a whisper right and so for me

i think the best place to do that is in your warmer audience um so that's like your free group or your gym you know your your clients group etc you can just make a post with a big countdown timer and like the logo of the challenge right doesn't have to be more than that mind you, you might not even have the thing ready yet. You don't need to. You just need to have the freaking graphic ready, right? So you just post that. You don't even need to put any, any copy around it and just be like, it is coming. And then everyone will get super excited about it, right? A week later, you can do the same thing, you know, with less days on the countdown again, right? We're talking like a month out.

Now, the heavy marketing for me, when I start any more than a month out starting to heavily market, I think it kind of backfires. I feel like it crescendoes too early. So I feel like, I feel like 10 to 14 days is where you crescendo into like max hype. And so putting like the post out a month out and then nothing else, maybe one email one post, a week later, one email one post. And then now you're into the last kind of 14 day cycle. And at that point, then you can really start marketing. I usually do it in a 10 day countdown because maybe I don't like writing as many emails or

I just feel like people are, people have so short of attention spans that like I don't think you need to keep something top of mind for a very long time. I think it's just like keep a top of mind for 10 days and then launch your thing. So what is the process in in that kind of 10 day window? So there's kind of the five or six emails that go out. I like every other day works fine for me. And I probably do it that way because again, I don't like writing tons of emails. But if you're ready, if you're starting 10 days out, you're like email one, you know, day off, email two, day off, email three. That tends to work very well. And what you're trying to do is, you're trying to do. try to adjust and ahead of like ahead of time what concerns someone might have right the things that they would get excited about what is in it for them right um and typically you should be making a

problem that's trying to address certain pains that everyone experiences right so it's like don't like if you if you're including meal prep for example and it's like don't have time to cook don't have time to count your macrass don't have time to go like so then you're going to basically exaggerate or aggravate the pain associated with just buying your own food with just you know whatever right and if you're just you know whatever right and if you if you were selling something that was just like, sure, we launched our meal program. That's why I was just talking about that. But like if you were launching because you're training stuff, right, your services.

So instead it's like aggravating the pain around going to the gym, figuring out what to do, walk around aimlessly, having people judge you and stare at you, wondering what you're going to be doing next. And then all the while giving up and then it's going on the treadmill where you get bored within 10 minutes and then leave ashamed of yourself. Right. So like that's where we're talking about like, okay, we're going to talk in terms of the customer and about the things that they're struggling with. Now, if your program addresses multiple of those facets, then have each email address like the nutrition component of trying to figure out meal plans, blah, blah, blah, right? And then the fitness part about going alone with the gym and not knowing

it's doing. And then like the accountability part of like not wanting to, not being motivated, not having somebody to like help you out, be motivated, like all of that kind of stuff, right? So you hit each of those emails and you basically can just recycle them through again and, you know, lean in on one aspect because the reality is that not everyone's going to read all your email. and sometimes it's better to be reminded than taught, right? And so it's okay to recycle the same thing, kind of hit the same points again, just say it in different ways. All right, so it's kind of like, if you had three points,

you could have like an intro email and then point one, two, three, and then point one and two and three, and then kind of beginning of the crescendo, because at that point, if you had six emails, you'd have like day 10, eight, six, four, two, and now you have one and zero, zero being launched out, right? So day one is gonna be like, hey, 24 hours left, 24 hours left. You don't even need to put any copy in here. It's just like, hey, get ready. Tomorrow's going to be sick. Super excited. Get ready to sign up. Right. Now, on launch day, all right? Really

important. I, if anybody saw for the meals, I emailed like six times on that day, right? And I've got that from Frank Kern. I got that from Russell. I got that from every big internet marketer that I know is that on launch day, the email like six times. And they're like, the reason we do that is because we want it to be on the top of their inbox and they see it. Like, it's just like, you don't even have to have copy in it. You'd be like four hours left. That, dot, dot, dot. And then you're like, your body. You're like, your body. copy, you can be like, see subject. Right? Like, you just want them to see the inbox, right? Now, if you have phone numbers for all these people, you can also do this concurrently with text messages, right? Now, if you're like, I don't want to sell via webinar, which you probably shouldn't. And by probably, I mean, definitely don't fucking do that if you're an in-person business. All right, so please God, like, Alex doesn't have us do what he does because he's trying to hold something back from us. No, if I had a fucking in-person business, I would sell in-person.

Duh, I would use the biggest advantage ever of having trust face to face. Anyways, sorry, a little side note. Anyways, so you're doing your countdown, right? Now, you have your text going on top of that. Now, the text need to be super short, and you're basically trying to distill down, like, that entire email into, like, one bullet, right? Now, the last, like, 48 hours,

which you're trying to push is going to be the link for them to, like, sign up for the thing. Right now, they don't need to buy the thing. Like if you're like the easiest thing is just have them opt in and then schedule a time or just have them straight schedule of time if it's a warm list. If it's like your your client list, et cetera, you can have them to straight schedule a time slot with you because they're probably not going to know show you. Right. And so at that point you can have everyone sign up for the thing so that you can have one on two consultations every 30 minutes. Now it's like, man, Alex, that sounds like a lot of work. I'm telling you every single time.

Like don't be cute. Don't get fancy. This is the best way to launch your facility, have a huge momentous starting. And if you want to also include the referral part, like, which you definitely should, right, like tell them to bring a friend with them to the orientation. You can close the friend and get them signed up because, like, if they're coming with someone, they're not going to not buy unless you're an absolute idiot, right? So like, have them bring people with them.

They can schedule for themselves and just bring their friend with them. It just makes it logistically very easy. All right. So, hey, if you're a returial to do. turn listener and you have not rated or reviewed the show. I want you to know that you should feel absolutely terrible about yourself and everything else in the world. I'm kidding. But it would mean the absolute world to me if you guys would go ahead and do that. You don't even have to pause the show. You can keep listening and you can just do it with your thumb right now. It'll take

you less than 60 seconds. And like I said, the only way that podcast grows through word of mouth and this is you joining hands with me and helping as many entrepreneurs as we possibly can because no one is coming to save us. It's just us. All right. So please go do that now. And let's get back to the show. Big recap. Here's what to do and what not to do. All right. So if you're trying to promote something new, don't just feel like, hey, here's our new thing. Click the link. Sign up. Hey, here's our new thing. Click the link. Like new. Like having sequence, whisper it, tease it, build excitement, right? Then in the 10 days leading up to like your registration opening or where you open up your calendar, at that point is where you go every other day, email,

address their beliefs, and then text, if you are allowed to, you. the same thing kind of on the off day. So if you email on day 10, text on day nine, email on day eight, text on day seven, and that way you have this nice cadence. Inside of Facebook groups, what I've seen in terms of posting cadence, I really stick to the once a week

because it takes like two days for a post to like I feel like it's seen by everyone. And if I post like more than once a week, it just feels like aggressive and people are still like in the old posts. So I just, I've just done once a week. And then with the exception is the last week, I'll do a 24-hour reminder on Thursday

if I'm doing like a launch on Friday or something like that. So that way it's like they'll get four weeks out, three weeks out, two weeks out, one week out, and then 24-hour reminder in the post. So if you're keeping track at home here, there's basically three channels on communicating on. All right, I've got my texts, I've got my emails, then I've got my Facebook posts.

All right. And the Facebook posts, the first two are really just whispers. I don't really say anything. And then the last two before the 24-hour countdown is me kind of doing a high-level overview of how cool the program is and all that kind of stuff, right? And so that is how you want to promote stuff. All right. Now, I think the reason that people get hung up on this is especially if they're excited about something, it seems like something that they want to do. They're like, I can't believe anyone wouldn't want to do this thing, right?

It's like, I'm seeing it right now with meals, right? Which is funny because like everyone should be excited about meals. But the thing is, the rules of selling don't change, right? And so I had a gym owner who came up to us at one of my, one of our masterminds recently. And he's like, hey, man, I just bought this $20,000 piece of equipment. It's this EMS body suit thing. And he's like, so how do I sell it? And I was like, the exact same way you sell everything else.

Clarify why they're there. He said, no, no, but like, how do I sell this thing? I was like, you don't because no one cares. There's literally, like, are they trying to lose weight? Yes. Cool. So they're going to need to exercise and you to work out. the fact that you're using this thing makes no difference,

whether it's cycle, you know, or it's spin, or it's kickboxing or, you know, whatever. Weightlifting, CrossFit, whatever. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter, right? And so, anyways, he was like really sure. He's like, but how did I sell? Like, he literally kept coming back to me like six times in it.

I was like, dude, like it doesn't fucking matter. And so finally, I was like, listen, the only thing that this can do, I was like, the big selling point is that it only takes two sessions for 20 minutes, twice a week, right? He was like, yeah. I was like, then the only thing that you're going to sell, like, that you can have an addition to this is a benefit is that it takes less time. I was like, that's it.

It's not like, that's all. So it just takes less commitment on their side, which you can increase the value of what you're selling because they need to do less. They need to be here for fewer hours of the week. That's all, right? But he thought he had to have like a whole different pitch. It's like, no, man, like it's the same game, right? So don't make that mistake when you were trying to market your new programs.

Don't think because this thing is so awesome. I think it's so awesome. People are just going to go and sign up because it's so awesome. Unfortunately, people don't think that way, right? And you still have to do, and at this point, I feel like it's the dance of sales because, like, honestly, like, I wish I didn't have to make big pitch decks. You know what I mean? That take me like three days to make. But I understand that, like, as humans, we like being sold.

We want to be sold. People like buying stuff. Think about it. Do you like buying stuff for yourself? Do you enjoy going and buying stuff for yourself? Yes. And so what we have to do is just allow people to do that and just take them through the dance that they want us to take. They want us to take them through it.

All right. So build anticipation, whisper it first, then tease it, then shout it, which is going to be the last, you know, three days where you're just pumping it and making sure that everyone sees it. And here's the reality. I sent a bunch of boxes of food to people that I, that are just friends of mine, you've been following, you know, forever. and one person I text, I was like, hey man, I was like, how'd you like that food? And he was like, oh shit, that was you? And I was like, where the fuck have you been? I was like, how did you not?

Like, what? And so then I just realized it was just like a nice reminder of myself is that like you can market your face off and still there will be people who don't see jack shit. Right. And so, anyhow, I hope you guys have an amazing Friday. Make sure. Now, one final warning with this is that if right. now, you're like, oh, I've got this thing that's going to start in three days. If you have done this

wrong, right? I honestly would recommend you take 10 days from now and just make that a little bit of your hype and then follow that process at least the last 10 days. If you don't, you're going to be really underwhelmed with how poorly it's going to do and you're going to be really disappointed and be like, oh my God, I wasted January. Right. So don't do that. Now, in terms of, I saw some questions in my own groups, I might as well just say them now. If it's like, what should I do externally versus internally. You can do both the same thing or you can do them different. It's up to you. It doesn't really matter. Like if you do a 42 day shred, it's going to work externally and internally. If you're doing a six-week new year, new you know, new year, new you, doesn't matter. It's going to

work externally and internally. At the end of the day, the people who are your clients are going to trust you no matter what and they're going to want to do whatever the thing is. Like, they're like, hey, Rosie, do you want to come like do this whole 30 with me? They'll be like, no, I'm like, I'm at Alex's a gym. I'm sure he's going to have something. I'll just do whatever they're doing. Right? Like, you hate. have trust with your clients. Like just do the dance that they want you to do, make them feel excited about buying the thing that you're going to have them buy so that they get more bought into it and ultimately get better results. So anyways, I hope you have an amazing Friday. I hope

you follow these things and don't make the mistakes that I just said. Like you have to promote, you have to do it the right way. And if you don't do it that way, then you will be really sad and less people will lose weight and you'll be, you know, sad face at the end of January, which you don't want to be, all right? Because especially because it's easily avoidable. All right. So tag people like this. Anybody who has to help you with this stuff?