The Game with Alex Hormozi - The 6 things I would have told my younger self before opening up my first gym...Tactics & Theory | Ep 80

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

"You're probably not as good as you think you are." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares what he wishes he had known before opening his first gym. He emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the customer experience and hiring an operator and also provides tactical advice on pricing and scheduling.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:(1:43) - Limit classes, set prices, open sessions when full.(5:19) - Focus on customer experience, not just marketing and sales.(11:38) - Hire detail-oriented operator to manage growth infrastructure.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Hello, everyone. I am wearing a Star Wars themed Pinky and the Brain shirt. This used to be my favorite lifting shirt for a very long time. And I just found it in my closet. So I'm very excited about it. That being said, if you were in the podcast and you were listening in, then you can just think of the coolest shirt ever, and that is what I'm wearing. So today, I wanted to make a fun, I guess presentation podcast for you. And I'm calling it the six things that I would told my anger self before opening up my first gym. So I posted the other day a picture of my first gym. The first day, I took, I actually, I didn't sleep for like four days because all my equipment got there like two days before I was planning opening it and it was like disgusting it was all like dusty and nasty and like covered in dirt because I got it like off some you know back to the truck somewhere like it was it was super sketchy but anyways I like I like I needed it to be clean so I like I just it was like I got it and I had to clean it like 20 it just took me forever so anyways I didn't sleep the night before my machine ended up opening but it was a it was a fun ride and I'm and I'm glad that I have memories.

Now, what would I have told myself, my younger self, before I'll be on my first gym, tactics and theories? I'll start with the tactics and I'll just hammer them out really quickly and then I'll kind of go into the theory, which I think is maybe more important or more impactful for you. Tactically, I would have said, don't do unlimited. Do three days a week. You'll double your capacity.

I would have said, don't open up as many sessions as you can with the hopes that you'll sign up more people. Only open up sessions when you already know they're going to be full. Make sure that your prices are, like between 170 and 210 for your lowest session. And if you want to offer semi-private, you need to have it between 500 and 700. And then I would have tapped myself in the head and been like, don't worry, you can do it. And those are like the immediate tactical differences that I would have done.

And then I would have said, Bill, we clean up monthly so that you can make more money that way. But those are like, those are the very easy tactical things that are pain in the butt to fix after the fact. But like if you can start out right and just say, we're doing three days a week. We don't have unlimited. We have a semi-private session that is $500 to $700 to $700 a month, which works out to like a buck $25 to a buck-75 a week. The weekly, that would cover most of the initial front-end huge mish mishaps that I had and lots of mistakes that I made in the meantime. Now, from a theory perspective, this is actually something I'm more interested in sharing with you. There's probably just two things that I would ask myself to consider.

And it's just that when I started out, everything that I thought, about was making money, making sales. And so I came into it. I honestly really didn't have a, I mean, I liked fitness for myself, but within the first month, I realized that I wasn't actually training people, you know, training young dudes to get jacked. I was really helping, you know, 35 to 42 year old women lose weight, which was a lot different. And so very quickly became about money. And so the two things that I would have said to myself is first you need to actually like your customers and you need to embrace the fact that the reason that you don't have people storming into your gym right now is because you aren't that good and that's something that I would really really have tried to

like take the heart and maybe I would only have listened to like my older self saying this but like for the gyms who are on here if the one of the things that bugs me the most is when People are like, I have such an amazing gym. My facility's so huge. Our culture is amazing. Our community is great. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? We just can't get people in the door.

I'm like, do you understand, like, the conflict there that doesn't make sense, right? Like, if it were so amazing, people would tell everyone they know about it. And then your gym would be full. And so there's this thing where we want to, like, protect our own egos and say, like, we're doing so well. We're so good. The realities are probably not. you know what I mean. I always like thinking like half the gyms who are who are in this group are below average,

right? Like half the gyms are below average and everyone's like, well, it's not me. But like you have to like think about that. And the thing is, even if you're above average, it doesn't mean you're good, right? And there's a difference. Like you can be above average, but you can still not be good. And in a day and age where you can call it category economics, but basically economics of any category flow to the king of that category. So you look at Amazon and you search socks,

right? And the first thing that comes up has like 2,000 five-star reviews. And the next thing under that has 100 five-star reviews. And then after that, there's nothing, right? And so the king of the category gets the lion's share of everything else. And the rest of the guys on there are like, man, my socks are so good, right? But they're not good enough. And so I would have not focused as much on, and this might sound crazy for me for me, but like I would not have focused as much on the marketing of the sales and would have focused a lot more on what we could have done to truly create a memorable, unbelievable experience. And until you get people coming in repeatedly and on a large scale, bringing in their friends and family, then you know that you still

haven't succeeded yet. And so I would kind of reset that bar for myself. So that would be kind of like a belief that I would try to attack of my anger self, is that like, you're not that good is what I probably would have told myself. Like you're not that good. Like, you're not that good. like you think you are, but you're not. Maybe you as a trainer or your knowledge of whatever is, but the business that you've created and the experience that you've created for your end users isn't good enough that they actually want to bring their friends. Like, you can ask for it, but like SoulCycle, okay, soul cycle does not have an EFT.

They do not have recurring memberships. They relied solely on an exercise experience that was so good that people would come and then they would come back. they would come and they couldn't help but tell their friends and their family and their co-workers about how amazing their workout happened at that morning. If you listen to the founders and you hear them talk about it, that was their entire, when they started the business, they had already had that intention was how can't make an experience it's so good, so memorable, so exceptional that people can't help but tell everyone they see the rest of the day about it.

That was their goal. And so if you were to set your goal like that rather than think, like, I need 10 more EFTs this month, I just need an extra, I just need an extra 20. I need an extra two grand this month or whatever it is, right? And that's just focused on you or not on your customer. If you were like, how could I, if I was not allowed to market, how could I create an experience that was so good, so amazing, so five-star, that everyone would tell everyone else about it? Hey, if you're a return 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 word. to me if you guys would go ahead and do that. You don't even have to pause the show. You 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. Chippole doesn't market. They don't need to. Their food's so good that people are like, you've never been at Chpolae. We're going for lunch today. I can't believe you've never been in Chappole. I used Chappolell and I use Chappolellas. But like that's that's the point. So like if there was The first point that I would have told myself is that you're not that good and only by accepting the fact that you're not that good will you be able to grow. And if you only think, like if you had to handcuff yourself and say you cannot market, you cannot sell, like you can only get more people by creating an experience that's

truly acceptable, you would probably take more effort in how you're approaching the classes. What does the first five seconds look like? What are the exact things the trainer are supposed to say? energy they're supposed to have. Where are they wearing? Where is everyone located in the room? Are they saying hi to each other? Are you greeting everyone by name? There are all these things that we would probably do if we were trying to be better, but we just don't. So that would be the first thing that I would tell myself. The second thing that I would tell myself is you need to hire an operator. And this is something that I did not do nearly early enough and I didn't understand

the importance of it. And so what I ended up just, I always ended up to, I always ended up trying to pay people less than they were worth and get more out of them. And that was a mistake that I made early on for a while. So I'm not saying, like, I made this mistake for a long time. And the reason that gym lunch has been able to grow at the speed that it's been able to grow is because I wasn't the one running the operations. And because Layla is better than me at a lot of things. And this is one of them. And I've learned a lot from her. And I know that if we were to like open a gym together, like she and I, it would be a totally different experience than the gyms that I had, which were very much sales-oriented, marketing-oriented.

I just knew the numbers of the clients and it was just bringing bodies in and stacking cash. And to be fair, the business was a reflection of who I was as a business owner at that time. And I would tell you that your business, your business is a reflection of who you are as a business owner at this time. And for your business to grow, you will have to grow, and then your business will grow as a reflection of your growth. And so Layla, and so like I said, the second thing I would tell myself is like, hire an operator, hire a great operator. Because if you have this big vision of what you want this to be, you're going to need someone to operate that.

You're going to need someone to have the infrastructure and help you create that because typically the skills that the skill sets and the characteristics that go with being an entrepreneur or a visionary or someone who's like trying to rip their, bring their future and rip it into the present of what they want, you know, creating a dream and making it really. real, that personality type typically is not the type of person who's really good at details and meetings and communication cadences and emails and billing and all that kind of stuff. And so, but it's really important from a customer experience standpoint that all those things are dialed in and are on point. And so I would have said, hire an amazing operator as soon as you possibly can and pay them what they're worth. And so that would have been, and if someone's like, well, what do I pay them?

I would probably say, if you can, try and start somewhere at like high 30s, 40 grand a year, and go from there. You know, I mean, every market's different. So I don't like, I'm like what you said. It's like just use your better judgment. These are going to be people who are really managing your business. And they're really the ones that are going to be responsible, like the mother goose of the business, who can hopefully balance your entrepreneurial spirit with like true care for your customers.

Like the reason that Jim Watch, like I said, is what it is because like we have we have like an entire team of like moms and I hope I'm not trying to sound sexist but like we have like a whole team of moms who like take care of our gym owners you know what I mean I probably and I'm really not that good at customer service a lot of times because like I am not patient and I am not detail oriented a lot of times and I would fail people even with the best of intentions and so it's just being candid with yourself and knowing what you suck at and then aggressively hiring against that and hiring people who really are good. And so like the first thing that I said that I would do is understand that I'm probably not

as good as I think I am and really heavily invest in thinking like how can I make this customer experience so good, so amazing that if I had no ability to market, that people would be banging down my door. And that would be just kind of like a belief shift that I would have tried to tell myself. That's the first thing. And the second thing is, if I had an experience that was that good or I had this desire to make any experiences out good, I would need someone who was going to be able to run the systems and the infrastructure to support that, that dream. And that comes from somebody who's usually a very different personality type. And usually not the type of person that you would initially like.

You know what I mean? Like typically the people who are super detail-oriented and like they're not always people who you immediately would be like, I'm going to be buddies with this person. That's not always the case. but sometimes you have such great working chemistry that you can make something really magical happen. And so it would really be finding that first follower who really buys into the vision, who really, really cares about your customers,

even like almost to the point where you're like, sometimes I'm worried if they care more of than I do. You know what I mean? You want someone like that whose mother goose and who will go above and beyond, not for the money. The money needs to take care of them so that they can get out of scarcity

so that they can not think about money and so that they can be 100% present in your business taking care of. your customers. So and that person also needs to be like fairly dominant like D character because they have to be able to oppose you and say no and you need to listen. And that's probably the last the last thing that I've learned in the the two years of scaling gym launch has been learning to listen to people telling me no. And like everyone wants to be like, I'm just a guns frowning entrepreneur. I see how it is. I call the shots like most times I just

get people to talk it. Most times people just tell me no. And you have have to be okay with that. And it's not always no, it's just like, yes, but not yet or yes, but not now. And being okay with that and saying like, well, what do I need to do to help to make you feel better about being able to do this thing? So if I had to go back in time, I would obviously have given those little quick tactics of Bill Weekly, have three times a week be your main session that you're selling so you can double your capacity. You're under the capacity issues. Make sure your price points between 170, 210, and then between 500 and 700 for semi-privents. There is no man's land between 210 and 500.

There's no point in having it. And then make sure that you can fulfill at least 24 people per hour. Those would be the things that I would have told myself tactically. But realizing I wasn't good enough and really, really heavily investing in the customer experience would be the first one. And then having an operations person who I valued, cherished, and respected their opinion and their skill set and saw as an equal to myself, not as an employee. would have been that that second key to growth that I would have told myself much, much, much earlier on. So I hope that was not too, too tactical or too pie in the sky. I wanted to like, I couldn't, I was, I was going to make a list of like a bazillion things that I have learned

since then. But if there were probably two that I would have boiled it down to that I would have told myself before starting my first gym, that would have been it. So anyways, guys, I hope you found this valuable. Drop a comment or drop a like so that someone else can hopefully find it valuable. But otherwise, have an amazing day, have an amazing week, and I will see you guys soon. Bye.