If you are in the fitness space, you've probably heard of Causely and their Facebook check-in business. They help businesses, mainly gyms, restaurants, and churches, generate social media reviews and referrals by giving back. This helps a business reach more people while creating a charitable reputation for them.Here at Alloy, we have found Causely to be a great giving partner, especially because prior to using them, we would spend so much time trying to vet the charities that we wanted to donate to. With Causely, we know exactly the impact our donations are having as a business.In addition to the vetting of charities, Causely has a dashboard that helps businesses track how many check-ins they got and their social reach in any particular month. The business can bring awareness to their giving culture in a meaningful way.Tune in to learn more about Causely and how we have partnered with them here at Alloy Franchise to give back and do good! Key TakeawaysWhat is Causely and what they do (02:53)How a Facebook Check-in is a powerful marketing tool (06:08)How a giving culture helps a business (12:06)Data shows that a business that gives back will attract more customers (13:35)How Alloy Franchise is paying it forward (18:41)How Causely helps Alloy bring awareness to our giving culture (21:20)Stronger together for the common good (23:33)Looking good, feeling good, and doing good (27:16)Additional Resources:https://www.causely.com/Jeff's email: Jeff.presley@causley.comText or call Jeff on: 8599838493------www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

How do you and your team answer the phone at your facility?How do your conduct a tour of your facility once a prospect walks in?These seem like really basic questions, but you'd be surprised at how many businesses get it wrong and waste the golden chance to convert the prospect to a client.You may run the most creative marketing campaign and get lots of people to call you or walk into your gym, but if your phone scripts and facility tours are not on point, your efforts will amount to naught.You have to strategize, implement, evaluate and continually optimize your processes around how you answer the phone and conduct tours of your facility with the ultimate goal of getting a prospect to book a starting point session.Having done it for many years and seen what works, Rick and Jared dive deep into this topic and give gym owners actionable tips that will maximize their marketing dollars. Tune in!"If your phone scripts and your tour of the club are not on point, you're literally throwing money away." Rick MayoKey TakeawaysHow a good phone conversation with a prospect goes like (01:56)Stand up🧍‍♂️ and smile😀 while answering the phone… seriously (02:51)Don't talk incessantly..... flip the script and ask these questions (03:56)Never sell the process, sell this instead (08:48)How to conduct the best tour of your facility (14:54)How to ensure your prospects book a starting point session all the time (21:41)How trainers should handle walk-ins (22:51)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts! 

We have previously talked about the dirty C-word in our organization; today, we talk about another dirty word, the F word. That's right, we are talking about freezes and their impact on a fitness business.Right from the start, Rick and Matt implore all gym owners, especially those in the personal training space, to consider every freeze as a nice way of your client quitting without saying they are quitting.This way, you are able to fight it by going to the root cause of the problem and addressing it as you should be doing as a personal trainer. In most cases, there is an underlying problem that makes the client want to quit.It is an excellent opportunity for you to hold an accountability session with them to talk about it. It might be medical reasons, an injury bothering them, frustration with failure to lose weight, going for a long vacation, stress, etc.Listen in to learn of some ingenious ways to mitigate against freezes and keep your retention rate high up.Key TakeawaysHow we look at freezes here at Alloy Franchise (02:06)Why a freeze is a nice way of your client quitting without saying it (05:16)Month to month vs. annual contracts (06:18)A freeze is a good opportunity for an accountability session (07:28)How to mitigate against freezes (10:58)How our Alloy app helps us hold clients accountable when they are away (11:45)Consider every freeze as quit so that you can fight it (13:32)How to measure and categorize freezes in your books (16:31)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts! 

In our current Alloy model, we do not use wearable tech as part of our personal training. It has not always been the case; we used to have specific heart rate belts with a screen where people would track their effort during workouts and outside the gym.However, from our personal training experience, we intuitively knew that having your heart rate as high as possible is not the end goal of a workout, and neither is it the ideal way to train. We had essentially created a tool that drove behavior we didn't want in the gym, and we had to get rid of it.For personal training brands and gym owners, we need to understand where we fit in the broader ecosystem of fitness. We are more of a hub of our client's health and wellness, and as such, we are not competing with tech but trying to understand how it fits in our client's overall goals.Listen in to learn more on how wearable tech fits into the wider ecosystem of fitness and how gym owners can fit tech into their business model.Key TakeawaysHow tech is a competitor to any fitness brand (01:36)Where the Alloy fitness franchise brand stands on wearable tech (02:23)How wearables fit into the broader ecosystem of fitness (06:10)Why people who wear wearables gain weight (10:14)Why personal training brands are a hub of people's health and wellness (11:26)Using tech to enhance customer experience (14:00)It's about health and wellness, not just workouts (17:24)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts! 

In this episode, Jared and Rick discuss how to align your fitness business for the post-COVID era. The good news is there is a pent-up demand for fitness services IF you speak the right message to the right audience. Now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel shining brighter with the vaccine program going on smoothly, we need to start looking at how the fitness industry will look post-Covid. Consumer confidence will definitely go up, and people will start getting out more, and as such, we should be ready.The big question is how we align our fitness services moving forward with the new post-Covid normal. One thing that is clearly coming out is that fitness professionals need to do more to educate consumers about what they need to do to get and stay healthy. Not just workouts but from an overall health perspective. Rick reckons that we’re going to need to do better than sell six-pack abs and tight glutes. We need to align ourselves and our messaging around wellness and overall health moving forward. Covid has taught us that fitness is not about looking good; it is literally about our life. It’s about mitigating our risks and giving ourselves the best chance to fight something like this in the future.Click play to hear Rick and Jared talk about how the fitness industry will look like post-Covid and what fitness professionals need to do to align ourselves as a wellness solution.Key TakeawaysWhat we’ve learned about our health from Covid (01:58)How to align our fitness messaging going forwards (05:00)Why fitness is not a quick fix but a wellness solution (06:43)How to approach the market going forwards (08:50)Why fitness professionals are not just trainers but teachers as well (09:33)Why the future of the fitness industry is in overall wellness and accountability (13:54)Systemizing the wellness messaging in the gym (15:37)How to be a relevant fitness brand coming out of Covid (17:35)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

As a gym owner, have you ever thought about raising your rates, then somehow talked yourself from doing it? If you answered yes, then you are in the right place. Rick and Matt explore the reasons why you should consider raising your rates and how to do it in a way that won’t hurt your clients.  The obvious reason why you need to raise your rates is to make more money… duh, which by the way, you deserve as a gym owner for the service you are offering to your clients. The fitness business is the only service where prices go down rather than up, which shouldn’t be the case.However, there is a more compelling reason you should be raising your rates. It has everything to do with the science of psychology. Tune in to find what this is and also learn how to raise your rates and effectively communicate this change to your clients.Key TakeawaysWhy you need to raise your rates (01:35)The little levers that you can pull to make more money in the gym (04:01)Why gym owners fear raising rates (04:39)How raising rates will result in better customers (05:32)The science behind raising rates and why people value what they pay more for (06:34)How to raise rates and communicate effectively (10:57)Don’t underestimate the small changes in your business (16:12)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

In this episode, Matt and Rick discuss the optimal formula for how to pay your trainers.The subject of trainer compensation in the fitness industry is an issue that is always dividing opinions. Many gym owners want to know how best to pay their trainers without compromising their business while at the same time attracting good talent.Your payment structure and other benefits you can offer your trainers will greatly depend on your fitness business model. The small group personal training model offers the best opportunity to pay your trainers decent wages and other benefits such as retirement and paid time off.In addition to this, Rick and Matt discuss the different ways you can incentivize your coaches without affecting your margins.Tune in to this episode to learn of the golden rule and the magic formula to apply when it comes to paying your trainersKey TakeawaysThe magic formula you should use to calculate trainer compensation (03:10)Why the small group training model is the easiest to pay coaches (06:01)How we pay our coaches at our gym (06:46)How the two Alloy Franchise models overall payroll to revenue margins look like (08:21)Why performance-based pay is good for your fitness business (12:23)The problem with gym owners focusing only on topline revenue (15:06)Why you have to pay coaches if they are doing sales (16:40)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

As a pioneer of Personal Training and an expert in systems and scaling, having built a global franchise, Rick has a lot of insights to share on the evolution of the fitness industry and what the future looks like.Rick and Matt talk about the different gym models and how they differ from the perspective of member experience and price points. Rick shares his thought on how the different fitness models need to do to succeed.In addition to this, Rick shares his remarkable journey from how he started personal training in people’s homes to pay his way through college. He then opened one of the first facilities dedicated to one on one training. Due to a lack of systems, some staff left to set up their own studios taking some of his clients with them. This was the birth of a systemized process to training, programming, and gym experience.Tune in to hear Rick and Matthew discuss fitness business models, fitness marketing and client experience, and what it takes to succeed in the fitness industry.Key TakeawaysThe studio within a larger club concept, and this was key to maintain revenues (01:58)How experience differs between large gyms and studio models and what you need do (05:04)How to upsell from base memberships to coaching in a large group model (09:39)Success is like weight loss; you have to change your expectations or change your habits (13:38)Creating a franchise business through a systemized approach to training, programming, and experience (16:46)The formula to profitability and why you need to outspend your competition (22:53)How gym owners can market to an older demographic like the automotive does (30:35)The massive opportunity that lies in marketing to an aging demographic (38:30)How to have a viable virtual product for a personal training brand (55:00)Where the fitness industry is headed in the next two years (59:07)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts! 

Just like a recipe can easily be ruined by one small wrong ingredient, so can a business. It doesn't matter how well you have done the other 99% of things correctly. If you don't connect all the dots all the time, it doesn't take much to break even a perfect machine.In a fitness business, if you over-promise in the sales office and under-deliver on the floor, and it may be just a small thing, you will push clients away. It doesn't matter how many things you got right if you got one small thing wrong.In this episode, Rick and Matt emphasize the importance of all details in a business. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. As a franchisee or a gym owner, your most important role is to keep reminding your team of the details and why they should be doing them. Always sweat the small stuff.Tune in to listen to a few examples of the Paprika effect in the gym and how small things make all the difference.Key TakeawaysHow one ingredient can ruin your entire business (02:31)If you don't connect all the dots all the time, you'll break the machine (04:20)Sweat the small stuff: All small details are important (07:27)The barbershop experience: Clients expect one thing all the time (07:53)How it doesn't take much to push people away (12:27)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!

Many coaches or personal trainers find it hard to disassociate their likes and dislikes from their client’s needs. They are passionate about certain training types, modalities, or even equipment and project this to their clients. That’s why it easy to tell the preferences a particular coach has by watching their clients.However, this is not the right way to go about it. Rick and Matt persuade coaches and gym owners that the different types of training, modalities, equipment, etc., are just tools in our toolboxes. Our work in the fitness industry is to deliver happiness to our clients.To effectively do so, we have to dissociate our likes and dislikes from our client's needs. We have to look at everything we are doing from the lens of the client. Our goal should be to make as many people happy as we can, and to do this, we have to put our personal preferences and ego aside and focus on the client.Listen in as Rick and Matt talk about delivering happiness through fitness by ignoring their own personal biases when it comes to programming for clients.Key TakeawaysYou have to disassociate your likes and dislikes from the needs of your client (02:31)Fitness is a mechanism to deliver happiness (04:35)Why are you in the fitness business? (07:19)Our goals should be to make as many people happy as we can (10:15)The key to being a great coach and a great gym owner (11:04)The approach to having a successful fitness business (13:02)Additional Resources:www.AlloyPersonalTraining.comLearn About The Alloy Franchise Opportunity---------You can find the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.If you haven’t already, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts!