Optimal Aging

Gym Focus & Fitness Over 50: Rick Mayo on Staying Mission-Driven

• Jay Croft

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In this episode of the Optimal Aging Podcast, Jay Croft sits down with Rick Mayo, founder and CEO of Alloy Personal Training, for an insightful deep dive into franchising, fitness, and the over-50 market. Jay and Rick explore entrepreneurship, messaging, and personal growth—including a fascinating discussion about the book "The Gap and the Gain."

Rick shares how he built Alloy into a franchise with over 300 awarded licenses and more than 100 locations open, all while staying mission-driven and sharply focused. This episode is packed with takeaways for gym owners, personal trainers, and wellness professionals who serve clients in midlife and beyond.

Learn how Rick keeps distractions at bay, how Alloy’s messaging evolved, and why staying focused on franchisee success drives everything he does. If you're building a business to serve people over 50, this one’s for you.

Guest: Rick Mayo

Bio: Rick Mayo is the founder and CEO of Alloy Personal Training, a fast-growing fitness franchise built to serve people over 50. With more than 30 years in the fitness industry, Rick has been a pioneer in small-group personal training and an advocate for purpose-driven business growth.

Links:

  • Website: https://alloypersonaltraining.com
                     https://alloyfranchise.com
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachrickmayo/

Episode Topics

The Gap and the Gain Mindset
Rick discusses the value of celebrating your wins without losing your edge—and how this mindset shift has changed the way he leads his business.

Franchising Lessons
From 2% success rates to surpassing 100 open locations, hear what Rick learned over five years of building a franchise.

Marketing That Resonates
How Alloy learned to lean into purpose and strength messaging to reach their ideal clients over 50.

Avoiding Distractions
Rick shares how he stays focused on what matters most—and why he says no to almost everything else.

Trends to Watch
Strength, experiential fitness, and AI—all seen through the lens of growing a franchise for people in midlife.

Resources Mentioned

  • Selling Longevity by Jay Croft – https://a.co/d/hbtl3p6

🎤 Host: Jay Croft
Jay helps gym owners and health professionals grow with more people over 50 through content, communications, and expert strategy.

🌐 Podcast Website: https://primefitcontent.com

📬 Join the email list: https://primefitcontent.com
📱 Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primefitcontent
💼 Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/croftjay

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Timestamps

00:00 - Intro: Rick Mayo & Jay Croft
01:15 - The "Gap and the Gain" mindset
04:10 - Lessons from 5 years of franchising Alloy
08:00 - What motivates the over-50 client
11:00 - Messaging & brand clarity
14:00 - Who your avatar really is
18:00 - Focus, distractions & shiny objects
21:00 - Why Rick says no to most speaking gigs now
24:00 - How to avoid being your own bottleneck
27:00 - Great marketing moments that stuck
32:00 - Trends: strength, experience, & AI
37:00 - What to ignore vs what to lean into
39:00 - Wrap-up

Speaker 1:

An initiative that Domino's Pizza did one time. That was super clever. They, you know, one of the biggest complaints is like the pizza may show up to someone's house and you know if you've driven over a real bumpy, lumpy road, you know, maybe you shook the pizza up and there's some cheese stuck to the top of the box, or you know, whatever it just it would be disruptive to the structure of the pizza to bounce over a pothole filled road, Right? And so what they did is they, instead of complaining or complaining to the city, they just started fixing potholes and they would put like a little Domino's logo, kind of transparent, but you could still see it like on top of the tar. And they just started fixing potholes all over these little towns, right, that were causing this disruption in the way the pizza was delivered.

Speaker 1:

They got tons of press from that. Tons. I mean, they got all kinds of national press and press releases and stories written and like it's just a really creative way to look at marketing. It's like, well, here's a problem Bouncing down these horrible streets trying to deliver these pizzas. Not good for the pizza, People don't like it, so we could complain about it and try to get the city to do something, or it's not that expensive, we can just go out and patch some potholes. Right, and they did, and so they got whatever permitted they need. They started patching potholes and, lo and behold, it turned into this massive national marketing campaigns.

Speaker 2:

You know, sometimes one good conversation leads to another and that's how we got here to this episode of the Optimal Aging Podcast, the show for gym owners and other fitness and well-being and health professionals who want to grow with more people over 50. Let me tell you what I mean. Yesterday I went up to Rick Mayo's office here in the northern part of Metro Atlanta and recorded his podcast about my new book, which is called Selling Longevity. It's available on Amazoncom now. Rick was kind enough to have me on his show to talk about the book. He's been a big supporter ever since I started Prime Fit Content a few years ago and, full disclosure, I do some work for Alloy Now.

Speaker 2:

The conversation went on for a good hour. We had a lot to talk about. I felt like we could have kept talking one of those you know about serving the older quote unquote older fitness market and communications and content and marketing and key messages and all these things that I geek out on. Well, he kind of geeks out on them too. So we had a good conversation and I wanted to keep it going and he was kind enough to do that today and I thought let's keep it limited, let's keep it tight. I'm going to give you five questions, rick. We're going to do five questions with Rick Mayo, ceo and founder of Alloy Personal Training, and that's what this conversation is. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:

Again, I always enjoy talking with Rick and I think you will too. He's always got a lot of good insight to share about what he's learned and what we can learn from him. I'm not even a gym owner, let alone beginning a franchise business, but a lot of the lessons that he's sharing here in this conversation about entrepreneurship dovetail beautifully with what I'm learning and struggling with in my own business. So I think you'll get a lot out of it. I hope you do. Here's my conversation with Rick Mayo. Rick Mayo hello, my friend, good to see you again. Hi, jay, how are you? I'm excellent today. How's everything in your world?

Speaker 1:

It's good, it's really good. Yeah, so busy as always, but loving it, loving it, so appreciate it, and it's good to see your smiling face again. With you being a new published author, I'm sure you're swamped with book signings and flying all over the country.

Speaker 2:

And yes, you just have to be covered up Right. It's just, it's just really a lot. It's a lot. You know, so many pressures on my time. Everybody wants a piece of me now. I can't, can't, help it.

Speaker 2:

Well, look, hey, thanks for making the time, the time like don't forget, don't forget us little people now that you're a published author, anything, well, I appreciate that again, it's not lost on me. So, yeah, well, you mentioned the book. Thanks very much, and thanks very much for talking about it with with me on your podcast. Yeah, it's gonna air next. You're gonna release that next week, I think. So we're not going to talk all this episode about my book, which is called Selling Longevity and is available now on amazoncom. Oh, look at you, nice plug.

Speaker 2:

Nice plug.

Speaker 1:

It is your podcast. I mean you could just plug the whole time if you want.

Speaker 2:

I'm afraid people might turn it off.

Speaker 1:

Right, leave it alone. We heard about the book already. Enough with the book. It's a good book, it's worth it, it's worth a little promo, for sure.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thank you. I'm proud of it. There's some good stuff in it that I hope people enjoy. And you know, I thought we would open this conversation by talking about another book that you got me to read a few years ago. I don't think you and I talked about it directly, but you talked about it on your podcast. It's called the Gap and the Gain and I thought, listening to your show, I thought that sounds like a nice point of view and I needed to get my head wrapped around that. So I bought this book and it was just fantastic and basically I'll just share the premise, or you share the premise, do you remember?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, look, the idea is that we'll start with the, the idea or the premise that if you celebrate wins, um, maybe gratuitously, that it will somehow affect your push or your drive to push for more right, and so I would say that's something that, historically speaking, I'm not very good at I think I did the podcast with Matt he's also not very good at it Meaning, by the time you get to a win or a milestone or a benchmark, jay, it's like the goalpost has already moved. I always cite the tweet from Elon Musk, love him or not, when he became the wealthiest man in the world and he posted a link to the article about him being the wealthiest man in the world and he said, well, how about that? Dot, dot, dot. Now back to work. And I appreciated that because it's like, well, it doesn't mean much. I mean, look, it means a lot, but you know what I mean. Like in his world, he's probably working really hard. Those aren't.

Speaker 1:

His objective is not to become wealthiest man in the world, and so sometimes when you have lofty goals, you know you set short term goals that'll lead to that long-term goal, but when you're not there yet, it's easy to just, yeah, the goalpost moves, and so a lot of the benchmarks that you set early on become anticlimactic, and this book was giving evidence, essentially, that you can do both.

Speaker 1:

You can both look back at where you started and be proud of your accomplishments, and that it would not be a detriment to your ability to push forward and push for bigger and better things and, if anything, it would actually be a positive. You know lens to where on what you've done and where you're headed. So for me it was a real shift in paradigm to be like wow, we've, you know, we've done this as a company, or I've done this personally, or personal professional development. Like, look, how far I've come and I still have a long way to go. And so I think you can do both. And the idea is that if you do both, you're in a much more abundance mindset. You can, you're happier in general, right. So there's a lot of positive things that come with looking back on the achievements that you've had, as long as that doesn't work against you in the sense that like, oh well, you know, here I am, I've arrived, and I don't think anyone who's paranoid about reading the book and losing their edge would feel that way. Right, I know.

Speaker 1:

I don't, and so, if anything, it's harder for me to remember the ideals and the principles of the book, which is like don't forget to look back every now and then take stock of what you've done and then immediately move forward. And what? What lessons did you learn, or what have you taught yourself? What kind of self-efficacy have you built that you can use as a tool to push you forward, because you're always pushing forward? So, essentially, that's the book is. It's okay to look back and look at the gain.

Speaker 1:

The gap is the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, and that's the easiest thing to focus on, and I think that's okay. You know what I mean. But it's not everything right. There is a gain, so you have made some gains to get here, and, yes, there's always going to be a gap between where you are and where you want to be, but hence the title the gap in the game. You know, can you do both? Is it an and thing, not an, or thing right, right, so I that was a great summation, thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

So tell me how you know you've been. You've been franchising now for a little more than five years. You started right before the pandemic and so not sure how we count those years of lost months, but but you're doing great. Obviously, alloy is booming. I think you've. You've sold more than 300 locations, got more than a hundred open and so plying the gap in the gain. After five and a half years. Now look back and look forward. What do you see?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think. Well, I mean to your point, when we started the franchise and certainly COVID hit. You know, we we launched at the end of 2019. So we had a few months under our belt and then that's nothing, as you know, and then COVID hit and it really derailed us until mid 21. So really, we considered, hey, we really started the process and got things rolling in mid 21. So mid 21 to mid 25.

Speaker 1:

So, really, four solid years, um, you know, to have now 360 licenses awarded or sold is another term for that, and to have 102 open, with 17 in presale, which means we'll have nearly 120 open here in the next few weeks. It's a big deal. And I can look back, even four years ago, at what I thought would happen at this stage and what I thought the sort of the mechanisms and the business systems and softwares and everything that we would need to get from here to there. Yes, some of those are true and some I've learned a ton and what I thought was not true at all. And so, yeah, I can look back and say, wow, you know. I mean, look, there's stats, jay, that we've talked about. Only 2% of you know brick and mortar franchises ever get 100 locations open. So pretty good benchmark right, a pretty good milestone for us.

Speaker 1:

And so I think what the gap in the game taught me and what I've learned is like, if there is something like that, it's really more important. Maybe not even for me personally, it is. It is obviously helpful. But I think more helpful that if I celebrate it, then everyone is, they're just in here working away and it just seems like there's a never ending flurry of of challenges and, and you know, problems to be solved and that's just business in general. But every now and then it's okay for the leader to be like hey, we have a long way to go, we need to keep pushing and look how well we've done, look where we are.

Speaker 1:

There's very few people who get where we are. And also it kind of realigns the expectation. Like why would you expect it to be anything but difficult If only 2% of franchises get here, like we're in the 2%? There is a responsibility that comes with that and so be proud of yourself that you're on the team and it's going to be really hard. It's not going to get any easier at 300, 400, 500. So, um, I think it's been wildly beneficial for me to look back and see the things that we've accomplished that are not easy more, so it's been great to then illuminate those things for the team so that they can also feel good about where we are and know that like it's not going to get any easier. We got a big mountain to climb right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you and I talk a lot about messaging and communications and what you're putting out to the world. Tell me something that you've learned in the last few years or that has evolved, perhaps in your messaging that maybe you thought things were going to be one way when you started the licensing, the excuse me the franchising journey, and somewhere along the last few years you something clicked or you saw it a.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's easy early on to think so there's a couple of ways to look at it. Like, I really think that at times we're in two businesses. Right, we're in the franchise business, which is a business in and of itself, regardless of what the end product or service is, and then we're in the fitness business. It's become apparent which I knew already, but even more so when you start putting scale on something you know a hundred plus locations open that the wise for our customer avatar have very little to do with six pack abs and a lot more to do with quality of life and I think I knew that intuitively.

Speaker 1:

um, everyone will have a secondary goal of weight loss, typically right Coming in. But really, if you read our success stories, it's almost an afterthought and the weight loss was just a byproduct of getting to a healthier place. But getting to a healthier place allowed them to do what our brand promise says, which is live life to the fullest. So we have leaned heavily into that message. If you look at our success story videos that we shoot, it's like you know. We've got a great one out there from a guy who climbed Kilimanjaro. Well, he lost weight and got in really good shape aesthetically, but that wasn't what he was talking about at all. It was all about this mountain climb, right. So we've leaned heavily into that message, as opposed to the typical fitness message. Now, I knew it already, but, boy, at scale, it really has driven that point home. So maybe a reinforcement, if anything, and then, on the franchise side, developing that.

Speaker 1:

It's really a lot about purpose. We get a lot of folks that have been working in corporate for 25 years, their burnout. They want to do something of meaning and put some good in the world and so, again, we've really leaned into purpose. I mean, you have to start with can you get return on investment, yes or no? If you can't do that, it doesn't matter how much purpose it has. But then, beyond that, there's a lot of ways to make money. You could buy a franchise that does fencing or gutters or septic tank cleaning or whatever you want, but it's really nice to be able to get return on investment and put some good into the world. So we've really leaned heavily in our messaging for our franchise into purpose right, why we do what we do. And it's really important not only for our franchisees to continue to be reminded of that, but for people that are considering investing in Alloy, like hey, you can do something that really puts some good into the world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, we were talking yesterday, and I think we were talking about how to decide who you're marketing to, or how to think about who your audience is, and we were talking about how saying you're over 50 is not enough to say that's your defining trait, because there are so many different people in there, and when you started this, you told me once a few years ago that you discovered that a lot of the people that are in your audience are the movers and the shakers, the type A, the go-getters right, I think? You said yesterday something I wanted to ask you about, and that is that there's more than that. It's not just the type A, super-driven people who have succeeded and made a lot of their lives. Was that something that you learned throughout this too, or how has that played into who you're serving?

Speaker 2:

Because, the reason I ask is because I get this a lot from young gym owners not young in age, but who are newer in their business than you are and they ask me well, who am I talking to? Am I talking to little old ladies? Am I talking to studly I talking to little old ladies? Am I talking to you know steadily 55 year old dudes? Who am I? Who's my audience? And and I always say that's, that's up to you, let's talk about it, but your messaging has to align. So how did how? I'm just curious how that evolved for you, if it did at all.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I think there's movers and shakers. If you look at the archetype wheel, you can name characters. One of the characters is named movers shakers. I mean, you can imagine, smarter than the average bear, maybe entrepreneurial. You know, again, financially, that they're at least well-organized enough emotionally and financially to amass enough wealth or to create enough income to be able to afford an expensive service, right, discretionary income, if you will. So I think that mover shaker still stands.

Speaker 1:

But I think when you look at this population, jay, and I think when you just look at people in general, you can have someone that is a mover shaker financially, who's in horrible physical shape, right. So I don't think, I don't think mover shaker always means that that person is also really fit. I think what it means typically, as we're looking at it, is how does this manifest itself financially? And we all know the folks that are financially very successful, but boy, they've done it at the expense of their health, right. And so I think we get a lot of those. So we get people that are smarter than the average bear. They do well financially, but they're, again, they've done it at the expense of their physical health. So I think, when you look at it that way, from an exercise standpoint, we're getting both people that are relatively fit that already exercise Typically if they have a few chinks in their armor or injuries that they can't find a solution to work around.

Speaker 1:

There's not a brand that can do that. We'll get those folks. And then we'll get people that are just fresh, either back to, or first time ever to, a structured exercise program. Um, and they just didn't see anything in market that spoke to them until, you know, we showed up and we have the right imaging and messaging. Obviously, that speaks to our avatar, which is important. So I think we we get both. Both could still be defined as movers and shakers, though, because that would be reflected in their financials, right? Sure, and they're in that realm. So that's what we've noticed. If anything, um, I don't see it as much like a mover shakers, like a super go getter in every aspect of their life is hitting on all cylinders. I don't think it's that.

Speaker 2:

Hey, are you a fitness professional trying to grow your business with people over 50? If you are, then you need to know how to communicate with them, how to market to them and how to get them to trust you with their fitness, well-being and money. We're talking about millions of people who are a little older than the typical market that the fitness industry usually pursues. They have more money, more time and better motivation to make the best long-term fitness consumers you'll find anywhere. If you're not focusing on them, you should be. Prime Fit Content is the only content marketing company designed specifically to help you engage people in this group and to help you distinguish yourself from competitors in your community. It's effective, affordable and super easy to use. Check it out at primefitcontentcom. That's prime, like prime of your life fitcontentcom. Back to the show.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, I didn't. That's good to know. I guess I just want people out there who are looking at you and thinking, how can I emulate this guy's success a little bit. I want to help this market, but it's such a big, broad market. Well, you just have to think about it a little bit. You did a lot of research. You didn't just sit down one day and dream it up and you built your business around your, your, your research, so um what affects everything.

Speaker 1:

I mean we real estate choices. Where are you going to put your location? Well, you needs to be a target, rich environment for our customer avatar, right, and so obviously, with data you can that's more of an algorithm you can find a good place to put it. We have final approval on that, so it wouldn't behoove any of us to put it in the wrong location, right. But after to your point, clearly define your customer avatar and there's a cascading effect in almost every function of the business.

Speaker 1:

From your point, like the messaging you're sending, like you know, if the business, from your point, like the messaging you're sending, like you know, if you guys engage with Jay and he's sending out newsletters a couple times a week for your business, he's going to speak directly to this customer avatar, right, because he knows them. So even that's affected. So every bit of communication, images, you know everything has to speak to that customer and do it well, you know. So that's I think that's why it's so important, jay, and what you're telling those folks that haven't started yet is have a clearly defined audience and then that will affect almost every other decision in your business.

Speaker 2:

Exactly so. Over these last few years, you have created a great many opportunities, and you have probably found a few distractions as well, right, and so I'm wondering how do you decide what to ignore? You know what's noise, what's just squirrel, and how do you stay focused on the big picture of what's really important for developing the brand?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you know going into franchising because I'm a consummate entrepreneur and I have lots of squirrels that run through the room and sometimes right through my brain, you know, with all of these opportunities and extra things to do, but if you're going to do something big and massive, you need to just really stay focused. And it's different, it's very difficult. So I would say it's just a good discipline and so the lens that, at least that I use, jay, is like franchising is very complex at times it's very litigious, there's lots of stages and steps and a million other companies that are supporting it and it's a beast, right. But ultimately, if you can simplify it down to what is the real, you know needle mover in a franchise business, and the answer is franchisee success. If your franchisees are getting return on investment, being able to serve that purpose that you know was the at least the secondary goal, right, why they engaged with alloy then everything's going to take care of itself. That that'll fix sales, that'll fix, you know, the financials of the franchise. Because if the franchisees are doing better, you know we're sharing in their gross revenues, but by taking a royalty which is a percentage of their top line revenue. So they do well, we do well. I love the alignment of that business it's a fractionalized partner, if you will and so that then sets the perfect lens. Will this distraction or opportunity would be a better word Will this opportunity lead to franchisee success? Right, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1:

So I used to speak a lot. As you know, I would speak maybe 20 times a year at different events. Sometimes it was friends that would ask me to come out and speak at events and, and, or just ones that are speaking circuits that I was on for 10 years plus, and when we had a licensing business, which means we were serving existing gym owners, that was a very good vehicle to get out and talk about things, and then people would want to hear more from you and engage with you, and then perhaps you could license them right and power them with a white labeled version of whatever they needed. Well, now that I'm into franchising, those same speaking opportunities aren't as effective or maybe relevant for my business. So I say no to 99% of those. And it's weird. You know, it's a bit of an identity crisis. It's like, wow, I used to be the guy that was up on the stage and everybody loved what you had to say but, like, my main goal is to grow the franchise, so I'll take a speaking engagement if it moves the needle on the franchise, otherwise I'm not doing it Right. And so that's just one example of out of hundreds where I just don't do things anymore.

Speaker 1:

I get a lot of folks that reach out and say, hey, do you still do consulting? No, and it's like, could I take a one hour phone call and charge somebody 500 bucks or whatever I used to charge? Sure, but I don't do it because it's a slippery slope. And it's like again, it's like a discipline, right. It's like, okay, if you're trying to lose weight, you could eat an apple pie and maybe still lose weight, but you just don't because it just, you know, it's just not the right thing to do, and so same here. So I can think of a million examples, but basically that's the ultimate lens. Does it help franchisees, help more people and, by default, make more money? And then, by default, it helps us make more money? If it doesn't do that, I'm not going to do it, period.

Speaker 2:

So I think the lesson, maybe for other entrepreneurs who have, who are not franchising, might be to have some lens.

Speaker 2:

It's going to be a different lens than when, the one that you adopted and reference throughout your, throughout your experiences I do that myself. There's always a new social media channel, there's always a new app, there's always a new doodad to help me do my communications jobs better or to market my business better, or to do something better and faster, and some of it's pretty sexy, you know, and it catches my eye and I'm like, yeah, I want that, let's do that. And, um, I have to think about, well, what's my? My thing is I want to grow the business. I want to get my business to a certain number of gyms where I have a certain ceiling, a certain minimum of clients. That's what I think about, like, yeah, it would be fun to do all those things, it would be cool to go and learn how to do all these new tools, but am I learning anything? Am I helping anybody grow their business? Am I growing my business? That has to be it, because there's just only so many hours in the day, right that?

Speaker 2:

we all have, I think really for entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1:

This is the thing I see that may be the number one mistake that holds them back from scaling a large business. Sometimes you're in the wrong vehicle, I get it, and you're looking for opportunities Nothing wrong with that. But once you land on something that has legs and there's a runway there, your ability to wake up every day and just incrementally improve on that journey whether it's product or service or message or marketing, all the things right that come along with building a business Um, it takes a lot of discipline to do so, so it may take you a minute to find your heat signature. You know we often use the term bullets before cannonballs, which is from a Jim Collins book where you have a finite amount of gunpowder and you're an enemy ship sailing. You're sailing towards an enemy ship in the old days where you had cannons and it's like, well, do you pour all your gunpowder and you only have enough for one big cannon shot? Do you pour it in there and hope you get it right, or would it be more pertinent to put a little bit of gunpowder and a few rifles until you ping a few off the hull and get your range, then load up your cannon? So I think if you use that principle we often say that in our business, hey man, bullets before cannonballs it's like you can have some feelers out there. You can give a little bit of attention here and there, right, because you don't want to have blinders on, so focused on the one goal that you don't have anything in your peripheral that you may miss. But it's a fine line, right. So it's a dance, it's a skill that you can learn over time, where there will be things that pop up that are adjacent but do help you towards that goal. But if they're wildly different and that's what we typically see, and here's what we see but if they're wildly different and that's what we typically see, and here's what we see If you can't focus, what I'll see is a franchisee will start an endeavor.

Speaker 1:

It might be mildly successful, but, boy, that push to get through that ceiling that maybe every business in that category runs into is really just discipline. And it's about again people say it to do the boring work. You know, do the things repetitively until you get so good at them that you can't be denied. That's how you do it, right. It's not sexy, it's not fun, but what we'll see is entrepreneurs will run into that headwind and, instead of just buckling down and continuing to do the thing until they get better at it and figuring it out, they will shift gears and start something else. And so, like you know, oh well, that's not where it's at, I'm going to go here and do this.

Speaker 1:

And maybe it's like, oh, I'm going to go from a like I'm running a fitness franchise, I'm gonna start a coaching business now where I coach other entrepreneurs on how to do stuff. It's like that's not the same business at all. And then guess what? That thing might scale a little bit and project, and you're going to find out that you are the roadblock. You know you're the one holding it back, because as soon as you run into those headwinds, you're going to tell yourself it's not the right vehicle, and maybe I'll do this and maybe I'll do that. And then you're going to end up with, you know, four or five half-baked businesses that never really break through, do anything significant, because you couldn't stay focused long enough. Right, and you thought it was the business model you know, or the opportunity, and it was really just you as an individual. So I see that a lot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I see it a lot with with gym owners trying to get their communications or their marketing messaging out. You know they'll hire me to do their um, their content, and three weeks go by and they don't have 25 new members and they're like this isn't working. Yeah, it's a process. For sure, it's the process. Man, you got to give everything some time, okay? So I promised you five questions and we've made it through three, so I want to keep this.

Speaker 1:

All right, I'll keep it succinct. Let's go. No, I'm not.

Speaker 2:

I'm just saying I'm trying to honor your time here and stay to the premise five questions okay.

Speaker 2:

question number four is, uh, has to do with marketing messages and breaking through the new noise, because we're all slammed with so many messages constantly, right, um? And so I want to ask you, just personally, to think of something that has stopped you and got your attention, naturally, when you weren't even thinking about it. Maybe you're scrolling through your social media, you're flipping dials on TV or flip through a magazine, anything, I don't care. What was a message or an image or something that made you stop and laugh or think or get a tear in your eye, anything like that yeah, I mean, look, there's a bunch of those out there.

Speaker 1:

As you were talking, I was thinking about an initiative that domino's pizza did one time. That was super clever. They um, you know, one of the biggest complaints is like your, the pizza may show up to someone's house and you know, if you've driven over a real bumpy, lumpy road, you know, maybe you shook. The pizza may show up to someone's house and you know, if you've driven over a real bumpy, lumpy road, you know, maybe you shook the pizza up and there's some cheese stuck to the top of the box or you know, whatever it just it would be disruptive to the structure of the pizza to bounce over a potholed, pothole filled road, right. And so what they did is they, instead of, you know, complaining or complaining to the city, they just started fixing potholes and they would put like a little uh, domino, you know domino's logo, you know kind of transparent but you can still see it like on top of the tar, and they just started fixing potholes all over these little towns, right, that were causing this disruption in the way the pizza was delivered. They got tons of press from that. Tons, I mean they got all kinds of national press and press releases and stories written and like it's just a really creative way to look at marketing. It's like, well, here's a problem bouncing down these horrible streets trying to deliver these pizzas. Not good for the pizza, people don't like it. So we could complain about it and try to get the city to do something. Or it's not that expensive, we can just go out and patch some potholes, right, and they did, and so they got whatever permitted they need. They started patching potholes and, uh, lo and behold, it turned into this massive, massive national marketing campaign. So that's one like gaudy example that I thought was just really thinking out of the box.

Speaker 1:

But I saw one today it's funny that you mentioned that that I thought was right on the nose. It was for Amazon's new like um, you know, remote virtual physicians and pharmacy service and it was a family on vacation and the guys in the bed with his like man cold you know we're laughing, cause it's probably not as bad as he's making it out to be and there's a woman there and she's in a bathing suit, you know, and she's got these two kids the floaties and, you know, pool toys and she looks out the window and there's like a wild water park, down below the window, and it's just all kids running around and the dad's, of course, in bed sick, and she just basically gets on Amazon, dials up the doctors on the screen and she just reaches behind her and just hands it to him Like here, like we're not doing this right, you're not laying in this bed all day. Well, I go hauling these kids all over the waterpark. He doesn't even have to say it, you just get it right away.

Speaker 1:

Because so many people have been in that situation where it's like you know, you go on vacation with two little kids. It's really like it's kind of a vacation also, kind of not. And so this mom is just like uh-uh, like I'll get you a doctor, we'll get you some meds and they'll deliver right here to way to advertise in a very real world example that a lot of us, if you've had kids, have been in that situation. So I just thought, I just laughed.

Speaker 1:

I'm like so clever, the guy's dying because he has his man cold. She's like we're not having this. And she dials up a doctor on the phone, taps him on the shoulder, hands in the phone and boy right there on the screen is the is the physician. He's gonna have to tell him his symptoms and then a couple minutes later he's gonna get some pharmaceuticals delivered to his room so that he can take also take the kids out to that very fun wave pool. It's flashed around with a thousand other kids, right, but it was just a clever commercial. It speaks to something that a lot of people have been through and also speaks to the convenience of like hey, you can be laid up on vacation, get a doctor on the phone quickly and have the meds delivered right to your hotel room.

Speaker 2:

So really cool Right.

Speaker 1:

That's a good one.

Speaker 2:

I like that You've made me want to call Domino's pizza for the first time in about what? Since the dorm room? At least they're patching potholes. At least they're patching potholes, that's right. Let's talk about small group personal training. I know something about that, I know. I've heard that you do so. You know, um, I want to say before the pandemic maybe I'm wrong about this, you can correct me, but it was less widely in use. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 1:

It's hard to say. You know, we started it in year 2000. So I knew a lot of private gyms that we had worked with as a license that were doing it. Typically just one location owner operated, you know. So there were people out there doing it nobody at scale though. But yeah, there were people doing it, but nobody really, like I said, at scaling. And sometimes the word small group training would be used for what you and I would call a class, because it was really a small group of 25 people. Right so you know. Then we switched to like, okay, personal training in a small group, and I know that sounds nuanced and it is, but it's important. Small group training is just a bastardized term that can be used for any kind of a class space concept, which we are not at least it has in my mind.

Speaker 2:

It seems like five or six years ago people weren't quite sure what that meant. Does that mean spin class with 40 people in the room? No, and then COVID happened and we weren't doing that anymore and we had to sort of refocus on what we were talking about, kind of like with online training or video training. So what I'm getting at is there's often an evolution of things. Initially, we might poo-poo them or we might not understand them, or we might think, oh, that's a ridiculous trend that's never going to last. So, given all of that, what's something going on now that some people aren't seeing or getting or dismissing as a trend that, if I'm a gym owner, I need to be paying attention to?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think it depends on the model really I need to be paying attention to. Well, I think it depends on the model really. I mean, there's other models that are doing well that aren't in our sector, like the you know the high value, low price. So they're often, you know, hvlp models, which would be like a planet and a cruncher. Certainly those kinds of guys they're doing really well right now. They're way up. So if you look at a lot of these displaced folks, they end up joining a regular old gym and for nine bucks.

Speaker 1:

not a bad deal, right? Some of these gyms offer a lot for that. So that's growing pretty well. And then, in the boutique sector which we're in, people have moved away from maybe cardio based choices which, as we know this day and age, certainly in our avatar, our target age group, it's like strength is really where it's at Right, and that's a very widespread message right now.

Speaker 1:

So I would say, at least for the next five years, you're selling additional, like food tours and bicycle tours and whatever that may be. Just you know, tacking on things like that, experiences based on the location, right? So if I rent the house, it's like hey, would you like to do this? How about a food tour? How about a bike tour? How about a guided hike? I mean, all you know, somebody can come to your house and do yoga, have a chef come over and make you dinner, all these little services that have popped up that are very popular right now.

Speaker 1:

So I think, if you're looking at our industry, think more experiential, which at times can involve AI and at times it can be at the expense of experiential meaning. There's normally a people to people connection there, you know, and so some automation is good. But as we all push for fully AI driven, full automation at least our lens is that needs to be just to bring down friction, to get humans together right, because we still haven't evolved to the point where we don't need other humans in our, in our circle right, and to be with people. Ai is not quite there yet Now. Who knows it moves so fast? I mean, you hear all the reports it's 500 times faster than we are and who knows what's happening right? But right now, that's at least what I see.

Speaker 1:

What people might be missing on is like you fall in love with the tools and the stuff, but not necessarily what the stuff does right. And so for us it's about making human to human connections and just making people again live life to the fullest. I don't think AI is going to do that now, but there are parts of the business where it will bring down friction to make those things easier to get to. You know, it might bring down friction for our franchisees. I mean their efficiency tools, yes, all of that, but as far as the customer experience, efficiency tools, yes, all of that, but as far as the customer experience, um, not so much once you get together. So, anyway, that's where we see it, and it's really hard to say beyond a few years out, jay, just because tech is moving so fast. I don't even you know who knows really.

Speaker 2:

I know it's fascinating and and um and I'm glad to hear you talk about it without any fear, and I'm not afraid of this either there's so many people afraid that ai is going to ruin everything. It's like, I don't know, maybe well, what do I know? But I'm not worried about it, it's like it's always.

Speaker 1:

It's always an ant right like there'll be. Just like any tool that ever comes out, there'll be a ton of super positive things and there'll be governments that are trying to weaponize it right and do terrible things with it. But that's humans. Anytime you give a tool like that to humans, you know that's going to happen. There's there's good players and bad players, and that's always going to be the case. So I tend to be glass half full, like yourself. So I look at all the positive things that AI is going to bring. I can't do anything about the negative things. Anyway, I'm not running any large governments this last time.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no one's asked me to do that.

Speaker 1:

I have no effect over whether we're going to build bots that murder people and do horrible things. I don't know If it becomes sentient like the Terminator and kills us all. Also can't control that, so I choose to look at all the amazing positive things that it's going to bring to our business to get people together.

Speaker 2:

I like that, and that concludes our five questions. But I'm not going to let you go just yet, because you hit on something this idea of broader experiences and bringing people together and the role that fitness plays in that. It goes into a main theme of what I write about, and I know a main theme of what Alloy believes in, and that is that this being fit later in life gives you, when you have the strength and endurance and agility to do the things that you want to do, you have a better life and a better, longer health, span, play span, whatever you want to call it. And I wonder if there are some opportunities coming up. You know, or maybe they're already here, where gyms and fitness businesses can coordinate or or you know, uh, market together with other I don't know travel organizations or biking organizations or hiking groups, or what have you to to get to sort of bring down the walls between going to the gym and having a fit lifestyle, because you know we really want people to be healthy and fit, which maybe that's going to the gym and lifting weights, and maybe it's doing something else.

Speaker 2:

So if you can incorporate that, if we can incorporate that in people's minds, that, um, it's your life. It's not just a place you go to three days a week for an hour and complain about how much you hate it and why, how come I'm not losing any weight and this sucks. It's, it's your life, whatever. Whatever that might be, um, I think that that's the possibility that, uh, you know, I think it's gonna appeal to a lot of people who who just still don't get it about strength training and going to the gym, and we can keep bringing those messages and making inroads, but when we connect the different parts of their life, man, that's where it happens, I think.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. I look forward to where we end up with those things. But yeah, obviously we're on the same path, so I get it 100%.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay. Well, rick promised you five questions. You gave me five and a half, so I appreciate that and look, they were great questions.

Speaker 1:

It's an honor to be on once again. I think we're multi guests on each other's podcasts, yes, so nothing wrong with that. But yeah, man, thanks for giving me a chance to to express some ideas, and the questions were different than the normal question, so I appreciate that well, good, that was, that was what I was hoping for, because, uh, yeah, yeah, gotta do something different.

Speaker 2:

Gotta keep it fresh, all right, my friend, good to see you.

Speaker 1:

Good to see you, rick. Thanks, all right, bye, cheers, cheers.

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Jay Croft

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