S02 E02 - Inversion Marketing, Celebs and Programming

In this episode, the brothers kickstart their Equilibrium studio by using videos of their clients to market their unique approach to training. The celebrity clients start rolling in and the TRX programming magic proves to be the special sauce...

Transcript

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Podcast. This is season two episodes. Inversion marketing, celebs, and programming.

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So after my several cock-ups with utilities and not being able to get the lights on and not having air conditioning in the studio, we got everything to a point where the gym could actually function as a gym or a private personal training studio in Notting Hill or Holland Park, as it were. So we started off with our own clients. So I brought a bevy of clients, probably 20 clients. Jay brought 10 to 15 clients with him, and things were going well. We were starting to learn the process of running your own studio in West London and trying to take on the big boys. At the time, the big boys, what I mean there is Barry's boot camp, which I think was in central London. Um there was bodyism up the road on Westbourne Grove, and there were a couple of other studios that were doing really well and that were quite well known. We were just the we were the up and comers, the scrappy little underdog. So as I said before, Jay is Jay's your your protestors and systems man. So he was making sure that the towels were washed, the kitchen was clean, the studio was clean. It's not like that I didn't help. It's just that because as you know, I'm mildly ADHD and all over the place, I'm the more creative of the brothers, whereas Jay is straight down the line and gets everything done. So he would allow me to to be me, I suppose, and create what became the social media program of equilibrium. But remember, I was completely um against social media. I thought it was cakes, dogs, trees at the time, and it kind of was. But um, my girlfriend at the time, she convinced me to start using social media as marketing and to actually put it out there because we we had no money, we'd spent all our money on the actual studio build. We'd actually decked this place out, got all the equipment in. So we had everything we needed, including that beautiful TRX Valley, 10 TRXs running down the center of the studio. Again, as I previously stated in the other podcast, if you ever want to know the perfect layout for a studio for a TRX class, I've got it down. Measurements and all, just come to me on Instagram and I'll tell you. So, with no marketing budget, I really did have to turn to social media. Um, and that was a learning curve because I thought the impressive things that I could do on the TRX was the selling point. So I would have videos of me with my top off doing push-up knee tucks or just impressive feats of jumping and athletic prowess, and it didn't work. Nobody give nobody give a shit, and then we didn't get any likes, any views, and then I tried it with Jay, and then I tried it with me and Jay with a little bit more traction when you get two people moving on a video on Instagram at the time. It was kind of a novelty, and people were were impressed by it, but it didn't really bring us any business. Do you know what changed our entire trajectory was that I'd spent years developing unique and truly original moves on the TRX, um, including the TRX headstand, and you can argue amongst yourselves for the people who are listening in the TRX world, I was the first person to put it on video, blah blah blah. So I created this move where you put your feet in the TRX in a plank, put your elbows down on the floor, and flip yourself upside down into a headstand. But the magic of having your feet in that TRX is that you can continually do a headstand, you can go up, come down, up, come down, so you can rep a headstand, which is very impressive when you see it. Now I posted me doing this again, kind of impressive, but no real traction. And we got one of our clients, um, the lovely Jill, who um at the time was in her 50s and I think had three kids. Yeah, that's correct. And we showed her doing this headstand on Instagram, and that was it. It caught on like wildfire. It was like a West London viral moment. It was almost as if all these wealthy ladies in West London, they want it was the next thing that they had to do or had to have. If it was the car, if it was the handbag, the headstand was the next thing that they wanted to acquire. And it was why were they not doing that with the trainer? And then our classes and our PT went through the roof. I didn't come without as controversy because at the time TRX, the master instructors, the education department had a very rigid uh viewpoint of how TRX was supposed to be performed, and they kind of stayed within these guidelines, but it was thinking outside the box that brought all our business to us. And again, I'll talk about this as we go through the through the history of equilibrium and how I get to this point where I am now. Sat in Mumbai training people and living in New York. Um, but that's for another day. So that was our inversion marketing that filled up PT, that filled up the classes. Now, the classes, I had spent years concepting and designing and programming TRX classes for how you could flow them. Remember that I started in Reforma Pilates, and Reforma Pilates classes are all about flow and moving continuously for 50 minutes, and that is the way that I designed my TRX classes, whereas other TRX classes in the world were all about one move and two move, loop them three times and then move on. Whereas I wanted you to move through your entire body continuously to different strap lengths, moving to the floor, getting up from the floor. So you became this almost athletic robot moving through all these different things with lots of flare moves and foundational movements. It was something beautiful that I was very, very proud of. And you can hear the passion as I talk about it. Now, what that did, it was bring in all the mums from West London who then hired us for private group classes. And it just so happened that one on one of these days, um, a lady came in, I won't release her name, um, and she loved the class and she knew Ellie Goulding's manager. Now, when I talk about celebrities that we trained um in equilibrium or throughout my career, I'm gonna name drop, but I'm not gonna talk specifically about those those uh celebrities because they were great clients and I've got nothing but respect for them. Now, this uh this woman knew Ellie Goulding's manager, and that her name is Cassandra, and she won't mind me dropping her name, but that's as much as you'll get from me. Now, what she did was bring Ellie Goulding down to uh our studio and we trained her and we posted some videos of training Ellie, who then became a client for the next two or three years, which was fantastic. But what that did was bring Rita Orin, who Cassandra also knew. It also brought in a few other celebrities like Nicole Schierzinger, BB Rexer, Winnie Harlow, Diplo. There's a there's a multitude of different clients. I'm not going to go into detail, so when I actually post this, don't message me on Instagram because I will tell you nothing. But that actually grew the studio. We ended up in magazines, we ended up in the Daily Mail. I actually ended up in the Daily Mail picking my nose while Rita Aura left the studio. It's quite a funny little picture. I'll try and find it for you and post you at some point. So again, all these little bites of marketing, you know, the headstand, the original handstand movement, the celebs coming in, that started to put equilibrium very, very firmly on the map and started to get mine and Jay's names synonymous with TRX around the world. So we were off to an absolute flying start. Me and Jay were loving life, but as with all things, if you're a studio owner out there, if you're running your own, if you're running your own location, it's a lot of work. You are there from 6 30 a.m. in the morning and you don't leave till about 8 30 at night. And this was starting to take a toll on me and Jay professionally and personally. We'll talk about that in the next episode. Oh, I see, it's starting from there, right.