Run a Profitable Gym
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Run a Profitable Gym
From Facebook to 8 Figures: Mike Doehla's Marketing Approach
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Using mostly unconventional marketing methods, Mike Doehla built a nutrition company that sold to Anytime Fitness for eight figures.
In today’s episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” host John Franklin chats with Mike, former owner of Stronger U Nutrition.
Prior to its sale, Stronger U had over 50,000 lifetime members, and about half of those members were in its Facebook group, where Mike focused on sharing knowledge and building community.
Outside the group, Mike’s marketing tactics ranged from sticking business cards inside nutrition books to sitting in coffee shops with a giant laptop sticker that read “Hi, I'm Mike. Ask me nutrition questions.”
If you’d like to ask Mike nutrition questions—or business questions—you can reach him on Instagram: @mikedoehla
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3:30 - Creating community
9:00 - First 100 clients
23:04 - Getting traction with groups
35:12 - Generating buzz for small gyms
48:59 - Removing unnecessary boundaries
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Run a Profitable Gym . I am John Franklin , the CMO here at Two Brain Business. And this week we are talking about building a strong community using Facebook and to help you learn, I brought one of my friends who happens to be one of the best people I think in the entire world on this topic. He is the previous owner of Stronger You Nutrition. And you may be asking why is he the previous owner? He's a previous owner because he sold it to Anytime Fitness for eight figures. So this man walks the walk, he talks the talk, he comes off as incredibly humble. And that's likely because he is, but he's not afraid to shy away from an internet fight. And we're gonna get into all that now. It is the man, the myth, the legend. Mike Dola . How are you sir?
Speaker 2This is awesome, man. I'm happy to chat and share whatever I know with the audience. So thank you, man.
Speaker 1So when someone tells me they want to build a nutrition coaching company, I tell them that is a terrible idea. I hate those businesses because there is just a built in churn factor. Or like, even if you are the best in the world, people are gonna leave. In fact, if you are the best in the world, people are probably gonna leave faster because you've gotten them the results they want faster and then they just wanna go back to their old life. 'cause , 'cause you've done what , uh, they paid you to do for whatever reason, you've been able to buck the trend. Like when you sold, you had, you had how many thousands of people on the program?
Speaker 2Lifetime. There was 50,000 plus. I think when we sold it was like maybe 6,000 active and about 80 coaches or so.
Speaker 1So insane numbers, Jim , numbers that just make your head explode. And when you ask Mike like, how'd you do it? He's like, I don't know, it was an accident. But like in reality, like what was, what, what do you think made you different than the million other macro coaching companies out there? Like why were you able to get to 6,000 and almost every other nutrition coach I talked to stalls somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to a hundred ?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think a lot of it is the timing of everything was really good to us. So we had a lot of years to build up our reputation, to build our community, to fine tune our processes and everything like that. But it was really just a refreshing approach for people , uh, not only because it was a flexible dieting approach, but because the community was just so fun. Uh, everybody was so cool with each other, everybody was helping each other. I think a lot of nutrition coaches now, they try to, they either just try to post reels and things like that and grow that way. Uh, they haven't really fine tuned A, their philosophy and b how they're gonna deliver it. And it's just kind of a little bit of a jumbled mess. So we just, we had a singular vision of just , uh, helping people eat a little bit better and have a lot of fun in the process. And we just luckily had the right mix of characters in our group that did that every single day.
Speaker 1You and I both come from the world of CrossFit and our businesses spun out from there. And you and I both had the advantage of excellent timing, which was starting in the early 2010. So that's definitely a part of it. But one of the things that you mentioned is community, and that word gets tossed around a lot in group fitness. I've built, not personally, but uh, through Kilo, we built thousands of gym websites At this point. Everyone wants to talk community, community, community, community. Everyone's got the best community. That's obviously not true. And so you mentioned your community. What made it special? Like why was it, why was it better than any other community? You know, is it you like, my my theory is it's you, but like, you know , is there something else you can point to or is it just like, you know, brute force?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's, it's funny 'cause when you, when you say that I get a little uncomfortable because we're not supposed to talk about how great we are , uh, other people can say it, but we can't say it. Uh, I do think a big part of it was , uh, my personality was infused so much into the business and my insanity in terms of awareness and social media presence in the group was so valuable as a CEO for the average person. I think it was so unique to see a CEO of a company of that size interacting with customers, whereas most CEOs or or figureheads are kind of behind the scenes, you know, in spreadsheets and things. So I, I think what it is, is I had such a close pulse on everything. Like the DNA of the business was so much, it was guided so much from all the interactions I saw all day. So just constant positive reinforcement, constant fun, constant problem solving . Having a bunch of different coaches in there that were kind of on the same page, but also had their unique viewpoint on everything. And then it was just like, the best way to put it is everybody talks about community, but that's like a place where people just kind of go to get information. This was a place where people, when they would go on Facebook, they knew the newsfeed was just such a show , but the stronger you group was where everybody was cool as hell, helpful as hell, and experienced as hell. And that's not just me and the coaches, that was the members too. So like when you mentioned yes, we had a lot of churn because, you know, we sold mostly three month blocks. So pe some people did six months a year and beyond, but most people were there for just a little while. But I kept them in the community because I knew they were the experienced people that were gonna help the new breed of clients. So one tip I I give people is think about if you want to kick people out after they're on your program or not. Because for us, if we kick those people out every few months, it's a, it's a brand new fresh group of people that don't know the vibe of the, of the company and the culture. So we just had that from the start and we just ran with it.
Speaker 1Yeah, so they were stewards of the brand. And for context listener, I've done stronger you multiple times. Mateo Lopez, my, one of my partners , uh, in Kilo has done stronger you multiple times. Chris Cooper, the owner of Two Brain has done the stronger You my wife has done it. We're all in the community and I can attest it is an incredible, or it was a com it was an incredible community. I I'm not active in there anymore, so I can't speak to it now. But , um, as we'll , we're gonna pull up some of your old posts here and you can see that like posts in the group were regularly getting 700, a thousand, 1500 likes, like insane numbers for a Facebook group that at the midpoint of the company, like how many people were in there. It , it wasn't like an insane number, it was a lot, but not an insane number like
Speaker 220 5K . And like, you know, not every single member we had got in there, it sucks because they probably would've done better and had a greater time. Uh, but a lot of people would leave too because they thought they didn't, they weren't allowed in there. But I was constant, Hey guys, don't leave, stay in here. Get all the value from this. You can for as long as you want client or not.
Speaker 1And so you started like, you don't shy away from an internet fight and you have a special place in your heart for business gurus. So, so I've seen you, I've seen you pick some fights before on the internet and now that we've talked before that that was a part of your strategy, not like, you know, I'm gonna find something bad to say about this person, but if you genuinely disagreed with someone, you know, you're not afraid to tell 'em why you think they're wrong. You said, you said you were the CEO , you used the word CEOA lot, two brain uses the word CEOA lot, but like, you got your hands dirty, man. Like is it true, like you told me in the beginning you were using your phone so much that you had literal calluses on your thumb, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, I had , um, I was on my phone so much in the case that I had the little bump on the bottom where the charge report was. It would just constantly rub against the side of my thumb. And I had a callous on there and it was just a testament to how involved I was . And it's, it's one of those things that's so controversial now, like social media and hustle culture and grinding and all that crap. But it's like when I look back and I see all the situations that brought us forward, forward, it was because I had that cell phone in my hand and I'm, I'm not gonna pretend that it wasn't valuable for a entrepreneur to do that,
Speaker 1Right? Because a lot of people like to talk about balance and four Hour Work week and how you should have time built in for rest, but usually the people who are, who are, are , are are saying that are where you are now or you sold the company or you've gotten over a couple million in revenue or you have a team in place. But the reality is if you talk to anybody who's built a business of any substantial size, like they're gonna have a dark period where there was no balance whatsoever, like going all in. And so maybe you can talk about how you got that first a hundred clients because I think there's something that everybody listening to this can learn about it even if you have more than a hundred clients already. Like there is some some value in here and it's something that is just not said enough in our community.
Speaker 2Yeah, these were, I I like to refer these people as like the, the grandpa and the grandma of the Family Tree of Stronger You . Without these first few people, there is no stronger You story. And a lot of these people were met because of my involvement in the CrossFit world. And for people that don't know, I was, I was one of those people that didn't know what the hell I wanted to do with my life and wanted to break into the fitness world. And the easiest way for me to do that was affiliate with CrossFit. So I owned CrossFit Newburgh outta my, I don't know , 400, 500 square foot garage in Newburgh where I was living. And that didn't work because I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I could only do it an hour a day. But what that did do was introduce me to so many people in the CrossFit community and all these awesome gyms locally that would trust me as their nutrition solution when I did start talking about it online. So I was in the CrossFit affiliate owners group and I was one of those people that was saying sugar is okay. And obviously it's all context dependent and uh , dosage dependent. But you , you remember at those times, like 20 14, 15
Speaker 1Paleo challenge, prime Paleo challenge,
Speaker 2Paleo challenge sugar is the devil, don't you dare touch it? And I'm like, wait man, some of these, some of these people are so high level and they're putting out so much expenditure, they probably should be eating some gummy bears post-workout. And people were like, oh my God, who are you? Why are you doing this? And I was just, I was very, I was convinced based on my experience and the nutritional science and my understanding of it and application of it, that this is what people needed. And I wasn't shy about it. And I would constantly talk about it with such confidence that I believe people were like, this, this guy's onto something. There's something about this that should, should work if I do it. And I just got a few people and the results they got in a matter of weeks and the community and the vibe and the, the attention to detail that I had, they were just telling everybody about it. So that's, that's why I'm so big on, I think coaches these days and companies these days in our field start with how do I make my life easier? Not how do I make the client's life easier? And I was backwards. I said, I'm gonna do everything I can for these clients because life right now isn't that great. And if I get this thing popping off, it's gonna be awesome and I'm gonna gonna be one of those people that can work in a field I like. So I just, I just like harness those first relationships because I knew just like the human population in the world, this can spread so easily because every other solution out there was kind of crappy at the time and people were just sick of what was happening when they would try to lose fat or perform better and fail over and over. So that was it. Just give them what, what they weren't getting reverse engineer the dieting process. Don't just tell them what to do, figure out why they don't do it and plug it in.
Speaker 1So you were talking about building authority a little bit there, and you , you wanted to escape the life you were in. So you, you were working a desk job, you were an hr, right? If I remember correctly. So , so you're, you were an HR guy, you're working behind a desk and you were talking about nutrition and so you don't have like a PhD in nutrition, you know, you don't look like a superhero, you're a fit guy, but um, you know, you're, you're not , um, posting shirtless picks of your 10 pack, which is a lot of people who, who talk about nutrition , um, and get a lot of heat for it. Like they're , they use that as authority, just like, look at my abs. But it sounds like based off of this post your , uh, origin story begins with a bagel. Is that , is this true or is this an April Fool's joke?
Speaker 2Well, at , at the end you could see it says it's a joke, but I, I figured I'm just gonna make up a story just to make a few people laugh and that's it.
Speaker 1So this is from, if you're listening, I have , uh, the stronger You community up right now, and I'm actually scrolling through some of Mike's old posts. Um, you're referred to in here a lot. And , uh, you refer to yourself in a couple posts as food debt . What <laugh> how did you , how did you get that name?
Speaker 2I think it was from a post a while back where I was, I was making people that were on the program and no longer on the program or people that fell off a little more comfortable with knowing they could always come back. So I think I equated it to like a college kid that goes off to school and then graduates and maybe has to come back home. And I said, your your room is always ready. I want you to think of us as like your food parents. And I maybe I said like, love Food Dad or something. And it just kind of stuck and then people were just saying it all the time. So I was like, all right , it's like a character, like, you know, I wasn't a different person, but it was like, all right , I'm just gonna put a name to this thing.
Speaker 1Yeah. So here we can , uh, here's a post with 1,100 likes. That was in 2019 where it's literally signed off Food Dad . And so you said there's 18,000 people in the group at the time you wrote this post. So it means like, more than one in every 18 people in the group, like this thing. And it was like, this was before there was like an at everybody button in the Facebook group . So just massive. Yeah , I didn't have access . Massive Breach ,
Speaker 2Didn't , that's a , that's a new thing. Yeah ,
Speaker 1Me . So I don't want to get too much into this post. I wanna push you back and talk about getting those first a hundred clients. And, and , and maybe I'll give you a little nudge here since I know your story. At two Brainin , we tell people not to discount. We also , uh, don't like , uh, the idea that a lot of gym owners give their stuff away for free, and that is something you strongly disagree with. And , and so tell us why, and tell us how that was a part of like getting a little traction for
Speaker 2Yeah, so that was when I would get into some of these CrossFit gyms or even other regular random gyms or offices, I figured that a lot of people just like discounts. It's just, it's, there's something very attractive about it. They, they pay attention when there's a sale. They also, it also gives them incentive to share because if something's a discounted rate, cool, I'm special, I'm gonna jump in. So I would give, a lot of times when I would get into these gyms, I would say, Hey, all right , owners or coaches, I'll give everybody in here 10% off. And I was getting at the time, like I'm, I'm researching business, I'm looking at things, I'm hearing everybody say, don't give discounts. And I have what I think evidence that suggests these people signed on because of that discount and the attractive nature of the discount. So I would just get, I don't care. I'll take 10% off the top at that point. I'm a one man show. I don't care about making that 10% up in my bottom line. I'll use that to subsidize marketing costs because now I don't have to pay to market. I could just run around and give discounts to people. So I often think about, you know, I'll never know in reality if the discount helped, but I believe strongly that if I didn't do the discounts and I did 'em in Facebook groups too for certain parties, I wouldn't have had this story happen. Because if, especially in a Facebook group or one of these gyms when they say, Hey, stronger you is now our , our nutrition solution, it's 10% off. People say, oh crap, this thing is 10% off. Rather than seeing, okay, there's stronger, stronger use the nutrition solution at full price. That's not attractive. That's not exciting. So I don't know, man, our , our industry likes to not give discounts because we like to think that like, we're so valuable and we're so special and we shouldn't have to do that. But I mean, we all kind of look for sales here and there, so
Speaker 1Everybody likes getting a deal, man. Yeah,
Speaker 2I , I don't see it as like, oh, you're discounting your service. Yeah, that's the point, man. Like, yeah, it's cheaper. That's it.
Speaker 1Didn't you do your first 10 for free? Wasn't that like your, your first 10 clients were, were $0?
Speaker 2No, they were, they were $120 for 12 weeks. So basically you , I mean you could call it free, it was $10 a week basically.
Speaker 1And that was unlimited access to you, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. And I , you know, it's, it's another one of those things people are like, oh, I need to start at $500 a month. I'm like, dude, I started at, I started at $40 a month. Like, you could talk to me whenever you want. You had your weekly check-in, but you could text me whenever you want. And I would be, that's why I had the callous man <laugh> .
Speaker 1Yeah. So , and , and before you hired your first full-time coach, how many, how many nutrition clients were you working with personally?
Speaker 2When I quit my full-time job, I had 350.
Speaker 1So you were doing 350 one-on-one check-ins. Yeah. You were answering, how many techs were you getting at that point? Dude,
Speaker 2It was just, it was constant. It was like all day. But it was one of those things where these, these people don't, not everybody texts you every day , but, or , or even weekly for that matter. But there's a few that you would talk to constantly.
Speaker 1And on top of that, you were posting in the group, you were posting on your personal Facebook page and you were liking, engaging, you know, how many posts would you say on a given day?
Speaker 2Uh , I , I, I couldn't even say I , if I, if I said it was a hundred, it would probably be 10 times that.
Speaker 1And what was like, were you still able to manage your health? Were were you married at the time?
Speaker 2No, no, I was, I just started a new relationship who is, you know , now my wife and the mother of my children. So I didn't mess that up, which is great. But yeah, dude, it was , uh, and I did this on top of the full-time job, which is, you know, corporate America's kinda laughable because I, I probably could have been part-time, but you know, thanks for not firing me guys.
Speaker 1<laugh>. Yeah, you made it out. Okay. All right . And so you mentioned that like discounts were a way , you thought of like not paying sales commissions or you thought of it as like, that's my marketing expense from that zero to 50,000 client mark, how much money did you spend on paid ads?
Speaker 2Uh , I mean, it was, it was less than a thousand dollars. We tried it a couple times, like Thanksgiving posts and random booths and things like that. But we didn't have a strategy or, or any like agency or any internal marketing person at all. So I would say really nothing.
Speaker 1So how do you think about marketing? 'cause you were the most successful company in this space, and like what, what was marketing to you? We talked about the discounts. Yes . But how else did you think about it?
Speaker 2<laugh> ? My philosophy about it is, and again, I don't know if it's correct for everyone, but my philosophy is when I think of businesses, I don't want to be told from the business that they're awesome because I won't believe it. Because why wouldn't they say that? So my theory was, if I could make all these happy customers be my salespeople and I guess representatives in some way, and even calling them salespeople sounds too tactical. Like I, it was just, these people are happy, I'm gonna enable them to share our website, share their pictures, share their stories, and get everyone on their news feeds. A little curious about what that thing is that they did that made them in better shape or healthier or whatever. And they would do it. They would post all over the place. And that's something I see missing now. I don't see anybody's people posting anywhere, and I can't understand why. If you want your coaching business to grow, you have to have the people who use it say that it's awesome. And that's what we did. It was, it was everywhere. And little tactics, like if, if they shared a picture or something, I would try to encourage them to post it on their newsfeed rather than me posting it. Because if I post it and I tag them, it probably won't be as visible as if they did it. And this time maybe, maybe the news feeds are different now, I don't know. But like, if Susan posts it on her feed, maybe a couple hundred people will see it. And I think those numbers are not attractive enough for a lot of coaches. They're like, I need thousands of eyeballs. I need to go viral. It's like, why? Why do you need to go viral? A single picture? I have, I have stories of not even encouraged, but members just randomly go into the, the Peloton main group with hundreds of thousands of people will just post their picture and mention us, and it would make us $20,000. Like, just because they did it. And I'm like, holy. But that was all the vibe that we tried to create. Like if your people are not sharing your coaching company or, or what you did for them, you have to ask why are they not happy? Do they not know? How do they not know that it's gonna help create more jobs? And that's what I would say, I would purposefully say things like that, wow, you guys just, we just hired four more coaches because you shared this. So not only did I get to quit my job, these four people now have a online coaching career because of all of you. And it's not like this is, these are real feelings. You know what I mean? I just knew, man, this is not company versus client. Like so many businesses, this truly was a little team, and like family gets thrown out there. Obviously these people are not family, but it was this like this little food family that was like, holy, I did good on this program. I'm gonna tell everybody about it because not telling them is selfish. They have enough coaches, they're, they're growing the CEO is cool. He's, he's, he met me for coffee. Like, this is, this is just what the story was. And I love these conversations because it pulls this stuff outta me because I was there, I was living it, but I don't remember enough like how it all went down.
Speaker 1Because what's crazy is like, you have a little bit of a following on, on Instagram. You know, you have , uh, just under 15,000 followers, I'm assuming a decent chunk of them came after the sale because you've been doing a lot of shows and podcasts like this. So the fact that you were able to get that type of reach, it wasn't because you were going viral all the time or doing the latest dance trend. It literally, like, it seemed like it was just a ground and pound approach. Like, you know, I think you were in the, like what were your, your, your hunting grounds? I know you're in the affiliate owners group, I know you're in the masters group. Like were you just going in these Facebook groups every single day and looking for stuff to comment on? Like how were you thinking about it?
Speaker 2Yeah, so pretty much I, and again, these were things I was interested in. So the main ones were CrossFit masters. I was in there before I was 35. It used to be 40. And then I think they reduced it to 35. I think I was in there when I was like 33. So I would always, I would always be cool with the admins too. That was a little, little secret for everybody because these groups don't want you to go in there and try to sell, right? So I would go in there and I'd be like, all right , I'm not gonna sell anything. There's a few people in here who know who I am. So when I comment on common nutritional questions, I get, I get a lot of backup because there's probably someone on my program that has , that has experienced that information. So they could say, oh yeah, listen to Mike, he's a CEO of stronger you . And then they get curious and they look, look into that. But I would just post random, you know, advice here and there. I would get pushback though. I had a few PI had , I remember one guy, I don't remember his name, but it like, it hurt man. He was like, oh, you're just a charlatan. You're just here for business. And I'm like, dude, I, I started this business because I love talking about this stuff. So yeah, I might benefit from being in here, but I'm giving valuable information to every single one of you, whether you sign up or not. So like CrossFit Masters was huge for us. I mean, that's where we probably got in contact with so many of the other CrossFit gyms, not only in America, but Canada, Bermuda, all these different places. And then the Peloton Nutrition, I basically became like the dude in there and then a bunch of people . Yeah, I was like, if , if, if someone had a question and, and I would answer, like, it was basically like, you just listen to just listen to what he says. And again, I'm not this PhD registered dietician , I'm just a dude with a lot of experience dealing with pretty normal and slightly athletic people and their nutritional problems. So that was really one of the things was I just had so many more reps than most people. Because again, I , in my, my first year of coaching, I had like 350 clients, people who coach now maybe don't have 350 for 10 years. So like, again, that's, I , I know I'm all over the place right now. But our coaches, one of the coolest things about having the coaches at Stronger you was , you're getting a fast track to understanding this job. What you're going to know in a matter of months will take a solo coach 10 years and that's no exaggeration.
Speaker 1And so for these groups, was it like you're going in there and posting, here's my chicken salad recipe? Or was it like you were waiting for a question to pop up and responding to the question to the best of your ability and knowledge?
Speaker 2Yeah, I wasn't, recipes are so, like, I'm not the recipe guy other than like making healthier chicken nuggets. Like I'm, I'm not the dude posting recipes,
Speaker 1I feel Yeah, you have like a named recipe after yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 2Mike Nuggets. Yeah, it's , uh, they were delicious. I would go in and just answer questions, man , because everyone is so confused. And I knew that one, I feel really good when I can help these people. And two, I , when I answer these questions, I know a crap ton of people are gonna see it and be like, who is this guy? He's constantly in here answering these questions, not in a yes or no way, but in a very nuanced way. Like some of my questions would , or my answers would be 200 words. And I know that's crazy for some people, but it would, I would think about all the possibilities and everything that these people might be think thinking about, and not just the asker, but the onlooker. And of course that would bring, you know, debates here and there. People would like to battle me about stuff . And like you said, I was not shy about answering or responding.
Speaker 1I think it's important to note that you're always in there. So a lot of people think about like a social strategy or an engagement strategy or an organic strategy as like, I'm doing zero posts and now I'm gonna do three a week and I'm gonna try it for three months to see how it works. And so, yes, that's better than zero. But everybody that I've talked to who've had like insane results like you, it was like, no, it was not like once a day. It was like I was all in to the best of my ability. And it was one of those things where like in a group like Peloton Nutrition, like being, giving the best answer all the time, every time didn't mean you were probably getting like, you know, twice as many leads as the second best nutrition expert in there. You were probably getting a thousand times as many leads because you put in three times the effort.
Speaker 2Yeah, we were constant.
Speaker 1And that was like, it's one of those things where, you know, if everyone's doing three a week and you're doing 30, you're not gonna get 10 x the result, you're gonna get a hundred a thousand x the result because , uh, you own that. You are , Mike is the nutrition guy in there.
Speaker 2Yeah. And we would get, we would get accused by some people who were just grumpy. Oh, it's an MLM oh. And I'm like, okay, well thanks for the compliment that, that's a testament to how engaged our audience is . They love us so much, they will not shut up about us. And they're not, they're not downstream making money off this in any way.
Speaker 1So let's talk about things you were doing online to make your audience love you more. So I'll pull up an example from your Facebook group that I saw that I thought was cool.
Speaker 2Are you gonna make me cry on here?
Speaker 1I hope so. That's good context . <laugh> . So here is a , oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So explain what this is to the people listening.
Speaker 2So I, I'm gonna give credit to, to Goodman , uh, John Goodman a while back posted how he, I don't know , he put like a hundred bucks on a Starbucks like scannable meme or something, posted it and bought like whoever saw a hundred dollars worth of coffee. We were like, okay, we're a bigger business, we got a lot of people, a hundred dollars won't cut it. So we went to Starbucks, we loaded up our account with a thousand dollars and we made a little graphic with the scannable Starbucks barcode and that says, have a coffee on us. Of course, the you was our logo and we posted it in our group and I forget if we posted it, I'm assuming we posted it early in the morning. But we had, and we encouraged people to post their pictures again, get on your newsfeed and spread this for us. We're giving you coffee, I want you to share it for us. So they would go, they would get their coffee, they would post their pictures and everyone was just so happy because like I could spend a thousand dollars on paid ads that would probably flop or I could buy people coffee and then they're gonna just share and like our brand even more. So it was just, this stuff was just so fun to do and it was like so cool to see the engagement. And I'm glad you brought this up 'cause I kind of forgot about this and we did it a few times.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's just people, there's just a ton of people posting photos with the coffee that they did. And then there was a message from you here being like, my bank called me <laugh> , I think we're hacked <laugh> coming back online shortly.
Speaker 2Yeah . It was connected to our , our account.
Speaker 1And you were big on, you were big on , uh, gifts for members too, right? So this was just like a little something you did to surprise and delight. Like what are , what are some other things you did to just like make your clients happy?
Speaker 2Yeah, dude , it was, it's, it's wild. It's like crazy. I think someone's washing machine broke one day we bought them a washing machine. They were just talking about the stresses they were dealing with and we're like 400 bucks, like take it, people , uh, talking about their pants falling off because they lost weight. Hey, I'm gonna send a belt to you, someone's food scale breaking. Uh , uh, one of our coaches would just surprise someone with a food scale. We did vacation giveaways. Um, I had people do a bucket list, like, tell me where your bucket list , uh, idea is. And we picked people to live out these bucket list vacations. And it was like, it was just one of those things where it's really cool to do these things for people because like, I never in my life had an opportunity like to do anything like that. And then you can do it and then you're like, man, this builds the brand. This is just like what we're all about here. And you know, people could say, oh, he only did it because he wanted to build the brand, say whatever you want. But it really did feel awesome to be able to do these things. So we just kept doing stuff like that. And it was, you know, we sent during covid , like we sent people like kids books, Lego sets, like all kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 1Here's one where you ask people to post their Halloween costumes and then the best costume got a hundred dollars worth of Omaha steaks, protein macros. But , uh, vegetarians could have a , I guess they got potatoes from Omaha Steak. Yeah .
Speaker 2See, even, even something like that, it was the playful nature of the group where I say, we'll send you the winner steak, but knowing that there's maybe 10% of our membership base is vegetarian or vegan, I don't want to exclude them. So I'll make a joke about how we'll send you something else because obviously you're not gonna want the steak . And, and it was just one of those things where people are like, wow, he acknowledges the people that are not the main thing while making them feel included and making a joke about it. Like, I don't know how to tell people how to do that. It just kind of, it just pops in in your head, you know.
Speaker 1Let's see. Here's a , here's a photo from a toy drive in 2018 where you filled a 12 foot trailer filled with toys. What , what was this? How'd you get this going?
Speaker 2This was , uh, I forget what year we started. I think maybe like 2016. We might have started where Alessi and I, my, my COO my best friend we went to , um, we went to Target and filled up a shopping cart and it was like 600 bucks and that was on us. And we were like, cool. We did, we took some of the revenue from Stronger You and we donated like $600 worth of toys. And then I was like, what if the next year we get the community involved? So now I probably wouldn't do it, but I gave everybody my address and I told 'em to go on Amazon or whatever, you know, delivery site they want to, and send me the toy and we're gonna donate them locally on behalf of Stronger You . So the first year I did that, it was piles of boxes here and my wife was like, what the dude, what the hell is this <laugh> ? It's like a distribution
Speaker 1Center.
Speaker 2Yeah, I had to , I had to realize what orders were ours and what were sent from other people. And that was kind of difficult. The next year we got a trailer, we get did like a a a pod or something I think, and we filled the thing like thou like thousand toys and it just, it brought the community together. They knew like, alright , during the holidays there's a , in our area, like we're not in an area that's like thriving, so like these kids need help. And they were able to help. And then we were like, look, guys like thousand frigging toys here for the local community. And we did that for a few years really until I, until I bounced. And I think they still, they still did it. So that was cool to, to hear.
Speaker 1And some of these things, so like these toy drives and Starbucks cards and little things you can do to surprise and delight your members. The gym owner can rip this verbatim and you know, that's easy to do. We talked about your, your your , your group arbitrage strategy where you're just in there trying to be the number one guy in the group for nutrition, but , uh, are, are you still in Newburgh? Is that the town?
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm in New Windsor now. So like next town over new.
Speaker 1Okay, so let's say you had a, or, or we don't even have to say you do own a brick and mortar business. So, so once Mike sold, he got into the, he's in the pasta game now. He is , he's a carb paddler . Um , you know , if you're a gym owner listening here and you're not gonna be the nutrition person in, in the Peloton group, what are some ways you would do that if you're thinking about , uh, generating some buzz, some hypes, some community around , uh, a brick and mortar business that's location specific.
Speaker 2One of the, one of the big things is like so many people are a little bit more shy than they should be. I think one of the things that like fitness conferences should be like, someone needs to speak on shyness and how to get outta your shell because we can play on the internet all day long, but there's nothing that beats, especially for brick and mortar gyms being like the person in the local community. So how do you do that? Do you join a lot of leagues? Do you create a team? Do you sponsor a team? Do you get your name out there any way possible? Do you sit on the corner of a busy intersection and give out protein bars and spin a sign that points people to your gym? Like these are the ridiculous ideas that people need to have. It's, do you, do you do a charity 5K that your gym is putting on? Like, do you go to the radio station and talk about it? Like you just join the, the Chamber of Commerce, you have to be out there or you're just gonna be another business that people drive by. And the most successful brick and mortar gyms that I know are doing these crazy things, and I wouldn't even call 'em crazy, I would say you're just getting out there in front of as many people as possible. Like you can cold email or walk up to many businesses in your local community and say, Hey, I have a gym down the street. I want to give your your entire office a free workout. Could I do that one day after work? I'll come by with some equipment. We'll do it in the parking lot. Like you don't know what these things can do. Most of them will strike out at first, but you have to be persistent and you have to get creative with it.
Speaker 1And it sounds like , uh, you definitely got over the fear of putting yourself out here. Here's one that I , uh, love and talk about a lot. That would work probably a hundred percent of the time, but it's just like, you gotta have some, some brass balls to do this. Maybe talk us through what , uh, we're seeing here.
Speaker 2Yeah, so this one I would spend a lot of time in coffee shops and I was like, well, no one knows who the hell I am. I'm just this dude sitting here all the time, so why don't I do something to get some attention? So I created this laptop sticker, I think I uploaded it in Canva. And then I , uh, went to decal girl.com. I have no affiliation with them by the way. And it said , um, hi, I'm Mike. Ask me nutrition questions and if you're shy, go to stronger you.com . So basically few calls to action, come talk to me. If you have nutrition questions, I will talk to you. So I'm not just this guy that's sitting here that doesn't want to talk to anybody. And then if I, I acknowledge that people are shy and they're , it's probably weird for someone to just walk up to me. So knowing that they're nosy and they're shy, I'll put the website right on the sticker and then they could go to that. So I figured why the hell not? Like most people have their laptop sticker with in this world, what a rogue sticker or the Apple logo or I don't know, some protein company. Like why don't you just take those off, get the whole backside of your laptop branded with your gym or your nutrition or your company and invite people to talk about it. And I've had dozens of people copy off this and I tell them to do it. I say, put , just do it because what what can happen? You're just gonna , you're gonna sit there and maybe today 20 people will see, see your logo in your company and maybe a couple people will talk to you. Like just try it.
Speaker 1Yeah. And if you're a gym owner, you can literally just be like, Hey, I own CrossFit so and so talk to me on how to get a free personal training session, or I'd like to give you a free session. Go . And it's the exact same thing. And it sounded like , um, this , uh, you would also drop a 20, it sounded like you would pay for people's coffees. Like just open up a tab , Starbucks and Right.
Speaker 2Leave 20 bucks, a hundred bucks, whatever, and say, Hey, can you, can this cover like the next five people or however many? And they usually say like, oh, some someone bought my coffee, who was it? And they're like, that guy over there. Sometimes I would just get like a nod. Sometimes people would talk to me, other times they would go to the website and eventually sign up. So it's like these little things I would go to, I would do it with toll booths. I had someone in to , in a toll booth when people didn't have epass back in the day and they would , uh, pay for the next few cars behind me here , here's a business card. Can you give it to 'em? Sometimes they would , sometimes they wouldn't. Fast food restaurants. I would go into Barnes and Noble and slide my business card in the books, in the diet and nutrition section because I knew these people are desperate for help picking up probably some garbage book about some nonsense. And I'm like, all right , I'm gonna do it. And I would always post about it when I would do it because it might not work. But if I could get a thousand people to see that I'm doing it and being creative and being playful and taking care of people by buying them , people just gravitated towards that. It would, those were always highly engaged posts on my personal page and in the group when I would be like, Hey, look at the silly thing I just did.
Speaker 1And you would like tape it on like candy during Halloween and stuff, right? Like you, you were big on taping your business card places. Oh yeah .
Speaker 2You know, everyone's like, oh, you don't need business cards anymore. Okay, put, create a card and put a QR code on it. And there's an idea I have now that obviously I don't do, 'cause I don't work in the field right now, but like you could take a card of some sort with a QR code that says something like, make a, make a healthy decision on us and tape or staple a $5 bill and just drop these all over the place where you think a potential customer could be. So yes, someone might tell you your littering, who gives a crap? You're throwing a card with $5 that says make a healthy choice on us, and a call to action to scan, get a free trial, talk to me, ask a question, follow me. And they're just like, who's doing that? What is it gonna cost you 250 bucks? You could get quite a few cards out there.
Speaker 1So we're talking about all these little gorilla strategies you'd post and you know, you have all these little clever things and it sounds like it was just kinda like whatever you thought of that day, right? It wasn't like you had a planning meeting. It just like, you know, people would be like, what's the strategy? What's the, you know, what's the calendar he used? It just sounded like, oh, we should get 5,000 toys and put in a trailer and take a photo of it. Let's go. And it sounded like that was the extent of the planning.
Speaker 2That was it. And I think that's why for me it worked because, you know, when I sold and I was kind of used more towards like, Hey, let's post this on this day I shut down man, I don't want to do that. Don't tell me to post about sleep in three weeks. If you wanna talk about sleep, I'll do it right now. And that was my strategy. It was like, oh, a thought came to my head because of something I just saw. Boom. Put it up, write it, put it up. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not. Grammarly didn't exist when I was doing it or I didn't know about it. So I probably had some errors in there. I didn't give a. It was relative to whatever situation was going on to me, and I knew somebody would resonate with it and I would just put it up there.
Speaker 1And the thing that I think doesn't get mentioned a ton is that you did this stuff, but you did it for a very long time. So I think that the three people who are like the, the, if you're in the fitness industry, you should look at Mike, you should look at Chris Cooper from Two Brain and you should look at John Goodman. I think you guys are, have a healthy social media addiction, which I think is the, the first piece. But the second piece is you guys had did it well before you had successful businesses. So like, we pulled up five or six posts so far, and they were all from, you know, 20 19, 20 18, 20 20. Every one of them had 700, 800, 900, couple thousand likes within the group. These aren't public posts, it's literally within his group. But if you just go back , uh, like three years ago, like you were still grinding out every day, but these posts are getting one comment, 36 likes, 28 likes with 10 comments. Like, it wasn't like you started out and it was like this monster thing, like it just compounded over time. Were you thinking long term or is it just like, this is what I do, this is how I grow my business, and it just came naturally to keep doing it over and over and over again.
Speaker 2Yeah, I didn't , I didn't have any foresight into what would happen. I I really, the goal was help enough people so I could maybe quit this job and just pay my bills. That was it. Because to a fault didn't think it was possible to do what I did. So I ne I never even thought about it. It would be like someone saying they're gonna just, they're gonna build a jet in their backyard and frigging fly to France. Like, that's stupid. Why would I even think about that? So no, I had no foresight, I had no plan. I said, all right , 10 people reacted to this, I'm gonna talk about that. And then you would get clients and it would just kind of roll like that. So it was very much, again, probably why it worked because I didn't have any grand plan. And that was kind of weird for like, a lot of the staff, they're like, what's the strategy? I'm like, I don't know man, just let's just keep rolling <laugh> .
Speaker 1Like it's not
Speaker 2Up today . Like , cool , let's take care of 'em because like nothing else matters. If your customers and your coaches are happy, like, cool, we're just gonna keep doing this. And I'm probably crazy because I never got bored of it until like way later when I had like had my kid and sold the company. But I did this all day, every day for years. And I think like if I'm, if I'm trying to like shrink myself and think about why that worked and how other people can make it work for them is you have to do what you like to do. Like you have to make work, play. So like I would, every time I picked up my phone, I was like, positive reinforcement to me. Somebody told me I helped 'em , gotta help more people. Just got another coach to, to join the team, gotta make sure they're happy so, and and fulfilled so they don't go get another job again. Like I was, I was probably addicted to that in some way. And it was const like winning every day by helping people, getting clients, giving people jobs. Like how could I not want to do that?
Speaker 1Are you a naturally anxious dude? Like, it sounds like you were just like, it was a a , a healthy scoop of stress fueling you, like you it was
Speaker 2Productive paranoia because as things started to grow and, and pretty much tell me like, dude, this is a thing. Like you're, you're doing all right here. I again thought back to like why I , dude, I went to community college, I got some random nutrition certifications. Like I'm not, I'm not one of these startup founders that crushes it. That's like, oh , Stanford dropout. It's like, yeah, that dude, he got into Stanford. Like I didn't even know what the hell Stanford was when I'm starting, you know? So like, these things don't happen to me. So I was constantly not like, dude, I slept great. I would every night pass out like not stressed out entrepreneur, just very dedicated to what we were doing and always knew. I was very grateful the whole time because I knew it could end at any moment because the nutrition game is crazy. Zuckerberg could change an algorithm and ruin everything. Competition can swoop up government regulation, who the hell knows. So I thought that the whole time 'cause I'm still, I still have a lot more experience being a failure in corporate jobs than I did a success. So if we're talking like, who am I, I was never this success story as I was building, I was the guy that was hiding in the bathroom, answering clients trying to get out of his 35, $40,000 a year job. You know?
Speaker 1Glad you made it <laugh>. Yeah . And glad you're throwing the ladder down so other people can climb up. <laugh> , we're gonna be talking a lot about like chatting so DMing people this week on the Tube Brain thing. So you had a steady flow of inbound just from being that guy and literally coaching 350 people and sounds like you were obsessive about answering those people quickly. Were you doing any type of like reaching out to people who weren't clients? Or did you just, was your thing just deliver enough value that people would come to you?
Speaker 2Yeah, I didn't, maybe kind of weird and not normal now that I don't, I didn't DM anybody, so like people that would engage with my posts, I wasn't like, Hey, thanks for engaging, do you have any questions about nutrition? I didn't do any of that. I was just like, here's some information, here's a post, here's this, here's that. And if they dmd me, I would give them the information. But I looked back a while while back at some of my old messages, man , it was so bad. It was someone would be like, tell me about the program. Copy paste information next. Copy paste information next copy paste information. I didn't have good follow up . I had systems. We were just very lucky that we, we were the attractive thing for those people at that time. And they either joined or they didn't, you know, looking back I'm like, man, I wish I had better follow up . But also like, maybe as weird as it sounds, maybe that confidence to not go and follow up was attractive for people. They were like, what is this? Like, he just gave me the information and he, he doesn't care. If I joined , that would
Speaker 1End up the late nineties Abercrombie and Fitch Grind , you know, the <laugh> just being the cool kid at the bar . And
Speaker 2That wasn't purposeful, it was just, I'm, I'm busy answering the clients that I have and the ones that are coming in. I didn't care nearly as much as the potential customers as I did the current ones we had.
Speaker 1So you weren't doing outbound, but we talk , you know, something that's talked about a lot in the fitness business, communities like boundaries, letting your clients know you'll, you know, that you have up to 48 hours to respond to a request. It sounds like you were not about boundaries. Sounded like a big part of your strategy was answering people as immediate as possible. Do you think there's something to that? Uh , and like do you recommend that for, do you recommend that every fitness pro has no boundaries? Like
Speaker 2Y Yeah . To start until you start crushing it? Yes. And call me controversial. These boundary , this boundary conversation is such. It's, again, it's coaches and trainers and rds that just don't wanna do what's actually helpful for people. They want to build the company that they want, not the company that customers need. And in this world where people are so confused about food, you have to be there. You have to be fast. The best. I mean, dude, I, I just, I'm like, so probably annoying to people about it because I'm like, you have five clients and you're telling me it takes you two days to get back to people. You're not checking your emails because you read some book about how email should go away. Tim Ferriss is your role model for a four hour work week . Like, get off that. You didn't earn that yet. You need to give your customers what they need and you need to anticipate that because they don't even know what they need. And a lot of times that takes constant attention. And if you're trying to make it, I'm sorry to say, that's what it's gonna take. And the people that didn't do things like this and still made it out are the survivors that you should not try to emulate, because that's not probably as likely as being all in is.
Speaker 1And so we're getting close to an hour here. I don't want to keep you over. You definitely have an untraditional approach to marketing growing a company. You , you've done it differently and it worked out really well for you. If people are listening to this, they're resonating with it. They wanna learn more, they want to , they want to understand a little deeper how to be more like you. Where are you sending them ?
Speaker 2Uh , I mean, I , I don't know Instagram, but I , dude, people can message me and ask me any question. And I, I mean that like, message me, talk to me if I said anything that you wanna know about or you have questions about, maybe my thoughts on a business decision you ought make. Odds are I've seen some version of it. So just message me. I know it's not gonna be 10,000 to you, so don't think it's gonna be 10,000. Just ask the question. 'cause I love that.
Speaker 1Something went really right if there's 10,000 people messaging you after this. So I hope there is. But yeah man, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I appreciate you staying in touch with the industry, even though now you are officially retired. And , uh, if you guys want to reach Mike just at Mike dola Instagram and you can just put his name in Facebook and he will show up. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about running a profitable gym, just go to two brain business.com and click the book a call button , uh, where you can learn , uh, from many successful Fit Pros. And if you got value outta this, please , uh, like and subscribe. It helps us reach other gym owners and share cool stories and cool business systems and people doing unusual things like Mike here . So that's all for this week. We will catch you next week. Goodbye .
