Gym Funnel Hacking: 200 Leads and 60 Sales Appointments Per Month!

Unleash’d Strength Gym generates 15 times as many leads as the average fitness facility and sets eight times as many appointments.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” owner Joseph Strada reveals the tactics that produce 200 leads and 60 sales appointments per month.

He walks through his marketing funnels, explaining how he earns leads through organic social media outreach, paid Meta ads and referral-driven events such as monthly pancake breakfasts.

Each funnel includes a systemized, VA-driven follow-up process that turns interest into booked appointments instead of lost leads.

Joseph also explains how he improved his online presence by auditing his website and optimizing his gym’s Google Business Profile to boost SEO.

Two-Brain teaches clients to build and operate four marketing funnels that produce high-value clients regularly. If you aren't turning leads into members, analyze your funnels and remove the clogs fast—a mentor can help.

Use the link below to find out how to use the Prescriptive Model to close sales and get results for clients.

Also linked below: “Help First” by Chris Cooper

Links

The Prescriptive Model

"Help First"

Gym Owners United

Book a Call

2:57 - Lead-generation strategies

15:02 - Automations and hiring a VA

22:15 - Optimizing show rates

27:35 - Sales process and closing

30:25 - Advice for gym owners

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

The Median Gym gets 13 leads and only seven sales appointments a month. That's not enough. Today I'm going to talk to a gym owner who crushes those numbers so you can generate more leads and sales appointments too. This is Runner Profitable Gym. I'm your host, Mike Warkin, and please hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening with my thanks. Now, to improve your marketing, you have to track three important metrics. Set rate, that's how many people book appointments to talk to you. Show rate, that's the number of people that book and show up. Close rate, that's the number of people who book, show up, and buy something and start training with you and changing their lives. Two Brain released top 10 leaderboards, three of them for all those metrics. And the averages are 40 sets, 32 shows, and 23 high-value sales. These are awesome numbers. That is a world-class funnel, and that's the average of those top 10 leaderboards. You can see them on our blog. Joseph Strata of Unleashed Strength Gym in Virginia, here in the spot on our set leaderboard with 37. That was in October. He's agreed to come and help you book more sales appointments. And Joseph, I understand that you've beaten that number more recently.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yeah, I was excited when you actually had reached out about the initial leaderboard. Someone reached out, hey, can we put you on the on the board? You I saw you got 37 appointments set, and I was excited because I knew November was gonna was actually crushing it. So yeah, we we set 60 appointments in November. Uh averaging, averaging two a day and still working out some kinks with with some of the other, you know, other metrics, but that one we were super excited for.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, so 37 in October, and you almost doubled it the next month. That that's that's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, let's dig in. I want to you obviously have figured this part of the funnel out. Let's talk about it. We'll help some other gym owners. So talk to me about how many appointments you generally get per month. And I mean, you've just given us two metrics. Is that kind of a standard thing for you? And how many leads are you using to generate these appointments?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Sure. So we've got uh our our lead flow has been pretty consistent over the past, I would say, six months ever since kind of dialing in some of our ads. Um worked with uh comb over there uh with with TwoBrain, got some advice from him in a month or two, and you know, I I feel bad because I I've I brought him on, he he tweaked some things, and I was like, I think we're we're good for a little bit, and uh we're getting we're getting leads and we're rolling. So we've been averaging between you know Facebook leads, general just drop-ins, and then inquiries from our website. I've been I've been dialing in on SEO, got a couple of tools I've been using for SEO for especially Google, really focusing on our Google metrics uh and our profile there. And so we get and we're usually about 200 leads a month.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

So that's from a from a collection of different places, and we've been established now for six years too. So it's like we get people coming in, dropping in friends. We have a little bit of momentum built from from just from that perspective. So, you know, is that a number you can expect right off the bat when you open a gym? Probably not, but being in the area now and being just more well known, uh, I think through our community, it's it's helpful for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Okay, so 200 leads is about a standard for you, and then 37 to 60, 30 to 60 appointments is that about right for an average?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yeah, I think that's that sounds about right. You know, and it's it's always hard to when someone comes in, for example, um, they're gonna be counted as a lead and they might be already visiting for that first time. So that's not necessarily an appointment, appointment that was booked that was maybe we should be classifying that. So really you could say maybe even higher from an appointments booked perspective. But uh, yeah, that's that sounds about right. We we were setting probably 25 to 30 appointments, I would say, a month for a little bit. And that was mostly me doing a lot of the that appointment setting. And so I'm not sure if we are we are we ready to move to like my secret sauce or do you should I wait? I don't want to I don't want to get ahead of the card.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

The secret sauce will come after this question. I just want you to give listeners a 60-second summary of what your gym is. What are you selling into who? Like, give them the lay of the land so they know what what you're doing out there.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, 100%. So we started as just a normal 24-hour access, uh, open access gym. So we catered to strengths, strength athletes for the most part. So when we opened, we were extremely bare bones. We had a couple Della platforms, a couple benches, dumbbells to you know 145, and uh, you know, it was it was pretty straightforward, like a treadmill. And uh over the past six years, we have grown extensively from actual equipment selection. So having two full lines of selectorized and plate-loaded machines, a more extensive cardio layout. We've got the kettlebells, we've got the the row. People can come in and do their their crossfit if they want to, but we're really, you know, our number one offering uh is still just open access gym for for I would say strength and general fitness. We have since moved more into personal training and what and small group training now. Um, and so we have a nice blend, nice hybrid model going. And I'd say our training is is closing in to be equal with our open gym revenue. It's not quite there yet, but it's it's um 40 to 45 percent depending on the month of our of the overall gym revenue. So we do a nice blend of both. I would say I know I'm supposed to have more of an avatar, but we really do have a very broad demographic at the gym. I've got people who are young athletes, I've got a lot of power lifters, I've got Olympic lifters, I've got my parents are in their 80s and they're coming in. I've got a gentleman who's 92 who comes in and does his thing. Like it's literally everyone from just touching a barbell for the first time to nationally ranked athletes uh and everyone in between. So it's a really cool mix. So I think it's really for people, you know, our main avatars people who want something different than a commercial gym. They want the access to the gym or a more personalized community focus uh of the gym or with personal training. So as far as the type of people that come in, it's it's all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

So essentially, if you want to get stronger in Virginia, that comes to you. There we go. I think that's that's kind of your avatar.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

And that's okay. You can be broad, and obviously, like you you solved something that I never could, which is like connecting with the powerlifting, weightlifting community. We always had a few of those people, but they generally went to a gym that was more focused on that. You've managed to do that, then blend in just general people want to get stronger, and then like your parents and other people, everyone in between. That is a really cool avatar. And I love that you you know you've managed to solve that problem because I certainly wasn't able to do that. ARM, I'm guessing now that you're adding more coaching and training, ERM must be going up.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah, no, for sure. That's been huge. And I I know we were talking a little bit earlier uh how you know fluctuation with with actual gym memberships, and for a while, that was like a main kind of vanity metric that I would always focus on. It's like, oh, we're getting more members, getting more members. And typically that led to higher revenue, of course. But the you know, the thing with more members is you also get more cancellations, and so there's this like you know, you you take these hits, and you're we, you know, being a more open access gym, I I think we probably have a higher churn rate than like a small group or semi-private one-on-one training gym, that kind of thing. And so, you know, you see members coming and going a lot, and so you kind of get a little numb, not numb, but like used to that, and it's something to be stay on top of. But yeah, to your point, we've also been replacing lower lower ticket members with higher ticket members, and so even though numbers of members stay the same or or only go up more gradually, we can still see increase in revenue, which was what we've seen. Uh, and now we're seeing both revenue and gym numbers go up, which uh we love to see, you know, yeah. Uh them them holding hands on the way up. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I love it. That's that's an awesome transition. And now let's we put the bun on the table. Let's let's hit it with secret sauce here. So let's talk about generating leads. Exactly. What are you doing here to get 200 people a month to connect to your business?

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Sure. So like I said, I think it's a it's a bit of a blend. It's it's a have just having been around for a while. We've got so many people bring their friends in uh every month. I mean, it's um and that's not even something that I'm I'm we do events. I do I make pancakes on the first Saturday of every month for everybody, for whoever wants to come in on Saturday. So we we have open open gym Saturday mornings and I'm cooking at the desk. People walk in like, what's going on? But so we get people who come in from you know for our events. We did a hike, a Thanksgiving hike. So we we really do focus on the community side of things, and I'm still I'm still there five, six days a week. So people know me, people see my myself, my wife at the gym and like building the space, and they know that they you know, people have that. It's it's hard because you get these intangibles and it's kind of cliche, like oh just the atmosphere and the vibes and whatever. But I do think that is it also is a legitimate reason that people bring their friends and they say it's it's it they're excited to show off their gym to someone else, and so we do just get a lot of people who bring their uh bring their friends from just the environment that we've been able to set and create. So that's been a huge one. Um I'm gonna interrupt before you hit to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I just gotta ask you this right off the bat. When you cook pancakes with these things, do you collect like lead information or how do you keep track of the people that come in? Do is that like a systemized thing?

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Sure. So anyone that so we always do, we've done this for a long time. We've always done first workout free, especially being an open access gym. I know that's harder to do from like a class or PT thing, but someone comes and wants to come in for the workout, you know, to check out the gym. I I always let have them come in for a free day pass. So when we do stuff like the pancake days, yeah, we they've got a little waiver on the desk, they just scan that, they put their information in, and that's their their waiver for the day. And we've got them, and they're on our long-term lead nurture list, and they get all my emails and my text and until they you know tell me to leave them alone. So um we'll get to that part too.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

And listeners, I'll just qualify this for you. If you're doing a coaching service, we recommend a free consultation. He Joseph's running a different model here where he's got some access options. That first workout free can work in that setting. But the other thing is that he's following up and consulting with people and talking with people. We're gonna get into that in a little bit. You cannot just run a gym, have people come in for a free workout, and assume they're gonna join. That will not work. You have to add stuff around that. So that structure is very important. And we're gonna talk about how Joseph's making it work. So I interrupted you, hit the next thing that you were gonna talk about. I think it might have been ads, but maybe it's something else.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Yeah, for sure. So um, yeah, ads have been a big one for us for sure, from uh Facebook, mainly, mainly meta and Facebook ads. And I was, you know, uh running, I've I before running uh joining TwoBrain, I had played around with some, never really seen a lot of success. Uh, and then I started, I I made a video, I think I saw someone else's, and I made a quick talk into the camera, uh, really basic video that I you know put some money behind as an ad. And it was just like, hey, if you're tired of you know, hit the pain points, commercial gyms that don't care about you, that everyone's just you know, no one's respectful of the space and don't take the gym seriously, blah blah blah, and you're looking for a more community-oriented, you know, it kind of just like the very cliche like ad. And I I posted that. This was before even working with anybody, really, and it started popping off. I just started I posted it, and all of a sudden I was just getting, you know, we were getting flooded with leads. It was awesome. And so it was just like a particular ad set that that that worked out really well. Okay. And then I I iterated on that, tried it, kind of died down. I talked to Comb uh at you know Two Brain, got some advice from him. He helped me tweak and also added a secondary ad. And honestly, I've had those two ads just because they continue to work. I've been running the same ones now for months. I think my the Instagram one has like a thousand likes on it now at this point, just from which is weird for an ad. Um, tons of comments, and that's another lead generation. I'll get to that in a second, too. Yeah, nice. So so every day we get a couple a couple ads, a couple leads a day from that. Uh, I'm putting about, I think I've got 30 or 30 or 40 bucks a day at this point. I think we're at 1200 bucks a month on ad spend for meta. And for a while, it depends. Month to month is weird because you know, you know how it works with a high ticket item can really swing one or the other. If someone comes in and buys you know, a thousand dollar package, you know, it's a great ROAS month that month. Yeah. If someone, if we don't get that package, then it it kills, you know. But we're usually at least one to one, but then that for the month, and then obviously those long-term numbers stay on. But for a while, other other good months we'll have, you know, two, two and a half uh ROAS on like an ad spend. So it's like I'm not gonna, you know, and then that builds over time because there's a recurring revenue. So it's definitely been worth it for us to kind of to buckle in and leave the ads running. So that's been a big one. Uh, and then our really optimizing website and SEO. I've got a couple, you know, I do one, one these things called page, and it's a really cool uh AI tool that reminds me to do reminds and also generates posts and replies and that kind of thing on our Google profile. You link it up and it, hey, hey, we need to, we need it. If you if you're slacking or anything, it reminds you to do something. So hey, we haven't responded to this to this review. Go go do this review. Hey, we need to post a new QA, and it kind of like dials in some of the you know, optimizing that kind of thing. So, yeah, there's a couple different tools we use just for like optimizing our our Google presence, but that's been big. I know a lot of people find us through Google now reviews. You've got over 200 five-star reviews on our Google profile. So that goes, yeah, I've got that all automated now. People getting those after two weeks of membership, you know. I I check in with them and they should uh, hey, can you just do us a quick quick quick review if you're having a good time? And so that's been big for it too. So yeah, just having that online presence. And we have our website through Kilo too. So it's you know, there's some optimizations there. They actually just emailed me saying they want to make some improvements, so that was really cool. It did a website audit, so we're gonna make some changes. So, really just continuing to be a presence online has been huge for us.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

So, listeners, I'll lay out one thing, two things that Joseph has done here. He's tracking metrics. He talked about exactly what his return on ad spend is, how many leads he's getting, how many sales appointments he's getting. He knows the numbers. If you don't know your ad numbers, you don't know if things are working. And the other thing that attached to that is he took different, you know, different ads. This one works. We're gonna iterate a little bit. We've got these two ads, they're working for a long time. We're gonna keep them going. You're not gonna kill our winners, we're gonna let them run because they're working. You don't need to get chase novelty. If something is working, keep it going. So these are important things. The final thing that he noted that you need to do four marketing funnels. He named them all. He's got the referral funnel going with his pancake breakfasts, he's got paid ads, he's got content, and he's got organic social media. There's four of those. If you run all four of those at once, you are going to get more members and it's going to you're gonna close more sales. It's gonna be much easier for you. The caveat on that is don't run four crappy funnels. It would be better to run one of those funnels really, really, really well and then build the others afterward than it would be to do a bad job on all four of them. So start with the one, and I will recommend the referral funnel because it's the easiest one, the cheapest one that takes the best least amount of time and gives you the warmest leads. Start with that one, then start posting on social media, get your content out, paid ads, absolutely start doing that. But do track your metrics because sometimes marketing companies will say, spend more, and you're not getting results. So you got the whole package that Joseph laid out, and I just want to highlight those things for you. Four funnels, Kubrain teaches you exactly how to do that stuff and it can help you do it. So, what does your funnel look like after that? So now we're talking about I come to your pancake breakfast, we're talking a little bit about what happens, but or I see an ad and I click in, I get into your system. What happens next?

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Sure. So we've got uh, you know, we use our our CRM, we got uh Jim Gym Lead Machine uh as our CRM. So we've they've already had some some cool automations built out and we've we've dialed those in a little bit, made them a little more personalized to us in the in the tone and you know the tone we want to reflect. And so we have the automation, so they're getting you know, they're getting texts right off the bat, uh just to just try to start the conversation. And I've tried to make those pretty pretty normal, not you know, you're hey, this is Joe from the gym. Thanks for reaching out.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Like, would you might like to mighty your deadlift today?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Exact exactly. Yeah, you've named it.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I like it.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Trying to trying to be a little a little more just normal. Like, hey, are you you looking for a new gym? Like what and then just try to start that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Uh and so you got a couple automations uh for a while, and this was this was a big bottleneck for us, and this is where I kind of dive into what our appointment setting has improved so much. Uh for a while it was just me doing appointment setting, and I was trying, I don't have a full-time staff right now. I've got some trainers. We were I I was I kind of hired one of my trainers to do some follow-ups, and it was like very casual, and it was like, well, you know, he was busy one day, so he like couldn't, you know, if if you're busy, then you don't get the calls. Well, then I'm like, well, we got 10 leads sitting that haven't been called yet. Are you gonna do that? So it's like we we had some you know, it wasn't dedicated time or uh attention to calling leads, and so I would do it sometimes and spend two or three hours on the phone when A, it's like I feel like I have a million things to do, and obviously this is a high, this is an important part of the business, but I also feel like I shouldn't be so much of my time shouldn't be sucked up just doing that too. You gotta cook pancakes too. You gotta cook pancakes too. Also, man, after at the end of three hours on the phone of just hitting redial and redial and redowel, you're just like, I I gotta get out of the room. So, anyway, so that was a big thing was was I knew I needed more time of for those calls, and and I was like, we've got you know, I had hundreds of leads sitting in our opportunities tab over here on on GLM. And I knew we weren't that there's just lots of money that was sitting there untouched, essentially. And so pulled the trigger, and I tried before to bring on a a uh VA, a virtual assistant, and I was not A, I wasn't the right VA, and B, I did not do a good job of managing uh her and getting things getting operations set and getting just guiding her. And I kind of just assumed like, oh, I'm hiring someone who knows what they're doing, so I'm just gonna let them do their thing. And we weren't setting appointments, so we weren't it was just like not very well. There was no SOPs, there was it was I didn't do a good job of managing that, and it didn't work out very well, and I kind of just like all right this isn't gonna work, I'll take over from here. And then I was trying to do it all myself. It was a mess. We weren't touched, we weren't getting the leads, but I knew when I did spend an hour or two or three doing those calls, we were getting appointment sets. Like, okay, need to really recommit. So I went through the process again for for a VA and I used used one, you know, one of these agencies to help me interview. And this process was a lot was a lot smoother, though. We ended up interviewing like six different people and went through and had a bunch of questions, and I was able to really to talk to them individually face to face, had another person helping me interview them, and we really we it was cool because we ended up all six calls, and we both were like, we know exactly who we're hiring at this point. Found the right found the right guy and brought him on, and he's just been he's been crushing it. And it it was a little, you know, maybe a little serendipity of that we got the right guy, but I think just being able to interview and hear them on the phone and and someone who had the experience of of sales and of of appointment setting in to begin with. Yeah, so I was a little nervous, I was a little apprehensive of doing that for sure. But thankfully, we've been able to make that work. And since bringing him on, Stames James, great dude. We we jive really well, and he's got great phone presence, he's got great uh text presence, and his conversation skills are just very kind, very welcoming, which is there's exactly the model we want to do, right? Like you get some people who are just like, let's let's can you book a sale right now, like book the appointment and a little more aggressive and known that's not the tone I want to set. And so he was he's very uh sympathetic, uh very empathetic, and very, very good conversationalist. And so that's been huge. And so that's what took us really. Like October was a little higher than normal because he came in halfway through October, set a few extra points than usual. We hit the 37. Uh, and then November was his first full, you know, month, calendar month, and that's when we hit the 60 because he's just been literally 40 hours a week. He is he follows up and texts and calls and appointment sets, and that's been just just game breaking for us.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

So the ROI on James, I'm guessing, is a no brainer.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Absolutely. So that's been huge, and yeah, I I just that that's been that's been massive for us. So um the amount of the amount of people that we've just been able to get into the gym and there could like I said, we have that many. Leads coming in, there's easy money on the table, but there's also people need the ask, and you need to make the actually just make the close. But there are people who are ready to give us a lot of money. And if you're not calling them or touch touching bits with them, and that was a huge mistake, even just like I sometimes I look back, we've been open for six years, and I look back and I'm like, wow, I don't know how we made it through the first several years because it was just so it was so random. I mean, to your point earlier, yes, you need to get the collect contacts and follow up with them. I I didn't even have a CRM, I didn't know what that was. I didn't either. I was just like, they would come in the gym. I was like, sweet, hope they come back. Like that was it. And yeah, that was it. Like I I had no nothing and uh no systems in place, no, uh, no nurture, no, you know, I'd send an email every once in a while to my email list. That's about it. So that systemizing the whole process has been huge for us.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

So listeners, Joseph has said everything with metrics attached to it. So everything that he's talked about has come with, and it produced this number or this happened as a result of that, or I track this and this happened. Start tracking your numbers. If you take nothing else from the show, your set, your leads, your set, your show, and your close rates start tracking those numbers. You will see stuff in there and you can take action on that immediately. If you don't track anything, you can't make improvements. The second thing that Joseph said was he got these great numbers, and then he noticed his system was starting to break down because he was simply just couldn't do all the stuff. He's the big wheel at the gym, he's got a ton of stuff he's got to do. He cannot spend 40 hours a week on the phone, right? So he realized his system was breaking down at that point, took clear steps to fix that problem with a VA, then a better VA. Now he's or not a better VA, but with James, and now he's got a great person in place who knows the gym and is keeping it on brand in the nurturing conversations, and almost doubled what was already a leaderboard total of sets. So from 37 to 60 in a month, as a result of hiring this guy, he knows he's getting ROI on this, and now we're working down the system and we're finding out all the things that we can improve. And then we're gonna start closing at a higher rate, we're gonna start doing all these other things, and all of a sudden you can see how a marketing funnel works to build a world-class gym. So your first thing, track your metrics, find the weak spot, address it. Just will ask you this what happens to leads who don't book? You I think you said is James gonna hound them and talk to them until they say no, or how does that go?

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, so yeah, it's been another thing. Just little little process improvements that we're trying to work on. So uh making sure, like making sure my staff has all the when I'm at the gym on a lot of days a week, but I've also got staff now that are covering. So if they need to be out there, you know, one of the big things was like, hey, you guys need to make sure we're updating these appointments because if people aren't showing up, I can't I need to know that they're not showing up. We need to go set them either into the pipeline to to rebook, or uh, like you said, set we'll set set James on them and start hounding them. So that's been honestly one of the one of our bottlenecks, I think, right now, is like is appointment shows. So we've I actually, you know, don't don't uh hate me about my numbers. I don't have the appointment showed for last month right now. But we're we're setting appointments and we're getting a good amount. But I had a day last week where we had like three no-shows or something. It's just like demoralizing, you know, a little bit. But then the next day we'll we'll have you know three or four appointments set and all of them come in. So it it just sometimes switches. And I know like some of those leads to begin with we're never gonna buy, so I I get it. I'd rather them not come in and waste my time anyway. But uh, okay, how can we improve this? So that was actually you know, what's been awesome about you know the mentorship program is being able to sit with my mentor, uh David, every month and we and we look at where's the but where's the gap, right? And so for a while, well, you know, it was those appointments showed, and you know, it's it's still going to be a little bit now. We're setting so many more appointments, we're probably gonna see more no-shows, but we're also gonna see more shows and more closes, you know, from that result as well. But you know, so we're we're dialing in like our automations a little bit. How can we, you know, even from once someone sets an appointment, they get now a video from me at the gym that says, hey, booking your appointment. I'm a real person. This is a real gym. You know, it's not just another a spam call. So we we've set that uh at the the morning of you know, asking them to confirm their appointment, of course, kind of as a reminder, confirm. And then we've also shortened the window that you can actually set an appointment to. And I've talked to my VA too. Uh, because you know, on their website, if you go in the web, if you go on the website, you know, you get you get two or three days to actually book the appointment. You can't book for three weeks out because we all know a three-week out appointment's not gonna show. So we do it. I think it's the three-day, three-day limit. So you, you know, there's much higher chance they're gonna show up for that. And then, yeah, and then I've told my VA to I told James, like, hey, let's not, if you know, if the only thing they can do is come next week, fine. But like at that point, let's hop on a call. Let's see if hey, we have we had an up something open. Can we get get you in tomorrow? So he's been really good about getting them in sooner, and and we're we're working through things, so we're you know, we're trying to look really like optimize that a little bit. And then I even just started asking, like, hey, can I get you the that morning of like we'll see you an hour? Would you prefer a water or a gator eight? And so it just give them an option to say to respond. And that's something I've you noticed in with communication too, is and for a while I was very passive about when I was communicating with people, like, oh great, uh, I hope to see you around, instead of, hey, great, when are you available? Right. So like asking a question that forces a forces a response instead is been is been a big one for me. And I've I've passed that on as well to everyone's just like, hey, when we're asking, make sure we're asking, you know, asking a question versus a statement that we're waiting for them to respond. We need to take the initiative and force, not force them, but encourage a response. So um, when they get to choose something, I remember Alex Ramosi saying something about this, whereas like, you know, uh when they they get to choose something for the appointment, hey, I want a green wristband or a blue wristband or whatever it is, they have a little bit more buy-in to actually make that appointment. They know someone's counting on them, they've already told them what they want. There's that extra couple percent chance they're gonna make it to that appointment now.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yep, that reciprocity is a big, big deal. And it's as simple as, you know, you're doing all the stuff right, like, hey, video text, here's where you park, here's our front door, I got a t-shirt waiting for you, whatever it is. All these things that people do, according to the two-way playbook, really change these numbers. And again, going back to our two uh top 10 averages, 40 sets, that was uh on the top 10 average, then 32 shows and 23 sales. You're never gonna go 40, 40, 40. It's just not gonna happen. That's especially true as you start getting into paid ads and a wider funnel and so forth. You're gonna get leads. Some of those leads are not gonna be perfect. Like maybe they clicked into Joseph's funnel because he got a great ad in front of them, but they decided, oh, you know what, I want to do something slightly different. I want to train for a marathon or something or whatever. They're just not the right fit for his gym or at this time, whatever it is. Some of those aren't gonna book, some of them don't aren't gonna book yet. And that's where the lead nurture comes in because maybe they need to see some more stuff. And so you educate them, you put that stuff in place, you may get them. But it's gonna be un unbelievably rare for you to get 40 leads and or sorry, 40 sets, 40 shows. That's the target, of course, but like it's not gonna happen very often. And you probably won't close every sale because some people just aren't gonna be the right people for your business. And you would do well to say, you know what, the gym down the road is gonna be much better for you. You're gonna have a perfect time there, go there, and they'll do the same thing for you and so forth. But again, you can put all these systems in place to ensure as many people as possible show up and then you start working on your closing, see as many people as possible buy. I'll ask you, we won't focus on this because this is a bus show, but we're talking about generating leads and appointments. Uh, how does your sales process go? Are you doing that? Is James doing that? Who handles it?

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Sure. So uh it's down to whoever's whoever's staffing when that appointment is is set. And so this is actually gonna be one of the next things we're looking to improve. I have an appointment actually today to to increase, you know, to work on our sales, just our improving our sales process and our our verbiage and our coaching. I I really like them, you know, what Chris talks about about moving through the sales process as a coach. And like we're we're here to coach people through fitness, right? But also you're coaching them. Part of that starts at the sales process. And like, look, you came to me because you know that something is wrong in your life, and as selling a good fitness product, we know it it's great because we're we're not trying to be slimy and sell someone something they don't need. We know that you need this, we know this is going to be helpful and improve basically every aspect of your life, right? And so I I've adopted that mindset a lot more of the coaching thing, and I've super feels really good when someone's sitting there stressed out and not able to make a decision, and you're able to coach them to a good decision for them with and have them walk away, you know, happy about it. So yeah, so I've I've definitely gotten better at it, and then I've gotten I've got right now two other guys who are staffers, and we're gonna be starting to go over that a little more regularly, doing a little we've got monthly staff meetings with our with my trainers and my and my staff, but I'm gonna start incorporating a little more of that sales process and working on for my sake uh and for their sakes, just like how can we close a little better? Because there's been many, many pretty hot leads come through, probably ready to buy that we should have just asked for the clothes that got through our fingers kind of thing. Or they were ready to buy that day, and then tomorrow, oh, actually, actually, it's too far. It's like well, it wasn't too far yesterday. Why is it too far today? And so really trying to get better at taking advantage of that initiative that they've taken and try to again not not from like a trap them into an agreement, but it's like, hey, they're they've shown initiative, they're ready to buy, let's let's close it while they're still here. So that's something I we're kind of next on the shopping block as far as improvements go.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

You've just laid out the help first concept. Chris Google wrote a book about that and also the prescriptive model that is coaching people to start training with you, right? It's the coach, it's the first act of coaching is getting them to buy. That is, I'll put links to both of that help first and prescriptive model in the show notes for you guys if you want to take a look at that stuff. It is great and it'll change the way you approach business. Again, it's not pressuring someone into something. They raise their hands and said, Hey, I need help, and you have a solution. You tell them what the solution is, you tell them how to accomplish their goals, you lay it out and you say, Hey, do you want to start tomorrow with me or do you want to start uh in the group? And then you follow up and so forth. And it's a very simple process, but it works like a charm. And Joseph is using it uh to a T. So as we close this out, I know you got to get in the gym and start doing some coaching and training and probably responding to leads. Let's help some people. What is your advice for someone out there who's just not getting a lot of appointments right now? What can you tell them to help them get more people to click that button to make an appointment?

SPEAKER_02 30:35

I think you know, it depends on on where the problem is. And that's kind of firstly, I think a lot of people, first of all, have more leads than they than they realize. Yeah, you know, and again, hormones you talks about this a little bit too, where it's like your whole, you've got a phone, you've got lots of contacts in there, you've got a Facebook, you've got a lot of contacts on there. Like everyone in your in your immediate surrounding is technically a lead. And so, you know, one of the new things, you know, we didn't talk about this earlier, but um, as an example, just trying to get creative about where where you're finding those leads, first of all. So people obviously on our Facebook ads, when they submit a form, they're automatically into our system. People that are not in our automatically in our system are the thousand people that have liked our ad in the past six months or whatever. So that's actually we just started doing this yesterday. I gave I got uh my VA logged into our Instagram, and he's going through messaging every person that has liked or commented on our ads now.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Those are leads.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Uh, so those are all people that should be theoretically in the area that have shown some sort of interest, and they are a potential, they're definitely a potential lead. And we've actually got interaction. And the nice thing about Instagram, they see your profile immediately. They see my face is all over our Instagram profile, making stupid videos, making a fool of myself in some or giving some advice, maybe some something helpful, but mostly being ridiculous. And I like both.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

I like help and humor.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

I like for sure. Um, especially from a big scary strength gym. You see the owner just like uh again, flipping pancakes. Or I had I had one, I set the pancake, skill it up on the treadmill, and so I was running. I'd like run in flipping pancakes, and it was just it was it was one of the other guys on it was a DJ table on the treadmill. So anyway, they see that.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

People need to check this out.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

What's your handle then so they can look for uh unleashed at unleashed strength?

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Okay, check it out, listeners. Yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

There it is. So so yeah, so where was it going anyway? So yeah, being creative. Anyone that has that follows you is a lead, and that's something you know David kind of hocked on too. It's like, how can we and so this is if you're struggling for leads? If you've got all the leads and they're coming in, people are visiting your gym or people are in your CRM, or you know, you you had you have some sort of ads running, or people check your your Facebook your website out, like just just you do need to really find a system to reach out to them more consistently. And I know this these numbers have stuck with me for a long time, and of course I'm gonna butcher them now, but you know, the first time that someone actually responds to you is gonna is like the sixth or seventh or eighth time you actually call or text them for the average, you know, the average lead, not someone who said, I want you to call me, and it takes seven times for them to get to answer their phone or something like that. And so being consistent, and so it's hard because you'll get when I was doing it myself, it was a little depressing because I'd call like 20 people in a row and no one would respond, and I'd leave 20 messages. The thing is, you'd get if you did a hundred calls, you might get five or six people. So, like to actually answer or to whatever, and then you have cut those, you get to so like the problem is it it really becomes a bit of a numbers game and a volume game, a law of numbers kind of thing. So it's like you need to have the dedicated time, whether it's you, whether it's a staff, whether it's a VA, someone to whether they've got they've got AI tools at this point that they can do it. And I don't know, I was looking at some of those, they look cool and I think they're gonna get better. So when that comes available, maybe that's an option. But you know, having something to call and to text the people that are in your actual funnel now and directly invite them personally. Sending a blast, you know, email to everybody, hey, come check out our gym is one thing. But like um, if you can say, Hey, you know, on their phone, I'd love to invite you in for a workout, you know. I think that it really comes down to it is just really spending the time and dedicating the time and effort and focus onto that lead nurture.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Joseph said you have more leads than you think, you just aren't finding them, right? So I'll tell you get your clients, go through the list, figure out, take let's say five or ten of them. Who do they live and work with? Let's get let's talk to those clients and ask them to bring a friend in for a free consultation or or a or a two-on-one workout. Okay, so that's that's you could do that. That's an easy one. Joseph's got a ton of members, he's doing pancake breakfast, people bring in their friends, it's awesome. That is like I'll give you the simple plan of that. Just get five of your members to bring in a friend for a two-on-one workout. That's that's your referral funnel. That's the start right there. The other thing, go right to social media. We'll talk about the organic social media funnel. Anyone who likes, comments, or follows is a lead. And this is a new thought. A lot of us don't know that. They don't have to reach out for you. If they've indicated any interest in your business with a like, follow, comment, send, save, whatever, contact them. Reach out. And it can just be as simple as hey, Joseph from Unleashed Strength Jim, what are you doing for fitness these days? Start a dialogue, see what happens, go from there. If nothing else, they know you're a real person, they know you they're seen, and you might get them down the line because they're following and they know it's a real person. So those are two things that you can do today to get more leads. And the final thing that I'll say, Joseph has said this build a sales system and track your metrics. If you track your metrics, you will see where the problems are, then you can improve your system. And if you can't figure out how to do this, Two-Brain Mentor can help you. Joseph, has a mentor helped you do this stuff faster than you would have done it on your own? Like David Allen's an awesome dude.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Yeah, no, David, David's been amazing and uh been super cool. Even just, I mean, entrepreneurship, gym ownership can be very lonely. Uh, and I think not having anyone to share numbers with and share data with, even share wins with is can be frustrating as I don't have when I hit a new revenue PR at the gym or something, it's hard to tell your friends that because they just think you're bragging or that, oh, this guy's must be must be loaded now. It's like, well, no, you don't know all the expenses I have. But um anyway, it's just like nice to be able to to to be able to talk to someone who understands, uh, first of all, and being in the community for sure has been has been awesome. And David's been been super helpful in helping me identify every month what the next bottlenecks are and like where where can we now improve to let a little more water water flow upstream because um and yeah, I I had no idea what my numbers were, honestly, before this, and having my dashboard, having my graphs, being like, oh, things are actually trending in the right direction. Let's continue figuring out where we can continue to improve has been has been awesome. And it's been nice to be able to be delegating more things now and understanding where I can, you know, justifying that delegation too. Where it's if I didn't know my numbers, I would just see James as an expense, but I know it's an investment because he is directly bringing back lots of people to actually come visit our gym. Whether or not they buy that day, whether or not they buy maybe in six months or even a year, who knows? They either getting reached out, they are tough, you know, and even just knowing that we're not leaving money on the table is nice, is, is, is having uh, you know, nice to have him for that too.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

I love it. And David Allen and I track metrics. Our metrics are we hold the Buck Hunter record at uh King's Bowling in Chicago, Illinois together. So that's uh that's the metrics that uh he's a good dude, and we play buckhunter a lot together. So, anyways, we'll close it out there. Thanks for sharing your numbers. You like you gave us a peek inside the marketing funnel of a sick gym. This is awesome. So thank you so much for being so detailed on this and sharing your numbers so openly with other gym owners. You're gonna help a lot of people. Thank you, Joseph.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

100%, Mike. I appreciate the time. That was uh awesome.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah, this that was Joseph Strata. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I'm Mike Working and thanks for watching and listening. Please subscribe for more shows just like this. And now here's TwoBrain Founder Chris Cooper with a final message.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Hey, it's TwoBrain Founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook or go to gym ownersunited.com to join. Do it today.