Steal These 8 Content Ideas From a Viral Gym Owner

This episode contains several visual examples. For the best experience, head to our YouTube channel "Run a Profitable Gym."

Get a comprehensive, AI-powered audit of your gym’s Instagram at GymIG.com.

Joe Strada just won Two-Brain Business Gym of the Year. Here’s exactly how he built one of the best content strategies in the gym industry.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin sits down with Joe Strada of Unleash’d Strength to break down his content playbook.

They cover everything from his early TikTok trend-hopping days to the storytelling and conversion-focused content that’s growing his gym today.

Joe walks through real examples from his own feed, including the meme-style video that got him five million views but zero followers and the carousel that finally broke his streak of flops and brought in nearly 200 new followers.

He also shares his exact process for using AI to script and edit videos for his gym based on viral videos he admires.

John and Joe dig into the difference between content that goes viral and content that actually converts, why getting your community involved in your videos pays off in ways views never will, and why finding the content style you genuinely enjoy making is the only sustainable way to stay consistent.

Tune in, steal Joe’s best ideas and adapt them for your own gym.

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00:00 - Why Most Gym Owners Never Post Content

00:51 - Meet the Viral Gym Owner of the Year

02:50 - How Joe Started Creating Content Before Opening His Gym

05:08 - The Trend-Hopping Strategy That Got Millions of Views

07:54 - Brand Positioning: Why "Strength Is for Everyone" Works

09:14 - Top-of-Funnel Content vs. Content That Sells

11:31 - Meme Content: Turning Members Into Creators

12:47 - Viral Content: How to Repeat a Winning Format

16:27 - Educational Content: Build Authority With Simple Tips

18:22 - Community Content: Show the Personality Behind Your Gym

21:18 - Content Planning: Never Run Out of Ideas Again

24:23 - AI Content: Adapting Trends for Your Audience

28:49 - Interview Content: Let Your Members Tell the Story

31:20 - Conversion Content: The Carousel That Added 200 Followers

36:44 - Storytelling Content: Create a Pin Post That Converts

42:26 - How to Start Creating Content Consistently

Transcript

0:02

Hello, Joe Strada. We are celebrating today, my friend, because you just won Two Brain Business Gym Owner of the Year. Welcome to the after party. I know you have your award. Let me give you a little champagne congratulations amazing the real reward right here right uh cheers to you my friend uh give her a crack right on the mic and uh crispy i'm gonna pour mine over the rocks because uh i'm a little classy now do you ever see the guy the uh connoisseur that does all the monster reviews he's like an actual like wine taster it's pretty cool so speaking of that we're gonna be talking about content. And if you're unfamiliar with Joe Strati, he's the owner of Unleashed Strength. And I've been talking a lot about his gym because he has amazing founder-led content. He shows his personality, his personal brand, and integrates it perfectly into the gym. And one of the things. Joe loves is a white monster. If you head over to the Unleashed Strength Instagram, you will see plenty of posts about that. Aside from white monster, Joe, tell people about your gym. Sure. So we are a gym out of Northern Virginia, Manassas Park to be specific. And we've been around for about seven years now. So we are started as a fully access gym. We've transitioned to access, but also one-on-one and small group training models as well out of those in. And yeah, we continue to grow, continue to learn. I've got a team of six trainers now. And yeah, this is my first time at Summit. So super excited to just come out and be learning and drinking through a fire hose a little bit this weekend and figuring out all the ways we can take our gym to the next level. We're in a good spot, but I know there's more to learn, more to do. And in terms of content, right, which is one of the things that I think you do better than most gyms in the world, how did you get your start? It's a good question. Because honestly, we started making content before the gym opened. I knew when you say we who's we uh i guess we started with my wife and i even before that one of my other buddies who was going to open the gym with me and we were just like one day we'll open a gym we should start an instagram channel i don't know what i don't know what it's going to be but we're just post our workouts we started writing some blog posts like a new content and this was you know dating myself but um you know 10 11 years ago when we were like content is up income and it was a big thing already but it's like this is going to be even more important we kind of saw that and you know looking back of course there's always like i wish it doubled down even harder kind of thing but and we knew it was going to be something so we started making content just like here's our workouts here's what we're doing my wife started getting more involved in like that that content side of things and once we had the gyms and even once we were going to open the gym it was like a place where we could start talking about hey it's coming soon we're we're finally doing this people follow that journey up until actually opening and once we actually had the gym location you know the Instagram started following going a little bit more naturally as a lot of gym gyms do people start looking for for the Instagram before they come to the gym and that kind of thing and so yeah we just started starting started making posts and it was nothing fancy when we first started for sure it was a way to communicate it was a way to get some some messaging out there we started experimenting with some you know more silly material here and there but yeah it's been pretty consistent over the past like I said decade plus of of posting uh all types of content um pictures story stories memes skits and yeah so the unleashed strength was an instagram account before it was a gym it was actually unleashed fitness was how we started okay and i i wanted to only strength sounded better once we opened the gym and so i found you like you initially came under my radar because you were getting a lot of traction on TikTok of all places. You're getting like millions of likes and zeros, dozens of dollars for those millions of likes. Exactly. I don't think we've been paid yet. And so how'd you crack that algorithm? How'd you figure out how to get views? So when I started is interesting with. TikTok was again, I'm maybe old. TikTok was coming out strong where it was right around COVID time. It was like right when we opened the gym, honestly, is like when it started kind of started to take off. And, uh, I noticed Instagram was like real quiet at that point. I think it was before reels were really going and it was like hard to get any kind of real traction. But I noticed people on TikTok posting these more short form when it was really starting to take off. And. I just noticed it was real easy to, there were a lot of trends. TikTok at that point was like hugely trend loaded videos. Uh, and so I found it pretty easy just to trend hop on TikTok on like, there were certain things you'd see five of the same video in a row sometimes of like the same people doing the same things in different situations or scenarios or whatever. I found it relatively easy just to adapt it to the gym and started seeing, actually, I'm trying to think my first, one of my very first ones, it was early on. It was like right after, right during COVID. I think it was like during shutdowns and everything. And, uh, I had one of some gym injury videos, like to come in, you bump your knee on the squat rack. And like, there's a few things. And there was a weird sound and a weird filter that went with it. Took me five minutes to do. And that popped off. It did like, you know, my first, I think million view video or whatever. And then I started getting tagged in someone else's video. And it was another, another creator. There's a big creator who I've been following for a long time with the same exact, like cut for cut scene for scene video. And of course it was a trend. It was not a big deal. Um, doing this, all the same stuff that i had just did i was like that's kind of crazy that like this big creator clearly saw my video like it was not just like the same trend but it was like frame for frame and copied me i was like that's kind of cool and so um anyway that was just kind of like the start of like this is this kind of relatively easy at that point it's gotten it's changed the landscape has changed since then but i just started enjoying like those trend hopping videos and it was a lot was a lot of fun and that kind of got me into like making more consistent like silly goofy videos or just even just starting talking to the camera more so and by the way if you're trying to figure out if hyrox affiliation makes sense for your gym we put together a toolkit that has the exact playbook two brain gyms are running to get a huge roi on hyrox we even interviewed the best gyms in two brain who are affiliated with hyrox to have them break down their exact strategies to grab your just click the link below or scan the QR code here. And so you gotta cut your teeth on TikTok. You figured out how to identify trends, what works. You got good at like that quick cutting short video format, which then became like, then reels came out. And so you had that edge there. Cause you're a power lifting gym. And if you look at your Instagram, there's definitely some people lifting heavy on it. Like what percentage of your population's actually like serious power lift? Sure. I mean, it's not huge. I would say like, you know, 10% of people that are like, hey, they're really competing regularly slash like lifting at a pretty high level. There's another 10, 20%. I mean, even more than that. There's another 30, 40% that are like really trying to get stronger and like lifting consistently. And there's another, I think 40% that are probably just in there to lose weight, move, get stronger, but like, aren't the typical like power lifting, you know, mentality, which, and that's, that's, what's cool. I think like our general tie is like, I really want to lean into it this year, honestly, I think is really embrace strength training. That's like our core and that's our fundamental. I think I've had trouble like going all in on that because I like, oh, I want to cater to everybody. But at the same time, I think we can do that. We, our whole motto is strength is for everyone. And like, I think we can do that. Cater to everyone while still having a core fundamentals of like we're a strength training gym and be proud of that. We talked about how TikTok likes led to dozens of dollars. How'd your style have to change a little bit to adapt to like actually growing your gym rather than just like getting attention on the internet? For sure. So one thing is kind of interesting, TikTok is really good. And it's something I always like whenever I talk about it, realize like, man, I need to do more on TikTok. They're super good at geolocation and like tagging your, when you post something, it definitely shows your videos to people in your area. Instagram does it a little bit. It's let, it seems to me like anecdotally less so, but TikTok, I literally would have a video pop off and I'd have comments, people commenting in the comments. I live right down the street from this gym. This is insane. And like I had people sign up from some viral videos. So. Oh, so it wasn't that you were making, you were getting members from TikTok. There, there were definitely were some signups. I can't, it's hard to quantify and it's hard to say it was a ton, but I did have people say, I found you. I found you from that stupid video you posted last week. Like, and so that was cool. I know we're gonna maybe go for some videos later and then like there, there were some actually direct one for one made a video, got a sale. So that was kind of cool. But yeah, it's obviously adapted. I know we talk about this, you know, in different presentations and content where it's like trying to be five mile famous too, which is obviously a different strategy than just going viral and blowing up because that only has so much effect if you're reaching someone across the country, not coming to your gym tomorrow. So I have found myself doing a mix of content. I think at this point on it, focusing mostly on Instagram, cause that's where the majority of our members are as well as it seems like a lot of attention on Instagram right now in real. So I've definitely focused a lot there now to where I'm posting a mix of content from memes and trends and stuff like that, which I find to be a little like easier to post to more storytelling, some higher quality content. Sometimes it's event updates or whatever. And just having that mix of content that, you know, to get that whole funnel covered, where it's like you get the top of funnel where you have a large reach and just for fun video and maybe even some brand building with that. Cause you know, I mean, talk about that in a little bit too, but how it kind of makes people perceive your brand. But then also some of the lower, some of the more bottom of the funnel, where your interactions with direct members or stories from your members or stuff like that. So it's, I've found a mix of content now at this point, to be. Effective so we got some of the only strength greatest hits here why don't we watch a couple pieces of content maybe talk through it yeah I'm excited let's do it a good one a good one. This would be an example of, like, a meme-y style, like, go ahead. Yeah, it's definitely like more of a meme skit funny one. What I like about this one in particular is that you can clearly see there's half a dozen people involved in this. So sometimes it's me literally going up to my members and just like, hey, help me with this stupid video. And sometimes, you know, people who are like a little more shy or hesitant and stuff. But there's a lot of people who are really excited to be a part of it. And who are like, you know, a couple of these guys are regulars in my videos. And they really like being a part of it. So that's something I think is a lot of fun. And it's like I said, a good example of getting your community involved with some of your content and kind of like you guys do such a good job of it, too, where it's like you are either recognizing people or putting them on a pedestal or like letting them be a part of what you guys are doing with your branding and everything. People are happy to do it all right let's see what the next one we got here is first time failing four plates in a long time my most viral video ever i'll get it next time this was interesting um again i think this actually was another repost because you actually noticed it is my caption can we can we get another 5 million views because the original one uh was i think 5.2 million and this one was actually interesting another good case study i so it's pretty easy to see what's happening like i failed the squat and then re-rack it and everyone's disappointed as if i actually failed it but i clearly didn't fail it anyway a lot of this was because confusion people arguing in the comments not understanding what is happening so it's kind of funny because um you know this is also an example of video that went viral it's the most views we've ever gotten but i didn't i barely got any followers from it so it was kind of interesting um it was not a very i guess like sticky piece of content there's a lot of people arguing in the comments and just like watching it or re-watching it and like trying to understand it so it was a lot of fun i did actually make this a series so i i did this with a bench press and i did it with a clean with a failed front squat into a clean and re-rack um and same thing everyone just like arguing or confused but all three of them did well. So the first one did 5 million, the second one did a million, and then the third one did like 800,000. So like, that's something I will say, and I probably could have run it even farther. But if you do have something that hits like that, and you do get that virality, if you can figure out a way to make that some sort of whether it's a trend, whether it's a, you just keep that going and kind of stretch it out a little farther. There's there's some easy views right there, for sure. That is such a solid piece of advice. And something I'm glad you brought up. Right? If you have something like people when they're creating feels like everything's got to be different. But when the reality is, like, nobody watched it the first time, even if it got 5 million views, nobody watched it, right? You forgot what you watched, you're just scrolling is very passive activity. Like you're not like, remembering, oh, I watched this viral video, like three months ago, right? If you got something that works, do it again, again, again, again, I have a style of content on my Instagram that every time I posted, I get like, between 200 and 1,000 followers. And we've just like done that 11 times now and it's the same format, the same structure, the same start, the same end every single time and it works every single time. And you mentioned something interesting where this got a lot of views, it didn't get a lot of followers. So I think gym owners need to set their intention when they go into social, right? It's like, do you wanna get a lot of views? Is the idea to get a gazillion followers or are you just trying to grow your gym, right? Like I never set out to get followers, I set out to get people to find out about Two Brain and book a call with us. And so a lot of times the worst posts from a views and like standpoint hit the hardest and generate the most sales momentum. And so this is an example of a great piece of content that's awesome, top of funnel, brings a lot of attention to the brand, but like you said, no follows, no likes downstream, but worth doing over and over and over again because that's... Whatever, 10 million eyeballs across all the posts, series, reposts, et cetera. Exactly. And this one was relatively easy to do. Just had to squat four or five and had some people in the background yelling. And this was a repost, like I said, and the repost did pretty well, all things considered too. So it's fun to try to repost if you got a really good one. It's easy to do. All right, next one. All right, so warming up is important, but I would say what's more important is... A little less, not a funny one, a little more informative one. Lifting is probably the most important thing you can learn as especially a strength athlete, but also for other sports and other training styles. Honestly, if you learn how to properly manage load in the gym, you will be unstoppable. Lifting belt. Lifting belt. I'm actually going to say it's not important, so don't hate me here. It's not important for you to get strong or get big to have a lifting belt. People think that lifting belts are there for like safety. It's a proper way to do things. So there's like a value piece of content. Demonstrating some expertise here it's going to help you lift more but it's not important objectively um to have a lifting belt protein protein is super important uh from a recovery standpoint from a strength i have to make it sound like someone else is doing that there's one macro you're going to track i would track protein protein timing okay so protein is important protein timing i'm pretty sure the latest research says that protein timing does not matter it's more important to get your overall total protein goals so yeah so it was a pretty basic video i think i saw someone else do it i can't remember who exactly it was but it was a similar it was like a content creator who taught how to create content and show her whole businesses around that and she did something like that like what is important in post time like uh timing of your posts hashtags blah blah went down the whole list of like important non-important just a quick adaptation to that um you know something like this either not funny but it's like oh this adds a little bit of like you said expertise so when i go and check out the video like oh this is some cool coaching some cool tips establishing you as a little bit of an authority so easy one to make didn't take much much effort so yeah i like that one too because the first two were like a little more viral top of funnel stuff and this is like we're showing some expertise and and building in your brand as well for sure oh here we go dude we could recreate this right now there we go trash bag real quick i will admit this is more of a direct copy video i just had seen several people make it make this one what are we going to do with the leftover i think i saw hamburgers or like food i really don't know if i saw a drink one or not so if i maybe it was an adaptation one or i can't remember if it was a copy or an adaptation but just ridiculous i guess same thing one of my friends that's regularly in my content as soon as i showed him he was like excited to go let's do it get the trash back cut a hole and just it's just stupid just something silly um i don't think that one did particularly well but the comments liked it um stuff like that too it's interesting even if the ones that don't do viral necessarily to you know 100 likes or a couple hundred likes a few thousand views a lot of our members follow us on instagram and see it and oftentimes i'll get in even like in-person reactions like oh my gosh saw that video yesterday that was hilarious whatever like so there's a there's a little bit natural brand building within the community that happens with some of these posts too and just like i get a lot of members that send me videos regularly you should recreate this you should make this video can we do this next like next week please. So like, there's almost like a bit of a expectation now that we're going to make silly videos and then I'm just get excited to see it. And does your gym have kind of like this funny, irreverent brand about it? Like if I walk in your gym, is everyone kind of clowning around like that? I think everyone's having fun. So like, you know, we, we definitely have, we got some amazing lifters in the gym. People take their, their lifting and workouts seriously, but that doesn't mean we're like uptight and take ourselves super seriously too. I think there's a balance to be, to be had. You can walk up to anyone in the gym, even the hardcore guys and interrupt them to help get a spot or whatever, and they'll drop whatever they're doing. I actually had a lady sit down at the desk with me for a, for a no sweat intro. She was scared. Like, she was like, what the hell am I doing here? Kind of like she was very nervous i was really trying to reassure i was like i promise you i pointed out i called out one of the guys over there he was he's a six five 340 pound strong man bald big beard one of the strongest guys in the gym he's massive dude so you can go up to him right now and and tap him on the back interrupt his workout mid-lift and he would stop what he was doing and excuse me and help you out and like what can i do to help you out and actually he was walking by as we were finishing up and i got i was like caleb talk talk to her real quick and he's like yeah and just like it was perfect it was a perfect timing he's like oh my gosh like great to meet you welcome to the gym like we'd be happy to have it and it was a you know one of those things where we can again uh i think some of this content helps kind of show that too where it's like big scary intimidating environment actually lots of fun people who are just having a good time and training hard too. So are you following like a structured content process or it's like, I'm going to make content today and you just start ripping through for inspiration, you go? Yeah, this is one of my, one of the things I want to start working on for sure. Cause it's, uh, I keep saying it and I know I need to take it more seriously. You know how it is. It's just like, there's always other things to be doing at a gym or you're for your business. And so like, sometimes I get distracted and I like, I want to make content for the day. And then I go, I gotta, I got a little time to do that. And then I like, don't have anything ready to go. So I, this, one of my goals this year is to be much more intentional, um, about planning my content and having a little more structure to it. So right now, excuse me, it's been a weakness of mine that it's been more sporadic. I have weeks where I crank out a bunch of good stuff and I get more inspired and other weeks where I have, I don't put the effort into like the plan and the execution. So that's something that's been, like I said, I've been, I've struggled with that i want to like really improve it's on my on my to-do list for this year so where are you going to get inspired sure so it's a mix sometimes i have a little bit of just you know day-to-day life something happens in the gym like this would make a funny video and we go with it other times it's it's through scrolling and i'll this is something maybe a maybe a pro tip don't engage if you're on your business page like have one of your instagram profiles uh don't engage with videos that you don't want to recreate if that makes sense or types of videos like instagram knows you really well and as soon as you start liking uh you know you see like a video where it has like five likes and like a thousand shares because it's someone playing the guitar and it's terrible something like that you and you like even linger on that or like that video or something like that or laugh at it it's going to show you a bunch more just like dgen videos like that and that's not helpful at all for inspiration for your videos or like you start liking cat videos or whatever it's just going to start showing you those so if you can have maybe like save your business profile and only engage with videos that you're like maybe it's gym videos maybe it's trend videos maybe it's educational videos whatever content creation like and you can really curate your feed to be inspired an inspiring feed i think that's very helpful and then i have a save folder that i just have content ideas and so whenever time i see something like i can make that with the gym i just do that so then next time i do go to create something like i got some time to make something that's the first place i'll go to just to get inspired real quick and like oh yeah i remember that that's a easy i can make that real quick and just you know edit it to make it mine so that's funny that you say that because when i started engaging with your content i actually made a reel about a carousel that i think we're going to review here i started just getting all kinds of white monster content which is a which is a full niche like i just get bombarded with white monster videos and i believe i sent one to you yeah and i just made it way worse so funny. I like white monster, but the reason I use it in my videos is just because white monster is a meme in and itself. You know, yeah, so I just kind if I use them obscure energy drink. It's not as funny as a white monster iconic the class exactly. Good old AI post. This is a recent trend right this is like that follower trend my google search was literally how many gerbils are in 405 pounds and uh yeah just someone saw my notes i was writing all the conversions down and my train was like i don't lift it what the hell are you writing i don't lift in i don't lift in kilos i lift in gerbils exactly so yeah so this was like you said this was a trend recently. I saw the first guy that posted it. I couldn't find it again. It was kind of weird. I saw like other people who did it that had less, but the first guy I did, I think he had tens of millions of views on his video. And it was like, here's what a hundred followers looks like. And it zoomed out and then here's what a thousand followers looks like. It was really cool. It was very well done. I thought it looked dope. Yeah. It's just one of those, one of those ways, like how, how can I adapt this? And to me it was like people's and it's kind of, it's almost like two steps removed from the original idea, which is when I go back to like, how can you make it your own and twist it a little bit? You know? Uh, I was like, okay, well what does it look like to have a hundred members in the gym? Like, no, this makes it like, I was trying to like think through it a little bit. Basically the whole idea of the original video was your perception of a number is more, is probably off and what it actually really means. So I was going to do like, what it's it's actually really impressive if you deadlift 300 300 pounds here's what 300 pounds looks like in some other uh in some other form that makes more sense and then i just i was going to do like a single animal but then i just thought it was kind of funnier to do like hundreds of gerbils and i don't know it was funny it was kind of funny so it almost went from like i was going to be in a more inspiring post to just a meme post and something funny and just yeah and so. So that requires, like, editing skills and AI skills. And I don't think we talked about that yet. So for making AI images like that, I'm assuming you're using, like, a nano banana or something like that, right? That one was actually just the free version of ChatGPT. Okay. So you're just like, here's this picture. Put 2,000 gerbils in it. Essentially. And trying to get the right number of gerbils was hard. I was literally –I was doing the math probably for too long because I was, like, engineering background. I was doing the volume of the pyramid based on the number of gerbils and stuff. So I was like, this is actually 5,000 gerbils. I need to make it a little more accurate. So I went back and forth with ChatGPT arguing about the size of the pyramid of gerbils. Yeah, because the details matter. Details matter. Probably not as much as I wanted them to, but – And so for editing a thing like that, like, let's see. A gem owner sees a video. They they have a funny take on it like how are they getting the audio the audio was easy that was the easiest part honestly because you can just um i believe that one i literally just save the you can just save the audio on instagram uh i use edits a lot on the instagram edits you can open the sound in edits and then just import all your clips so i took those photos by myself so my camera up literally just took four photos no eight maybe eight photos no four photos um five if you include the one with the barbell so like yeah five photos of myself doing different poses and then argued with chad gpt for a half an hour to get the right pictures the most important part most important part and then just put them all together and added a slight uh camera pan just to make a little more movement which probably wasn't even necessary and i also had chad gpt just edit you can chad gpt edits photos too which is kind of dope i just said make it look more dramatic and then that's all it was i have made this mistake before though uh i took a picture of my family after like with my kids after doing murph sure and i was like uh make it like a little brighter because the background was dark and i thought it was like decent and i just like posted it and then like people started messaging my wife like that's not your daughter and you and it like just changed her face into like this mutant warp face and it was like some serious post it was like. Like, you know, we support your, like, honoring the troops and, like, something serious. And it was, like, and MRF is, like, not something you want to, like, you know, lie about doing, you know. Of course. You don't want to do AI MRF. Definitely not. Yeah, I learned my lesson the hard way there. So if you're doing your face. Double check. Yes, yes, yes. All right, let's check out this one. When was your last successful bowel movement? Last one was in 2021. And yeah it's gonna be a good time what's the hardest part about sports betting oh my gosh setting up right because there's a million and one things you got to remember to do you got to pay out referees communicate well communicate often what was your favorite part about prison the community and the snacks why are you trying to go back because i need something to smile about what is your favorite year of all time 1300 how many chicken nuggets could you eat in one sitting 525 how do you deal with annoying co-workers i think i'm gonna hit nine out of nine today are there any benefits to being in a gang the communal uh lifting up of each other how many guys have you left at the altar two do you have a word for that bailing why do you color code your list of enemies i would say to keep structure okay so yeah that was uh that was not the carousel um another trend video but that was like again interviewing people changing their questions to make them sound crazy um which was so we had a powerlifting meet this past weekend i just i knew i wanted to make a bunch of content around it i just wanted to grab some sound bites from all the from some of the lifters some of our friends those are most of those were members same thing that they all were excited to be in little interviews and then i saw that trend going around like i've got all these interview clips i could just change the answers this would be hilarious i actually messaged them ahead of time just to let them know i was like are you good if i use you to and make you sound ridiculous and they're all like yes please like they're all saying it was they were excited to be a part of it and then uh tried to toe the line between not getting too dark and too inappropriate but also having fun with it so i think we walked the line pretty well there what's cool about that if you have a following like your gym you're bringing the members in yeah they're going to comment on that right for sure and then their friends are going to see it and their friends live in your market right and so that gives you exposure and tying them in right and that's similar to what we're doing here you know a lot of gym owners follow you now we do this video and now they're going to see what we have going on exactly so like putting your members and your clients into your content and doing it in a fun way like that um i like that as a great like like that's a elevated version of trend hopping versus some of the earlier ones we saw right right right and that one did like you said the comments people really it was an engaging discussion in the comments just like laughing and like people were making comments responding to people's answers and stuff too so it just like furthers the conversation too all right so we talked a lot about reels and trend hopping and editing and posting consistency this is like actually one of my favorite posts of yours that you've done. Because it's funny, it's reverent, but it actually pushes people down the funnel. So it does a good job of not just, like, entertaining random people on the internet or making your members laugh, but it actually makes people want to buy from you. So walk me through this one. And it has a white monster in it. Of course, of course. So this was a post inspired. So I, I, uh, follow, uh, Shannon McKinstry. She's a content creator and, um, she does a really good job of like sharing posts to cop to use for inspiration and copy. And so there was someone thing, things that should be in every house or something like that. And it went through like a bunch of little house hacks or something like that. And so I was inspired to do something similar. Didn't expect this kind of success with this post but same thing i i tried to add some flair to it so like this is something that could be very boring post to make if i just took a picture of our bench press and like a good bench press and like oh cool a squat rack like so i tried to make every post something that was some sort of some engagement that the caption that was a little funny or like a a unique picture of it so um you know walking through uh walking through it i did a very similar like startup photo to the um to the original post that i was using for inspiration you know something we have at the gym we're small we're only 6 000 square feet we've got a ton of squat racks and people always talk about like who come strength training gym one of the biggest complaints about commercial gyms is there's only two places to squat we've got 11 so it's like okay immediate we're immediately attracting a certain type of person that would be interested in our gym um bowl you know or bowls of chalk i think are unique and they've got random stuff in them there's little ammonia bottles that are just like mystery things that people some people don't know what they are and smell them and like pass out and like whatever so just kind of walking through my mom this is my mom actually dead lifting you know dead lifting grandmas and so like there's a bunch of things that are more unique at least one corner of pain and misery so. So like just trying to show some of the unique factors that I know there are some people out there who will see that photo and be like, this is exactly the gym that I want with a little bit of like kind of humorous explanation there too. This is actually the gentleman that I talked about earlier, who's this big, scary strong man. But like we all laugh as like, oh, it's a good gym is going to have those big, scary guys that are super nice. And anyone, again, who's been to a strength training gym like that knows exactly who I'm talking about. And you'll probably list a couple of them too. Same thing. We got a couple of ladies in the gym who are stronger than most guys, like in general. And just like Heather's a beast. She's a, um, squats 400 pounds and she weighs like a buck 40 or something. Like she's, she's a monster. And the super the nicest girl in the gym too she's awesome um so anyway just kind of again adding our own flair to this kind of thing and uh this was one of my more successful posts in general too obviously like a view and like but what i noticed this was a huge follower booster for us um the ladies that we've gone viral and get zero followers we were at almost like 200 followers from this post which is a lot for us at least um so that was really cool to see some actual conversion from that whether or not like i don't think anyone necessarily ran to the gym to sign up it's like oh this was this resonated with people and you know checked both boxes of it got good reach and good followers and good like comments uh you can see 290 i think it had 100 and something saves too so it was like it was cool it kind of checked all the boxes so it's your point you said it was one of your favorite posts of mine i actually really like this post too because it kind of fulfilled, checked several boxes, not just viral, but also like sticky content too. I think that's part of evolving, right? And that was part of your journey. It's like, I fell victim to this when I first started getting attention on the internet. I started on. Twitter and there was like formats that would do really well and they'd get a lot of impressions. And then I realized like, oh, like that's cool. It's getting a bunch of likes and views, but it's not really driving the objective. And so like, I think just asking yourself, like, why are you on the platform? What is the goal of doing this? And I think this serves, like, you're obviously very good at trend hopping. Like you've got that down in the strength corner of the world. And it's nice to see that some of your more recent stuff is definitely a little more conversion based. It was also a little hopeful for me, and maybe this is a lesson to be learned, but like I've posted carousels before and honestly, every carousel I've ever posted has flopped. This is- This is the first carousel I've ever posted that actually got traction and did well. And I, a couple of reasons I think that did it. I think there was like, intrigue from the very first slide. I think there was again, some, a little humor tied to it. It also was like a little more niche down directed towards people that you were calling out a certain avatar of people, I think. But I think there's also just like trying new things out too. Whereas like, again, I posted a bunch of carousels that all flopped and it's been frustrating. I didn't want to post this. I was like, I hope this does- That's something. I hope it does a little, you know, I think it's a good post. I hope it does well. It did, thankfully. My next carousel, complete flop. That's all right. Like, you know, you only need one to rip, you know? Exactly. So pin posts are something I talk a lot about. It's the first thing a prospect sees when they're creeping on your Instagram. I think you got a good one. Let's watch it. This is my husband, Joe. Six years ago, he gave up his engineering career to chase the wild dream of opening a gym. Not because it made sense on paper, but because we'd never found a gym that truly felt like home. We wanted working out to be something you look forward to, not just checked off the list. So we started from scratch. We collected equipment piece by piece for three years before we even opened our doors. And when we opened, it was just us. Staffing, cleaning, repairs, training. Joe was still working a full-time job while I did photography on the side. Our setup was pretty bare bones at the start, mostly free weights, a couple treadmills. We promise to keep upgrading, improving, and investing back into the gym. Little by little, we closed the gap between us and other local commercial gyms. And the 24-hour access didn't hurt either. But what's really set us apart from the beginning is the community. Our community got us through the challenging beginning, through those crazy. COVID times shortly after, and through our growing pain since. Through it all, our community has kept us alive and helped us become what we are today. And now we're building the next chapter. Bigger events, better training, more competitions, because our motto, strength is for everyone, is something we believe in wholeheartedly. Everyone deserves a gym to call their home. So follow along with us as we keep chasing this crazy dream together to build something great. Talk me through it, man. Yeah. You have to shout out, again, another creator, Michelle Lowe Horton. I've been following her for a little bit, and she has gone all in on creating storytelling videos. And what attracted me to her content was this other business, a dry cleaner of all places, which is the most boring brick and mortar, respectfully, right? Like, thing you can think of, like dry cleaning clothes. And she took their page and blew them up using storytelling. They have a really cool story, you know, immigrants, like a whole immigration story. It was awesome. They're really cool background and showing how they built up this dry cleaners. So anyway, I got, took basically their video, and I've connected with her a few times and stuff, but I took this video on their page and their intro kind of origin story video, and basically re-scripted it to fit my, our story. I actually ended up getting the transcript. It's something you can do, right? Get the transcript of a great video, put it into Claude or chat and be like, Hey, ask me questions. I always like this tip to ask me questions. I want to make a video like this transcript, right? Ask me questions so I can fill in the blanks and recreate this script for my own video. Basically. And so that's some essentially what I did and input all the important pieces of that store of their story and redid it to mine to fit from a dry cleaners to a gym. And obviously we have different backgrounds, different experiences. And so it helped me craft this script. I also did the same thing cause it was, they had a hugely viral video and this one wasn't quite there, of course, but it was same thing. He had the main owner's wife talking about her husband and his story. I thought it was really cool. So I asked my wife, I said, here's, here's your script. Could you just record it into the mic for me? And then got that audio. And then another tip I just have, like, I'm always trying to record and always have tons of B-roll from seven years of gym ownership at this point. And before that, some of those clips were me riding in the car, documenting, looking for spaces and stuff. So easy for me to go to through Google photos, download clips and just kind of smash them all together and relatively match them up. Do some auto captions. Like it's not overly difficult. To do something like that. I think people see it like, oh, it's a lot of editing. It takes some time to do something like that for sure. A more thought thoughtful, well told story, et cetera. But like, again, you can use a lot of tools to do, and he doesn't have to be super flashy. It can be a bunch of camera roll, like video footage that you kind of throw together over a nice, a nice story and call it a video, you know? So let's unpack that because yeah, that's a much more powerful piece of content than any of the funnier trend-based ones that we talked about. And I think storytelling is an incredibly hard skill to master, but you gave a great tip there. It's like, find a piece of content that's based around a piece of story, a story that you like, and it resonates with you. Take the transcript, pop it into chat or Claude and ask it, hey, ask me questions so we can make a simpler script. Did I get that right? And then from there, having your wife do it, that's the nice touch. Was that always the intention? Yeah, like I said, to me, that was the setting of the viral video that I was trying to emulate. So I figured, let's just keep as many of the variables the same. Something about that video went viral for a reason. So let's have my wife read the script as well. And the other nugget that's important is, if you've made it this far in the episode, you probably have an interest in creating content one day. One of the things that you said that was very helpful, white monster burp, is having a backlog of B-roll. So taking a lot of footage, that's something I regret. I don't have a ton of stuff from my early days of gym ownership. And now with all the tools, it makes it so easy to sort and find and take the pieces together. So you have a huge advantage over someone like me, who maybe has like 50 photos of nine years of gym ownership. So we talked about AI, we talked about photos, videos, B-rolls, overlay, editing, storytelling. This is going to be overwhelming to someone who hasn't started yet or made their first piece of content or is maybe doing like Canva templates. What would you say to a gym owner who's struggling to just make their first post? I think spend some time, you know, researching and finding types of content that you like, that you think you can emulate, whether it's other gyms, brands that you think, or like, your favorite creators that are doing a really good job of that and like just i mean there's nothing wrong with with using them for inspiration and trying to make it your own if you know if there's certain types of content you hate or don't like or you're you don't want to do all the flashy edits like that's fine like find the type of content that you do because there are creators who have made it big or brands that have done really good job with all types of content whether it's storytelling memes uh you know just just photos just carousels it's all can be successful so find what you what you enjoy doing i i trying to give glitch cliche but it's like yes you do just have to kind of start and just start practicing you and you gotta get the reps and i think um you know you talked about this before too which is the consistency and keeping yourself too but what are you going to do every day or what are you going to do how are you going to set your schedule and just like working out like i'm going to work out monday wednesday friday three days a week and get my workouts in. Uh, you can't really review and get better if you don't put the reps in. And again, a little cliche, but it's just true. Like you do need to practice and try things out and just get better. Um, I have a background in engineering. Like I'm not, I didn't go to school for videography or like a creative degree by any means. But, um, just like someone looks at someone who's been in the gym for a while and was like, Oh, well you've, you've always been strong or you've always just had the natural ability. Like, no, you put in the work, you put in the effort. Um, it's, it's a very similar, very similar thing. Joe, thanks for doing this anytime. And if you're watching this and feeling a little overwhelmed, I encourage you to check out our video on the only social media strategy gym owners need. You can watch it here.