One of my favorite people on Earth is Mike Arce, a friendly Italian from New Jersey who also runs Loud Rumor, an AZ digital marketing agency. This year they decided to double down on a niche (studio fitness gyms) with their services and needless to say the results have been incredible.
Mike and I got on a conference call to chat about how their new niche strategy has allowed him to scale and get results faster than anything before.
Need an incentive to watch the video? Here’s a little taste of Mike and their marketing chops to promote their flagship niche service – Fit Flaver:
Now, here is our interview and the transcript is below!
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Russ:
All right, we are live. Mike, welcome, everyone who is watching this on the replay or live, welcome to another Design Pickle Private Webinar. For those who are Design Pickle clients, you get to attend these live, ask questions, jump in, be a part of the conversation. Most people though busy people, they’re going to watch this on the replay, so for those of you watching this on the replay, thank you so much. Today we have Mike Arce, founder of Loud Rumor. Mike and I, this is like our third time interviewing. You’ve done a few kind of experiments with us back in the blab.im days, which is like two months ago or something.
Mike:
Yes [inaudible 00:00:40].
Russ:
[00:01:00]
Now, we’re doing this and I’m real excited to talk to Mike. I won’t steal his thunder, but I’ve known Mike a long time and over the past year here in 2016, he has been crushing it with a big business decision he’s made with his digital agency to power down and double down on niches. Mike, let’s get people up to speed. Let’s talk about what you guys have been or had been doing before your critical decision, kind of get us up to speed of what Loud Rumor was all about. Then we’ll get to that aha moment after that.
Mike:
[00:02:00]
Sure, so we first started niche as far as service goes, where we just did web design, but we were working with any type of industry and company in the whole world. Then, we started adding to our services, so on top of working with many different types of industries, mostly local so like dentist, doctors, chiropractors, stuff like that we were also providing many different services SEO, AdWords, Facebook, content, all that stuff. It just got really really hectic and then we started really just deciding at the end of the year 2015, we did our SWOT analysis and just figured out if all the things that we’re really good at, what are we case study good at and what we were case study good at was working with fitness studios.
Russ:
Does case study good mean like measurable results, super clear at what you did?
Mike:
Consistent, yeah so measurable, super clear, consistent and it’s something that I think everybody can really understand is really good. For instance, a dentist, if they got 10 or 15 new patients in a month that’s really good. They actually do like that but that’s not impressive enough for somebody like Digital Marketer want to write about because it doesn’t seem like over the top amazing, whereas getting a fitness studio or a yoga studio 200 leads in one month, Digital Marketer likes sharing that stuff, [inaudible 00:02:44] lot of these other guys, so [inaudible 00:02:48].
Russ:
[00:03:00]
Why is it so hard because I don’t think the topic or the conversation of niching as a business, especially if you’re service provider, is that like revolutionary? We hear it all the time, but why is that decision so challenging at times, like why is it taking so long to make that realization in your case study or in your shoes?
Mike:
It’s scary because you’ve built a reputation and now it’s going to change and you have customers that you serve and they may get confused. You have a team that likes consistency and we got to change. There’s just so many little variables that we’re just like, we don’t want people to think we have an identity crisis. At least that was my concern, but we eventually did it and it’s been the best decision we’ve made.
Russ:
[inaudible 00:03:59] for everyone watching this who is a business owner or founder or entrepreneur, when you get started too, any opportunity is a good opportunity, like you want to take business, you want to grow, you want revenue, you want cash and so did niching is always like a double-edged sword early on because it really means you’re going to have to say no a lot, which is hard for a new entrepreneur.
[00:04:00]
Mike:
Right, yeah, I said no to people that I would have loved to have as customers. Six months ago, I just said no to a dentist that had three locations and that was really weird because I was targeting them for a little bit, but no, it’s been great because my team has very good clarity as to what’s successful and they don’t have to be so creative. We just have to be consistent.
Russ:
Let’s talk then, you’re doing some strategic planning, late 2015, you’re trying to dissect what was the case-study-able way you could take things, was there like a in the movies, where it’s like [inaudible 00:04:44] like everything, like pieces [inaudible 00:04:46] like oh my God there it is or was it more gradual as you decided to double down on the niche that you’re focused on?
Mike:
[00:05:00]
I wish it was like that because that have been so much easier. It was definitely gradual because we do have clients that were doing very well that were not fitness studios and they are happy with our service and we know we’re providing them value, but we had to keep it in our mind that it’s not case study worthy. The difference is this, this is really what was in my mind, I got this client is here that I have to work this much for and they’re going to pay me let’s say $1500 a month and I got this customer here, same thing, I have to deliver this for $1500 a month. I’m getting what I want moneywise, the difference is, this one here, I have case study material, which allows me to, it’s basically marketing material for free to get more. I didn’t get that here, so there was a lot more of a return and we just have to keep that in the back of our mind. It’s not just about making the fee, it’s about making the fee and marketing materials and that’s what we have to keep on our train of thought.
Russ:
[00:06:00]
You’ve already mentioned this, but there’s what you’re delivering there’s the sale side and the marketing side, which what you just touched on makes that easier, like when you have success that can easily be documented and shared, it’s a fantastic marketing tool. What I think a lot of people don’t realize about niche, especially when you niche down, the implementation side, so you already mentioned this like the hiring and the execution and the training, like to me as a small business owner that’s almost just as important as the sales and marketing side because if you’re struggling there or if that takes a lot of your time and energy and resources, you don’t have any money, time or energy left over to do the sales and marketing because you’re stuck in the [inaudible 00:06:41]on the implementation side. It’s like this continual cycle that feeds itself, the streamlined implementation, better results, better results, streamlined implementation and it just kind of goes around and around.
[00:07:00]
Mike:
My team, you as an entrepreneur, me as an entrepreneur, we have learned that we have to take complex things and break them down to the simplest form, not just to be able to sell customers, but to be able to sell our employees on things, [inaudible 00:07:12] or whatever, we’ve had to learn how to break things down. Our employees haven’t had that experience yet, so when there’s new things that come in for AdWords and YouTube and SEO and content and all these different things, we have to learn them and then we have to explain it to our clients. When we can get down to, “This is all we’re doing,” it’s very easy to take that and make it simple to break down. We don’t have to learn a ton of things. We just have to learn this better than anything else.
Russ:
[00:08:00]
Well, as you know [inaudible 00:07:44] my background prior to Design Pickle was running an agency, where we were, it sounds like early days for you, we just kind of did anything and everything. What I’ve realized like, so we could say niching also is creating clear systems and processes and a path that you’re executing. That’s one out come out of it and when you have that when things go sideways, it’s really easy to understand what the problem is versus when you are doing … Looks [inaudible 00:08:17] connection, when you’re doing anything and everything, then like and something goes wrong, then you’re like, “Well, I don’t even know where to begin from the,” like I’m going to try to fix this problem kind of things, like it’s just there’s a million different possibilities …
Mike:
Variable.
Russ:
Yeah, so like how could you improve versus that assembly line of a process, where if some thing’s slow, you could say, “Okay, hey, this is the issue, let’s focus and let’s solve this.” How have you seen that become easier in terms of better …
Mike:
[00:09:00]
That’s my favorite part, so yes, the cool thing about this is we have a great example that happened last night. We were working with a company called Fit Body Boot Camp. They have like 300 locations throughout the country. I think it’s like seven in Arizona or something. We’re working with the flagship location in Chino Hills and we noticed ad fatigue, which some of the people may have heard listening to the show, but basically on Facebook after some time, six days, seven days, sometimes two, three weeks, your ad will get fatigued and you start getting shown to lower tier audience and so you don’t get the same amount of leads. It’ll just drop in a day. Well that happens in our business and yesterday it happened with that location. We were getting eight, nine, 10 leads a day and it was great and all of a sudden, they got like one. Then, we waited a day to see if it was a fluke and they got one again, so we knew there was an issue.
[00:10:00]
Went in, looked at the account, we just basically changed the copy. We knew exactly what change we had to make by looking at the metrics, just the same like four KPIs we looked at. We made an adjustment. This morning, they got 11 leads already, it’s not even like lunchtime and that is great because like you said if we had have AdWords and YouTube and copy and all these things playing in, it’s like which variable is the one that’s making the difference. There’s only a few components here, let’s figure it out.
Russ:
Yeah and I think if we could say like one macro thesis for the power of the niche, it’s the power of simplicity, like the power of doing less, so that you could do what you’re doing at a higher level and with more efficiency with greater results.
Mike:
[00:11:00]
What’s really great too is being able to provide such better advice from an experience standpoint because the experience we’re using is coming from many other customers that you work with. For example, [inaudible 00:10:39] one of our customers and she talked about how much better results she gets when she texts people as supposed to following up through phone calls and so because of that I’ve mentioned that with a lot of our locations. They’ve all giving me feedback like, “Yeah, the texting is so much better, I’m getting ahold of almost everybody.” I’m like, “Okay, great.” I’ve done that with like 10 different things, where I’m hearing what works so well and then I hear a problem and I know how to solve it because this person already told me they’ve solved it.
Russ:
When is the Loud Rumor Fitness Marketing Boot Camp event going to happen because I think if that’s already play that’s where you could have compiled all that.
Mike:
Well, is it crazy to hear that we started thinking today about starting a Loud Rumor Fitness Studio, like actually a fitness studio.
Russ:
That’s not crazy man, like especially if you do it up here in the North Scottsdale side.
Mike:
[00:12:00]
We’re thinking about it and it’s exciting, but there’s a lot of things we really want to talk about. We know we’re best as far as marketing goes. Really the reason we want to do it is we’ve learned and this goes for any industry I think but we’ve learned there’s two different types of customers that we deal with. There’s the fitness person that decided to open a business and then there’s a businessperson who decided to open a fitness studio. These are two different people because this person really struggles with the follow-through and being able to convert and this person has no problem with that. What we really want to be able to do is not only say, “Hey, our customers do this,” but we want to be able to say, “Look, we believe it so much, we’ve built a business just to prove it,” here’s an [inaudible 00:12:17].
Russ:
This is like a topic I want to touch on for a second because this is badass like if you’re going to launch your own studio that you’re marketing, you’re like testing grounds for everything and then to be able to case study yourself and then roll that out, like that …
Mike:
Yeah, franchise these.
Russ:
That to me is genius.
Mike:
Right now, it’s not a cooked idea, it’s not even defrosted. I just kind of took it out of the freezer, but …
Russ:
You shouldn’t frozen food if you’re into fitness.
Mike:
It’s not healthy.
Russ:
It’s not even picked up from the local organic farm yet.
Mike:
Any nutritionist would go against that so you’re right.
[00:13:00]
Russ:
[00:14:00]
No that’s amazing and you mentioned the Digital Marketer Camp and the group there, something that people, if haven’t check them out digitalmarketer.com, we love them, they’re a huge supporter of us and the concept that they’ve done. It’s not as well known and maybe just to me, but the Digital Marketer work and the stuff that they do really started out [inaudible 00:13:25] from all the other businesses that they were running that aren’t digital marketers. The company that owns Digital Marketer has many other online type businesses that they have done this stuff that then they compartmentalize and teach through the digital marketing platform. Now, they have clients and other people that are using their strategies and submitting case studies, but that like practice what you preach mentality is I think why they’ve been so successful. I think for you guys like that’s a key factor as it’s not, “Here, let me just tell you my opinion,” it’s like, “Here, let me show you something that actually is working that I’ve done in the past or several times for that matter.”
Mike:
I think it’s great. It puts the proof in the pudding. It shows that we know what we’re talking about, but also for me it’s a passion. I don’t even know if you know this, but I used to own a personal training company before starting my digital agency and I’ve always loved working with people that want to get in better shape and change their life on that part of it, so to be able to merge the two passions I have, I have one more passion basketball, I don’t know how I could work that in, but to able to merge these two together is, it’s something I didn’t even see happening, but it’s really cool that it’s [inaudible 00:14:38].
Russ:
You have told me many times about your past and when you told me or when I started to see this and then we talked about it, to me, it was like, “Well duh, like that’s so perfect for Mike, like that makes like genius sense.” I think in hindsight it does, it’s funny that it took you several years to get to that point, but …
[00:15:00]
Mike:
I know [inaudible 00:15:03].
Russ:
This is the dentist versus dentist niche, we love the dentist.
Mike:
Way to make me look like an idiot on your show Russ, I’m kidding. I agree, I don’t know why I didn’t work on this sooner because that’s actually what I was good at with the training. L.A. Fitness still uses practices that I taught today on getting more customers and I did really good with the marketing side of it. I guess what I thought was I can, the skillset that I had was marketing and I can apply this to everyone. I started and it did well. It didn’t do bad, but it was a lot of work and you know because you ran an agency that did well and it got really good results for people, but is the work worth it because there’s so much that we have to do and it’s hard to run it.
[00:16:00]
Russ:
[00:17:00]
Like, going back to the agency side and then the previous iteration of where you’re at, I think this is a big fallacy that people in service-based industries have is that my work is equal to my results. It’s a direct relationship and so really from my experience with the agency side, I thought, “Okay, if I just throw more muscle at it, if I throw more power at it, if I throw more effort in, this and that, it’s going to result.” That was never the case and it didn’t come into my brain to say maybe there’s a different way to do what we’re doing, so that one equals 10, like the effort and the energy is much greater of a result than what you’re putting in, which is common for most businesses and start-ups and software companies and all that. I don’t think that’s very clear when you’re going into the service-based industries, but it exists. I mean you see now this whole generation of service-based industries that are coming out of the gates that are so hyper focused and niche and it’s like they’re crushing it.
Mike:
[00:18:00]
I don’t think it’s so much that you didn’t ask yourself, “How can I put in one and get 10?” I think you asked yourself that a lot of times, I just think we’re so in our own head and in our own business that we’re looking too much at inspiration of other people, other agencies and what they’re doing that are closest to us, but more successful. It’s like cheating off somebody on a test and you don’t know if they studied. We have no idea if this agency is like losing its mind. We don’t know. It looks like they’re doing great, but we did a good job of making it look like we were living the life too. I think what for me, I started doing, I started taking on some clients that I was like doing consulting for and coaching for. These are people that are making 80,000 to 100,000 year in revenue, so for me this is something I’ve overcome a few years back. I notice that I give really good advice to other people and it’s working for them, they’re scaling their businesses, so I started asking myself, “What if Mike Arce was my coaching client, what would I say and take Mike Arce, forget everything, like really put yourself in that zone, what would I tell Mike?”
I give myself much better advice when I do it that way than if I just kind of keep in my head and keep in my head and just copy other things.
Russ:
[00:19:00]
Well and it’s nice though, I think too this is some level of maturity as well. I mean we’re close in age, we’re in our 30s and unless you’re like a super fit 50-year-old, but I think you’re closer to my age. I think too as you mature as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, you kind of settle down a little bit from like a mental state. I remember having the realization say like there’s enough of a market size for me to just hammer away at this little piece of it and be really happy and be really successful and deliver something. I don’t need to worry about all the other, what the other agency is doing or what our competitors are doing or what clients are telling me they want or whatever. I don’t know if 20 year old version, like I know 20 year old Russ couldn’t ignore that kind of stuff, like he’d be so distracted, wanting to, “Okay, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this …” Maybe we just like care less about what other people think, but I do feel that like it’s easier now with like a decade of experience to focus and narrow in than it would have been 10 years ago.
Mike:
[00:20:00]
[00:21:00]
Yeah and the thing, you’re like me where you like to read a lot and you go to conferences, you have coaches, you have mentors, so we get a ton of information. I think the thing that I had to do was kind of channel my 20-year-old self because one thing that I think I might have had a problem with is that I learned too much. It’s not that that’s a problem, but I want to implement everything because you hear knowledge is empower, implementation is empower, so you [inaudible 00:20:19]. You’re like, “Okay, I can do that.” Then, you read disciplines of execution, you read that. Then, you go to the seminar and you’re like and you’re reading for that one thing, the kick and then you realize, “Man, I just need to dumb it down, let me just get this one thing right and just focus on this and I’ll keep these things here in mind,” but I’m not there yet because my 20-year-old self was making more sales than my 30-year-old self, but my 20-year-old didn’t know as much, so he wasn’t talking as much. He wasn’t saying more than he had to. He was just streamlined because he had no other way to go. Streamlining now, I’m making more sales, it’s easier to talk about what I’m doing, not only to customers, but to my employees and to my team, vendors.
I guess dumbing it down is something that it’s hard for guys like us because we get so much we want to learn and implement everything.
Russ:
Tell me this, has it been just so awesome honoring your niche in the sense that when people come to you that don’t fit with in it, it’s like, I don’t want to say you feel like a badass, but you’re kind of like you know you kind of love say no a little bit because it basically reflects like your strategy. You’re like sticking to your plan.
Mike:
[00:22:00]
Yes and I haven’t fully gotten there yet because I’m not at my goal, so it’s still like that feeling of “That’s revenue right there that could get me to where I want to be monetarily.” There is a good feeling with saying no and then after hanging up, going, “That’s work that I would have had to do that I wouldn’t have wanted to do.” I’m excited about that. Once I get to where I definitely want to be at, I have a goal of working with 100 studios and so once I get to that point, yes I know I’m going to feel like a badass, just be like, “No, sorry, I’m referring people.”
Russ:
Where are you at right now, how many studios?
Mike:
We’re at 21.
Russ:
21, so that’s like us [inaudible 00:22:22], you can see here we have our 500. We have 500 client goal. I think we’re at 350 right now.
Mike:
All right, so fine, my new goal is 501 studios.
Russ:
500 has taken a while. I thought I was going to do 500 the first year and it’s like, “All right 500 in two years.”
Mike:
It sounds so simple sometimes.
Russ:
[00:23:00]
Well, yeah I mean technically we’ve had more than a 1000 clients but people cancel and churn out, this is 500 active clients. Let’s jump into that because you were briefly mentioning in the call, you are in a state of transition, so you made the shift to the fitness studios, but you said you have a good chunk of recurring revenue that is not within this niche. What are your thoughts around that? How do you, experience or advice you’d give someone or where are you at in your situation where you’ve made the switch to a niche, but you still got your legacy group that’s not there, like how do you handle that or what are you doing to handle that?
Mike:
I’m not 100% sure where I’m at right now on that to be fair. I think what I’m going to be doing because the clients that we have right now that are not in that niche we’ve had for a long time because we haven’t sold anything but this for like four months. The customers …
Russ:
For anyone watching this in agency years is like two decades like four months is, where it’s like one month for every 10 years in agency’s time.
Mike:
[00:24:00]
[00:25:00]
Really, the first two months we made like one or two sales because we didn’t have enough clout and we got like 17 sales in the last 40 days. It’s really come from there, but the clients that we have they’re not that they’re doing very well, they’ve already achieved a point to where my team understands them. It’s not a lot of creative work. At this point, it’s just consistency, so it’s not too much of a burden. I think we’re going to hang on to those guys for a long time, but when I say longtime, it’s like maybe six months. I don’t know, it really is going to depend, but either way one thing that I’m doing is I’m aligning myself with other agencies and I’ve started referring the people that I’m turning down to them. I’m doing it for two reasons, one because I hate saying no. I like to give other people an option, but also because it gives me an opportunity to get feedback during this time and see how well they’re doing with those customers and then possibly shift over our customers to them because the price points are same, the results are the same and the customer service is the feel. I feel comfortable telling my customers like, “Hey, this is better for you guys and for us.”
Russ:
[00:26:00]
Yeah, it’s like any sort of that evolution whether you think about like personally, our evolutions as individuals, our group of friends in junior high and high school and college are much different than our circles now or in my opinion they should be. I would consider myself a failure if I still had the same social tendencies as high school version of Russ, but some people they’re cool with that. That’s all right, but I think the same goes for business and your every iteration, every niche move, every upgrade you make in your team and your systems, you’re going to have a book of clients that may or may not be a good fit anymore, but it sounds like I honor your way you’re handling that. I think that’s a very high-class way to make sure these clients still are served and just it’s not a notice like, “You’re going to be terminated, sorry got to figure this out on your own.”
Mike:
A lot of them, we’ve had for two, three years and I know them. I just went to a barbecue with one of them. They invited me to their kid’s birthday party and I’ve gone to Seattle with some of them. You know what I mean, like there’s a friendship there, so it’s kind of like you and I. I have a friendship with you and if I knew that there’s a day where I may have to change things up on you, I want to at least know because of our relationship and the trust that you have for me, I have a plan to move you into position, where you’re going to do as well or better, so we could still be friends and maintain the relationship that we’ve developed.
Russ:
[00:27:00]
Nice, so we actually have a lot of fitness clients in our spaces. For those of the guys, the people that are watching this that are in that space, they probably going to be really interested and connect with you. Let’s get into some tactical stuff really quick, like tell us about your process, tell us about some of the things that you’re doing. Feel free to use as much marketing tech details as needed, but really like give us elevator pitch of where you’re at and kind of the things that you guys have been tackling and building and creating for your studio clients.
Mike:
Sure, so we created a product for the first time and it’s called Fit FLAVER.
Russ:
I saw that. I was like, “Go Brandon.”
Mike:
I don’t even know, does it come up backwards on your screen?
Russ:
No, it’s good on this end.
Mike:
Okay, cool, so we created a product called Fit FLAVER and we’re really excited to do it because it’s a consistent program that works for us. It’s an acronym. I didn’t spell it wrong. It stands for Facebook Landing Pages Automation Video Email and Retargeting and you can be successful using …
Russ:
That’s awesome dude. I love it.
[00:28:00]
Mike:
You can use any one of these and still have a level of success, sending Facebook ads to a website and not doing any of this stuff. You can still have a decent amount of success or retargeting a video. What we’ve learned is we’ve come up with a formula when we use these six components, we put them together and the way that we do it, the results are, it’s almost fake, like some people don’t believe that it’s possible, which is really cool. Really the whole goal is we run Facebook ads, we have a set of interests that we know work very well and we create ads in a way that we know work very well.
[00:29:00]
We send them to a landing page with a copy and the structure that we know works. There’s automation. We use Infusionsoft to make sure that the customers automatically get emails right there and then from the customer. There’s video in play. We’ve learned that if we’re going to work with a fitness studio, either A, they need to have a great video already or B, we’ve learned a cool work around where they can take even just their phone and do a really cool pan of their studio and then either I or somebody better looking for my team will get up in front of our green screen and we’ll wear a generic shirt and we’ll put the branding on the [inaudible 00:29:15] in the video. We’ll just say something like, “Hi, my name is Mike and I’m with Absolute Martial Arts, if you’re looking …” We just do the thing.
We take that. We put it on in of course retargeting, so anybody that visits the landing pages, but doesn’t opt-in, we’re going to continually follow them with different ads that mention about the offer expiring, hurry up, this popular, you don’t want to miss out. Once they sign, then we turn those off, so that’s the whole formula. Of course, there’s other things, but that’s the program that kind of started it all.
Russ:
[00:30:00]
I love it and as most marketers will recognize, everything you mentioned is not new or novel, like this is all 101 kind of stuff, but creating a package, creating a sequence, even the clever way of being able to brand it is awesome. I mean it’s easier to sell, but then I think it’s easier to really say like, “Look here is our sequential process and our pieces and we need people to be trained in landing page or Infusionsoft or whatever it is.”
Mike:
It actually worked out that the acronym had to be spelled incorrectly, like it was an [inaudible 00:30:24] because Fit FLAVER spelled correctly dot com was taken. Fit FLAVER this way was open, I was able to get it.
Russ:
Well, I’m sure you could monopolize like down the road, you start niching in other spaces. You could have like dentist flavor or whatever.
Mike:
[00:31:00]
We already bought [inaudible 00:30:43], puppyflavor and there’s a couple others. We bought like five or six because we’ve learned the flavor program works very well for a couple others too, but we just really wanted to get in the zone and start with one and kill it and [inaudible 00:31:01].
Russ:
I mean until you to get to a 100 that’s [inaudible 00:31:02], you’re not allowed to launch any other flavors until you at least get to 100.
Mike:
You don’t have to worry about that. Yeah, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m focused right now, yes.
Russ:
I’m actually registering pickleflavor right now as we speak.
Mike:
Shit.
Russ:
I’ve already got it, taken, what? How did he knew?
Mike:
Pickleflavor has got to be taken anyway. That just makes sense.
Russ:
[00:32:00]
I want to ask a question I’m really curious about, lead quality and like how you’re managing that because anyone can get email addresses with the crazy enough offer and the ride around things, like how are you helping your clients because like let’s face it, if you deliver 100 leads in a month and there’re 0 sales, but like the studio owner is not calling them back, like that it’s really you’re handing this off to an abyss that’s a challenge. Have you run into that …
Mike:
Oh yeah.
Russ:
Or is there more part of your program or coaching or training that you guys provide, especially with like the fitness guy who wants to be a business owner who may not be the best sales guy?
Mike:
That’ the thing, so you know [inaudible 00:32:15] from Scottsdale, she’s a businessperson [inaudible 00:32:18].
Russ:
By the way, for the record, she is the number one referrer of Design Pickle.
Mike:
[00:33:00]
She is the number one referrer of Fit FLAVER too. Yes, she is referring quite some people to us. She is a businessperson that opened a fitness studio. She understands marketing and how to do PR and she’s really [inaudible 00:32:35] she hustles. She know the value of leads and getting these people close. We do have customers and we have had customers where they’re getting the leads or getting 5, 10, 15 leads a day and they don’t feel comfortable following up more than once or twice because they like they’re bothering or they don’t follow up right away because maybe their owner, operator when they’re on floor back to back for six hours. We’re very transparent when we first talk with them and we say, “If you can’t make these leads a priority and you can’t see yourself following up with them this quickly and you can’t follow up with them this many times, then be honest with me and tell me now because the answer’s got to be no between this connection until we get that down.”
[00:34:00]
I’ve turned down fitness studios because they were honest with me and they told me, “I really don’t have anybody that can follow up, I’m in back-to-back where I have a full-time job and I don’t have that ability.” We said no to people and that’s okay because we want to keep the reputation solid, but we put customer update video once a week and that customer update video every week talks about things that you can improve. It’s always solving a problem, so the most recent problem was how to get more of your booked appointments to actually show. Then, we started a show, kind of like what you’re doing Russ, where it’s video and it’s a podcast. We rip the audio and we upload it to a podcast and it’s called the GST Show, Get Shit Done, right. It’s really focused on fitness and the goal is to always have a great guest on the show that’s mastered a challenge that some other studios seem to be having.
Russ:
Nice that’s awesome. What do you think the biggest challenge is for anyone coming into their newfound leads, is it the closing, is it the getting them to show up for the free trial or whatever? Like I’m just more or less curious of what you’ve seen so far.
Mike:
[00:35:00]
We haven’t worked with enough studios enough to measure which ones for sure the most, but the three most popular ones is one, getting them on the call. Two, getting them to show and three, getting them to buy. These are three. Now, we have people like [inaudible 00:34:58] that doesn’t have any of those challenges. We have some people that may only have a challenge with one of them or another, really the inexperienced businessperson that opened up a gym because he was a good guy, he was the best personal trainer at the gym he was at. He figured, “If I opened up my own place, it’ll be great,” and he does and doesn’t realize there’s a lot more that goes into it. That guy has the biggest challenge. That’s why we screen those out from the beginning, but here’s the thing, think about it this way, 92% of the leads that are generated through this Facebook program are mobile.
[00:36:00]
You got this person that we’re targeting within seven miles or five miles of the studio that is exactly what you want, a woman between 27, 55 or whatever the demographic is and interested in fitness, she’s bored and is on Facebook. Then, she sees your ad for free week. She likes it enough to click on it, gets to the landing page, then watches the video, likes it enough to go ahead and click on the option to get the pass, puts in her full name, her email address and her phone number, quite an exhausting process from mobile standpoint, but she does all that. Then, she sends you the information knowing full well you’re going to reach out to her to schedule the first appointment. That’s a pretty good lead. That’s a targeted person that fits your demographic that’s within five to seven miles that found that time worth spending. If you follow up with them and you do your job, you’re going to get great results, great results, but if you don’t, then at the end of the day, it’s a lead is lead.
This is what I’ve been telling everybody, I don’t care if you’re in business, you could be a detective in the police force, when you get a lead as detectives, it doesn’t mean you’re a step away from solving the case. It means you’re a step towards solving the case. You got a really good opening here, but there’s work that needs to be done.
Russ:
Exactly.
Mike:
[00:37:00]
On the business side, a lead doesn’t mean you’re a step away from getting a customer, a lead means you’re a solid step towards getting a customer. We got a good opportunity here, but now there’s work that has to be done. I’m keeping my customers busy with things that they should be doing as opposed to posting on Facebook and finding things to do that could possibly get them opportunities. Look, stop all that. We’ll take care of that. You just get on the phone, close them because we’re going to send you 150 – 200 opportunities a month.
Russ:
Boom.
Mike:
Get them in.
Russ:
[00:38:00]
Give your taste of Fit FLAVER, woo. I actually just had this conversation yesterday, a lot of our sales happens automatically, but like people want to talk on the phone all the time, “Hey, can I call, can we talk, can we talk,” because it’s not a cheap product, but it’s not like it’s … We’re $370 a month right now, but every time I have someone wanting to talk on the phone with me and you could feel free to steal this if you don’t already have this conversation, I look at that one 5 to 10 minute phone call be worth thousands of dollars. For me because you get bored, I mean especially you’re having the same conversation over and over and over and over and over again, it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but I literally set myself up. I’m like, “I’m going to call this person back this call, this few minute phone call could be worth 3,000 or more dollars.”
Mike:
You never know who that person, it could be [inaudible 00:38:17] that refers you 50 people.
Russ:
Exactly and I think a lot of people, they’re afraid of the phone now a days because of how much happens on the mobile side or the digital side of interactions, but tell you what the person … First of all, any sales guy, I know you’ve ever studied or I’ve ever studied, they’ll always say they’re success was due to getting on the phone, like hands down, like getting on phone, talking to people, closing people. I think most people are afraid of that nowadays, so if you’re actually doing that and you’re cool and you’re engaging and whatnot, you’ll have an extraordinary level of success because …
Mike:
Absolutely.
[00:39:00]
Russ:
95% of everyone else is just trying to do everything via email and not actually talk to anybody.
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