Is your business where you want it to be?
What got you to where you are may not be what you need to get to where you want to be.
Reinvention just might be the answer to your problems.
In this episode, we cover:
- Understanding who you are in your marketplace.
- Simple moves that can double the size of your business.
- How limiting beliefs and reverse peer pressure are holding you back.
- Why there’s no ceiling to your earning potential with reinvention.
If you’ve been feeling stuck and need to make a change, this is exactly the episode you’ve been waiting for!
Need help reinventing? Naamly helps fitness professionals like you simplify your follow-up systems so you can build your dream business. Start your FREE trial now!
Watch The Full Episode
Sumit: welcome to another episode of just one thing. And I’m with the legendary Tom again, and we’re going to unpack one more thing here today. So, Tom, uh, I w I’ve been coming to all your workshops and I’ve been reading your books and you talk about this art of reinvention. So help me unpack that more. What does that really mean at a deeper level?
Thomas Plummer: [00:00:26] There’s. I always Boulevard discussions. Cause you, you make me go deep into stuff that I sell them. Don’t think about it anymore, but that’s, that’s a, it’s probably one of the most appropriate things you could ask for where we are right now in our world. So to speak post virus is there’s a lot of people I’m working on a new presentation for perform better.
One of the things I was talking about in there was one of the biggest mistakes people make is they, they fail. Their own reality is that you, you kind of, you’re either caught clinging to who you used to be, or you’re, you’re really kind of so obsessed about what might go wrong in the future that you really want.
Ever understand your own presence. You know, you really don’t know who you are, where you’re going, what you’re trying to do. You just simply lose track of your own current reality. So the art of reinvention really is the fact that, okay, here’s who I am. Here’s how I got here. But who I am is not enough to get where I want to be.
So you have to reinvent yourself again. You have to let go of everything you think you believe, and you have to go out and reinvent yourself and take you to where you want to be. I think Mike Boyle, I mean, I’ve heard of speak so many times. I, I is one of my favorite guys to listen to, uh, and he, you know, he he’ll get up every couple of years and say, you remember all this stuff I told you a couple years ago, I was wrong.
I was like, cause he’s down a new path. But there’s a lot of people that, okay, I can’t let go of this. It got me here, but, and I, I, you probably heard me say that too. What made you good is the very thing that stops you from being. Because you have to let go and reinvent yourself. You really have to just let go.
So the art of reinvention is looking within your business and going, what is the potential left here? And the tools I have may not be the right tools to get me to that level of play.
That’s a very hot. Thing to deal with. It’s kind of esoteric, but you know, everything I know is not enough to get me where I want.
So what’s all this mean in the gym business. You’re you were coming up through everything. We talked about the virus. Happened. We went through the second wave in the fall. It was devastating October. We came over the hump, all that’s been written about, talked about all that information was always available when people want to really read it.
And we’ve gotten to the point now where we’re coming into, we’re going to have a little downturn this winter, you know, there will be a little resurgence in a few states. And, but in essence, we’re in a part where this is the best business is going to be in two years. Are you ready? And lot of guys should take the next six weeks to two months.
The gym business really doesn’t start until the third week of January. Anyway, you’ve got basically two months to reinvent your business to get it to that level. So my daughter’s gym, quince training, you know, madly proud of this woman. She’s doing such good work. Uh, just shut her gym down for several days.
And we did a whole jam. That’s only two years old because the gym had grown the gym had she, she got in, it was a little more of a basic team concept. Women’s only gym, Cape Cod and some small group while the small group started taking off. And then all of a sudden these one-on-one clients were coming in and.
We’re, you know, we’re, we’re here, you know, do something and she wasn’t prepared for that. She just wasn’t. She just didn’t think that client would be there. Then they showed up. And so we had to reinvent the entire gym to go for small group and one-on-one and the team stuff is kind of just falling away as, maybe at best to support for the other stuff she had to let go of everything that made her successful that helped her survive the virus.
And. Re-invent yourself to go forward on what the T to reach the potential. She was good, but her skillset top-line the business. When she reinvented this business and redesigned it and restructured it. Now she’s opened up the potential for another 50 grand a month. It’s an amazing process when you understand what you’re doing, but that’s
Sumit: true.
I think that’s very powerful. I think you you’re throwing out some amazing nuggets, which connects. Really well with me too. It’s like, what got you here will not take you there. Marshall Goldsmith’s book. I remember I was sitting with him. We had hosted one of the parties many, many years ago in a different avatar and, and, and I was having a seat by him.
So, you know, when you were talking about that, just brought back memories, but like you said, th the idea. But the biggest takeaway as I look at it is let letting go of who you are and embracing change to who you want to become. But, and, and, and, and getting over that ceiling, right. The ceiling that you just kind of come up and make up in your minds, but how do you know where you want to be Tom?
Like w when do I decide that I’m ready to reinvent? Like, at what point do you say I need to let go now versus. Pushed through. I got to persevere. I just got to power through this and there’s going to be this rainbow on the other side. So, so is, are there some signs that I should be looking at, which tells me that I’m ready to re-invent or te tell me, tell me more on that.
Thomas Plummer: The big picture simplified is everybody looks at their revenue as it’s, there’s a ceiling, there’s no ceiling there. You know, you should be raising your rates every two years for new members forward. We don’t usually raise the existing members rates. So every couple of years you’re going to start to make more money.
Anyway, your expenses go up. Your cost of living goes up, everything. Has to, to, to follow suit. So you’ve raised the prices in your gym for new members, but there’s also that we get locked down and there’s a lot of reasons for this. One of it is reverse peer pressure, where they, you, you sit around with 10 other gym owners and they’re all talking about why did twenty-five?
I did 27. I did 32. And you got the one guy that just says I did 80, and nobody wants to talk about. No, cause they go like, how do you do it? And he goes, well, here’s how I did it, but nobody wants to do it because they would have to come out of there out of their comfort zone of who they are. So the potential of your business in the gym business, almost always virtually untapped because there’s guys are performing underperforming 20, 40, 60 grand a month.
I’m working with a client. I just, this guy is one of my favorite clients to work with. He just, he has no. And little Jim, um, uh, about, uh, roughly 3,500 feet and he was doing 20 grand a month and I’m looking at this going great location. Great gym, good owner. No fear. I’m like, we can go to 40 and he’s like, no, what do you mean?
No, he goes, I’ve been here three and a half years. I, this, you know, I said no. So we started putting the plan together. What, through the sequence and within, within 18 months, not quite two years in that range, uh, 40, so. And so I’m looking at everything and I’m like, okay, this is, you know, he’s got a critical location.
He’s got all this. I’m like, well, that was good, but what do you want to do now? And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, I think we get to 80 and he’s, he’s laughing on the phone. And I said, what’s important to you is, is I want six weeks off, twice a year. So we need a partner. So we brought in a junior partner and kind of restructured his business.
And within two years he was at. So what was the potential of his business? 20, 40, or 80. And we could probably push a hundred thousand in this location and that’s, but you know, the, the, the barrier wasn’t the neighborhood very rigid in his head. He was the best. So a lot of owners, when they start to re look at this, they, they, they are afraid that this they’re held back by reverse peer pressure.
Also a big thing. We need to talk about summit. This is so powerful is that the, these we’re so afraid of change, but the members hate change that not all of them, but there’s always that core of members that no matter what you change. They, they hate you.
So we help get held hostage by our members. Cause a lot of young gym owners wouldn’t make that change because the members hate it. Oh my God. You’re not going to change that schedule are you?
I’ll I’ll have to quit. And we believe that. And sometimes your it’s okay to sacrifice five members to get a hundred more, but we get so long. Oh my God, they’re going to quit. And I’m only making 20 grand that guy’s going to take a 10th of my membership outta here. You know, we just get so caught up in that nonsense.
And so besides the reverse peer pressure, our friends hold us down, we can held hostage by our. And we’re not, we’re not willing to make change. So th th the key essence is you always have to do what’s right for your business, even if it costs you a few members to move to that next level. And people are just, they just, it’s a very hard thing in fairness.
I get it. Change is tough, but if you know, so what your. Uh, 80 members, 120 members, and you’re never going to change anything ever for the rest of the time. You own that business because six members are going to walk out. So you’re never changing anything, nothing you can’t fire a staff, hire anybody new because all my God, the members of being your face, that’s the first number I would fire is to get that member out of there because they’re holding back the potential of my business.
Fair enough. Okay. So
Sumit: let go embrace change. And. Reinvent yourself. So
Thomas Plummer: because there is no timeline. Yeah. There’s a timeline. You you’ve got to, you can’t wait. There’s a right now it’s a perfect time. If anybody listens to this and the next week or two, this what a beautiful time to reinvent your business.
Uh, so in Jillian’s case, you know, we had to do the pod system. Uh, I’ve got guys that I’m working with that were shut down. They had five gyms and we, we changed all the gyms from team aspect to small group. Their average return per client average payment was 1 27 and across the five gyms prior, uh, when they reopened the gyms, they, they were hitting as high as three 50 and some of the gems, uh, because they just changed the, they changed the business plan.
They were willing to reinvent themselves, very talented owners, some of the best donors I think I’ve ever worked with. 47 plus year career. They just were brilliant. They did. They just saw the business differently. They knew there was more potential. So you, we, we sometimes look around w you know, one final thought on that.
It’s, uh, it’s just, most of them owners, you, you become one dimensional. You, you do training, you become good at training and you work every day to become better at training. But training is. A very small part of the gym business, because that’s a basic assumption. If you look at a good restaurant food while it’s has to be good and quality is actually a very small part of a good restaurant because of it’s it’s everything from how the place feels sounds, the music, the colors, the service, the shell, everything combined.
To do that. So in the gym business guys say, well, I can’t do. I talked to a guy just yesterday. He’s a, uh, a young, talented older on the west coast. And we’re looking at this going, we can double as revenue. If we just add one new client. That’s it, but we tracked him through, he came back to marketing. We just need to up the marketing, a little work, a little on his transition on the sales, but he needs one a week.
So he needs maybe four more paid trials a month. And he’s that close to doubling as well. ’cause over 12 months. I showed them the projection on it over 12 months is revenue doubles. And he goes from the proverbial 20 to 40, within 12 months, probably less it’s there. It’s in his business.
You know, if you do recruitment of new members in marketing nine to 12 hours a week and cut your training down to 20 hours and hire some staff and probably double the size of your business, it’s not that hard, but it’s really not that hard to double your business.
Yeah. I’m putting barriers up.
Sumit: I totally buy that. I, I, I, as you were saying that there were two things that were popping up in my head. One. No, this picture of a bull with an arrow, you need to pull the arrow back for it to go forward. Like you said, you know, don’t be held hostage to losing a few members because those decisions that you take may be hurt.
He hurting you small. It’s the fear, right? You’ve got to get over that fear of losing that five clients, but in the long run, those would be the best decisions ever to propel your business forward. And then to, um, the point about you, whatever, wherever you, man, if you, wherever you put your energies and your water, whatever side of the, uh, garden you water, it will become green.
So if you’re starting to put in more time and energies into marketing or recruiting new members, then lo and behold, it will get better. You know, you’ll start feeding more. So it will manifest itself. So I buy that up. Jack Welch, uh, one of the most brilliant CEOs and, um, modern American business.
Uh, he was the guy that turked, uh, GE when it was just flailing and actually resurrected it. But he’s the guy that really started that whole concept of what made you good is not enough to make you great. Right? It’s it’s, he’s the guy that destroyed. So he went in and looked at the businesses and one of the first things he said, you know, he looked at all the divisions because GE was just a cluster.
All kinds of disparate companies at the time. And he goes, if we’re not number one or number two in that division, close it, sell it, move it on. And people are like, well, w you know, how can that be? It’s like, you’re not number one. Or number two, you know, your who’s going to remember. So when you look at, I think the brilliant advice is if you look around the market and you are a gym owner and you need to reinvent yourself, are you number one or number two in the market?
And are you just doing the same thing? You know what, uh, I I’d hate to be in a market where there’s an orange theory and F 45 of Barry’s bootcamp. And here I am trying to do team. You know, I’m, I’m not even a brand name. I’m not even, I don’t need to connect with anybody. Oh, sure. I’ve got 75 clients that love me.
But if the art of reinvention is one, I could probably double my revenue by changing away from that team concept.
So we look at our businesses sometimes. We go in with the right concept and all of a sudden competitors come in, people come in and you have to look at your business and go.
The leader anymore. I need to reinvent my business and take it down a path. Maybe nobody else is doing yet. I need to let go of what I’m doing that got me here. But now I’ve got eight guys trying to do the same thing I’m doing. What’s the next level of play or sophistication or reinvention I could do to make my business relevant.
The art of reinvention they’re kind of finished. This is, are you really understand who you are in your marketplace? Do you understand what, how your business relates to the other businesses? Do you understand? What’s what’s changed the last three to five years just because you were right. Five years ago.
Doesn’t mean you’re right. My daughter’s Jim was right pre virus. It was wrong. Post-fire us because the client had changed. Of course, we always blamed the client. We sent them a letter. Thank you. We’re reinvesting in this gym because the gym has changed. We’ve become more upscale, more elite. We have much more need emphasis for one-on-one privacy for our clients.
You know, the clientele is really changed in here. You know, clients that we did not anticipate now, or our main population in this gym. Thank you. And here’s what we’re going to do. You’re right. So we’re going to do this and she’s going to lose 10, maybe 15 of this, the groupies. And she picked up, you know, 40 one-on-one clients.
One one-on-one client pays four times what a group. He pays. She had to reinvent our business to stay competitive because the market changed. And that’s the challenge to everybody. What’s your current reality? We’ll end on that. What is your current reality and what made you go. And what got you to this year.
It may not be the same skill sets you need to get next year. You need to reinvent yourself and your gym, and you really need to look at the potential of the business, not the barriers you put on it, but what is the real potential? And it’s virtually unlimited and training gyms, you know, 80,000, a hundred thousand a month.
That’s it’s it could be just crazy if you let your business go. All right. Well,
Sumit: thank you. Once again, Tom, it’s always a pleasure to have you. And on that note, we will end this episode of just one.
Thomas Plummer: Join your man. Thank you.