Don't Buy Ads: Grow Your CrossFit Box

Do The Voices, Daddy!

If you're a parent, you've heard this before.  Your five-year-old isn't interested in Little Red Robin Hood, not really; they just want to hear the Big Bad Wolf voice.

Voice inflection is more powerful than you may realize.  It goes without saying that it's critical to project an excited demeanour to your clients, but doing the same thing all the time - same cheers, same words of encouragement, same gestures - can become monotone. Clients acclimate to you.  And since we already know that novelty is king, acclimatization is a negative.

Some steps to changing and applying inflection during a tough WOD:

• Get on their level - if they're on the floor, get down with them. Try to make eye contact.
• Alternate pulling and pushing, carrot and stick: "Don't Stop.  Five more to go!" "Let's do another three, and then take a five-second break."  "Keep your hands on the bar!" "Okay, let's try to get the first thirty unbroken."
• Use a more intimate voice when things get REALLY tough. At the start of the WOD, it's great to be loud and screamy. With three reps left on Grace, though, I'm standing so close that I'm practically sharing their shirt.
• In that same vein, a low voice - just above a whisper - adds a degree of intimacy that lets the athlete know that they are receiving your undivided, private attention at that moment. Eye contact can also work wonders from across a room.
• Building: in a crowded, noisy gym, if you see one athlete struggling, start with a calm, empathetic voice. "Okay, you're doing well.  You're already over half done. Three more seconds rest, and we stand up again.  3...2....1....okay, great.  Hands on the bar." Building speed and pitch into your speech can lead to a crescendo of action.
• In a quiet gym, with an athlete attempting a personal best, you can draw attention to their attempt with the slow buildup, too. Start with the personal and intimate, as above, and slowly build up your magnitude until people are taking notice.  Nothing beats the private attention of a coach when you're trying hard; and nothing beats applause when you succeed.
• A deeper voice seems more sincere.
• Different scenarios require different voices (and different personalities.) Outside? loud. Max deadlift? Loud, from behind. OLY technique day? Well, Rip swears by southern rock, and who am I to argue?

As with anything else, frequent change is best.  To illustrate the technique to our interns on Tuesday night, I went systematically from one athlete to the next in a circuit during the WOD.  I used a different voice every time I made a lap. It wasn't spontaneous; it was planned.  The athletes didn't notice that I was always encouraging them in the same order.  They didn't see the pattern.  What they DID recognize was individual attention, tailored to fit their exact predicament.

You're The Sales Team - sorry.

Before he finished writing, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," Robert Kiyosaki was doing an interview in Japan.  The interviewer, an aspiring writer, longed to become the 'bestselling author' that Kiyosaki already was.  "You need to take a sales course." was his advice.  She bristled, taking offense to advice in the way only an artist can.

Kiyosaki pointed to her notes; she'd written, "Robert Kiyosaki: bestselling author" at the top of the page. "It doesn't say, "BestWriting Author," " he said.

Since that exchange, Kiyosaki now begins his lectures with, "How many people here can make a better hamburger than McDonald's?" and watches the hands go up. McDonald's isn't winning because it has the best cheeseburger.  It's not winning because it has the lowest prices, either. It's winning because it can sell. If you know any McDonald's franchisees, you'll know that they usually refer to their restaurant as, "the store." They're selling, not creating.  They're not trying to perfect the hamburger.  In fact, Ray Kroc famously told students that he was in the REAL ESTATE business, not the food business (McDonald's owns 50,000 of the hottest commercial properties in North America alone.  Right now, they've chosen to put restaurants on them...but maybe not forever.)

The cultural flaw that has somehow ingrained in us that wealth is bad, and the desire to make a lot of money is the road to Hell has thereby convinced us that salesmanship is a negative quality.  A good salesperson is just a better con man, right?  "Smooth" carries a negative connoitation, somehow: the guy who makes it easiest to fulfill your request is the most crooked?

As Zig Ziglar, a very devout Christian, pointed out at a seminar I attended a few years ago: Jesus is winning because he's got the best sales staff.  Christianity is NOT the perfect religion. It doesn't fold new science into its message; doesn't require that its priests continue to learn; doesn't measure one practitioner against another; doesn't work too well with "objective and measurable," either. But you can't keep it on the shelves.

This is the Rich Dad website.  Excellent stuff, and I highly recommend the book (link to the audiobook version is in the first sentence.)

How To Steal A Canoe

You can get into any building, any property, any meeting if you have a clipboard or a camera. A hard-hat helps, too. You've heard this before, or if you haven't, you've likely seen Wedding Crashers.

I'll add the 2010 version: you can get away with anything, if it appears you've done it on purpose.

When I was in University, a friend's law and security class played a game: one half of the class was to 'steal' items from a grocery store; the other half was to catch them.  Every 'shoplifter' was caught...except him.  He got away......with a CANOE! How'd he do it?

Well, he just picked it up and walked right out the door. Even though his classmates recognized him, they still assumed that he had a valid reason to take that canoe out of the store.  Because, after all, who would dare try to steal a canoe? 

Bed head? Add mousse and go!

Hole in your drywall? Cut more to show the brick beneath!

Worn wooden floors? Better street cred!

Broken plates and bars? Stick 'em up on the walls!

Novelty is 'in.' You can pass 'different' off as 'better.'

We've reached a point where fashion 'seasons' can no longer keep up with the demand for novelty. You can get away with anything as long as you say - or infer - that it's been done on purpose.

(Yes, that's Mark Twight on the right. He's persona non grata at CrossFit HQ, I know. He's also a helluva writer and photographer.)

Assets

When we started Catalyst, we also incorporated a Holdings Company (Kickits Echo Bay.)  It's a nice soft cushion for splitting income between my wife and me; a nice tight umbrella against litigation; and now, a big part of our retirement plan.

Catalyst needs a new home.  Currently split between two locations, and constantly referring business out to complementary facilities (MMA, gymnastics, physio, and RMT) we could benefit from consolidating our two facilities into one AND housing the others in one building.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts.  Crossover from a martial arts studio, gymnastics club, and various therapies could add a substantial revenue stream.  Nearly 100% of our new business comes from referrals. With that in mind, if you're watching your kid's gymnastics or karate class and there's a CrossFit group going on in the same area......will your attention be split? I think so.

Kickits needs a muse. That is, something that will keep paying some bills when we retire, and potentially be saleable if necessary.  Even if the worst-case scenario happens, and we have to sell or fold Catalyst, the building could still be a revenue source - we'll just lease it to someone else.

For now, Catalyst will lease space from Kickits. New lessees will lease space from Kickits.  Kickits will hold the mortgage.  The risk is closer to the heart - if Catalyst fails, who would I sue to get the rent? Myself? - but so is the reward.  RISK is the ONLY thing that pays.  Only RISK separates you from every other armchair entrepreneur with a can't-miss idea. Time to start setting up for the long-term.

Buying The Farm

It's been awhile between posts on DontBuyAds.com, but that doesn't mean we're not busy.  In fact, the opposite is true.

Over the next twelve months, as our lease expires in two locations and we combine our operations into one, we'll be detailing our processes and some innovative programming ideas as we go.

A quick look through the lens:

1) purchase of a building (tomorrow's blog will feature our reasons for buying, instead of leasing)

2) potential sale of shares to a staff member

3) addition of "league play" CrossFit, for both individuals and teams

4) development of a huge educational exercise program (CFJ essay coming soon!)

5) development of our own specialty Education certification.

I'll break each down by turn.  But in the meantime, the backstory:

I was approached by a staff member - a terrific coach and Personal Trainer - who wanted to quit his full-time job (teacher) to coach fulltime.  He wanted a share of the company.  After explaining the potential downside (risk is the ONLY thing that pays, after all) and conferring with several clients whose opinion I respect, I offered him a deal.

Create double your proposed salary in new NET revenue.  In one year. Then I'll sell up to X percentage of shares at market value. 

He's got great ideas.  I'm cheering for him.  I'll keep updating his progress here.

Clay Shirky And The Cognitive Surplus

The Personal Trainer of a decade ago is now superfluous.

Keyholder to that giant Vault of Information, the Personal Trainer was the King of 1998.  He could hand out low-calorie diets, and no one would check his math.  He could prescribe 4 sets of 8 reps to everyone (The Weider "Blanket" Method) without retort - after all, HE was CERTIFIED. With a frame, and everything!

Those very few with a degree, in 1998, had a monopoly on "real" information.  We could (and did) refute anything said by any other Trainer, and it was good enough to get us boatloads of clients.  We could be boring, and still win! We didn't even have to exercise!

The problem with the education system, though, is that teaches everyone to read.  Whoops.  Suddenly, that Vault is without walls.  There's information everywhere, to the point that many use the phrase "information overload" to describe their biggest problem in reaching potential clients.  There's just too much out there.

Not so, says Clay Shirky.  Since the printing press, and the writing of one more book than a single man could read in his lifetime, everyone has had to choose which information to absorb.  There's been 'information overload' for centuries, says Shirky. That's the Cognitive Surplus.

The real winners, he says, are the Discriminators: the filters. Google is a filter. So was Guttenburg.  Governments are one type of filter. Godin has begun calling these filters "lenses," since their information is distorted by the worldview of the Discriminator.

The Personal Trainer - or Coach - of 2010 is Discriminator.  Also Disseminator, Chemist, and Anthropologist.  He is aware, experienced, and open.  Instead of attempting to protect that information through more "secrets," he is trying to be the biggest funnel possible.

Listen to the interview, from the BBC Digital Planet here.

Cash Flow Projections

Jon Gilson has a great series at AgainFaster about cash flow at startup (and even a sweet little Cash Flow Calculator for CrossFit Affiliates.) It's no secret that I'm a Gilson fan, almost to the point of creepiness.  Last year, our tshirts for The Catalyst Games featured half of his essay, "Don't Quit," on the back.

Jon practices all the things that make for a great business owner: he cares.  He makes you happy.  He helps you first, and doesn't ask anything in return. Plus, he's really cool.

He's been posting these videos for a few months, and I finally had a chance to sit through them all - nonstop - last week.  I like his projections, and his math is useful.  But they're not absolute: you can start up your box and pay yourself the first week (I did.) You can be "in the black" before the 11-month mark.

Gilson assumes a couple of things: that you're not starting with any clients, and that you're going to pay for equipment in lumps.  More likely, you're going to have a few clients follow you to your new Box, and secure financing with the smallest payments possible at startup to secure cash flow.

We found office space above a stationery store for $400 per month.  My partners had offices in the front of the building. We painted bright green over the grey wallpaper.  We cleaned the carpeted floors and lay rubber on top. We stacked equipment near the walls because we were unsure of the floor's capacity. We cleaned out a vault and rented it to an excellent massage therapist.  We had to take out a personal line of credit for $16,000 for our initial equipment buy.  We negotiated the equipment purchase to death, and then paid a little extra for the option to return the equipment (for 30% of its purchase price) after one year if we were going bankrupt. We bought groceries with our overdraft.  We lived this way for a year.  We grew anyway.

All we used was a basic cash flow calculator, just like Jon gives out.  The beauty of math: it's fluid.  If one side of the equation has to get bigger, the other side just gets smaller.  If you have kids at home, and you like eating, then you need to make a paycheque on Friday, even if you just opened Monday.

In a perfect world, you'd operate in the red for a year, pay off all your equipment and startup costs, have a full-time trainer to help you, stay up all night poring over numbers, and eventually be a millionaire.  But this vision, romantic as it may seem, usually doesn't happen. The world is not perfect.  Two-thirds of new businesses go bankrupt in their first two years. 

Jon's way is the smart way: save up some money. Pay off your debts before you pay yourself. Get your operations running automatically, in a streamlined way.  But my way - the less intelligent, head-to-the-wall, feed-your-family way - hasn't stopped me yet.  It can be done imperfectly.