The gymOS Podcast from PushPress
The gymOS Podcast from PushPress
Win Them Over With Your Passion with Anthony Vennare, Fitt
On this episode, Anthony Vennare from Fitt sits down to discuss fitness trends, as well as what gym and studio owners can do to enhance their community. He also shares some insight into where Fitt began, where it's headed, and how he managed to get 1200 people doing yoga in the outfield of PNC Park.
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Welcome to The gymOS podcast. I'm your host Dan Uyemura, CEO of PushPress. Each episode I bring the best and the brightest in the business world straight to your gym and we tease out actionable steps and strategies that you can implement immediately to become a better business owner. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of The gymOS Podcast. This is Dan Uyemura here, CEO of PushPress, got another good one for you today. I mean, man, y'all gotta give Ashley some props. She's the one who's producing all these shows. She's lining up all the guests. And today we got Anthony Vennare from Fitt.co. Now a lot of you guys out there might not have heard of Fitt.co yet, but you probably will soon. And in fact, by the end of this episode, I'm going to hope that you've subscribed to their newsletter. And you've already pulled up their website and sort of check out what they're working on. They're doing some pretty cool stuff over there. And honestly, Anthony and his brother Joe are kind of right in the middle of the entire boutique fitness industry. So he's a good guy to start listening to and he's a good guy to pay attention to, somebody that I listen to and pay attention to on the daily and I'm really happy to have him on as a guest today. Today we talked about a number of things we talked about kind of the state of the industry, the boutique fitness industry, we talked about franchise plays in the fitness industry, we talked about some of the lowest hanging fruits you guys can do to build a better gym, get more leads in the door and it's nothing like you think it has nothing to do with spending money on ads. It has nothing to do with hiring an agency to do anything for you. It's all stuff within your control and it's actually much easier than you think. So make sure you put your headset on you go somewhere quiet where you can concentrate, pull out a notepad and get ready to get some learning on because what Anthony's about to drop on in the next 45 minutes or so, I guarantee will have some impact on your gym if you pay attention. I'll catch you on the other side Alright guys, welcome back to The gymOS Podcast, Dan Uyemura here, CEO of PushPress. Today we got a special guest for you. We got Anthony Vennare here from Fitt.co. Me personally, I have to kind of keep my eye on the beat and the heartbeat of fitness in general as an industry. And one of the most important newsletters that has been coming out for a while lately has been something called the Fitt Insider which I don't really expect any of you guys to know. But if you haven't heard of that yet, you probably should go subscribe to it some serious good information comes out of it all the time. And the guys behind it are Anthony and his brother Joe Vennare from Fitt.co, and I have been relying on this information personally for the last six months or so. For for fitness industry information but recently I went to Fitt.co to check out what these guys are all about. And really what they're doing is this hyper localized play to get people to understand what business opportunities are in their neighborhoods. And that just put a light bulb in my head and I was like, we got to have these guys on to, to kind of get get this information out to gym owners, because this is an opportunity for you guys to get exposed. But not only that, Anthony's had a ton of experience building and running gyms himself, and he understands what it's like to build a community and how to do marketing and how to do how to network and a lot of information that is gonna be valuable to you guys. So with that, let me let Anthony kind of step up, let him give a background of himself and kind of what they're doing at Fitt.
Anthony Vennare :Dan, I appreciate it. It's kind of funny. So many people in the industry, know Insider and follow the newsletter that I send out, the podcast that my brother does. And when we you know say hey, do you know our consumer brand like no and then when they check it out? I thought, man, this is you know, 31 cities this scale. So what well started as like a random newsletter and a side project for us insiders become its own business.
Dan Uyemura :Which came first the Insider newsletter or the commercial?
Anthony Vennare :Oh no the consumer side, the Insider is about a year old the consumer side is thinking year three and a half maybe a little longer especially since we started under different name at first is like a side project too. So yeah, inside is brand new and it's just exploded with organic growth you know, thousands and thousands of subscribers and listeners and it's all very you know, investors and partners and you know, like how we talked about later but the mind body investment those guys all subscribe and knew who he was from that before anything. Yeah.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah, it's um it's it's a very interesting concept in the fact that like, if you as a gym owner, you probably overlook the idea of sending newsletters and I actually was chatting with Anthony about this last week. Up until just recently, I thought newsletters are a waste of my time a clog in my email box, but I just recently started subscribing to a bunch of newsletters that provided value. So you should go as a gym owner, subscribe to the Fitt Insider, pay attention to how they're structuring this newsletter and start thinking about how you can deliver that type of content for your audience. But Anthony, yes, please take us back to Fitt, I segued there.
Anthony Vennare :Yeah, so I guess quick background myself is. I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's where I grew up. I enlistened in Marines when I was 17. In the Marines, I was lucky enough to be put in a position where I would work out and train other Marines. So I enlistened in the reserves and planned on going through their platoon leadership course. But at boot camp, my father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and I didn't know about it. So when I graduated, and we found out and kind of changed my course of what I wanted to do. So I went through my training and got to be in a position to train other Marines overseas and got into fitness. And as my father is getting close to the end, and I actually ended up having to have a pretty big surgery on my on my knee. I got out of the Marines and when I was at home and then after he passed away. It was. I love fitness. I love being around people. How can I make that a career and that was our first business was we opened a gym. My brother and I together took over in an indoor skate park. We bet the landlord who had an indoor skate park that said, if we can make this in a gym, and in a week, you'll give us a lease of like $1500 dollars a month it was 12,000 square feet. He just wanted some people to clean his space because it's been closed for a while, but me and a bunch of my buddies and my brother took sledgehammers and knocked down this thing. And it's cool to see the pictures of before and after. But we had a gym and ever since then it was, you know, one gym turned into many and then we ended up having our programming and equipment. And I feel like I've done every single thing in the industry which has led to Fitt, so we built Fitt originally called Fittsburgh, as after we stopped running gyms, it was a way to get people to figure out how to connect with fitness and wellness in Pittsburgh. And from that point, it was Hey, this kind of works, and that's why we made it Fitt and there's two T's and we went from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and Boston and now we're in 31 cities in it. was originally just content around, if you think either thrillist infatuation yell places to discover restaurants and bars and nightlife that didn't exist and still really doesn't feel from fitness. So we built that. Getting writers on the ground and creating organic content. Now we're working on building and booking and feedback and reputation management and transactions and all that fun stuff. Because we think that we could be the long term play consumer platform that is based off of discovery and content, not discounts, like other platforms out there.
Dan Uyemura :Right. Well, we will get back to that discount concept in a second. What I want to, well, first of all, if you if you are listening this right now open up a browser, go to Fitt.co and check it out so you can kind of see what we're talking about as we're talking about. Let me ask you this question because I internally amongst my founders and executive team, I've been pushing forever to try and build this. Well, exactly what you're building. It turns out a directory of gyms that people can use as an independent resource to find places to go and work out. The pushback I always got from people was Yelp does that, what makes you think that what you're building is gonna beat Yelp or is better than Yelp?
Anthony Vennare :Two things one, it's not like Yelp because Yelp is a directory, we're not. We have that directory component. But we wanted to drive it through content and design and functionality in order to make it a modern brand. Yelp looks like it is something that was invented in 2007. And more importantly, they're pay to play, their whole model is advertising pay to play and really, you know, squeezing small businesses for money, and you can't pay to be on Fitt. You can't come to us and say, hey, I want to advertise my gym right now. It's not a thing. We're creating content. We're building brand, we're building functionality long term, you'll be able to pay us to have more functionality, but it still won't be able to show up and guides and show up on the top 10 lists and show up on these things. That's just not how it goes. And I think that's a big differentiation between us and as well as you know, why if I go to Yelp, I'm going there for restaurants. Maybe I'll look at other things, like home repairs. But the last thing on the list that people usually go to is fitness. But between that and Google, there's no other place to see reviews. So it's kind of like an afterthought for Yelp and everyone else. And most likely when you go there, and if it's a gym, it's something bad that happened or some competitor, it's leaving some nonsense or something. It's not really a place that many people want to drive reviews to.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah, I'm a big proponent, that as a society, we're driving more and more towards very specialized niches of everything. And yeah, I believe that there there's a huge need for what you're building in a fitness and wellness, I guess, things to do type specialized niche in for local, small and medium sized businesses. Let me ask you this. If I'm a gym right now listening to this, and I want to be involved in Fitt, how do I get on it? If I can't pay to play? How do I how do I get in there? Yeah, I'm sre now is fill out a form and just say, hey, I want you guys to check us out and we'll let that we'll send it to the writers, editors. See where it fits. And if it does, because we're constantly updating content soon enough, within the next few months, there'll be an ability to claim a place card. So you're not put in the content and articles about this or that or whatever it is, but you can claim your place, get your place listed on the map. And eventually, over the next few months, we're going to have the booking transaction like feedback where consumers will be leaving reviews, it will be able to respond to those and that's the side that we're really working on now. Because we built this content out as a just a consumer thing. We wanted to build something for the consumer. And then as we got investors and partners realized, that's a great thing that was our only goal was to build that and sell to somebody like my body or someone else. But we did that really fast and we did it really well. We're like well, we could do the rest of it too. So now the focus is building the complete end-to-end system for both the consumers and the gyms and we're working to add more to the gyms and if you're not on our list, you're not somewhere you know, some people get fired up about that. Listen, I've owned gyms, I've been there, it happens. The content is written by somebody that lives in that city. That understands the industry and goes to these places. But there will be an opportunity to get listed slash and you know, work with us in the future. That's awesome. Yeah. So if you guys have navigated over to Fitt, you'll know like I'm looking through a guide right now. And just to reiterate on on what Anthony saying, the user interaction of this is amazing. Like, as I'm scrolling through the list, it's zooming in and out of a map, and it just looks totally modern and totally slick. So I can see why consumers would be interested in and checking out this content. Let's, okay, let's jump over to this concept that you talked about with discounting. This is something that I'm pretty passionate about and I have gleaned from our earlier conversations you're pretty passionate about. Can you expand upon this idea? Like what are you referring to when you talk about the discounting stuff?
Anthony Vennare :Yeah, so when we first entered gyms, it was Groupon and then it became something called Groupon Fits for a little bit and now it's obviously Classpass. We've worked with them. They've been a client for advertising purposes and obviously long term, they're what we would consider either a competitor or something out there in the space and having owened gyms and been there to take something that cost $20 or $15 and make it cost $5, but then you only get $3 of that it's just does not make sense to me. I get the customer acquisition side, but as you've seen in some of the Vice articles and things come out, less and less can you acquire that consumers information and do you can acquire the consumer you just become reliant on somebody giving you a small portion of what you're worth, and a small portion of that, to keep you alive. And that's what we don't think, I mean, I've been there, I just don't think it's a smart move, I get the short term value, but the value and fitness in the eyes of the consumer, as well as they're not in your funnel, they're not on your site. They're not in your newsletters. They're not on your social, you don't have this really good interaction. It's like a very superficial version of your gym is seen by these consumers and we don't think that's the right way long term. We think it's Yes, the ease of use to book at multiple places for multiple things, which is what we're trying to build with fit. Eventually we want every system every gym ever, whether it's a LA Fitness, a boutique gym, and event around group, people should be able to find them, and sign up for them and pay for them through us. But it I want that consumer to experience it in terms of the ease of use of getting there, but then they should actually experience your gym and get into your funnel and see what's going on. And that's what we're trying to create. And it shouldn't be off of discounts. Yes. First Class free offers or, you know, discounted punch cards. There should be marketing tactics in there, but not a consistent, massive steep discount on what you do as a consumer as a gym owner.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah, I mean, I've been on a soapbox for this forever commoditizing someone's professional skill is just a dangerous slope to get down and that's that's where my my grudge against the classpass of the world have been. As a gym owner and a fitness trainer myself. You know, you feel the pressure, sure, to compete with the guy across the street who's knocked his prices down to $5 a class so you're gonna go for and then they're gonna go $3 and then where do we end up as an entire industry?
Anthony Vennare :Yeah.
Dan Uyemura :Let's kind of dive into that idea you mentioned a funnel, so on Fitt as you're as you're talking and envisioning this because this is not in place yet. If people book a session at my gym, how do they land in my funnel? Yeah, so what we're working on is integrating directly with the Mindbodys of the world, the PushPresses of the world where if we use their API, it is just inventory and the information will be passed just like it should through any other funnel or how I'm assuming from what I've seen it used to with you know, Classpass everything else I buy from you, you will the inventory you get that consumer information and access to them. And long term we actually want to build some dynamic, some of our own management, inventory management and even pricing as well as retention things like you know, the centers of the world and Green tabs and others, we want to build a version of that to make it easier to understand what these consumers mean and where they're coming from. But we'll pass that information here they are they just like they would buy a, you know, one day pass in the mind body app or other places, that's your consumer. They're just using us as the discovery and pass through engine for that. Got it, okay. And you're saying this will not be a pay to play engine. If anything, you're going to monetize the transaction that you're facilitating, but you're not going to be like pay for a higher listing or anything like that. No, it'll be transactional, we'll take a small fee, and will prove the value there as well as long term we want to offer upgraded features, analytics, you know, certain types of profile value that you could do Yelp has a version of this, which is like a Yelp premium profile, where it's not about showing up first in searches. It's not about things like that it's you can pay to have more features, upload more content or have you know, more posts and almost like a Squarespace type thing and other stuff like that, so that we will charge monthly for but it's not needed to be listed on Fitt. Right? I'm gonna ask you kind of a tough question because there might be some skeptics out there. So I'm sure this was probably in Yelps original business plan, like they didn't want to become a pay to play engine that ended up kind of holding people's arms behind their backs to remove bad reviews or whatnot. Yes, how do you feel like you're gonna fight the two things, one that ending up so that people are, you know, like, there becomes a monetization scheme where people are going to have to, you know, pay you to get things off and B) Fuck, I forgot what B) was. So let's just go with A). ::laughter:: No, I mean, if you look at Yelp now there's booking and reservations, and that's why they're so there is a company in Pittsburgh called NoWait that got bought by Yelp. And we've seen what they've done there. And Yelp is generating much more revenue from their reservation system and the booking in their waitlist manager. And that's what we, that's where the transactional side for the longest time, we had no transactional revenues, all advertising. And that's why we're making a dynamic shift to get there sooner rather than later. Because for us, it's important to have that transactional and as more people sign up for gyms and as more people buy passes, plus we're doing events and meetups. That is a massive opportunity. Plus, we don't want small businesses to advertise. We have we've already done it. We have healthcare companies, retail brands, you know, sponsored content that that will come from, not gyms, not restaurants, not places. That's, you know, the Underaarmours, and Kaiser Permanente is another company. So we'll still have advertising but it won't be around that product. And that's the two differentiating factors that we think long term will make us better as one we won't sell out, the content will be the content. The listings will be the listings, you can pay the place in a certain area. And we have the advertising model on one side as well as the booking and transactional plus. I mean, the goal is our upgraded profile where you get analytics and feedback and all these other things you can do, it becomes so viable that everybody has that you pay 50 bucks a month or whatever the price ends up being to, you know, have this upgraded version of Fitt that truly adds value to you. Right? I will make one suggestion, this is kind of a selfish suggestion. A lot of small businesses have a hard time getting media coverage. And if I would, I would consider it a fair pay to play to have, you know, a writer come out, evaluate someone's gym, put them in a guide if the writer feels like they fit in the guide or something because that's pretty tough stuff to do for like a local gym, you know, to get covered in these guides that you have are pretty nice right now, right?
Anthony Vennare :Thanks. Yeah, that's actually one thing we're working on is it for the cost of getting someone to do photography and content, whatever but it won't be for a guide it'll be for the place cards. So if you click on those place cards in the guides, and you see like a listing for a gym like a place we're working on a way, Airbnb did this and they still do where you can get your listing for photographed and helped them create the place and help with the management of the content. We want to add that service long term. Yeah. And that's what something we think we can do. And yeah, I mean, the writers are out there people we have, our network is massive in terms of photographers, videographers and writers that live in the cities. And we're always working to grow that. And more importantly, like we talked about before we got on the podcast, it was not only can we help with, you know, getting listed and long term adding value there, but if gyms are running events, if gyms are doing meetups and run groups and activities, and like, we cover that stuff, too. And that's if you're doing your job as a gym owner, you should be doing those things. And that's another way to get in front of people from a media perspective.
Dan Uyemura :So perfect segue. Let's actually jump into that. When I first met you a few months ago, you told me a really cool story that I want to just kind of rehash real quick and I believe you can correct me if I get the story wrong. It's been a few months now. You guys got funded originally by some sports teams, and I think it might have been someone in your area Pittsburgh Pirates. Yes. The founder, the owner, whatnot. And the reason they found you is because you through this huge yoga event out in front of the stadium and how many people came 1000 people came to yoga.
Anthony Vennare :Yeah, so we, we, we create an event when we're still called Fittsburgh and it was like a side project for us. It was called Yoga in the Square, we created yoga downtown. And it was Sunday's going to place that, you know, Pittsburgh, secondary city. When this was starting to come on, it was still kind of iffy to go downtown, especially on a Sunday. So we got people to go and do yoga downtown. It was 20 people in the 50, and then hundreds. And then we helped promote an inground event that happened at the stadium actually, in the field was going to I was in the outfield. And we took our audience and, you know, promoted this and got it out there because we knew some instructors, we helped organize a lot of stuff. And it ended up being that, you know, I think it was like 1200-1500 people did yoga in the outfield at PNC Park. And the hundreds of the pirates were like cool, what is happening? Why one the pirates haven't done well in forever. So no one goes to games, let alone It's Pittsburgh. Why? They're 1200 people doing yoga at our stadium and staying after to watch the game because the tickets included both. And it was, it was a really good way to get on the radar because we show that we get people to turn up, they turn up for events, they turn up for activities, they show up for certain things. And that was like a good way to get on the radar for them. And other I mean, everyone in the city knew us the mayor, everybody knows knew who we are originally because we were just getting people to show up for things and do in a place like Pittsburgh, which is just not what you would think for health and fitness. Now it's a much different place and it is in a lot of areas. But that concept of finding a good channel and marketing and getting people to show up for events and activities not only gets people to connect in and really build your brand and get you out in front of other opportunities. And the same thing goes for gym owners we were a media company them or even you know what side project media thing but it goes the same and we did the same or we had gyms.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah, I mean, while your example is kind of taking it to the extreme, getting 1200 people to show up at a major league baseball park and you know, end up getting a check cut to your business because you're getting these new people to show up. What I want gym owners to understand is like, on a smaller scale. This is super applicable to you like doing workouts at the park, doing things where you're getting your members out in the community and participating and getting people to show up, creates buzz, and it creates people talking and it creates people to notice. And while it might not be the owner of a major league baseball team that notices it might be you know, a whole bunch of people who want to join your gym notice and they start talking about it and asking questions. I remember when I own my gym, two of my early loyal most loyal members, Drew if you're out there listening right now and his wife, Regina, they joined my gym in the early days because they saw us working out at the beach and they knew they wanted to join a CrossFit gym and they found us from that. It's just a stupid example to show that putting effort into these events outside of your gym matter, right. And I don't want to date this episode, but in the Coronavirus times like we need to start doing stuff outside of our gyms, you can't do it inside the gym anymore. Right? So, to that note, is there anything you can speak about in terms of like what you notice gym owners doing studio owners doing that, that could benefit that can help them in terms of throwing good events building good community. Everyone talks about community right with it. Yeah. What do you see? Like what are some tactics or some some tactical things they can do to make this work better for them? Yeah, I mean, we were just talking about this, my brother and I always joke that we want to get back into owning fitness facilities. And just because we think it's still not being done, right. And we have a unique perspective, we have thousands of creators, content, 31 cities 15,000, places that are mostly gyms and events and activities listed on fit. And I've talked to seen and interacted with a lot of those people to see what's the best of the best. And then on Fitt Insider, we do research about the industry. And not only do we see the local places, but what's Orangetheory doing what's Equinox doing all these different things. So the playbook for me would one be such a simplified version of your online profile, your site, your newsletter, this building a complete funnel, which we can talk more about. But once you have that funnel set up and you know that once somebody finds you, you can remark it retarget reengage you don't lose them, the CRM and the engagement around content newsletters and socials there. Then it's getting in front of the consumer whether, you know, we used to go to like school health fairs and, you know, business health fairs and community days and do so many things like we joke, so being the Marines, I used to go and do like the pull up stand. You know, you do that, like events doing that for your gym. Why? You never see that. But the Marines have been doing it for 100 years getting people to join the Marines. So it's stuff like that being on the community and then starting with run groups marathon training, CrossFit competition training bar in the park yoga in the park, whatever your domain is doing that in large groups for free, don't charge for it. Because even if you have to go out of pocket to rent that space which 90% of time don't have to, you do that and you put it out there and invite your members to invite other people or, you know, go and post it up in coffee shops or get it out there locally, hit up the HR managers at large businesses that have you know, a lot of consumers, you're getting them to show up for free for something which they love to do. We drive so many people just to fit just because of events. And then you get in front of them you get to display your personality, your training your aspect of, of fitness, and then that it's not just putting on the event, getting on the sine wave or sign up for the newsletters, follow you on social engage with them and then kind of get them in your funnel and doing that regularly. If I had a gym right now I would have a regular run group met up at a coffee shop. I would do free events and training quarterly for large businesses like we're in Pittsburgh, so PNC Bank is here, headquarters 50,000 employees downtown. I can find the man the email for the HR manager and say hey, I want to run a free training about nutrition and a free workout for anyone that works in PNC. Here's the signup stuff like that it's just so accessible let alone I told you I when I first started gyms I got the cops called me a bunch of I literally went door to door and knocked on doors handed off flyers like the Comcast people, but it was like, Hey, I have a gym. Here's a free class old school version of free class offerings but stuff like that you get people to show up and see who you are and you as the owner slash trainer get to be in front of them and win them over because you are passionate you care about what you do. Yeah, so I mean, I can speak from experience from this. Things like going door to door probably are intimidating for many of the people in this in this audience right now. I know when I owned a gym. That was some people told me to do that. It just mean petrified, going, like cold calling or cold knocking on doors. How How can you help? What kind of advice He give to somebody who right now is sitting listening is going like that sounds cool and all but I'm not gonna do that to actually like get off off off there but deal with a few rejections and kind of like do it enough to start seeing results because I believe that this actually can drive results you know? Yeah I mean it's proven I was a 21 year old kid and you know what he's doing is generating you know, 10s of thousands of dollars in monthly recurring revenue from gym memberships back when you know, trust fit in gyms and things we're still on the new side and the group's group side of things. And we see it every day. The best gyms have the best community community isn't being that cool person that runs a gym and your bros and everybody is getting out there and representing your brand so I think the easy playbook for them to get go on this one. Put on the free events, yoga in the park, run group meetup, plan something and get the current members that they have to go to that and and invite one other person and say, you know, if they invite that other person, they get something free or they get some type of offer or t shirt or anything or you buy them a beer after whatever Put some money in place, instead of running Facebook ads or giving some firm that you have no idea what they're doing to run Facebook ads, put that money towards an event and see how it goes. Everybody wants to go to things and run and engage and be social fitness social. So try that out. And if it works, then put in place the other aspects of getting out from community more knocking on doors ever, maybe, but you're going to win if you execute and, and market an event the right way by telling your members and putting on social creating a Facebook event and all that other stuff. That's the easiest way to verify that community engagement and acquisition actually works. Yeah, I mean, if you really want to think about just the mechanics of sales, if you get a member to bring someone to an event where they're going to get a free fitness class and have some fun with friends and meet new people and get to understand your personality and your charisma, it's almost like if you can't sell that...
Anthony Vennare :You're in the wrong business.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah, exactly. Like the the return on investment on that should be gangbusters. Right. So It's funny you joked around about when you're done with all this one open gyms me and Chris here talk all the time about like dude if we open the gym again knowing what we know now like we would destroy. Right because you get to see what they do and you get to see the mistakes and that there's this like weird mold that everybody falls into now when they think if I have a you know pre built site from other brands that build sites or I build a Squarespace I have an Instagram and I talk about workouts I'm going to have a successful gym one you should do you should you should be an expert, you know, the content, the site the representation, brand management, acquisition remarketing retargeting event, community promotion, there's just so much you should be good at to really run a true funnel because the gym isn't a gym. It's just like, you know, the mom and pop restaurants. If you look at them, yes, there's some outliers, but a lot of the ones that are winning and local businesses, they know what they're doing. doing? Yeah. And that it's that type of thing. I feel like the fitness industry. And the reason that we're coming on board with Fitt is we feel like the fitness industry is where the restaurant industry was, you know, 5-10 years ago, you know, where it's not just I opened my shop and I am successful, you have to understand now. And that's what we want to be that platform, hopefully bring everybody on board and modernize things. Yeah, that's a really good way to kind of paint that picture. If you're listening this now and you're kind of just going through the motions of running a gym. Yeah, think of a local restaurant, maybe even like a local coffee shop now. And honestly, all these breweries that popping are popping up, in my opinion are like the next version of fitness studios. Like they're all just super popular right now. And they're all going to hit a crunch real soon. Yeah, there's a brewery on every corner now. But yeah, if you're not like focusing on relationships, and building experience and like understanding your sales funnel and how you're bringing people in and why and what the cost of those people that are coming in are and how, how your retention strategies are and your referral strategies, right? Like if you haven't, if you don't have a game plan for all this stuff, then it's going to be a tough go for any business. And every industry in every niche is, is getting harder. Fitness is on that trend right now for sure. Especially with big entities like Xponential and others that are bringing these brands. Yes, they're not as good of a product. The product is not usually as good because it's more corporate and more cookie cutter, but they win. And the reason they can succeed and raise money and grow is you always wonder everyone talks about like, Oh, you know, that gym isn't good, or that training isn't good. Well, why did they have full classes and you don't? It's the experience and understanding of building a true funnel full scope of how to acquire, retain, engage and build these things. Yes, they have more money on marketing. But having been on either side and talk to these businesses, they really don't have that much. It's not like they're blowing out of the water with this money. They just have a formula that works. And you have to focus on your formula. When you're running these businesses, especially if you want to build scale and growth and not just have a piece of side project passion play, which is fine, but I mean, I feel 90% of the gym owners out there want to make it more and it's you got to step back and look in the mirror like okay I need to make this more business and less of a thing that I just kind of fly by the seat of my pants and do. Yeah, yeah so my narrative here lately or not lately for a while has been these Orangetheory Fitness and F45 these guys that are coming into the space to Xponentials they understand the business like locked down understand the business they know all their numbers, they know how to make these businesses work per square foot per person that's coming in the door. But they I don't think they understand the community end of it and the product end of it as well but that's okay because they're like Starbucks, right? They don't make the best cup of coffee but it's a coffee every time and you know what you're gonna get and you're okay with it. Right? The boutique boutique fitness studios that we represent, they don't understand the business end of it so much but they really understand the product and they understand community and they understand how to get people you know, having a good time and experience inside the gym. If our gym owners can understand how to do business a little bit better before the orangetheories understand how to do community better, I think we win but I don't even know if the economics work for orangetheory to really invest the time and energy that are our type of studio owners put into their people. What are your thoughts on that? Like, how does orangetheory and all them? And again, if they're a sponsor I want to talk about about any sponsor, but the big corporate entity entities are getting into boutique fitness. How do you see that? How do you see them fitting into the whole idea of community product, well, they win and experience right with the orange, you know, all the all the cool stuff in there, but how do you think they fit in with the whole community and personal connections and investment in the people? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that go into that, but from a surface level one, yes, their experience is better but are there coaches, coaches? Are they trained? Are they understanding and can they continually show results to the consumer if you can't play mass and custom at the same time, right. So that's one way that you could advance like, I know Jim, the CEO of OPEX fitness, if you know they are I think they have a really good model of like programming and consistent growth. And I think that's, that's some another angle that you know, the local brands or the smaller brands can win on is the consistent growth because you're going to hit a plateau at some of these studios that you go to and you're going to hit a phase where you can't go more plus access these places are booked, you'd have to wait my girlfriend used to go to orangetheory. And it was you know, she would have to set an alarm for nine o'clock to get into the class and just a lot of stuff that didn't make sense. So more access, more programming, more potential growth in in not hitting plateaus, more, more customized engagement, where they feel more engaged with you. So now she goes to a local studio that does not even the similar training but the gym, the owners, so every class that she goes to, she gets a DM thanks for coming to class. I appreciate you showing up offering things you know, this so it's called Meraki. It's in Pittsburgh. It is a bar and amp studio and it's not even close to orangetheory but my girlfriend goes there now and will loves it because the people that go there the way it's designed and she's literally was like, I can't believe that every time I go, she sends me a DM and we've come to class, the owner of the studio, and this is successful studio. So it's stuff like that that just wins. Plus the instructors are trained and they put a lot of time into their programming and their music and their efforts. It's not cookie cutter and when you feel that, your consumer feels that. Yeah. Hey, quick question. I'm curious. Do you think that those personalized texts coming to her after classes are are literally the owner texting or do you think it was some kind of a scheduled thing that happens after checking?
Anthony Vennare :I honestly think it's her doing it because it's Instagram. Its an Instagram DM, it's a text. If it was a text, I would think it was automated but it's a personalized Instagram DM. So she's probably spending 15 minutes after every class and sending people DMS.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah. So if you're listening to this, think about that. Like I mean, and honestly that could be something you're having a VA or somebody helping you with just going down your checking list and dming people if You have an associated record but think about how easy and effective that is and, like, does your [girlfriend] ever tell people like hey, you need to check out this Meraki gym because they are amazing? Probably their community has grown so much with that group like millennial young professional women love it because that that audience that community that feel and yes, she tells everybody that she goes there and loves it. So it's kind of it's crazy that that level of engagement and attention has really won that specific consumer over in the class aren't the classes aren't cheap and they're paying full price and they love him. And and again, this tactic could work today and it might not work tomorrow because once everyone starts doing it, it won't be as special but think about it like it's just a suit like for me. When I go into this one coffee shop near me they're good morning Dan, do you want your you want your drip coffee? Like they know what I like they know they greet me by name and they say good morning and I drive past three. And these are all fancy coffee shops along the way. But this is the one that does it. I drive past three coffee shops. To go to this one because and I didn't even realize until I started thinking about it is because they call me by name just is that simple. You know? Yeah, it's the same thing we talked about restaurants like going to the place where the manager knows you and the hostess knows you and they give you this special thing and in reality, it doesn't cost them anything or maybe it cost them a little bit to give you that extra thing or there's a buddy of mine that owns a place and every time I go there he brings out a dessert and whatever he'll text and thank us for coming in like we're friends but we're not really close friends but we've become friends because I went there once and he had such good service. I had to talk to him. I had to meet him and like he's a perfect example of if he owned a gym, it would be the text, the calls the special thing, the free shirt or whatever it may be, and really being helpful and engaging and showing that attention. And now like you know, certain things go on the committee with the the Coronavirus is going on right now. I don't want to date the podcast but like during that time I'm ordering food from him because I'm going and getting the coffee beans from my local coffee. shop, I am taking online classes with the gyms that I like, because of the community not because of the ease of use. And I think times like the show the value of engagement, attention the model of being a really good community. And I hate the word community because it seems so did you so much. But the intention, the intention and engagement and the the effort that's put in to make you feel welcome and make your experience better is shown. Yeah, I agree. 100%. And really, how hard is it to build a relationship with with your 100to 200 clients? Not that hard. How hard is it to train your coaches to do that? I mean, that should be ingrained in your culture of your gym, or your studio. And all it really needs is just some planning, like you just need to think about it. Like here at PushPress, a core mandate that we made a couple years ago was like customer service always is first. And just because we drove that down from the top, that's what we're known for now. So at your gym, if you're mandating to your coaches, you greet everyone by name. And if I you know, like you, you always say goodbye to people by name, you give everyone a high five, or at least some personal shout out and we make sure we do this every class and that is our culture, you're going to see huge dividends from that. And it costs literally nothing but just your time of building that framework around your culture. Yeah, and that as well as the systems they use and the online reputation management and the reply backs in the email time frame, everything has to match that which is the consumer is first the what when they think about your business at all, it has to be even if something bad happens, like for example right now going on, we let sponsors Hey, if you don't want to run ads right now, because I mean, it's going on, you know, pull it, cancel it, reschedule whatever is best for you. Yes, it's a hit. But winning in that scenario is same thing. Like their interaction was always positive no matter if it was actually negative to start. And that has to be online, offline community acquisition, everything has to be based around that. And you see it in some areas. gentleman's win but I think long term if they sat back and did like an actual kind of roadmap and understanding of how they engage with the consumer, everyone would have something to learn. Yeah. And you know if you're sitting there right now listening and wondering how you can kick this off because it does feel like a lot of stuff you know, building all of these touch points and how you're gonna communicate it really can be just as simple as like I'm obsessed with with having every customer love you. Like that's all you have to start with is just become obsessed with that and if you really can wrap your mind and your heart around that concept, everything else will follow because your obsession will drive you to every every other touch point that you need to find it won't be on day one you won't have it but over time, you will build the perfect like customer relationship building mechanism whatever that is for your studio.
Anthony Vennare :Yeah, on our wall at Fitt in our office to be like the entryway wall. It says "The right thing is always the right thing." And that's the same that we always say understanding that, you know, you know what's the right thing, you know, the right way to do this. And that's what we want the consumer to see us do. Yes, we might not grow as fast as some places and we might not. Like, you know, we didn't take money from certain things that we didn't like, or people didn't align with, or we didn't take certain colored initiatives to grow faster. But in the end, when people look at us and look at what we do and think about who we are, they're like, okay, I respect them. I appreciate them. And I think we will win in the end, because we do the right thing is the right thing. And that's what we always do.
Dan Uyemura :Yep. Yeah, nobody can ever take that away from you, because everyone always knows what the right thing is, you know, and everyone always knows when someone when they're on the other end of the receiving end of a business transaction where they're doing it to make money you know, shareholder value, whatever the case, whatever the reason is, if it's not in the customers best interest everyone knows even the customer service agent that they're dealing with knows. It's just, you know, the policy of the company. So, man, thank you so much. It's been a huge podcast, very informative. Let's end with a couple gifts to the to the to the listeners. I like to try and get everyone expanding their mind thinking thinking bigger than themselves and learning from people who have already kind of walked down this path? Do you have like a favorite podcast or blog that you pay attention to that you think Fitness Studio owners could benefit from?
Anthony Vennare :Yes, let me pull up my podcast app here. So I'm not very good reader. I love podcasts. And that's what I learned from. So these are not typical fitness podcasts, for example, but they've been very, they're very helpful. One is, it's called My First Million. So there's a company called The Hustle. They send emails, their Morning Brew Hustle, similar businesses where they have millions of subscribers that get their daily emails.
Dan Uyemura :Do you subscribe to that, by the way, I'm curious?
Anthony Vennare :Yes.
Dan Uyemura :That's a paid one, right? No, they have a paid one. So The Hustle is free. They have a paid one called Trends, which is way more in depth. Yeah. I almost subscribed to that one. My brother's on that. He loves it. So and I use this stuff. So it's good. Is it worth paying for?
Anthony Vennare :He thinks it is yeah, he loves it, especially with Insider like in what we do. So it's called My First Million, it's Sam Parr and Shaan Puri and the way they talk about things and it's the same mentality that we had today like hustle get out there do it, you know consumer facing do the right thing. And it's just it's all off the walls all over the place but it's it's awesome. I love it. It's my favorite podcast right now. I obviously shameless plug my brother's podcast Fitt Insider. We've had so many killers on from Rick Stollmeyer, CEO of Mindbody, I know they're a competitor but he was a good get for us John Canarick Managing Director of North Castle Partners, the CEO of Future, the personal training app, Aarti Kapoor, the head of Goldman Sachs, fitness and wellness investments. So like all over the map, it's people that are leading in areas and have something to say about a certain area. So one of you if you run a brand and you have scale we're growing that it's pretty backed up on the The list of who's getting interviewed, but we're always looking for guests here for many people. And it's just a good look. So like, you know, that one other one that I really liked was the CEO of Camp Gladiator. You know, how what they've done, how they've done, what they've done and how big they are. So that's another one. That's a really good podcast.
Dan Uyemura :Yeah. And for the listeners out there, I would actually say you should, you should, even though this is kind of outside the realm of your local fitness entity, you should probably subscribe to fit insider and you might want to listen to that podcast he was mentioning because what's going on in the bigger picture of fitness is stuff you need to pay attention to, because that's the big tide that's kind of getting you around in the long term, right? In the short term, not so much. But if like these big trends are happening with like, if you don't know who North Castle Partners are, they're one of the biggest PE firms that invest in the in the fitness space who do them the Orangetheory? No, they're very, Barry's Bootcamp. Yeah. So it's a good idea to understand who the players are in the space to understand kind of, you know, who's positioning, and where the trends are going and it's very, very important. Cool. You said you weren't really a book reader I was gonna ask you what your favorite book is, do you listen audiobooks at all?
Anthony Vennare :Yes, I do. The one that is on my list right now that my brother really recommended it's called wars or I think war is art or art is war, one to let me see I got a look at it.
Dan Uyemura :Hopefully it's not an art is war because that's when, the Art of War? Not the art of war?
Anthony Vennare :I think that's what it is honestly, because it's sitting on my desk right now that I'm going to Yeah, the War of Art, sorry. The War of Art. Um, my brother. It's one of the things he recommends. He's a big reader. And he said, I said, Listen, I you know, I'm not a fast reader. I'm not very good. Give me one book to read. He was like, read that. And then the other side of it all is a lot of the things that I say I've learned over time from a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk. Most people know who he is nowadays, marketing, you know, expert, whatever. And sometimes I don't agree with a lot of stuff he says, but his original books of crush it, and the Thank You Economy, the Thank You Economy specifically really touches on this side of it. It's a little dated because it came out, you know, more than a few years ago. But that aspect of the Thank You Economy being the consumer first and building out that customer service, it really touches on that. That's probably one of the most impactful books for me I've ever read.
Dan Uyemura :Very cool. And if we can leave the listeners with one tip or trick or tactic that you think that they can do that they can implement in 5, 10, 15 minutes today right now. That could impact their business. What would you say it is? Yeah, on the spot right here.
Anthony Vennare :No, I love it. I'm all about it. The thing that I have kind of learned over time is I'm not very organized. I'm not very skilled in certain areas. I I didn't go to college or barely graduated high school, the thing that I can succeed at and that I think most people can that they overlook is do what you say you're going to do. It's being the responsiveness of your emails and your calls, following up making sure that when you tell someone something, you're good at something, or you are engaged with somebody that you follow up fast, and you follow the right way. That to me, I've seen businesses that we've dealt with and people dealt with where they say they're gonna do this, and they don't do it, or they don't follow up, or they don't call back or they don't have some paper response, those simple tactics, or you just build people's trust, and even if something doesn't go, right, they trust you, and they like you. And that's what I've been focused on because I'm not good at it. And since I've been better at it, and with the leadership from my brother, everybody's a, they all just say like, you know, those guys say what they're gonna do, and literally from the top down, we've gotten investments in the millions from people and they're like, Well, why did you invest in Anthony and Joe, it's like, because they do what they say they're gonna do and they they're always there and they always Hold up and that That to me is something everyone can do and it really builds your brand personally and people trust you
Dan Uyemura :Spoken like a true U.S. Marine. I will actually add to that because I completely agree with that but I think my downfall in that spectrum of stuff is I agree to do too many things like I don't I can't say no to people for it, you know, like so I end up passively agreeing to things that I should just be being upfront and say I can't do that. So lately I've gotten a lot better at telling people like not in my timeline I don't want to like lead you on can't do it. Yeah, when we were first building push press I remember there was a lot of times where I'm like I really want this is a good idea to this is a very valid thing we need to build and I just stuck myself with so many of those that like I put myself behind in April I couldn't I couldn't dig out. So do what you say you're gonna do but but say no, when you can't do it. That's that's my identity to that part.
Anthony Vennare :That's a good one. Yeah, definitely don't over commit because then you can't follow up and you won't do it.
Dan Uyemura :Exactly. You're not doing everything you say you do. Cool. Well, hey, thank you so much Anthony. This is a huge episode. I know, there's been a whole bunch of stuff in here that people are gonna be to take away and learn from, again fit.co co fit t.co you should check it out. If you're listening right now, definitely subscribe to that newsletter, and I'm gonna I'm gonna start losing that My First Million podcast that sounds like definitely something I'm interested in. We're pretty big on getting people to expand their minds learn how to become better business owners. So check out check out those resources he gave you. And if you need to relisten to this podcast, please do so, tons of good stuff spoken by somebody who's literally in the thick of this entire fitness boutique fitness industry. Anthony, thank you so much again, and we'll catch you on the other side of all this.
Anthony Vennare :Yeah, thanks so much.
Dan Uyemura :Well, there you have it. Anthony Vennare from Fitt.co working on some big things over there. I hope you guys really have taken a look at that and you're going to be paying attention to what they're doing. At the very least , a good person to pay attention to and has a lot of information coming out of their organization that will help you in one way or another. And at the best I mean, Fitt.co is going to start showcasing more and more gyms and local regions and I mean how do you find new members, local marketing and local searches like the way to do it to find new people for your gym. And to be included in a directory like Fitt.co will be pretty big for your gym in the future once they get some more of those features rolled out. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you did, make sure you leave a comment, give us a review. Give us a five star rating give us a thumbs up do all of the things that help other gym owners find us you know, if you do that, if you find value in these episodes, and you think that it's worthwhile for me to be spending my time interviewing some of these badass guests that we're getting. You're letting apple and Spotify and these other algorithms that are out there Google know that what I'm doing matters to you. And by doing so they're gonna put us higher in the list which will let other gym owners find us which will make me be able to help more gym owners, which is at the heart of what we're trying to do here at push press. So, again, I'm going to make the ask. If you think this is helping you, I would really appreciate it, share with a friend, leave a review, give us five stars, give us a thumbs up and subscribe. I mean, that's the best way, what Ashley's been doing here who's the producer of this podcast. She's been silently releasing new episodes on early usually on a Friday. And all of the subscribers will get it over the weekend early and then she publicly is releasing them on Mondays. So if you subscribe, you get the added bonus of getting some of this stuff early as we do it. We also are going to start releasing bonus episodes here and there kind of peppered through the week because we're building up a kind of a library of episodes. So as we release those that are unscheduled you if you subscribe, you also get those two without having to lift the finger what's easier than that? Alright guys, I hope you enjoy the episode, and until the next time we meet, keep grinding on those businesses and we'll see you later.