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How Rotisserie Chicken Can Save The Fitness Industry · Gym Business Coach Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to the built-to-grow podcast delivering the knowledge in all things, fitness, business, who will help jimrollers win, hear your hosts, ten lions, and Randy Extend.
0:27
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, welcome back to the Bill to grow podcast from our host Tim Lyons joined in studio for episode seven thousand four hundred and twenty six Randy and so what's the buddy think we get we're ahead of the average we're ahead of the curve right here yeah ahead of the curve guys got a lot of stuff talk about but we're gonna talk about how rotisserie chicken
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: could save the fitness industry yeah they go take a bite out of this episode I guess so I was doing some research for you know for presentation be hosting here in a little bit you know by the way gross of a guy's Nashville it's right around the corner guys it's gonna come up quick I think we're like fifty percent sixty percent so the room already so that's awesome but uh... irrespective of that
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: When we are entering it, gyms, right?
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We think sometimes that more is better.
1:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We sometimes believe that if we could train athletes and then have, you know, an old person class, like an active adult, and then we could, you know, have the mom class and then this thing and the train training for athletes, but also training for a general population, then we could serve everybody.
1:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
1:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of sometimes bend our services.
1:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And guys, by the way, we did this way back because we needed to take on clients.
1:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We would create things to take on clients that really weren't in our wheelhouse.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We would take on, I mean, we were training pro golfers at something.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like we were just taking anybody because we know we could help them.
1:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But it really wasn't the best
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: training for them or for us or for the business itself or it would break systems of delivery for the main thing.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
2:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like we all believe we have one main thing and some people believe they have five main things.
2:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And here at this particular gym, my store, you've heard us talk about the data that kind of the epiphany that I had when I started looking at what's driving the business, what type of clients, what membership are they on, and we found that semi-private was by far and away, blowing out the rest of the services that we had, because we had
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: team training but we also had like this active adult and then we had some some athlete training like we were doing like some session packs but it was like ninety percent of our revenue is coming from some of my private training and we started looking at like why who are the clients all these things and the data drove me to make a decision to say get rid of everything else but this one thing
3:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when we scale, that's when we perfected it.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when we were able to focus on the delivery system, the customer experience, and that's where some of my private pro came like all these innovations and the gym room, all these innovations came from focusing on the thing, the main thing, the main thing we do.
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And since then we kind of have a little stretch therapy and we do some nutrition, but like it's not distracting us from the main thing.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really where it gets a little tricky for gyms.
3:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, is it distracting you from really being the best in class in this thing?
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of times we go over here as a gym and we have all of these things that are doing mediocre at best.
3:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Some that are just on the schedule and you have nobody in there and you're not willing to cut them.
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the story that I'm about to share, it was a little bit of the opposite.
3:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They had a main thing.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So the story is about Boston chicken.
3:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a rotary chicken, you guys may or may not know this story, but it's a pretty incredible story.
4:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like case in point, the main thing, right?
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Was driving the business.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like in the mid-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of, it was the first to market, right?
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody was doing a rotisserie chicken.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't in the grocery stores.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a healthier alternative to say fried chicken.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's delicious too.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you're getting honest, I really enjoy rotisserie chicken.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So Boston, rotisserie chicken was the name on the sign.
4:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It was outside the door, and they exploded.
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They were only, the only thing they served was rotisserie chicken.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: That was it.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That was their only menu item.
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And people went there for that.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really kind of cool because like if there was a Boston rotisserie chicken place, I'd probably go to it.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, if that's all they served.
4:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Because like sometimes you have a cream for a little rotisserie chicken, you don't want to go to Costco.
5:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Costco is my money.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right?
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to go to Costco right now.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to go and sit down and then leave.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so this company blew up right between nineteen eighty five and nineteen ninety five.
5:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They
5:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's exponentially grew.
5:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They had eleven hundred locations.
5:16
[SPEAKER_01]: They had a billion dollar valuation in nineteen ninety five, which we've calculated to be two point of five million of today's money.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Billion two point of five billion had a valuation in the billions of dollars.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They had one item.
5:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They were going hard and fast on rotisserie chicken.
5:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It was on their name.
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They ran the show.
5:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the CEO at the time was looking for growth.
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: They just had IPO in ninety three.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And as with a lot of these reasons, this happens in IPO, which is a initial public offering.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They are now a public company.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: They are beholden to stockholders.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They're beholden to the investors of such stock and the board.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And they couldn't make the calls anymore.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like he was driven into this, hey, you need to optimize.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Grow revenues you need to grow revenues and at what their height after their IPO and after all the pressure they were opening a store a day Wow one store a day and they were going Like gangbusters and they did continue to grow a little bit after the IPO but then something happened the CEO was pressured into optimizing the menu
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: adding turkey, adding ham, meat loaf, plus the chicken.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: The name got changed to Boston Market.
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And over the next three years in business, Boston Market tanked into bankruptcy into a minus seven hundred million dollars in debt.
6:51
[SPEAKER_01]: because they were taking out debt open stores and they were slowly cannibalizing their customer base by like confusing the market of what they are and who they are when they came for the chicken and now there's some turkey going on there's a hand they're just not as good at anyone thing master yeah master none of that the inefficiencies in the kitchen they couldn't like pull the orders together fast enough and they lost their customer base in a matter of three years into bankruptcy and the lesson of the story is
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They have too many products when they have too many things, when they, they already had a proven model and they went and ruined it.
7:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of maybe pressure from the investors and pressure from this, but like they added too many things to their menu and it collapsed their business.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Confused Marketplace, too.
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in mid-two thousand, they were sold for parts to McDonald's.
7:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They no longer exist from my knowledge.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just thinking trying to think the last one I saw.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: There was one over here.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gone.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been gone for years.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was sold for parts for where the kitchens and the locations that McDonald's wanted the locations.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they further on sold that.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They sold for a hundred and seventy seven million dollars.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Barely touched their debt like they killed themselves by just spreading out to thin across all of these things and it's like like Jim's do this but usually it's backwards we put out everything
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: in the beginning.
8:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We're constantly adding things to the service offering in the beginning.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when we get mature enough, we take things away and say, this is the driver.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The really smart gems start with the knowledge that we have created for them and shared on the show.
8:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And they start like a TJ and Jess where they start with the perfect model.
8:45
[SPEAKER_01]: and they exponentially grow from day one versus staggering and plateauing at some point and then looking at the business and having to cut things to make it optimized.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so literally that's the story and I think it's a great story in very relevant in this industry because what happens a lot of times in gyms is the main thing isn't driving enough revenue.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it's because it's not a great product to begin with.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's your market.
9:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's your price.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's competition.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But your product isn't generating enough revenue to keep the doors open.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So therefore you feel like you have to like grasp at the next shiny object that the that the that the guru says that you should run and then you're forced into.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: bending your own systems and operations to deliver the product that the guru said you should do because that's the only way you can support yourself and it's just this horrible cycle of going down the drain real quick and you can end up being like Boston chicken Boston market and going down and you know them basically disappearing off the off the face of the earth how many times is a gym owner asked the clients
9:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what do you guys want out of you know out of here if we could bring something in what you know what what would you guys like to see well they're not running your business they're there for a different reason and
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: There are already there for the one thing that they gave it to came for, right?
10:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So their opinion is a little skewed.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, if we give them the option and we aren't charging them necessarily for it or they don't see that part of it yet, they're gonna throw out ideas that it doesn't mean it's a great business decision.
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you said it right, I think distraction is the problem, right?
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I look at services in the gym kind of like juggling, right?
10:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You can only joke like,
10:37
[SPEAKER_02]: your average person could probably juggle three balls, like your normal juggle a few reps.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
10:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
10:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But then throw a forceball in there, throw a fistball in there.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And like how many people can still continue to juggle with one more thing added, right?
10:53
[SPEAKER_02]: In business to be a lot like that, you start dropping the ball literally in one of these areas.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's bandwidth.
11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's attention.
11:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It's focus.
11:02
[SPEAKER_02]: All of these things I have to go across all of these different service offerings.
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The whole conversation is the jack of all trades, the master of none.
11:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think people forget about that, right?
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The jack of all trades seems like the utility player.
11:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Seems like they can, oh, yeah, the trainer can handle it all.
11:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I can do any type of training.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, are you an expert in any one of those arenas?
11:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what you need to double down.
11:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I could tell you how good it feels to be able to say we don't serve you, not we don't serve you, but like we we we're not an expert in serving you.
11:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I think we should outsource this particular client to another place because you're so confident in what you do offer.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: If somebody wants one-on-one training here, we can't help them.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not what we do.
11:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't believe in it as a business.
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: We believe, yes, you can get great results in one-on-one training.
11:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, you get a super focus, but for the business, it doesn't work for us.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And we turn people away all the time.
12:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And they ask us, hey, can I pay a little extra to get the one that I'm sorry?
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not able to do that.
12:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've had a business coach tell me, like, hey, you need to find a way to take those clients because you're losing a piece of the market.
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But sure, we could make more money, but at what expense it would probably net zero at some point, and it would break a lot of the other things into it and cannibalize the delivery of our main thing, which is semi-private.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, yes, while I agree, we are not able to serve a piece of the market, which technically is like the smallest piece, but they are the most wealthy.
12:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They would spend the most.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit of me is like, man, we've got to find a way, but I already know the answers don't do that because our main things here.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it goes back to the podcast we did when you talk about the phases of business, right?
12:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Right now you're an optimization.
12:58
[SPEAKER_02]: We've figured out a lot of the structure, the model, where you want to be delivering to the marketplace and things like that.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Throwing more into the situation now is not usually the answer.
13:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about how many different things that we pulled back or removed from the business and it got really better.
13:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easier to run.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: There's times I sit back and I'm like, man, what else can we optimize?
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And sure I can probably dig to find something.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're there.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're missing the boat on a few things, but it's not like catastrophic.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not affecting the ability to keep the lights on.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not affecting the ability to progress.
13:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the question becomes like, you know, we're always working with us talking with Jim on the last night and he's got, you know, he's doing one, you know, one, twenty a month in revenue out of a seven thousand square feet.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great model.
13:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were talking like he's not in the gym.
13:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He's, you know, it's got a great team.
13:54
[SPEAKER_01]: He was gone with this family and came back at grew.
13:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, well, here's the question.
14:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what else can you squeeze out of this thing?
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really going to move the needle enough to be like, you know, squeeze that next to one percent.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, is that worth your time in effort?
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Because like, there's going to be a point in time where like, this is
14:15
[SPEAKER_01]: good enough or this is all we can get to in this model without like exponentially having to work harder or expansion or really funded in a way where it's like yeah we can grow but I think expenses net net zero it's like
14:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be okay.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, you know, I'm getting too long-winded here.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We had a great speaker come speak to us the founder of Priceline Jeff Hoffman.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He was at our iron circle event in Florida.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was telling us about his buddy that that was just so rich and he was buying huge yachts and boats.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And like he was sitting on the boat with this guy who was just like super competitive.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to be the best, the biggest and everything.
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, he had billions of dollars.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, I got the biggest boat here, and then Jeff was like, well, what happens when the next biggest boat comes?
15:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're in the shadow of that boat, right?
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You're in the shadow of this, you know, of Bayzos boat.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What then?
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: When are you going to be happy with the size of the boat you got?
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: How big of a boat do you really want?
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and so I think they really hit so many for a lot of people, it's because you can work until you're dead and never achieve any
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: you're never fulfilled because your goalpost moves all the time.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And while I believe that I, you absolutely should move the goalpost.
15:37
[SPEAKER_01]: When you hit a goal, like, okay, now what?
15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's gonna come a point in time.
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it's when you're fifty nine years old or sixty four years old.
15:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're gonna be like, I lost a decade of time chasing the sting that I'll never get because I thought that's what I wanted.
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But really if I were to go back,
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: ten years ago and be happy there that would have been the best I would have been and it's just like this arc of like when do you sell your company you always want to sell your company at the top but you don't know the next you're going to be lower than that you think you're going to be higher so you're going to get more and more and more but there is a peak of everything there's a peak strength
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: peak attractiveness.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I still haven't hit it.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a peak athleticism.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a peak of business.
16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a peak in Boston market of a billion dollar valuation.
16:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a peak somewhere.
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just never know this.
16:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a magic crystal ball, which is impossible.
16:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you just don't know where the peak is.
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And you like you want to exit at that point.
16:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have to be okay.
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: selling maybe a little bit lower or exiting or being happy with what you have even though somebody else buys it and ticks it up three or four or eight percent.
16:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you never know what's going to happen on those conversations with I was talking my dad about real estate right and we he was talking about the the last house that they sold and he's like man you like in hindsight we probably could have gotten a ton more money for it.
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like yeah but what would it have cost you?
17:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
17:08
[SPEAKER_02]: How long would that have been on the market?
17:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe to find that next buyer, right?
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's always, like, nothing is gained without something given, right?
17:16
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always some exchange for that added value.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It was probably time, right?
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a smaller market, less people that can afford that next thing.
17:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It's probably going to stretch out that sale.
17:27
[SPEAKER_02]: At that time, what was more important?
17:30
[SPEAKER_02]: for them.
17:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And just in that situation, my brother and I were out here, both of us have young babies, like it was getting out to the family that was the priority, not twenty-five thousand more, you know, in the sale of a home or shirt.
17:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's looking at the whole thing.
17:46
[SPEAKER_02]: and you're talking about the bandwidth, right?
17:48
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you willing to sacrifice in order to get that additional revenue?
17:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I talk to more and more Jim owners, it's becoming really clear.
17:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the industry's tough.
17:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to make a great living with a single location with the margins and the net profit and things like that.
18:06
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're sitting there and you're deciding, hey, do I bring this in or do I run this harder to make a little bit more money?
18:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Jim Warner's quite often don't think about what it's going to do for their lifestyle, for their time, their energy and effort, just to get that to that next spot when you could be working yourself into misery, just to have a little bit more money on the penality into the year.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you could.
18:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the takeaway here is that you have the goal that you want to hit.
18:37
[SPEAKER_01]: In a friend of ours Russell Brunson, he was telling me in our group or whatever that
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he has a very specific goal and when he hits it, he's done because he will keep running and running.
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't share with that goal was I think I know what it is, but it's like
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to achieve what he's talking about, it's like astronomical anyway.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, how can you not be happy with that?
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, anywhere in between here and there, he could hit that and then the goal post music.
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So just got to be heads up.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So like it, you know, look, we got a little bit on the tangent.
19:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really about the main thing and making it the best in class, best in market, Boston market, best in market.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Be that rotisserie chicken because people came from far and wide to get that chicken from that place.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Not, you know, was it good?
19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember it this place.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
19:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember.
19:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the funny thing.
19:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember Boston Market.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was good enough to have eleven hundred locations open up one a day and freaking being a billion dollar company, which is two billion today.
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's, it was probably good.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably damn good.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, take that lesson and kind of apply it to your business.
19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully that you see, like, hey, there probably is one thing that we're pretty good at, we should just go all in on it.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: and most likely, if you're following anything we're doing, it's probably some of my private training, but it could be the best in class at group training, whatever it is.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully that helps you guys, that's it for this episode.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, keep changing, I'll have to see on the next show.
20:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, thanks for listening to another episode of the Builds Grow podcast.
20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want more help growing your business, join our free Facebook group, profit accelerator, helping training gyms grow to thirty thousand dollars a month and beyond.
20:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to see you there, go check out the show notes for the link, and keep building something great, and we'll see you in the next episode.