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Healthier Habits: Building a Gym That Changes Lives with Phil Fortin · Built by Margin with Laurie Chen

• 0:04
  Welcome to Built by Margin, where risk meets numbers and better decisions get made. I'm Laurie Chen, cpa, fractional CFO and author of Risk Worthy. On this show, we Explore how founders, CEOs and high performers think strategically, take intelligent risks, and use numbers to build what matters. Because great outcomes don't happen by accident. They're built by margin.
• 0:33
  Hi, Phil. Welcome to Built by Margin. Hi, thanks for having me. Great to have you here. So you're based in Ottawa and you are the CEO of OC Fit. Tell us more about your journey to becoming an owner of a gym. Right. So first off, I guess that's exactly how most people know me as Phil, the CrossFit coach. The thing that most people wouldn't know is that I first started as a respiratory therap working full time in hospitals for about 12 years while also trying to build this. This gym. So I was having like, the. Seeing the very sick people, seeing people over and over of like, what happens when you don't take care of yourself. So that kind of sent me on this mission to try and stop this cycle of I need to educate people and help them before it's too late.
• 1:34
  The focus on prevention was something that was key for me.
• 1:38
  So that was the mission. That's what got me fired up. To just open up something to prevent people from getting into the hospital and being the last method or last resort, essentially. So you saw a need within your community and tried to fill that need immediately with health and fitness.
• 1:58
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you didn't have any previous experience owning a gym? Not at all. Not at all.
• 2:06
  I, I had no business knowledge. I was into sports, I was into fitness, but my, my background was really healthcare.
• 2:19
  Okay, well, that's. At least there's some similarity there in the healthcare. Yeah, for sure. And it helped me.
• 2:26
  You know, I guess the very similar thing is that I was helping people, just not at the same level. So I've always been helping, just in a different way, I guess. So how did you learn how to run the business side of the gym? Because there's operations and there's business and there's customer service, customer management. How did you adapt to all of that, to the business side? Well, a lot of trial and error, that's for sure. But I think I also did a pretty smart move right out of the gates to hire a coach, and that really helped me, you know, stay focused on what really mattered and also learn the ropes with.
• 3:17
  It was a, a coaching group where it was essentially all gym owners and you got a lot of data from gyms that were performing very well and gyms that weren't performing so well. So it got me focused on the things to do and learning as I went with, with coaching. So that was the number one thing. How long have you had your gym now? Now we're going on eight years this year. Okay, great. So yeah, you must have, there must have been a steep learning curve. But now your eighth year, you must be a pro at owning a gym. Well, pro, there's always any everything to learn, you know. But that said, I think I started at the right time. Not having kids. Yes, I had a full time job and then I still managed to to work and do it, but I was really running hard for about two, three years.
• 4:13
  Then the kids came and obviously that throws a wrench into everything.
• 4:18
  So I had to make sure to figure out how to buy back my time and make that work. How much of your time right now is administrative and ownership type tasks versus actual coaching and managing staff?
• 4:35
  Okay, so coaching, I probably do just about three to four hours a week of coaching now from the CEO. That's definitely the bulk of my work. I would say about 90% of it. And then staff management is the rest of it. Okay. Wow. Oh, that's not bad. And then I saw that your gym is also official. Hyrox gym.
• 5:06
  I've heard about that program. So tell us a bit more about what that means.
• 5:10
  Yeah, Hyrox is definitely booming. It's a new style of essentially fitness race.
• 5:18
  I think the reason why it's booming so much is that it's very low barrier to entry. Like if you can walk or run and then you can do some very lightweight movements, then you can probably do it. Obviously you need more to excel at it, but it's a low barrier to entry. The nice thing about it is that you know exactly what you're getting yourself, yourself into. So if you sign up to a Hyrox race, you know what you have to do. It's almost like a marathon. You know that you have X amount of kilometers or miles to cover. The Hyrox is kind of the same, but it also adds, you know, elements of strength on top of the runs. So that's one thing we find that in relation of to what we do in the gym. Hyrox is a lot more cardiovascular training for a longer period of time. We are also a CrossFit affiliate which varies a lot of movements and modalities kind of, kind of a lot more. So you'll see a lot more strength training, but also High intensity interval style of training. You'll see the gymnastics side of things. So we are essentially the best way to describe it is general physical preparedness.
• 6:35
  So if you want to be ready for anything in life, that's essentially the, the type of training that you would do.
• 6:44
  Interesting. Okay, I'm just looking at some of your Instagram reels and posts and kind of the offerings that you have. Seems really cool.
• 6:56
  Do you have any plans to grow and expand your gym?
• 7:01
  Yeah, for sure. So the way that I see this is we're really a lot of people that we meet. It becomes a new way for them of essentially living. It's a healthy way of living and where you're coming into a, a space where you enjoy being with other people, you enjoy being told exactly what to do, you enjoy seeing the results. And so the more people that we can have in our gym, the better health the overall community has.
• 7:38
  So the plan is always to keep, you know, adding to our community because it's a great group of people that we have.
• 7:46
  And does that mean a second location? Does that mean a bigger location?
• 7:50
  We don't know yet, but it's coming up for sure.
• 7:58
  How do you recruit and retain your coaches? Because you know, that's a big piece of why members sign up for your gym and decide to stay. So how do you, how do you keep the instructors happy? Yeah, that's great question. And it's for us, we've been blessed with amazing coaches. I think it starts with our hiring process. So we typically will never hire for skills or qualifications. We always will first hire for personality. And that's something that we feel like you can't train someone on that. It's just you got it or you don't.
• 8:43
  And then the skills and what you need as far as education and coaching skills, we can teach you that, no problem.
• 8:50
  So that's been very helpful for us in keeping our members very happy because the coaches first have very good people skills.
• 9:02
  Then how do we keep the coaches happy? Well, most of them are part time coaches with us and they have full time jobs. They really do the coaching aspect because they love it. So they don't require a whole lot as far as revenue or hours. They love their, they do their full time jobs, but they love that part time job as a side.
• 9:31
  So that's been working very well for us so far.
• 9:35
  That's great. Yeah. I'm just looking at your class schedule. So you've got classes Monday through Fridays. Well, Monday through Saturdays you have, you have your clothes on
• 9:43
  Sundays, but Monday through Friday, you're basically 5: 30am
• 9:46
  to 6, 7: 30pm and then you have open gym in between there. So you have the full slate classes going on every week? Yes, in total, I think it's 46 classes a week and we are open on Sundays for one class.
• 10:02
  to 6, 7: Oh, okay. So yeah, a lot of classes, a lot of options.
• 10:05
  to 6, 7: That's great. When you think about your business financials and the growth and trajectory of that, are there any particular metrics that are key for you to measure on the financial side?
• 10:21
  to 6, 7: Yes, but I think that the one North Star that we have, the metric that brings everything together is attendance.
• 10:32
  to 6, 7: So if you're a member at our gym and you are attending less than twice a week, we need to do something because eventually that will mean financials will go down and you'll get into a rut of you're not going to come to the gym, you're not going to see results and all that. So if we make sure that you're coming into the gym at least three to four days a week, typically everything else will follow for us. Now obviously there's the very like standard total revenue and the churn and all that, but the real thing for us is attendance. If you're coming in, we're doing a good job, you're happy, great. Do you sell monthly memberships or is most of your revenue from class packs and like limited packages?
• 11:24
  to 6, 7: The the bulk of our revenue is monthly memberships.
• 11:28
  to 6, 7: We do have personal training that is purchased typically as like session packs but otherwise it's all monthly memberships. So once someone signs up, we never. So we don't have any contracts. Anyone that signs up is signed up for a month. It automatically renews unless they tell us to cancel the membership. But we can be proud that we have a very low 2% churn and our members have a history of staying with us for at least 26 months as like a length of engagement. So that's one thing that we do very well is we're not just, you know, you come in and do your own thing, own thing type of gym.
• 12:13
  to 6, 7: We, we made sure that we know every member's name. We'll meet with you one on one every 90 days to review your goals, how you're progressing and things like that. So it keeps it very personal.
• 12:33
  to 6, 7: What about marketing because your gym is very local, localized. Right. So what is. Do you find that the referrals and wor mouth is the biggest source for new client acquisition or is it paid ads or is it social media? What are the top Sources for your marketing. I love that question because I. So historically speaking for our gym it's 100% been referrals. So someone walks in, works out, loves what they get and then they refer their friends, their parent, whatever. That's been the biggest seller. Now we're trying to move on to this next stage of. You know, Dan Martel has always been preaching the social media side of things and I was never on social media. I probably started my own personal page just maybe I would say six months ago or so and trying to get more of that going on. But the reality is that, that you kind of hit the nail on the head there. The hard part is I'm very local with what I do. So is my social media really focused on local population? Not as much. So the reach on socials is a little harder to me for my gym specifically. But the main thing has been referrals for sure. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's really interesting because you can do paid ads like partic within your location or space that might be an idea to try out and we've done that. We just found that we got so many what they call cold leads where yeah, we got a bunch of names but to get them to just walk into our door and then show them what we do, it just never seems to happen. So it was a lot of, a lot of conversations and time wasted on trying to, you know, get them into the door while never actually happened. So we still run Google Ads just as like marketing ads but they're very low.
• 14:57
  to 6, 7: Yeah, referrals in word of mouth is definitely the, your most effective source for new client acquisition. So it's working for you, so that's great. Okay, so let's think bigger picture about like risk and decision making. Like you must have taken a big risk when you decided to open this gym and become a, become an owner. How has that decision affected you? Like do you still feel like that was a big risk that you took that paid off and must have been because you've, you've been in this for eight years now. Yeah, so the risk was definitely there. Leaving a very high paying job with, you know, benefits and very stable job to something that you know, could work, could not. That, that I guess is also why I kept my respiratory therapy job for you know, two, three years as like a safety net because I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure that I was able to say that I trusted myself enough to just do it and make it work until, until other people, members specifically started to make me realize that we were doing a very good thing and that we should just keep doing it and double down on it to help more people.
• 16:19
  to 6, 7: So the risk was there still is technically, but deep down, I guess now I have the confidence that if we keep helping people, I mean that's value to people. So it's got to work.
• 16:35
  to 6, 7: From a healthcare standpoint, what do you recommend people do?
• 16:39
  to 6, 7: Like in terms of strength training or cardiovascular fitness or nutrition? Based on what you've seen with your customers and regular gym members, what do you think is the biggest thing that someone listening today to this podcast should know about their health or their fitness?
• 17:01
  to 6, 7: So there's been a whole lot of studies on, you know, exercise, health, fitness. The, the things that always keep coming back is that, well, number one, like regular movement is key. The other new thing, and that's a fairly new study, but it's a very big one that I actually posted on my socials not too long ago. They've identified key benefits to not how long you actually exercise, but how intense you go. So the intensity was a level of out of breath. So if you're feeling like you're moving and you're out of breath, on a scale of about like at least 7 out of 10, you're in that range that they found so beneficial for the majority of the population.
• 17:57
  to 6, 7: It brought the risk of cancer, dementia, diabetes, high blood pressure, down by like over 50% in the study that they did.
• 18:07
  to 6, 7: So it really showed that the intensity of your efforts matter more than the duration. So if you're someone watching this, I guess the main point is you do not need hours in the gym to be fit. You just need to do it consistently and have a plan for it.
• 18:29
  to 6, 7: Personally, I never work out more than about half hour every single day because my intensity matches what I need to keep it under the 30 minute window.
• 18:40
  to 6, 7: With kids, full time job, you know, it's time is not what I have. So that's that my recommendation right there. Now the other little thing is nutrition. Obviously that plays a big role into your health. And the one thing that is like broad across the board is whole foods, meaning stuff that is not processed.
• 19:06
  to 6, 7: I always tell my clients, if you don't know how this thing got to your plate, how it was made, essentially how it was created, chances are you should not be eating this or you should be thinking twice. However, if you know how that was created or brought to your plate, that's probably a good, good thing. So yeah, I really like what you said about intensity because, you know, I, I've heard that the hiit workouts are, are very effective. So I go to Orange Theory Fitness. I have been a member for a year and a half now. Um, and they have a lot of intense workouts and I definitely focus on, you know, making sure that I'm doing like the pushes and the all outs because those are the most intense parts of the workouts. Um, and then I've also read Peter Attia's Outlive. Yes. And that he talks about how VO2 Max is, is the best marker of longevity. Absolutely. And so, yeah, that's all tied into to what you're saying here about having the intensity of workouts, not the duration of workouts. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it also depends on, you know, your stage of life. But there's also a lot of studies with right now woman in like the menopausal perimenopausal stages with what they, they recommend and really need. And there's a lot of benefits with the strength training on top of this high intensity stuff.
• 20:35
  to 6, 7: So the best blend of both world from multiple levels is strength training with high intensity interval type of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Now you hit a good point there. Yeah. That women in their 40s and 50s have different needs. I was just reminded about this over the weekend with, at a health and fitness event. You know, someone was, was telling me, someone that works with women, I was telling me that Orange Theory is actually not recommended for people, women over their 40s for various reasons. But yeah, different, different physiolo needs and changes are something definitely be aware of. So are there any books that you would recommend for someone that's looking to, to learn more about health and fitness and longevity?
• 21:25
  to 6, 7: Well, definitely longevity. Peter Attia.
• 21:29
  to 6, 7: I can't remember what the name of his book is, but it might be Longevity. But actually that would be one.
• 21:39
  to 6, 7: And then I really like podcasts personally for that and Diary of a CEO. I don't know if you know about him, but this guy has a bunch of people that he invites on the show and oftentimes it's related to health and fitness and they're very, very interesting topics. I see.
• 22:09
  to 6, 7: Oh, Stephen Bartlett. Yeah, very cool.
• 22:13
  to 6, 7: Yeah, I think he's like the number one or two rated podcast in like the world. So it's, it's very good. Yep. And I would say that the other good book, not necessarily specifically related to health, but atomic habits to just help people get into the habit of exercise, you know?
• 22:36
  to 6, 7: Yes. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad you mentioned that because I just started reading the Atomic Habits workbook. Okay. Yes.
• 22:43
  to 6, 7: Yeah, he just, I think he just came out with that or maybe something like a modified version of the actual book, I think. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I actually just started reading that this week and so, yeah, it's great because helps you think about habits in a different way.
• 23:01
  to 6, 7: And especially if we're talking about health and fitness and going to the gym like that, that has to become a habit in order for someone to consistently reap the benefits of it and consistently go. Yeah, and like that's one thing. In our membership options, we have a twice a week package. The only reason why we have it is for people that have a specific sport that want to supplement their training with what we do.
• 23:32
  to 6, 7: Because people that come in that do nothing and then they ask me, should I go for the twice a week membership? Like, I'm not sure I'll be able to attend consistently. I tell them that this is probably the worst thing they could do because the twice a week membership, if you're not doing anything else, it'll be hard all the time. Like you won't be able to get into a routine that feels comfortable and that is just going to be what you actually do. Because the whole point is that you got to have a lifestyle change where it's now what you do, right? It's your daily workout. You just, you get it done and it's not hard, it's just what you do. Not saying that the workout's not hard, that that can still be hard, but the routine, right. It usually takes 21 days to form a habit. And I found that when. Well, for me, exercising consistently took longer than 21 days. Although you do start reaping benefits at that point. I think for me it took more like four months to really get into a consistent rhythm of going to the gym every day or almost every day.
• 24:36
  to 6, 7: But once you hit that point, you kind of like feel bad for not even going. If you don't go, then you feel bad. So you want to get to that point where you feel that. Exactly, yes. And I, I've read that as well, the 21 days. And it's a very specific number. I don't really know how you can put that specificity in a number, but I know that for sure. Eventually the habit develops and it's not like it'll be like one day you're like, oh, I got this habit now. And it just clicked. It's just I shared a story not so long ago that I, I went and played hockey at night and I came back as probably 11pm and I said to myself, I'm not going to work out tomorrow morning.
• 25:20
  to 6, 7: I typically always wake up at around 5am to go do my workout in my garage and then move on with my day. But that night I said I'm just not going to wake up to do it because I feel beat up. I went to bed late but because
• 25:36
  I've been so consistent with it, it was I think 5: 09 in the morning. I just woke up, no alarm clock and I was like, well okay, let's just go work out. And I felt great after.
• 25:47
  I've been so consistent with it, it was I think 5: It's just, it just happened because I that's what I do, you know.
• 25:52
  I've been so consistent with it, it was I think 5: Well Phil, thanks so much for sharing your experience and your journey and some great health and nutrition tips as well on the show. It's great having you here and we will definitely send listeners to OC Fitzgerald Instagram page as well as your Instagram page and then hopefully share more about what you're doing and follow your growth journey. Awesome. And if anyone listening wants to do workouts they don't know where to start, go follow me on Instagram Fakhtane Phil and I'll send you 20 of them right away so that you can get started.
• 26:33
  I've been so consistent with it, it was I think 5: Awesome. Thank you. Foreign thanks for listening to Built by Margin. If this episode gave you a new way to think about risk, numbers or the decisions in front of you, share it with someone else, building something meaningful. And if you want more conversations like this, follow the show for insights on strategy, decision making, and intelligent risk. Until next time, remember, take the risk, know your numbers and build with intention.