1971 – Transforming Gym Memberships into Lasting Relationships with Profitable Gym’s JP Levesque

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, JP Levesque. JP, you are the founder of Profitable Gyms. You're found on the web at ProfitableGyms.com. JP, it's great to have you. It's great to be here, Josh. You and I are chatting just on the tail of, you've recently done a Spartan event and you do a lot of ultra events. Before we kind of talk about Profitable Gyms and kind of what you do and who you serve, you're quite active in the ultra world. I like to think of myself more as a baby turtle. You know, maybe I listened to a little bit too much David Goggins. But after selling my gym, I thought, you know, let's do kind of the next chapter in fitness, which would be, you know, I ran a half marathon and then a marathon.

1:54And I thought, well, let's just take it longer and longer and kind of, you know, do the thing. So yeah, this is my second kind of hardcore season into ultra racing. Probably a little bit more than my wife would like, but the end goal being to finish with 100K this year. That would be the end goal. Wow. Wow. Well, and I'm sure you talk about this frequently, but endurance sports, you know, ultras, absolutely. And we think about, you know, both the physical, the mental, the spiritual, as it were, elements of that. What a great environment to exercise a lot of the same muscles that entrepreneurs, business owners, business leaders, obviously you work with a lot of gym owners, that mindset that's just required to make it past the finish line.

2:51And go ahead and give us your mini TED Talk on the parallels there, if you could. Yeah, I mean, there are a ton. And I think the funny part is, you know, I'm a CrossFit guy. I come from a CrossFit background. And most CrossFitters hate running. So kind of an odd thing that this would be my next thing. But there's a whole lot of parallels between ultra running and entrepreneurship, because at some point in the race, physically and mentally, you will be in the gutter. and your decision is essentially to suffer and push through or to quit and call it a day. And I think a lot of people have seen that picture or that meme where it's some guy and he's in a cave and he's got his pickaxe and he's digging and he stops just before he hits the wall of diamonds or gold or whatever the thing is.

3:41And I think that's just something we need to remind ourselves of as entrepreneurs. The going is not easy a lot of the time, but it's something that's worth doing. And that's the thing that I tell myself when I'm running, or, you know, when you've got those ups and downs during business is just to keep going, because it's something that's worth doing. And you build a lot of mental toughness and resiliency when you're out there, you know, running, because it's, it's just part of the nature is to is to suffer. But but you know, that going in, and I think those two things, you know, they overlap very well, as you mentioned.

4:16It's not easy, but it's worth it, I think, would be the summation of that thought. Well, JP, give us maybe an overview of where we are. We're recording this, you know, kind of midway through 2024. How is the gym industry doing? What are the big opportunities that you see? And, you know, kind of a third part to this long question. You know, where might some gym owners not be seizing a lot of maybe could just be the state of the industry or consumer trends, that sort of thing. But where are we right now? Well, I could talk about this for a very, very, very long time. So right now we are in summer, and summer is a down season.

5:02You know, the gym industry is very seasonal, cyclical. And so people want to be outside and get outside and, you know, get the vitamin D and, and, you know, kind of have that fun summer experience that we all remember as, um, as kids or that we see on the internet, we're like, yeah, I want to do that. Um, but meanwhile, as a gym owner, you're like, ah, people are leaving my gym. They're not signing up. They're going on hold. And this kind of sucks for me. And as a, as a gym owner, I felt that that was the first couple of years of my experience. And so that's, that's where we are seasonally is if you didn't essentially, you know, the ant and the grasshopper, if you didn't fill your gym with people during the good months, well, now the trees are barren and it's much harder to kind of push that season if you weren't ready for it.

5:45That being said, there are things that you can do it, but we are in a slow season now. And so my recommendation for gym owners is don't stop trying to get new people in, but this is a great time to improve your core service. So when we come back into the fall and people are ready to sign up again, especially when the kids go back to school, then you can push on sales. And so that's kind of the alternation through the season of gyms is there's a season to work on your service and your core offering product, and then there is a season to push sales. And so we are in that season to work on the core service.

6:18That being said, I am still seeing marketing work. It's quite effective. You just have to know with the seasonality, people are looking for short-term commitments. They're not looking for a six-month transformation or a 90-day transformation. They're looking for like a four-week kind of a quick fix as that first hook to get them into the gym. So if you are marketing, it should be on those shorter-term front-end offers. Yeah. Okay. So in terms of, let's say that a gym owner just like, listen, we just need so much more awareness, visibility. We need more people at the very, very top of the funnel, as it were.

6:57What do you see working well at kind of the very, very top, you know, building that awareness and visibility? Yeah. So the top of funnel, it's marketing. And a lot of gym owners, especially myself, came from a background where we thought, hey, if I do a really good job, people are just going to show up at my gym because they're going to know I'm awesome. And experience tells me that that wasn't the case because I thought I was pretty awesome. Maybe, you know, big ego back in the early days of being a gym owner. But even though I ran a great facility and I was there all the time and it was clean and I loved it and this and that, people didn't just magically appear.

7:36We still had to attract them. So that's kind of the first thing to get out of the way is even if you're doing a fantastic job and delivering a great service, people don't naturally know you exist. You have to put yourself out there. So filling top of funnel, basically Facebook and Instagram ads are still the best way to do it. Now, sure, there are some other organic plays that work really well, like sending previous members or unconverted trials, a reactivation campaign. That's something that would work quite well during this season. But those shorter term fun and offers, and they're super corny, like, like, you know, summer shred, like those kinds of things.

8:14Yeah, they just work like that. Yes, they're they're the cheesiest of offers that you can make people, but people still love them. So that's what I would be gearing towards. I'm seeing a lot of success with a 21 day and a 28 day kind of a summer kickstart or summer shred, or, you know, even really like goofy stuff like jacked in July targeted more at males. Those kinds of things are currently working. That being said, you've got to make sure when you're feeling top of funnel, you have great no brainer offers to make people on top of a solid foundation in your gym in terms of pricing model. I'm going to ask you an off the wall question I probably would never ask in terms of like, just from an observational standpoint, are weight loss drugs like Ozempic impacting the gym industry in any way that you can tell?

9:05No, not that I can tell directly, but I also do not have like a, you know, a massive, you know, several hundred franchise chain. That being said, if you think about it, there's two kinds of people. One person that really wants the super easy button, which is the Ozempic. And maybe they've tried some other interventions before and it's just failed them. There's no judgment on that. But then there's the person who wants to kind of go the traditional route, which is kind of a silly thing to say, of just trying to get healthy and change these lifestyle factors. Ultimately, they will contribute to weight loss.

9:39That being said, a pre-COVID gym and a post-COVID gym, post-COVID world, those are dramatically different things. You could get away with being kind of a sloppy gym owner back in the day, but now you are required to play at a much higher level to stay in the game and to thrive. So that's a big shift that I've seen over the last few years. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so JP, tell me about how you work with gym owners. What does that typically look like? Yeah, so that's a great question. So most gym owners are looking to get new gym members and they're struggling to do that. They want to take home more income, not so they can buy a Ferrari, but so they can take better care of themselves and their families.

10:25And they also want to provide more for their staffs. And they're also doing all of the work themselves. They are the chief gumscraper and teaching all the classes and all that different stuff. So essentially just solving those problems that make it more rewarding and fulfilling for gym owners to own and operate their gym versus just high stress, low reward, which is when you're young and when you're new to the game, you have that passion and that zest, zeal that's going to see you through it. But as you progress in your career, and if you have kids and all that kind of stuff moving forward, it's not enough to get you by.

10:59So essentially, the way we do it is we help to install a bunch of tech in your business that boosts your lead flow. That's kind of the first thing. Let's get some bodies in. Let's start to get you some momentum. We give you some no-brainer offers and some incredibly easy ways to sell people into new membership that don't feel sleazy, that feel really like you're having a natural conversation and you're an advocate for this person that wants to come in. So we've gotten people in front of you. We're giving you no-brainer offers. We're giving you a very easy way to send those people up. And then we take a look at the core foundation of your actual business model.

11:34Most gym owners have this really archaic, really dated business model that worked pre-COVID. But now with the difficulty of generally getting people to show up and how much more expensive things are in general with inflation, it's not enough for the gym owner to survive, let alone thrive. So those are some of the core things we do. You get more members, you sign them up easier. And then we fix kind of the core foundational pieces that actually will allow your gym to become a more profitable business over time. And that's really the goal. I want you to have an easier time to run your gym and for it to increase in value over time versus for it to stay the same or obviously to decrease.

12:15JP, is profitable gyms, is it consulting? Is it an e-course? Explain what it is. It is a lot of things. And that's kind of the difficulty of what it is. I think as we as entrepreneurs and business owners want to be like, you see this like encyclopedia or this great big trunk of value I'm going to dump on your head? And people are like, it's too much. So in a very, very simple way of saying this, I have a whole technology suite I call the Magic Member Machine. I know it's corny, but I like it. And so that's something that's going to help to generate you leads and members and make you sales. And that's something that we install in your business.

12:55It includes backend software and a website that we build for you. And it is a massive difference maker. I've seen gyms do nothing else but install the system and grow by 50 members in four or five months. Results not typical, but it's a huge boon for the gym owner who's never had this piece. So that's a huge thing that we do. And the second thing is I walk you through this process. It's about four calls with me personally to go through what your gym needs most. So we look at the current state of your business. We look at what you're offering for memberships and your pricing structure and kind of all your financial stuff.

13:34We dig into that. I show you how to upgrade the revenue from your current model, from your current member base, essentially finding diamonds in your own backyard. And then I show you how to hit the gas pedal. and get leads and get members on demand when you want to. And the last thing would be to put all those pieces together and create a plan for you to scale up and out. And a lot of gym owners don't want to exit their gym ever, but there's a lot of stuff they don't want to do. So the plan basically is to give you the option to create this freedom of wealth and this freedom of time so you can stop doing the things you don't want to do and just spend time on the things you do want to do.

14:17Your website is profitablegyms.com. Also, JP, you've got to produce some really great YouTube content. Do you mind maybe sharing about the resources you have available? So if someone stumbled upon this podcast, and they just want to keep kind of diving in, what do you see in terms of value? Yeah, I mean, I think both you and I align on this. we're value first entrepreneurs. I would rather just give you the keys and say, hey, if you're struggling with this particular issue, I've solved it before, here you go. And obviously if somebody chooses to work with me, it's gonna be smoother, faster, better, et cetera, et cetera.

14:57But I wanna just put that information out there for people. So on the YouTube channel, there are things like how to run Facebook ads. And I didn't cut the video in half and say, insert your credit card to get the rest of the information. It's just, no, here, go ahead and do it. There's stuff on how to create offers I talked about that are irresistible, how to sell to people in a very simple way. I don't promote the channel that much, but it is a library of content that exists to solve all the common problems that gym owners have. It's just kind of looking through your content. And obviously, I'm seeing some videos about sales, you know, kind of sales help and sales ideas.

15:43You know, my experience, JP, as a consumer is, you know, I've certainly had some experiences where I felt like there was a bit of a hard sell. Is that the norm? Is that effective? Or how do you typically comment on that question? Yeah, I'll say when you look at the YouTube channel. the thumbnails are terrible. So just don't judge a book by its cover. How do you make a YouTube thumbnail? You know, kind of the different poses and the this and the that. And it's like, you got to do the shock. I hate that part of it. Yeah, I hate it. But it's, you know, I made those videos to help gym owners. There's good content, even if the thumbnails are not great.

16:24So just kind of don't judge a book by its cover. Yeah. Sales with integrity is really, really important. And most gym owners, especially CrossFit gym owners are not natural salespeople because they love what they do. I want to teach Olympic lifting. I want to teach gymnastics. I want to put these things together and build a community and have this awesome facility that I love, but I don't want to feel like a used car salesman. So the best sales advice I can give people is to be an advocate for the person in front of you. If you truly want what is best for them, not just to make a sale today, you're going to feel so much better about every single conversation that you have.

17:02that's that's really kind of it in a nutshell and i would say the other the other part to that is pick a process that you're really comfortable with maybe that's something that we call um you know a no-sale sale where it's a free trial that goes into a membership you're giving people a lot of value up front and they can choose to stay or not maybe you offer them a really great sort of front-end results-based product which is something i had a lot of success with and if they're a good fit, you know, be an advocate. And if they're not, that's okay too. But we, again, we just want to align with people and not push them into something they're not ready for.

17:38And honestly, I've, I went through a program that was like a hardcore closing program. And when you kind of play games with words and you push people into a corner and they say yes, and you know, you push them into that, it doesn't feel good for either of you. So having done that once, that's not something that I would recommend that people do because that person, they said yes, but they don't trust you. They said yes, and they're probably going to send you a text and cancel as soon as they leave. Just the idea of being that advocate for the person who's in front of you and wanting truly what's best for them, that's really the only mindset that I would go into sales with.

18:17Yeah. JP, your website, profitablegyms.com. When someone clicks there, there's actually a pretty good video that explains exactly how this works. Obviously, there's a button to click get started. Anything else that you'd recommend someone do from here? No, I would say that's it. If you're interested in what I do, you can head over to ProfitableGyms.com and you can watch that video. It gives you a good overview of what I do. Instagram is definitely my favorite platform. so I'm on there active quite a lot. If you want to follow me there, it's JP underscore Levesque 24. Posting lots of stuff there, good content.

19:00Trying to keep things seasonally relevant as well so gym owners don't have to be reactive to what's going on in their business. They can see what's happening as the season approaches and prepare for it accordingly. JP Levesque, founder of Profitable Gyms, your website, ProfitableGyms.com. JP, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh.

19:47day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

20:31Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right. Seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.