In today’s episode, host Pete Moore talks with Lauren Schoenfeld, founder of Active Core Consulting and a powerhouse fractional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) specializing in the boutique fitness space. With an impressive finance background spanning PwC, WeWork, and Equinox, Lauren has a unique blend of skills in the HALO sector (Health, Active Lifestyle, Outdoors) to help studios and gyms not only survive but thrive. She relays her journey from athlete to finance entrepreneur, the creation of her consulting agency during the pandemic, and how her team supports fitness businesses with everything from streamlined financial and business planning, to holistic sales and operations coaching.
Schoenfeld dives into common financial pitfalls fitness operators face, why understanding your KPIs on a weekly and monthly basis is critical, and her hands-on approach to guiding owners toward sustainable growth and profitability. Whether you're struggling to get your cash flow under control, looking to scale to multiple locations, or simply want to run a tighter ship, this episode is packed with practical advice, real-world studio benchmarks, and Lauren’s “just ship it” mantra. Tune in for an insightful conversation that’s critical listening for anyone in the HALO space aiming to manage, measure, and ultimately maximize the value of their business.
On the power of personal connection in the digital space, she states, "I also think that because our world has become so digital, even having the front desk team learn how to have conversations with people that are coming into the studio is a huge area of opportunity that we help our clients with."
Key themes discussed
- Importance of financial clarity for fitness studios.
- Role and value of a fractional CFO.
- Building and tracking key business KPIs.
- Strategies for boutique studio revenue growth.
- Managing cash flow and operational adjustments.
- Software tools and systems for studio management.
- Community engagement and sales through conversation.
A few key takeaways:
1. Strong Financial Foundations Are Essential, Not Optional: Lauren highlights many fitness studio owners lack a true understanding of their finances. She says it's not just bookkeeping that's missing but a real, hands-on understanding of cash flow, profitability, and Key Performance Indicators (KPI's.) Solid financial processes and regular P&L reviews help owners avoid surprises, make better decisions, and ultimately set themselves up for growth or a potential exit.
2. Fractional CFOs Offer Comprehensive Benefits: Lauren’s firm, Active Core Consulting, provides not only CFO-level guidance but holistic support—combining bookkeeping, financial modeling, three-year business plans, and ongoing operational consulting. This all-in-one approach is especially valuable for boutique fitness studios needing more than just a traditional bookkeeper or an accountant.
3. Regular KPI Tracking Drives Better Outcomes: She stresses the importance of tracking KPIs weekly (and monthly)—not just revenue, but also leads, intro offers, membership sales, and class packs. By setting benchmarks and monitoring progress, studios can make fast changes and improve their results over time.
4. Sales and Operations Training is Often the Missing Link: Lauren found that many studios simply didn’t have a solid sales process, clear guidelines, or strong community marketing strategies. Her agency often helps struggling studios by focusing first on sales and operations coaching—sometimes before touching the financial model—believing operational tweaks can quickly stop the bleeding and boost revenue.
5. Entrepreneurial Flexibility Can
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal
partnership with the Prospect Wizard. And when I say
wizard, I mean wizard. Obviously you have a website.
This allows you to convert your website traffic visitors
directly into leads. It's not just another chatbot and
it's not AI, but it allows a visitor to call, text or leave a
(00:22):
voicemail immediately. Goes to you, your sales team or anyone else in the
club instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact
the lead within 10 minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine
times that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs
on it. Vita Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside
City Fitness, Philly, College Park. Become one
(00:44):
of the next Halo companies to deploy the Wizard.
It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com
get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy Dave Gallen. He will get
you all set up and let the leads flow based on the
Wizard. Go get him.
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure of
(01:07):
bringing your new fractional cfo. That will be your
Halo most important position. Hire
Lauren from Active Core Consulting, hailing out of San Diego with
roots in New York City. And she is music to my
ears because we're going to talk finance, we're going to talk ebitda, which
people know I love, and we're going to talk about how you make sure you
(01:30):
can manage and measure and eventually sell your business.
So Lauren, welcome to your first Halo Talks. Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, so look, in our
business, a lot of people have bookkeepers, they've got accountants
and we get on and we help them, trust me, try and sell their business.
And it sometimes takes upwards of six months to actually
(01:52):
decipher what their cash flow is, what their
KPIs are, how you can articulate what the business model
is actually through financial drivers. So
talk about your background, why you've dedicated yourself to be
a fractional CFO and
people you've helped and some of the takeaways you've learned.
(02:14):
Yeah, of course. My background is heavily in
finance and strategy. I started my career at PwC,
did a lot of public company financial audits. I was an early
employee at WeWork before they tried to go public the first time.
And then I got into the fitness space at Equinox where I
spent the lion's share of my corporate career. I was an athlete growing
(02:36):
up and then got into the accounting finance world out of college.
And so coming to Equinox and, and back into the fitness
space felt like the best marriage of my athleticism
and my finance brain coming into one.
During the pandemic, I lived in New York City. I was stuck in my apartment.
I was bored because I didn't have anything to
(02:59):
do in terms of work was slow.
Fitness industry was kind of slowing down. So rather than
finding a creative outlet through arts and crafts for
bread making, I was like, let me start a company. And so I reached out
to the cycling studio owner of the studio I was a
(03:20):
coach at and asked her how she was pairing through the pandemic. Obviously,
no one was doing great. And so I helped her restructure her business,
helped her open the first outdoor cycling studio in Brooklyn
since you're in New York. Bikeland was my first
client. And so she was like, this is
amazing. And she was an MBA grad from Wharton. So I was like, wow,
(03:43):
if this amazing, smart studio owner needs my help, I
imagine most people are in the same position. So it really
started out as a labor of love during COVID just wanting to help out the
industry and kind of get my feet wet into what a consulting
business agency would look like. And about five years
later, we have fully grown. I have eight other
(04:06):
people on my team. We're also growing into not just
fractional cfo, but also sales and operations coaching.
So the ideal flow is you come in on the finance
side. We have bookkeeping services, we
have finance services. So our fractional CFO offer is a
really holistic offering where we clean up your P and L,
(04:28):
we make sure you're giving reporting that actually speaks to what
your business is doing so we can make smart operational decisions
rooted in your numbers. We build you out a three year business plan with
monthly goals. So when you're doing your weekly and monthly KPI
metrics, you actually have something to base your metrics
against. So we can really keep a tackle on your
(04:51):
business and what you're doing, what you're not doing. And then
our sales and operations coaches will really come in and help you
nail down your sales process, your communication process, your team building,
your community building, your retail strategy, and just
everything that comes along with running the four walls of our studio.
Our sales and operations coaches have also come from the boutique fitness
(05:14):
world, from Barry's bootcamp, Orange Theory Fitness, a lot
of thick equinox generators
and helping out big names that we've all
taken our skill sets to help the smaller entrepreneur crew.
So before we get into the business, what was your athletic
prowess? And we have to get you a copy of our book, which is called
(05:35):
Time to Win again. We where it's 52 takeaways from
team sports to run a successful business. So it's a
caricature picture book. Kind of like Where's Waldo?
Beats good to great. But we love what you're doing. You know, we're
focused, as most people know, on the mergers and acquisition
side. And a big piece of our business is making sure
(05:57):
that we have a bulletproof historical and
projection model and be able to tell the story of
what's a special sauce of a club chain or
studio concept or franchisor. And it's really
difficult to do that unless somebody has a handle on how they're
driving the business, what levers they're able to focus on and
(06:18):
actually. Put. Rocket fuel on
or not. And as you reference,
you have to have a handle on those monthly in order to prove to an
investor that, that you're not just running a four wall business.
But you know how that four word business model and revenue
model works. So first off, what's your sport of choice?
(06:42):
I was a big soccer and volleyball player growing up.
Okay, live and breathe sports. Every weekend up and down the state
of California. My poor parents were just driving my brother and I to all of
our competitions and tournaments. And
I was a goalie. I just retired a year ago. I was a goalie at
52. No way. Awesome. Yeah. All right, there you go. All right. So we're
(07:03):
fast friends. You know, my mom used to tell me like, oh, you
know, there's 10 other people that it got passed, you know, so it's okay that
it got past you. I'm like, no mom allowed to use my hands. So, you
know, make me feel, you know, comforting. But
yeah, I say, well, you'll see in the book, you know, like the CEO of
the company is really the goalie. And, you know, I'm responsible
(07:25):
for people not losing, which, you know, in your current,
you know, profession, you're basically, you know, like the defense, you
know, for these businesses. So, Dave, make sure we get a copy of the book
to Lauren as soon as possible. And it's always good to have another
goalie, you know, on board here. You know, from a
standpoint of when you got involved with your first couple of clients
(07:47):
here, you know, they've, they're either on ABC, they're on MyBody,
you know, who, who, what role were you either replacing
or what role were you shocked that wasn't there?
It was more so just transparently shocked that wasn't there.
I think a lot of studio owners who were successful pre
pandemic didn't have to keep as tight of
(08:11):
a pulse on their cash flow and how
impactful certain operational decisions are going to have on their profitability
and their cash flow. But once Covid hit, obviously revenue
just plummeted. So each decision was so much more valuable and
so much more important. So. So in the early, early days of the business,
my goal was really just to keep people from not going
(08:33):
bankrupt and not losing all of their cash. So really helping them understand
cash flow analysis. If we make this change, what is the downstream
effect on your profitability and helping them manage cash
flow and make sure they can pay all of their people? And then
as Covid started to recover and our industry started
to recover, and then it was really about helping studio
(08:55):
owners, how do we regain the revenue that we lost during COVID
What operational changes do we need to make given this new landscape?
And then that's where I really brought in a lot of the sales and operations
coaches that we have now to help them redo a lot of
their communications, their sales, their marketing tactics. How do
we operate a schedule? How do we manage a team? We really
(09:18):
have partners that do everything under the sun that you need for boutique fitness, just
depending on what you need, who is dependent on who on the team that you'll
work with. And now that we're, you know, Covid is
in the backseat, Thankfully, a lot of our studio owners are opening up new
studios, growing their portfolio, figuring out how are we going to gain funding
for a third, fourth and fifth location. And so my
(09:40):
role with them is really outward expansion, growth
planning, what metrics do we need to hit in order to be attractive to
an investor and helping them build out the
bigger vision, but also on a smaller scale. They still work
with our finance coaches to make sure we are always understanding what are the
cash flow needs of the business, what is our cash flow run rate?
(10:03):
Every single month, we give our clients a P and L
review. And what that means is we take the budget and the projections that we
have set, we marry that up against the actuals that happen in your business
and through the story of your P and L. And then working
with me, since I know the operations of your business, we merged the two together.
So you can see, okay, we made this operational change in
(10:25):
the business and we expected revenue to grow 5% and
only grew 3%. What happened? So we'll dive into that. Conversely, if it
beat budget, then we really want to understand why it beat budget so we can
continue doing the good and leave what's not working. So we do that for every
P and L category that we have. And it's really
important for me for our CEOs to understand their
(10:47):
numbers, what's coming in and out of their business so they can make better
decisions.
This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's
this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards
from retailers that allow you to incentivize your
members without having to do zero down and one month free
(11:10):
or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you want to
do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value
and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the
deal. There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going
to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going
to answer questions, you are going to get those answers. You're going to be able
(11:32):
to target those members and you're going to reward them inside your club,
inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the
spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their
monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for the
actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be.
Promotion Vault, your answer, Trust me, this is real.
(11:58):
From a standpoint of a lot of studios. I mean, most of them
historically have been on my body. When you go into a company
and diagnose, you know, okay, we can help you, do you want
them to be on a certain software or would you rather
have that remain nameless or do you find that certain software
is better deployed
(12:21):
and able to give you the reports that you
need? Yeah, that's a good question. Ironically, we don't have any
clients on mindbody. When we came in with a lot of the
post pandemic newer studios, they were all going into Mariana
Tech, which I think is a.
I don't think there's a perfect system. I think every system has their pros
(12:43):
and cons and we could probably have a whole podcast riffing on
what are the pros and cons of each platform. I like Mariana
Tech for reporting. I think they have opportunity
to better integrate their marketing brand
bot with the system. So it's a bit more seamless. A newer system
that we've become partners with is Walla, because everything is under
(13:05):
one operation. They're the only system that has an actual CR
and lead flow, which is really important for our sales and ops team and how
they coach our studio owners and managers on how to follow
the journey and the sales Process. Another system our
clients use a lot is moments. So I would say like, those are probably my
top three systems that we've seen the best results with.
(13:28):
Gotcha. And then when you look at these systems and you look at what
the operator has been using prior to getting
involved, do they have like a management dashboard? Is
there like a KPI? You know, I use the word term crystal
reports from back in the day. Yeah, but, but you kind of building
those out for people and also like providing almost like an
(13:50):
educational roadmap on not only am I your cfo, I'm actually
like teaching you how to manage this business and actually understand
you can sleep at night or you can't or, you know, here's like three or
four things. You can just cut marketing and assume that you know the business is
going to be the same. You can't have less programs on the
calendar because you got revenue per hour, you know, that we're
(14:11):
looking at here. So, so what are some of the things where you're one,
you go from like shocked into like execution mode and saying like,
look, you kind of, if you hire me, you have to run the business the
way I'm telling you to run the business because I know how your business
works. I know you might have certain things that you look at. But let me
just tell you how successful studios work. And I've
(14:34):
got enough data and I got enough clients to tell you how to do that.
And kind of trust me, I'm sure if there's a question. I think there was
a question there somewhere. Yeah, it was.
We definitely have a specific framework that we use on both the finance
side and the sales and operations side. And so what I teach
(14:54):
in our program is our signature framework.
Right now we're taking people through an eight week group program to get your financial
foundations. It's called, called Finance and Flow. Depending on when you're listening to this,
we have eight week program that kicked off this week, the end of
January and we do another one in the summer. And it's eight weeks to take
you through. Like what exactly do you need to have in your business to feel
(15:16):
financially confident? Everybody wants financial freedom, but before we have
freedom, I believe we have to have confidence in our numbers and confidence
in what we actually need to do in our business to hit the goals that
we can so we can feel financially free. So, so throughout this program,
we take them through the journey. KPI metrics is the number
one thing that I teach. We have to do this on a weekly basis and
(15:37):
then we do it on A monthly basis to recap the month. Once
we have your business plan, you have specific goals that you need to hit
each week. For first timers leads, Intro offers,
new membership sales class packs. And so those goals are funneled
into your weekly KPI tracker. So your studio manager can pair
up how you're doing each week against the goal that we have and you can
(16:00):
make operations operational changes in week over week depending on what
you need more. Do we need more leads? Do we need more Intro offers so
we can hit that membership goal? It's all just a big math game, right? It's
all conversion percentages. So once we have the history of your business, we know
how you've been performing and then we can help you project out what the next
six months to a year will look like. And then if we add in our
(16:22):
sales and marketing coaching, we have the data to be like to say,
okay, on average your conversion rate will go up 15
to 20% depending on where you started if you work with our team.
So that's just a really powerful visual for owners to see
where they're at versus where they can be with the right coaching. Obviously
you have to do the work and follow the framework, but we're
(16:45):
laying it all out for you. So as long as the owners do the work,
we see really good success. Yeah, we, during COVID we started off something called
Halo Academy and it's basically an executive boot camp
where we go through the business models on Planet Fitness, CrossFit, Soul
Cycle, Cycle for Survival and, and Peloton. The next
one starts on a week from now if we'll send you a
(17:07):
comp on that if you want anybody to sit in because they're basically trying to
explain to them, you know, if you're going to operate in
this market, you got to understand how your competitors make money
and how you can either combat that or how you can maybe take some of
those learnings. Obviously studios don't have annual maintenance
fees, which sometimes equates to 50%
(17:29):
of the total cash flow of a Planet Fitness as an example.
So we love what you're doing on, on the education side and kind of having
people understand like this is how the, the revenue model works and
is what you have to provide on your end.
Do you see, do you find that, you know, in some companies that you
go into, they come to you as like a last resort and, and
(17:52):
it's like, hey, can you kind of fix this? You know, we don't have any
money left to put into the business and it's almost like A
rescue, you know, CFO situation. And
maybe you say, look, I, like, I can't help you because this is not something
where, you know, you should have called me like six months ago,
which sometimes I feel like I want to help everybody but I can't.
(18:14):
Or what do you go through to kind of diagnose? And also it's kind of
like dovetails into like, who's your ideal client
as a, as a studio operator? Like, you know, there's certain things I
can and can't do or who I want to target. Yeah.
Luckily, since our business is growing and the agency is getting more involved
with other coaches, we do have an offering for almost every
(18:37):
level of business as long as they're able to support the investment level needed
to pay for us. So we kind of, we put two, we
put ideal clients into two categories. We have studio
rescue. And that's kind of under what you were just describing.
You're probably not cash flow positive.
You have some success and you feel like you have
(19:00):
a good vision and you can see the road to it. There's just something
that's not sinking correctly. And for our Studio rescue clients,
we actually have them skip the fractional
CFO which is normally our first step, and just go right into sales and
operations coaching. Because something is wrong, or I shouldn't say wrong,
needs to be adjusted in your operating process
(19:23):
so we can get more leads in so you can have the money to invest.
Really think through of what a bigger three year strategy will be
like for your business and get that financial support and help to walk you through
the steps. But sometimes we just need to stop the bleeding and get the
top line revenue up so you have capacity to
start paying yourself so you can stop living in scarcity mode and then make other
(19:45):
investments in your business to continue that growth. And then, you
know, not necessarily to pin an actual dollar amount, but you know, what's,
what's an entry point for a studio on a monthly
basis to be able to bring, you know, your team on or
some component of your team. So you just know that this is,
you know, cost effective and probably the best return on investment they're going
(20:08):
to get in any, you know, outsourced, you know,
advisor or provider. Yeah, it's a good question.
And sometimes isn't necessarily a revenue goal that they need
to hit. It's more like, do you have the money to invest with us? So
ideally, if you're within the 10 to
$25,000 a month revenue range, it's
(20:30):
probably too low to invest with us. But if everything
that you own is tied into this business and you have to make it work
and you can find the money to invest in our coaches,
they will help you increase your revenue to what you need.
However, our true ideal client is bringing in at least
50k a month in revenue to
(20:52):
really go through the full journey with us. We
want you to be on the road to seven figures having one or
two studios and you want to open and grow your portfolio. That's the
ideal client for me on the fractional CFO side.
But there is a bit more flexibility with that studio rescue
type offer with our sales and operations coaches to help
(21:15):
you to stop the bleeding. Just get some
more. And what would be I like to use the term invest because
I talk about marketing is an investment in your revenue. It's not an
expense. So when you talk about your fractional
CFO role, can you give us a range of what that minimum would
be? Yeah. To join our group program and that's
(21:37):
where everybody starts now is so you can get the eight week
fractional roadmap or finance roadmap for your business
to just do the group program. It's a $2,000 investment.
If you want to have the one on one time with me and the team
to help you go through the worksheets and get your business plan together, that's a
$3,500 investment. And what we've seen is like the people who do
(22:00):
the VIP upgrades are the ones that were actually implement
implement the strategies. You could obviously do it on your own. It's just the, you
know, more one on one support is always beneficial.
This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.
We are partnered up with a company called higher dose
(22:22):
higherdose.com they are the leader in
workout recovery products, infrared technology,
LED light masks, neck enhancers and
other products such as PEMF mats and sauna
blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout
recovery train yet, your time and your stop
(22:43):
is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout
recovery and spas end up saturating your market.
Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations
for 200 bucks per month where they're paying 39 to
you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we
are already an authority in workouts. Higher dose,
(23:05):
check it out. There's a wholesale code and we look
forward to helping you augment your products and services
to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people
happy, healthy and Sweating and the recovery should be
just as good as the workout.
(23:25):
So there are a lot of franchisors out there that sell people a
franchise or award them. Usually the ones that are sold maybe
don't have something called Item 19 in their financial
franchise disclosure document because the unit economics, you know,
just aren't proven or aren't good. So they don't put it in there. I've always
(23:45):
used a benchmark for the last 10, 15 years of you have to really
be doing $60,000 a month or 2,000 a day
regardless of really what your rent is, to not be paying
more to the landlord than you are in cash flow to yourself.
Do you have any kind of benchmarks or, you know, hacks, if you will, to
say, like, look, I kind of, once I get your financials, I know what the
(24:07):
problem is. Right. I got a, I got a revenue issue, I got a marketing
issue. I've got, you know, I'm overpaying people.
I've got too many, you know, I've got too many of your family members on,
on staff or, you know, is there, is there a revenue kind of
threshold where it sounds like using 50, you know, that you say, look, if
you can't make X dollars per month in and
(24:30):
paying full rent next to a hair salon that's open 16 hours a
day, then you're open next to a Dunkin Donuts. So you're open up to,
you know, that this, you know, European wax or
lash amazing lash or what have you, where you're like, look, you just don't have
enough programs on the calendar to actually generate enough
revenue. What are some of the things that you see is maybe just like, you
(24:52):
know, industry benchmarks to say like, look, we got to get you up to X
for you to even be relevant and to stay alive.
Yeah. One of the first things that I'll look at with a new client is
instead of just revenue targets, I like to look at expense
categories as a percentage of revenue. So we'll look at studio
payroll as a percentage of revenue, marketing,
(25:15):
rent and operations, all the different categories. And
actually one of the things that I would love to gift your listeners, I created
a calculator for, for just the average business owner. It's
more high level analysis than what we do. Where
you enter in your revenue, you enter in different expense categories and it will help
you show you where you're spending too much or too little, or if you
(25:37):
have a revenue problem where we need to just generate more revenue. So
that will be in the show notes with the link
where you can download that calculator. And so just like some basic
assumptions that I like to call out from like a marketing standpoint, I usually
try and have people stay around 10% unless we're in growth
mode and there's a specific strategic initiative around it where we want to punch
(25:59):
out a bunch more ad spend. Rent,
Ideally less than 10%. 7 to 8% of
total revenue would be super ideal,
which probably sounds crazy to some people, but it's definitely possible
with the right strategy and with payroll like that, in my
opinion, payroll is going to be your most expensive line item
(26:23):
after rent. And so we try and keep our Studios
payroll around 30% of total
revenue. And then there's other buckets that we have. But I think payroll, renting,
utilities and marketing are the ones that I like to
focus on initially. And that's what's driving that calculator template
that you guys. Yeah. And then from a sales and marketing
(26:45):
standpoint, we used to own a couple of bar businesses
and one of the things that kind of shocked me is the lack of
co op marketing that people could and should be doing
in their local strip center. You know, if you're, if you're next
to a, a hair salon and you are a,
you know, Pilates or bar business, the fact that either the
(27:08):
manager at that location doesn't have a comp membership or
doesn't have, you know, get a haircut and get a free bar workout
or you know, you know, at like
a first watch, you know, breakfast place where they're doing like 300 or
400, you know, you know, transactions a
day. Like, how are they not just putting in there? Like, you know, our friends
(27:31):
at xbar, you know, want to welcome you to this. Show
your receipt, get a, you know, and get a, get a three day pass. Or
like, are you seeing a lot of people think like, oh, my SEO this,
my SEO that. It's like, there are people with cars that drive in here that
pass by and they have no idea what's going on inside here. Like, why don't
we actually talk to them, build relationships? So are you seeing a lot
(27:52):
of that? Like, people are like, oh, I did email marketing, I did text messaging.
It's like, why don't you talk to people? You know,
I'm laughing because this happens every,
almost every new client we get. It's a huge gap,
which is like an easy win for us to help them with community marketing and
having their studio manager or their event, whoever is in
(28:15):
charge of this, get out in the community and Create those relationships.
I also think because our world has become so digital, even
having the front desk team learn how to have conversations with
people that are coming into the studio is a huge area of
opportunity that we help our clients with. One of our coaches, Jamie,
has this amazing sales training. At the crux of it, it's
(28:37):
basically teaching you how to have conversations, but it's teaching you how to
have conversations based on different
behavior attributes, that you can identify people in
certain Personas and certain behaviors. And so based on their certain
Persona or behavior, we know how to talk to them based on what they want.
So it really helps our studios with conversion. She
(29:01):
did a training back in November,
so it was about three or four months ago for a client. And the
last two months, this client's
new sales numbers have way
overblown budget. Like, for example, we had, like, 50
was her goal, and I think she hit, like, 75 new sales.
(29:22):
That's amazing. Yeah. So we're just, like, really learning how to have conversations, and
taking sales out of the process and making it more conversational
is a shift that we really help clients with. She actually would be very mad
at me if I called it a sales training, because it's not a sales training.
We're actually, like, teaching you how to have conversations. But the word sales is
what I think resonates most with people. Yeah, gotcha.
(29:46):
In closing here, just to keep it under our cap,
how bullish are you on the boutique studio space?
And do you have franchisees that are
under a franchisor where you're like, look, I know this is the operating
model that you're supposed to do deploying, but let me pour some rocket fuel
on here. And you might become the best franchisee and kind of
(30:09):
listen to me, but you stay within the parameters of, you know, your
franchise agreement. Yeah, franchise.
Franchises are tough. Right. Because I think you believe
that you're coming into a business and you're getting a business in a box, and
the franchisor, in theory, is supposed to do all these things to set you up
for success. But in actuality, there's a lot of
(30:30):
gaps in training, a lot of gaps in specific sales
processes, and you're having to pay a lot of money out to franchise fees and
this fee, and you have to order things a certain way. Everything is
just so scripted, which could be great for some people, but the
clients that like working with me are like me. We're true entrepreneurs, and we want
to do things our own way. And so something that we've been really working
(30:51):
on as a Business is how can we give our clients a business
in a box, but instead of it being somebody else's business, it's
exactly the business that you want to build. And so through all of our
partnerships and coaching, we hit all of those pieces that you would
get from a franchisor as a business in a box. But it's even
better because it's yours and you can make whatever decisions you want or need to.
(31:14):
And that's where the creativity of working with our team really comes into play
and not having any rules and getting to do whatever you want to make
money. I kind of wrote this down as a. As a joke to myself as
you were talking at the beginning. That says you should have, like, little font letters
that they could put on their sign that says, like, buy Active Core or like
profitable by Active Core at the bottom, like the top of the
(31:36):
sign coming in. And then, you know, in closing, do you
have any. Have any good quotes or anything you live by or
Laurenisms inside your company that you could share with us?
Yeah, something that Jamie and I created really early on
because both of us are recovering perfectionisms and
just super high achievers. And as an entrepreneur,
(31:58):
perfectionism has to be thrown out the window. So whenever we're working on something
and if we feel like it's taking too long, we ask ourselves, is it right?
Like, fuck it, ship it. Sorry if we can't curse on here. No, you can
curse on here. It's actually preferred. Great.
Fuck it, ship it. Is it in a place where it's good enough and we
can put it out to the world and at least starting to get some traction
(32:19):
on it? Because we know 50 to 75%
of us is most people's hundred percent. So, yeah, good
point. Ask yourself. It, Ship it. Stop overthinking. Stop with the
perfectionism. The world just needs your gifts and whatever you can.
I like it. All right, From a fellow goalkeeper to another, thanks for keeping
a defense tight. And, you know, you can be my sweeper,
(32:42):
my striker, or vice versa. So I love it. I was all of
those too. So we can play the game. Stopper. Stopper. Sweeper.
Sweeper or stopper. I said striker. Deal with those guys. Awesome. Thank you for having
me.
I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal
partnership with the Prospect Wizard. And when I say
wizard, I mean wizard. Obviously you have a website.
This allows you to convert your website traffic visitors
directly into leads. It's not just another chatbot and
it's not AI, but it allows a visitor to call, text or leave a
(00:22):
voicemail immediately. Goes to you, your sales team or anyone else in the
club instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact
the lead within 10 minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine
times that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs
on it. Vita Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside
City Fitness, Philly, College Park. Become one
(00:44):
of the next Halo companies to deploy the Wizard.
It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com
get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy Dave Gallen. He will get
you all set up and let the leads flow based on the
Wizard. Go get him.
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure of
(01:07):
bringing your new fractional cfo. That will be your
Halo most important position. Hire
Lauren from Active Core Consulting, hailing out of San Diego with
roots in New York City. And she is music to my
ears because we're going to talk finance, we're going to talk ebitda, which
people know I love, and we're going to talk about how you make sure you
(01:30):
can manage and measure and eventually sell your business.
So Lauren, welcome to your first Halo Talks. Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, so look, in our
business, a lot of people have bookkeepers, they've got accountants
and we get on and we help them, trust me, try and sell their business.
And it sometimes takes upwards of six months to actually
(01:52):
decipher what their cash flow is, what their
KPIs are, how you can articulate what the business model
is actually through financial drivers. So
talk about your background, why you've dedicated yourself to be
a fractional CFO and
people you've helped and some of the takeaways you've learned.
(02:14):
Yeah, of course. My background is heavily in
finance and strategy. I started my career at PwC,
did a lot of public company financial audits. I was an early
employee at WeWork before they tried to go public the first time.
And then I got into the fitness space at Equinox where I
spent the lion's share of my corporate career. I was an athlete growing
(02:36):
up and then got into the accounting finance world out of college.
And so coming to Equinox and, and back into the fitness
space felt like the best marriage of my athleticism
and my finance brain coming into one.
During the pandemic, I lived in New York City. I was stuck in my apartment.
I was bored because I didn't have anything to
(02:59):
do in terms of work was slow.
Fitness industry was kind of slowing down. So rather than
finding a creative outlet through arts and crafts for
bread making, I was like, let me start a company. And so I reached out
to the cycling studio owner of the studio I was a
(03:20):
coach at and asked her how she was pairing through the pandemic. Obviously,
no one was doing great. And so I helped her restructure her business,
helped her open the first outdoor cycling studio in Brooklyn
since you're in New York. Bikeland was my first
client. And so she was like, this is
amazing. And she was an MBA grad from Wharton. So I was like, wow,
(03:43):
if this amazing, smart studio owner needs my help, I
imagine most people are in the same position. So it really
started out as a labor of love during COVID just wanting to help out the
industry and kind of get my feet wet into what a consulting
business agency would look like. And about five years
later, we have fully grown. I have eight other
(04:06):
people on my team. We're also growing into not just
fractional cfo, but also sales and operations coaching.
So the ideal flow is you come in on the finance
side. We have bookkeeping services, we
have finance services. So our fractional CFO offer is a
really holistic offering where we clean up your P and L,
(04:28):
we make sure you're giving reporting that actually speaks to what
your business is doing so we can make smart operational decisions
rooted in your numbers. We build you out a three year business plan with
monthly goals. So when you're doing your weekly and monthly KPI
metrics, you actually have something to base your metrics
against. So we can really keep a tackle on your
(04:51):
business and what you're doing, what you're not doing. And then
our sales and operations coaches will really come in and help you
nail down your sales process, your communication process, your team building,
your community building, your retail strategy, and just
everything that comes along with running the four walls of our studio.
Our sales and operations coaches have also come from the boutique fitness
(05:14):
world, from Barry's bootcamp, Orange Theory Fitness, a lot
of thick equinox generators
and helping out big names that we've all
taken our skill sets to help the smaller entrepreneur crew.
So before we get into the business, what was your athletic
prowess? And we have to get you a copy of our book, which is called
(05:35):
Time to Win again. We where it's 52 takeaways from
team sports to run a successful business. So it's a
caricature picture book. Kind of like Where's Waldo?
Beats good to great. But we love what you're doing. You know, we're
focused, as most people know, on the mergers and acquisition
side. And a big piece of our business is making sure
(05:57):
that we have a bulletproof historical and
projection model and be able to tell the story of
what's a special sauce of a club chain or
studio concept or franchisor. And it's really
difficult to do that unless somebody has a handle on how they're
driving the business, what levers they're able to focus on and
(06:18):
actually. Put. Rocket fuel on
or not. And as you reference,
you have to have a handle on those monthly in order to prove to an
investor that, that you're not just running a four wall business.
But you know how that four word business model and revenue
model works. So first off, what's your sport of choice?
(06:42):
I was a big soccer and volleyball player growing up.
Okay, live and breathe sports. Every weekend up and down the state
of California. My poor parents were just driving my brother and I to all of
our competitions and tournaments. And
I was a goalie. I just retired a year ago. I was a goalie at
52. No way. Awesome. Yeah. All right, there you go. All right. So we're
(07:03):
fast friends. You know, my mom used to tell me like, oh, you
know, there's 10 other people that it got passed, you know, so it's okay that
it got past you. I'm like, no mom allowed to use my hands. So, you
know, make me feel, you know, comforting. But
yeah, I say, well, you'll see in the book, you know, like the CEO of
the company is really the goalie. And, you know, I'm responsible
(07:25):
for people not losing, which, you know, in your current,
you know, profession, you're basically, you know, like the defense, you
know, for these businesses. So, Dave, make sure we get a copy of the book
to Lauren as soon as possible. And it's always good to have another
goalie, you know, on board here. You know, from a
standpoint of when you got involved with your first couple of clients
(07:47):
here, you know, they've, they're either on ABC, they're on MyBody,
you know, who, who, what role were you either replacing
or what role were you shocked that wasn't there?
It was more so just transparently shocked that wasn't there.
I think a lot of studio owners who were successful pre
pandemic didn't have to keep as tight of
(08:11):
a pulse on their cash flow and how
impactful certain operational decisions are going to have on their profitability
and their cash flow. But once Covid hit, obviously revenue
just plummeted. So each decision was so much more valuable and
so much more important. So. So in the early, early days of the business,
my goal was really just to keep people from not going
(08:33):
bankrupt and not losing all of their cash. So really helping them understand
cash flow analysis. If we make this change, what is the downstream
effect on your profitability and helping them manage cash
flow and make sure they can pay all of their people? And then
as Covid started to recover and our industry started
to recover, and then it was really about helping studio
(08:55):
owners, how do we regain the revenue that we lost during COVID
What operational changes do we need to make given this new landscape?
And then that's where I really brought in a lot of the sales and operations
coaches that we have now to help them redo a lot of
their communications, their sales, their marketing tactics. How do
we operate a schedule? How do we manage a team? We really
(09:18):
have partners that do everything under the sun that you need for boutique fitness, just
depending on what you need, who is dependent on who on the team that you'll
work with. And now that we're, you know, Covid is
in the backseat, Thankfully, a lot of our studio owners are opening up new
studios, growing their portfolio, figuring out how are we going to gain funding
for a third, fourth and fifth location. And so my
(09:40):
role with them is really outward expansion, growth
planning, what metrics do we need to hit in order to be attractive to
an investor and helping them build out the
bigger vision, but also on a smaller scale. They still work
with our finance coaches to make sure we are always understanding what are the
cash flow needs of the business, what is our cash flow run rate?
(10:03):
Every single month, we give our clients a P and L
review. And what that means is we take the budget and the projections that we
have set, we marry that up against the actuals that happen in your business
and through the story of your P and L. And then working
with me, since I know the operations of your business, we merged the two together.
So you can see, okay, we made this operational change in
(10:25):
the business and we expected revenue to grow 5% and
only grew 3%. What happened? So we'll dive into that. Conversely, if it
beat budget, then we really want to understand why it beat budget so we can
continue doing the good and leave what's not working. So we do that for every
P and L category that we have. And it's really
important for me for our CEOs to understand their
(10:47):
numbers, what's coming in and out of their business so they can make better
decisions.
This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's
this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards
from retailers that allow you to incentivize your
members without having to do zero down and one month free
(11:10):
or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you want to
do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value
and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the
deal. There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going
to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going
to answer questions, you are going to get those answers. You're going to be able
(11:32):
to target those members and you're going to reward them inside your club,
inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the
spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their
monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for the
actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be.
Promotion Vault, your answer, Trust me, this is real.
(11:58):
From a standpoint of a lot of studios. I mean, most of them
historically have been on my body. When you go into a company
and diagnose, you know, okay, we can help you, do you want
them to be on a certain software or would you rather
have that remain nameless or do you find that certain software
is better deployed
(12:21):
and able to give you the reports that you
need? Yeah, that's a good question. Ironically, we don't have any
clients on mindbody. When we came in with a lot of the
post pandemic newer studios, they were all going into Mariana
Tech, which I think is a.
I don't think there's a perfect system. I think every system has their pros
(12:43):
and cons and we could probably have a whole podcast riffing on
what are the pros and cons of each platform. I like Mariana
Tech for reporting. I think they have opportunity
to better integrate their marketing brand
bot with the system. So it's a bit more seamless. A newer system
that we've become partners with is Walla, because everything is under
(13:05):
one operation. They're the only system that has an actual CR
and lead flow, which is really important for our sales and ops team and how
they coach our studio owners and managers on how to follow
the journey and the sales Process. Another system our
clients use a lot is moments. So I would say like, those are probably my
top three systems that we've seen the best results with.
(13:28):
Gotcha. And then when you look at these systems and you look at what
the operator has been using prior to getting
involved, do they have like a management dashboard? Is
there like a KPI? You know, I use the word term crystal
reports from back in the day. Yeah, but, but you kind of building
those out for people and also like providing almost like an
(13:50):
educational roadmap on not only am I your cfo, I'm actually
like teaching you how to manage this business and actually understand
you can sleep at night or you can't or, you know, here's like three or
four things. You can just cut marketing and assume that you know the business is
going to be the same. You can't have less programs on the
calendar because you got revenue per hour, you know, that we're
(14:11):
looking at here. So, so what are some of the things where you're one,
you go from like shocked into like execution mode and saying like,
look, you kind of, if you hire me, you have to run the business the
way I'm telling you to run the business because I know how your business
works. I know you might have certain things that you look at. But let me
just tell you how successful studios work. And I've
(14:34):
got enough data and I got enough clients to tell you how to do that.
And kind of trust me, I'm sure if there's a question. I think there was
a question there somewhere. Yeah, it was.
We definitely have a specific framework that we use on both the finance
side and the sales and operations side. And so what I teach
(14:54):
in our program is our signature framework.
Right now we're taking people through an eight week group program to get your financial
foundations. It's called, called Finance and Flow. Depending on when you're listening to this,
we have eight week program that kicked off this week, the end of
January and we do another one in the summer. And it's eight weeks to take
you through. Like what exactly do you need to have in your business to feel
(15:16):
financially confident? Everybody wants financial freedom, but before we have
freedom, I believe we have to have confidence in our numbers and confidence
in what we actually need to do in our business to hit the goals that
we can so we can feel financially free. So, so throughout this program,
we take them through the journey. KPI metrics is the number
one thing that I teach. We have to do this on a weekly basis and
(15:37):
then we do it on A monthly basis to recap the month. Once
we have your business plan, you have specific goals that you need to hit
each week. For first timers leads, Intro offers,
new membership sales class packs. And so those goals are funneled
into your weekly KPI tracker. So your studio manager can pair
up how you're doing each week against the goal that we have and you can
(16:00):
make operations operational changes in week over week depending on what
you need more. Do we need more leads? Do we need more Intro offers so
we can hit that membership goal? It's all just a big math game, right? It's
all conversion percentages. So once we have the history of your business, we know
how you've been performing and then we can help you project out what the next
six months to a year will look like. And then if we add in our
(16:22):
sales and marketing coaching, we have the data to be like to say,
okay, on average your conversion rate will go up 15
to 20% depending on where you started if you work with our team.
So that's just a really powerful visual for owners to see
where they're at versus where they can be with the right coaching. Obviously
you have to do the work and follow the framework, but we're
(16:45):
laying it all out for you. So as long as the owners do the work,
we see really good success. Yeah, we, during COVID we started off something called
Halo Academy and it's basically an executive boot camp
where we go through the business models on Planet Fitness, CrossFit, Soul
Cycle, Cycle for Survival and, and Peloton. The next
one starts on a week from now if we'll send you a
(17:07):
comp on that if you want anybody to sit in because they're basically trying to
explain to them, you know, if you're going to operate in
this market, you got to understand how your competitors make money
and how you can either combat that or how you can maybe take some of
those learnings. Obviously studios don't have annual maintenance
fees, which sometimes equates to 50%
(17:29):
of the total cash flow of a Planet Fitness as an example.
So we love what you're doing on, on the education side and kind of having
people understand like this is how the, the revenue model works and
is what you have to provide on your end.
Do you see, do you find that, you know, in some companies that you
go into, they come to you as like a last resort and, and
(17:52):
it's like, hey, can you kind of fix this? You know, we don't have any
money left to put into the business and it's almost like A
rescue, you know, CFO situation. And
maybe you say, look, I, like, I can't help you because this is not something
where, you know, you should have called me like six months ago,
which sometimes I feel like I want to help everybody but I can't.
(18:14):
Or what do you go through to kind of diagnose? And also it's kind of
like dovetails into like, who's your ideal client
as a, as a studio operator? Like, you know, there's certain things I
can and can't do or who I want to target. Yeah.
Luckily, since our business is growing and the agency is getting more involved
with other coaches, we do have an offering for almost every
(18:37):
level of business as long as they're able to support the investment level needed
to pay for us. So we kind of, we put two, we
put ideal clients into two categories. We have studio
rescue. And that's kind of under what you were just describing.
You're probably not cash flow positive.
You have some success and you feel like you have
(19:00):
a good vision and you can see the road to it. There's just something
that's not sinking correctly. And for our Studio rescue clients,
we actually have them skip the fractional
CFO which is normally our first step, and just go right into sales and
operations coaching. Because something is wrong, or I shouldn't say wrong,
needs to be adjusted in your operating process
(19:23):
so we can get more leads in so you can have the money to invest.
Really think through of what a bigger three year strategy will be
like for your business and get that financial support and help to walk you through
the steps. But sometimes we just need to stop the bleeding and get the
top line revenue up so you have capacity to
start paying yourself so you can stop living in scarcity mode and then make other
(19:45):
investments in your business to continue that growth. And then, you
know, not necessarily to pin an actual dollar amount, but you know, what's,
what's an entry point for a studio on a monthly
basis to be able to bring, you know, your team on or
some component of your team. So you just know that this is,
you know, cost effective and probably the best return on investment they're going
(20:08):
to get in any, you know, outsourced, you know,
advisor or provider. Yeah, it's a good question.
And sometimes isn't necessarily a revenue goal that they need
to hit. It's more like, do you have the money to invest with us? So
ideally, if you're within the 10 to
$25,000 a month revenue range, it's
(20:30):
probably too low to invest with us. But if everything
that you own is tied into this business and you have to make it work
and you can find the money to invest in our coaches,
they will help you increase your revenue to what you need.
However, our true ideal client is bringing in at least
50k a month in revenue to
(20:52):
really go through the full journey with us. We
want you to be on the road to seven figures having one or
two studios and you want to open and grow your portfolio. That's the
ideal client for me on the fractional CFO side.
But there is a bit more flexibility with that studio rescue
type offer with our sales and operations coaches to help
(21:15):
you to stop the bleeding. Just get some
more. And what would be I like to use the term invest because
I talk about marketing is an investment in your revenue. It's not an
expense. So when you talk about your fractional
CFO role, can you give us a range of what that minimum would
be? Yeah. To join our group program and that's
(21:37):
where everybody starts now is so you can get the eight week
fractional roadmap or finance roadmap for your business
to just do the group program. It's a $2,000 investment.
If you want to have the one on one time with me and the team
to help you go through the worksheets and get your business plan together, that's a
$3,500 investment. And what we've seen is like the people who do
(22:00):
the VIP upgrades are the ones that were actually implement
implement the strategies. You could obviously do it on your own. It's just the, you
know, more one on one support is always beneficial.
This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.
We are partnered up with a company called higher dose
(22:22):
higherdose.com they are the leader in
workout recovery products, infrared technology,
LED light masks, neck enhancers and
other products such as PEMF mats and sauna
blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout
recovery train yet, your time and your stop
(22:43):
is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout
recovery and spas end up saturating your market.
Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations
for 200 bucks per month where they're paying 39 to
you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we
are already an authority in workouts. Higher dose,
(23:05):
check it out. There's a wholesale code and we look
forward to helping you augment your products and services
to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people
happy, healthy and Sweating and the recovery should be
just as good as the workout.
(23:25):
So there are a lot of franchisors out there that sell people a
franchise or award them. Usually the ones that are sold maybe
don't have something called Item 19 in their financial
franchise disclosure document because the unit economics, you know,
just aren't proven or aren't good. So they don't put it in there. I've always
(23:45):
used a benchmark for the last 10, 15 years of you have to really
be doing $60,000 a month or 2,000 a day
regardless of really what your rent is, to not be paying
more to the landlord than you are in cash flow to yourself.
Do you have any kind of benchmarks or, you know, hacks, if you will, to
say, like, look, I kind of, once I get your financials, I know what the
(24:07):
problem is. Right. I got a, I got a revenue issue, I got a marketing
issue. I've got, you know, I'm overpaying people.
I've got too many, you know, I've got too many of your family members on,
on staff or, you know, is there, is there a revenue kind of
threshold where it sounds like using 50, you know, that you say, look, if
you can't make X dollars per month in and
(24:30):
paying full rent next to a hair salon that's open 16 hours a
day, then you're open next to a Dunkin Donuts. So you're open up to,
you know, that this, you know, European wax or
lash amazing lash or what have you, where you're like, look, you just don't have
enough programs on the calendar to actually generate enough
revenue. What are some of the things that you see is maybe just like, you
(24:52):
know, industry benchmarks to say like, look, we got to get you up to X
for you to even be relevant and to stay alive.
Yeah. One of the first things that I'll look at with a new client is
instead of just revenue targets, I like to look at expense
categories as a percentage of revenue. So we'll look at studio
payroll as a percentage of revenue, marketing,
(25:15):
rent and operations, all the different categories. And
actually one of the things that I would love to gift your listeners, I created
a calculator for, for just the average business owner. It's
more high level analysis than what we do. Where
you enter in your revenue, you enter in different expense categories and it will help
you show you where you're spending too much or too little, or if you
(25:37):
have a revenue problem where we need to just generate more revenue. So
that will be in the show notes with the link
where you can download that calculator. And so just like some basic
assumptions that I like to call out from like a marketing standpoint, I usually
try and have people stay around 10% unless we're in growth
mode and there's a specific strategic initiative around it where we want to punch
(25:59):
out a bunch more ad spend. Rent,
Ideally less than 10%. 7 to 8% of
total revenue would be super ideal,
which probably sounds crazy to some people, but it's definitely possible
with the right strategy and with payroll like that, in my
opinion, payroll is going to be your most expensive line item
(26:23):
after rent. And so we try and keep our Studios
payroll around 30% of total
revenue. And then there's other buckets that we have. But I think payroll, renting,
utilities and marketing are the ones that I like to
focus on initially. And that's what's driving that calculator template
that you guys. Yeah. And then from a sales and marketing
(26:45):
standpoint, we used to own a couple of bar businesses
and one of the things that kind of shocked me is the lack of
co op marketing that people could and should be doing
in their local strip center. You know, if you're, if you're next
to a, a hair salon and you are a,
you know, Pilates or bar business, the fact that either the
(27:08):
manager at that location doesn't have a comp membership or
doesn't have, you know, get a haircut and get a free bar workout
or you know, you know, at like
a first watch, you know, breakfast place where they're doing like 300 or
400, you know, you know, transactions a
day. Like, how are they not just putting in there? Like, you know, our friends
(27:31):
at xbar, you know, want to welcome you to this. Show
your receipt, get a, you know, and get a, get a three day pass. Or
like, are you seeing a lot of people think like, oh, my SEO this,
my SEO that. It's like, there are people with cars that drive in here that
pass by and they have no idea what's going on inside here. Like, why don't
we actually talk to them, build relationships? So are you seeing a lot
(27:52):
of that? Like, people are like, oh, I did email marketing, I did text messaging.
It's like, why don't you talk to people? You know,
I'm laughing because this happens every,
almost every new client we get. It's a huge gap,
which is like an easy win for us to help them with community marketing and
having their studio manager or their event, whoever is in
(28:15):
charge of this, get out in the community and Create those relationships.
I also think because our world has become so digital, even
having the front desk team learn how to have conversations with
people that are coming into the studio is a huge area of
opportunity that we help our clients with. One of our coaches, Jamie,
has this amazing sales training. At the crux of it, it's
(28:37):
basically teaching you how to have conversations, but it's teaching you how to
have conversations based on different
behavior attributes, that you can identify people in
certain Personas and certain behaviors. And so based on their certain
Persona or behavior, we know how to talk to them based on what they want.
So it really helps our studios with conversion. She
(29:01):
did a training back in November,
so it was about three or four months ago for a client. And the
last two months, this client's
new sales numbers have way
overblown budget. Like, for example, we had, like, 50
was her goal, and I think she hit, like, 75 new sales.
(29:22):
That's amazing. Yeah. So we're just, like, really learning how to have conversations, and
taking sales out of the process and making it more conversational
is a shift that we really help clients with. She actually would be very mad
at me if I called it a sales training, because it's not a sales training.
We're actually, like, teaching you how to have conversations. But the word sales is
what I think resonates most with people. Yeah, gotcha.
(29:46):
In closing here, just to keep it under our cap,
how bullish are you on the boutique studio space?
And do you have franchisees that are
under a franchisor where you're like, look, I know this is the operating
model that you're supposed to do deploying, but let me pour some rocket fuel
on here. And you might become the best franchisee and kind of
(30:09):
listen to me, but you stay within the parameters of, you know, your
franchise agreement. Yeah, franchise.
Franchises are tough. Right. Because I think you believe
that you're coming into a business and you're getting a business in a box, and
the franchisor, in theory, is supposed to do all these things to set you up
for success. But in actuality, there's a lot of
(30:30):
gaps in training, a lot of gaps in specific sales
processes, and you're having to pay a lot of money out to franchise fees and
this fee, and you have to order things a certain way. Everything is
just so scripted, which could be great for some people, but the
clients that like working with me are like me. We're true entrepreneurs, and we want
to do things our own way. And so something that we've been really working
(30:51):
on as a Business is how can we give our clients a business
in a box, but instead of it being somebody else's business, it's
exactly the business that you want to build. And so through all of our
partnerships and coaching, we hit all of those pieces that you would
get from a franchisor as a business in a box. But it's even
better because it's yours and you can make whatever decisions you want or need to.
(31:14):
And that's where the creativity of working with our team really comes into play
and not having any rules and getting to do whatever you want to make
money. I kind of wrote this down as a. As a joke to myself as
you were talking at the beginning. That says you should have, like, little font letters
that they could put on their sign that says, like, buy Active Core or like
profitable by Active Core at the bottom, like the top of the
(31:36):
sign coming in. And then, you know, in closing, do you
have any. Have any good quotes or anything you live by or
Laurenisms inside your company that you could share with us?
Yeah, something that Jamie and I created really early on
because both of us are recovering perfectionisms and
just super high achievers. And as an entrepreneur,
(31:58):
perfectionism has to be thrown out the window. So whenever we're working on something
and if we feel like it's taking too long, we ask ourselves, is it right?
Like, fuck it, ship it. Sorry if we can't curse on here. No, you can
curse on here. It's actually preferred. Great.
Fuck it, ship it. Is it in a place where it's good enough and we
can put it out to the world and at least starting to get some traction
(32:19):
on it? Because we know 50 to 75%
of us is most people's hundred percent. So, yeah, good
point. Ask yourself. It, Ship it. Stop overthinking. Stop with the
perfectionism. The world just needs your gifts and whatever you can.
I like it. All right, From a fellow goalkeeper to another, thanks for keeping
a defense tight. And, you know, you can be my sweeper,
(32:42):
my striker, or vice versa. So I love it. I was all of
those too. So we can play the game. Stopper. Stopper. Sweeper.
Sweeper or stopper. I said striker. Deal with those guys. Awesome. Thank you for having
me.
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