Hey Bedros here 🙂
Here’s a guest post from my friend Mac Cassity. I asked him to share is journey with you because he pretty much went through hell when he was setting up his fitness boot camp business and boot camp marketing systems.
Take it away Mac!
PART 1…by Mac “the Knife” Cassity
Like many of you reading this, I pretty much kicked around the idea of starting a boot camp for awhile before I REALLY did anything about it. It was probably a little more than a year. I was checking out Bedros and his blog, listening, reading, and thinking…just not so much DOING.
Finally, after the 3rd time one of my 1 on 1 personal training clients cancelled, like 7 minutes before our session I said I AM DOING IT DAMMNIT! The boot camp I meant…so I went to work.
I pretty much lined out what I thought where the prime locations for my boot camp and started trying to set meetings. Using Bedros words of wisdom (with a little Hochman thrown in for good measure) I crafted an email that made ME even want to do business with me! I sent out 7 emails and got 5 responses. I thought that was pretty darn good and I went through them carefully and weeded them down to 3 and then set meetings with each one.
The first guy was a crotchety old dude who had been teaching gymnastics since 1961. I tried to explain the boot camp to him but he kept talking about how good the parallel bars were for building strength…we never connected…he had lots of chalk on his face…bye old man…
The next woman was very excited to talk to me and I was equally excited to talk to her…until I found out that she just wanted to pay me $20/hour to run my bootcamp in her space, because she thought that was “fair”…bye excited woman…
Finally, I met with the owner of a soon to be opening sports complex. Hmmm…let’s see…three 40×120 soccer fields, two 80×90 all purpose fields, all indoor, 57000 total sq ft…can you say DING DING DING! Using the words of wisdom from Bedros himself, I worked a sweet deal…$200/month minimum rent, then 10% of my gross once I hit a certain number of members, then 12% of gross once I hit 50+ members (gave the owners some incentive to help in the membership process!) I couldn’t believe my luck, but in looking back at the work I did, I realized it wasn’t so much luck as it was just taking action…ok, step one, FIND A PLACE, done.
Now, it was time get my boot camp marketing in order! About this time, a little ole thing was coming to Cali called Fitness Business Summit 2012. Now, I am a Yank here in Maryland so Cali is a world away, but something told me I had be there, so “ I loaded up my truck and moved to Beverly!” Ok, so I flew, and it wasn’t in Beverly Hills, but I DID feel like Jed Clampett a bit when I got there…
It was crazy, I was talking to people I had only seen in blog land! Steve Hochman was doing this crazy TRX challenge, Bedros came up and gave me a big hug, and I even got to hang with Ronnie Coleman at the pool at the hotel!
Here I am, this little peon nobody from Howard County, Maryland and I am hanging with the big boys (and I mean BIG boys) out in Sunny California! It was crazy! My head was about to explode with all the boot camp marketing ideas and strategies and I couldn’t wait until I got back home so I could throw some into action! I had locked in a place, been super energized at the coolest Summit I had ever attended, and now it was time to make some MONEY!
My first action item was door hangers. I have owned several businesses and have found that rather than wait for someone to find an ad I place in a newspaper or magazine, I would rather place that ad in their hands, so to speak. If I can get a mass amount of people to DEFINITELY see what I have to offer quickly and cost effectively, then I can start the money machine rolling! I have found door hangers are awesome because you just about every house where they are placed will see them within a day. Based on some killer advice from Bedros, I hit Craigslist. I placed an ad for part time help. Simple, to the point, “You put up door hangers, I pay you.” I got 11 responses in 2 days…BOOM!
Now, as I was interviewing folks to cherry pick my perfect candidate, I had placed an order for 4000 door hangers. (For those of you wondering, THIS is the real gold of this post!) Turns out, I found a place called Ladyprinting.com. They have an offer for 4000 door hangers for $99! Yep…it ain’t bs, I couldn’t believe it at first, but the box full of door hangers that hit my doorstep pretty much convinced me.
Ok, so that’s all well and good, but what are the results? (you are probably asking…) Well, once I locked in my trusty door hanger…HANGER dude…he got to work hitting my local area. What he did was go out for 2-3 hours at a time, hang as many door hangers as he could in that time, then send me an email listing the streets he hit. (this way I could track activity and if I wanted, hit those streets in my car to make sure he was doing his job…) Needless to say, the calls start coming in quickly – this new fitness boot camp marketing thing was working out!
In the first week, I got a little over 100 hits to my website…I also got 8 new prospects to take advantage of my boot camp trial session AND when their trial was over, I landed 6 new ONE YEAR CONTRACT clients at an average of $150/month. Now, here’s the REALLY killer part…that activity, only cost me 7 hours worth of part time work and ONLY 400 door hangers. My total spend was $130 for door hangers (I upgraded the order) and $84 for someone to pass them out. My YIELD was $900 in monthly revenue or $10,800/year.
So, in just a week’s time, with a little ACTION and a simple boot camp marketing tactic that most people overlook I increased my income $10,800… I think it’s time I get on board with Fit Body Boot Camp and really turn it up! I can’t imagine what the results will be when my “door hanger guy” puts out all 4000 door hangers!!! Oh, and as for the HELL part of my story…it hadn’t happened yet…that’s in part two…when my new killer location gets RIPPED from me and I’m a boot camp, complete with eager paying members and all, but no home!
Stay tuned…