How Andrew Replaced Gym & F2F Training Income (+ Paid Off Debit ) w/ Online Training

- Hey guys, Chris Lynton here from TribeFit and today I've got a very, very special guest with me, Andrew Read. How you doing, Andrew?

- I'm good thanks, Chris. How are you?

- Really good. Thanks, mate. Really good, and first and foremost, thanks for your time. I know you're a busy guy.

- Not so much these days. Things obviously, as you know, they changed a lot two weeks ago for me but still somewhat busy.

- Very, very true mate. Well, I guess for those who are watching this today who don't know that much around your background, can you maybe give us a bit of a spiel about where you were, where you are today, and kind of the journey of the path?

- Okay, so I've been a trainer for, wait, I'm 47 this year, so 26 years. I've had my own gym for 10 and about the same time, I actually started doing a lot more stuff like posting on forums. This is pre-Facebook and stuff like that. There's guys like Pat Rigsby and Ryan Lee
who were early Internet marketing guys talking about making a name for yourself and I really took what they said to heart and would write articles and so if you Google "Andrew Read fitness," you'll probably find about 500 or 600 articles online on various sources. I've got a couple of books and stuff. But over the last, oh, I don't know, two years or so, the gym has, I've almost made a hole for myself in the gym in that because one of the things I'm very good at is injury rehab. So a lot of guys would come to me with injuries and we get to this point where I would be paying staff to stand in an empty gym, so if I wasn't there the customers wouldn't turn up. They would only go when I was there.
So it meant I couldn't go on holidays and if I did, they wouldn't go so they'd suspend their memberships as well while I was away and so I'd come back to an empty gym, have to pay rent, and have no money to deal with 'cause no one was training while I was away. And so I started looking more and more at the online thing, which is how we first came in contact. And obviously, your process takes three months, I think, is the go-to-work thing. I said to you, "I think I need to do it in about 30 days," so we put some real pressure on it. Then at the start of the year, I got slugged with about $11,000 in body corporate fees and rates, so this is on top of rent. This isn't phone or electricity. There was water rates, rates, and owners corp fees at the factory where I am and I had six customers in January because all the rest were away and then I paid another $9,000 in rent for the first two months. So the first two months of the year, 20 grand and I was sitting there thinking, "Well, this is awful and things need to change." I have another business group that I use as well and my mentor there said, "You need to pull the trigger on this online thing now. "Go tonight. "You're gonna make a post. "You're gonna put it on Facebook." So I had already, through your module, had been doing, I'd created a Facebook group for 40-year-old guys. That's the guys I look after. I'm really only interested if you're over 40. I'm not interested in power lift or anything like that, so my guys are Spartan racers, guys who like SEALFIT, guys who wanna be strong and healthy. They don't necessarily have any specific goal, though, other than being able to kind of stay good at a bunch of characteristics. It already had about 600 members at this point in it. I made, it was about a four-minute video, four-and-a-half-minute video. Posted for free in the group. I got 80 leads in about the first two hours and was freaking the fuck out because I never thought, you know what I mean? We all understand that's a lot of interest straight away.I closed 36 of those, so a nearly 50% sale rate.  Actually, that message I sent you the other day where we said it was 30 grand, so that was split up. It was a little bit more than 30 grand, but in terms of initial, some were paying up front. It was $1,000 at $9.99 for 12 weeks.

- Beautiful.

- Some were paying up front. I didn't make any difference between if you wanted to pay in instalments or you wanted to pay the full amount or $3.33 a month.

- Yep.

- And so it wasn't actually 30 grand in the first two weeks, but I've now taken over that amount over the 12 weeks. It's been 36 grand, has been the total and out of the people who did the initial part, I've got about half have stayed on. Now I'm up to the next round of stuff, which'll actually be next week. And so that's where I'm up to.

- Phenomenal, man.

- Oh, wait, and sorry to interrupt. One last thing is the gym lease finished on the 31st of May, so our last class in the gym, I think it was the 17th or the 18th or something, whatever that weekend was in the middle of the month. I took two weeks to clean up and make sure everything was finished. The gym actually for me, my last day was Thursday last week with just the last little bit of tidying up, handing the keys back to the real estate agent. So when I said I'm busy, now without the gym, I'm a little less busy than I was.

- Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, congratulations, first and foremost, mate. And I guess, just to recap, the gym, the bricks and mortar, you're kind of, I guess, a victim of your own success being tied to it and needing to be there for clients to want to actually work with you or your coaches. So you've shut down the
gym, handed back the keys, and launched 36 clients. Well, sorry. How many was it? 36.  36 clients, a little bit lower than 36 grand in sales, and about 50% of them have stayed on from a re-engagement perspective as well. 

- Yeah. I mean, obviously, the crazy part was while the gym was still going and I had those 80 leads to chew through, and so my sales process is about 40 to 45 minutes, so that's 80 hours of extra work I put in over two weeks. I mean, I was working two full-time jobs. I was taking calls from about 8:30 in the morning 'til about 5:00 in the afternoon, and then I'd also do Saturday as well because a lot of the guys are international and that was their Friday.  I did another 80 hours of sales calls plus on top of the gym for a couple of weeks.  Then the reality kind of hit like, "Holy cow."  Now, I've actually gotta deliver  "training to all these guys as well." That was the real change was in person at the gym, I had about the same number, but my expenses at the gym were $6,000, $6,500 a month. All of a sudden, I'm like, "Well, hang on. "I'm making the same money online." I actually charged, it was actually slightly more online than it was in person and this was also one of the factors involved in changing around the gym, was I said to my in-person customers, "You have to pay more if you want me to keep the gym open." A bunch of them buckled and they didn't like the increase in pay, so I was like, "Okay. I'll catch you later then."  Because over here, I'm making actually more money, less stress, and 

- Less costs.

- Yeah. I mean, I pay for the internet. I pay for my phone, and that's it. A bunch of my customers have been, I've had customers from five to eight years. We have really good retention, but you obviously develop a relationship with them and they're saying things like, "Oh, are you upset?" Well, part of me is, but a really big part of me feels like, "Fuck, yeah. I got the best promotion in the world. "I'm going to the same job for "more money with better conditions. "What's there to be upset about?" It's been awesome for me. You know what the very first thing I did was? Slept in. (laughs)
Oh my God. Getting up at 8:00 on that first Monday morning instead of getting up at 5:00, that was pretty good. 

- Yeah, man. Well, I can see the big smile on your face, mate, and as I said before, you're a busy man and then you jumped straight into not so busy anymore, so to be able to replace that and do it in a lifestyle way that works better for you, still being able to help and impact lives, and I guess building something that is scalable and can go even further is pretty exciting.

- Yeah, and I think it depends on how you wanna do things. Do you mind if I share something? I'll show people actually what I do if you want.

- Go for it. 

- I use a thing. I'll go for the share screen option here. I use a thing called TrainingPeaks, which was recommended to me by a guy called Alex Viada. I just need to get this out of the way. How do I get that out of the way? Come on. Come on. I'm buying a new desk, too, obviously. So here's TrainingPeaks, right? So TrainingPeaks, this is what my training setup looks like. I can write anything in here, like I said.  I've got guys doing triathlons and rowing and running and whatever. This is all their names over here on the left, but in here, where it says "workout library,"  like we're talking about scaling stuff.
See, all down here? I've got month one, month two, month three. These are all templates now I've created for different guys for different reasons and to create a workout, it's as simple as, I mean, if I want, I could move this one over here, if I wanna put this one over here, for instance.
Once it's done, it's no different than any other workout, but it allows me to manage everyone all within one very easy to use format. Any kind of workout you want fits in there
and once you've written the work, it's very easy and it costs $9 per person per month. It's super cheap. So they're paying me $330 a month and it costs me $9.

- Yeah, yeah, mate. That's phenomenal and that's kind of what systems are there to make your life easier. They're not magical things or whatever, but they're there to make your life easier. They should be there to make your life easier and as you just showed there is once you've got things set up the right way, it is pretty straightforward. It allows you to take on, you could probably have double the clients you could have taken on face to face. 

- Well, I think the top number is probably around 50 because obviously, I recognise I'm charging a large amount for online and for people to feel like they're getting quality, I need to keep the numbers somewhat limited. I did try my initial offer and this was really interesting. I had $1,000 a month option as well, so it was like a $2,997 for 12 weeks option. I sold eight of those, too, but then I realised after two months that in terms of how much I was giving each group, it wasn't substantially different and it seemed unfair to charge the extra.
I had a conversation individually with all the guys in the $3,000 group saying, "Look, guys. This is what's happened." And the guys in the
$3,000 group, they were the very first people I spoke to, basically.
I sold all of those within the first three or four days and then I started getting a lot of price objections. At $1,000 for 12 weeks, there
were no price objections. I was like, "Okay."  Later on, I can put this up.  "This will be no problem." But the guys in the $1,000 group, I've given six months of free training to because the math all ends up the same. What I've noticed is now the group that's the 36 guys, much better vibe because the group's slightly bigger. On the group course that we have, it's better. The interaction in the group itself is better.  When there was this group, the guys who would pay a lot of money, they were fantastic, no trouble at all. The guys who pay you the smallest amount of money, and so as an example, I also sell an ebook that's 20 bucks. I get tonnes of pain-in-the-ass stuff off the $20 ebook, not so much from the $300 guys, none from the $1,000 guys and the $3,000 guys.  So that was interesting. 
It's a good lesson, but it also meant that  to keep the quality high, I had to kind of keep a cap on it. My goal actually by the end of the year is to average 50 in the group now, so I'm looking to pick up, oh, by the time sort of people sort of come and go over this one, I'm looking to pick up another dozen or so, so we'd get up to about 40 and slowly, by the end of the year, build up to about 50.

- Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, I know after this interview, we're gonna chat and there's some things we can go through in regards to making that happen and, obviously, how to improve your capacity as well. But I guess to keep this convo more to the specifics, that's phenomenal, first and foremost, and just a second on the point you just made there is generally, guys, most people will wanna start things and they'll go,"Oh, I'll charge less because I'm a bit fearful." They don't see their own value and unfortunately, just what you said there is people who pay, at least generally, time and time again are going to care about what you say less.  They're gonna listen to you less. They're going to not value your information as much as it should be, so don't devalue yourself and charge a lot less than you should. Otherwise, you will, in effect. It's weird.  Like you said, you charge less, those clients are generally going to get less results because they actually won't implement. They'll ask more questions. 

- They're much more hard work.

- Oh, much more hard work.  Then the guys up here, they're paying more and they're phenomenal. They're going to get better results because they've got this external motivator of the income cash going. If someone's paid $2 for something or $2,000 for something, whether it's the same person, the mindset around their engagement is just so different.

- Yeah. Well, and the other thing for me, I was like, If I'm advertising this at some point, Because there'll have to be some

- Of course.

- "Kind of ad campaign eventually, "it's the same cost to get a $20 ebook in front of someone  "as it is to get $1,000 PT package in front of someone." So unless you're using that  like your funnel is set up so well that you can use the ad for your $20 thing to just break even and get them into your system then  and then sell them on  the more expensive thing, you may as well just sell  the more expensive thing because otherwise, you're walking away  from your advertising at a net loss rather than a net gain.

- Yeah, yeah, mate.  You hit the nail on the head and I talk about this 'til I'm blue in the face is that this whole doing funnels and getting caught up in that magic of, "Oh, I'm gonna break even on the front end," or whatever. It's like, "Awesome. "You've made no money. "You've done all of this work. "You've put in all of that risk, done all this advertising, and now you have 100 customers, but $0 in the bank."
That's not fun. And as you said, a cost for a click, a cost for an impression, whether you're selling a Ferrari or you're selling a go-kart, a billy cart, a wooden one, it's the exact same cost to put that in front of your audience, so you need to charge the right prices, otherwise, advertising will never work.

- Yeah.  I think for a lot of trends, and it's not just online, but the lack of value in themselves, there's that insecurity. But I'm lucky my dad used  to work for Mobil Oil. Obviously, oil companies know a thing or two about charging money. And he always said to me, "There's nothing sordid about asking for money." So I've never been shy about saying to someone,  "Hey, I think I'm worth this much money." And online, you're having a conversation. I call people through Facebook and I don't use video like this because, let's face it, the internet in Australia is pretty dodgy and it can cut out at any time. So basically, cold calling someone to an extent on the phone, going, "Give me a thousand bucks," you'd wanna make sure you've got some confidence in your ability to deliver a good service.

- Yeah.  Dead on. Dead on, mate. Know your value. Know what people are paying for the result you're going to deliver in the market. So it's kind of acknowledging that and making the realisation, as Andrew was saying. You might go, "Oh, I'm gonna do online training "and I'm gonna charge $99." Well, it's like, "Well, there are people out there, there are customers out there, there are clients out there "that are spending $1,000,  $2,000, $3,000 on." It's not that it isn't being done. You're just kind of closing off  your mind that it is happening.  You're kind of going, "Well, I don't know if it can happen, "so I'm just gonna try and chop myself down here." Look around. Make the realisation it is happening and then it's really about just making it happen for yourself and not forgetting your value because one of the most painful things when I speak to coaches, trainers, et cetera, et cetera, is when they're like, "Oh, I'm giving out free sessions to all "of these people and the people don't turn up "and they don't care what I say."

- It just makes my heart hurt.

- Oh.   It's soul-crushing, soul-crushing. Knowing heaps of shit. You've done heaps of learnings. You're an expert or whatever, and then giving away your knowledge for peas. That is soul-crushing.

- Yeah. Look, I certainly gave away a lot of free time  many years ago, but I can't even remember the last time I did free for anyone. I have always, when I had the gym as well as now online, always a couple of people that I trained kind of out of the goodness of my heart. One of the guys has got six kids, he's a small business owner, I've known him through other things for a long time. He's very, very helpful, so he  gives me back a lot as well. He sends people to me. He always comments on stuff in my groups. He provides awesome testimonials, so I get something back from him, but the number of people who will ask you for free stuff is appalling. One year, the Melbourne Storm ran over the salary cap and not by a small amount. They got fined for it. That year, they asked me if I could help them do some work, and their offer was, "We're not going to pay you, though," because they couldn't afford it. Are you kidding me? You've got so much money, you've actually exceeded the salary cap and you can't afford  bucks an hour or whatever for me? Even Melbourne Storm coming to this,
making millions of dollars a year,
was trying scam free sessions out of me.
It's like, "Just don't do it.
"There's no need."

- Yeah.   Yeah, mate. That's spot on. It's having that internal confidence. Sometimes, it's hard. I understand that for people and it's a journey and it's about your life, but all in all, pretty much just keeping the path, knowing what to do. And mate, hats off to yourself. You've obviously kicked a monster goal and pretty much, I guess, to sum up, have you got any words or one-liners of wisdom that you'd like to give out there to anyone that's listening to this thinking, "I'd love to be successful online, but I'm just kind of struggling at the moment"? I think maybe Andrew's Internet's dropped off there. I'll see if he jumps back on. And I'll try and chop the videos together. Are you there? Oh, you're back.

- I'm back. I don't know what happened there.

- No, mate.

- Must have cut out for a second.

- Not a problem. Your face was frozen. I assumed as much, but what I was going to say  is just to kind of wrap up today, you've gone through heaps of different things, but if there's anyone that's listening to this going, "I'm a face-to-face trainer. "I've got a gym or I've got this and I feel "like I need to evolve and take "myself toward the next level "and I would love to do online." Do you have any kind of one-liners of wisdom that you would say to them to kind of point 'em in the right direction?

- Yeah, I do.  And we talked about this before we started the recording and you touched on it just then when you said, "Stay on the path." I would hope people could do it faster than me because I really wasn't sure how to make the online thing happen. I started the process in about 2007, so 10 years. There's no need for it to have taken that long, but putting out content, making the Internet take notice of you, takes time. You can't get Google to pay attention to what you're saying with one post. If you're gonna blog, you've gotta blog all the time. If you're gonna put out a podcast, you've gotta do it consistently. You have to keep doing the things that you think are gonna make you successful. It's not gonna be once or twice. I had a really successful initial offering. We're now up to the second time. I have to do the same thing I did last time, the same kind of posts, the same amount of build-up, the same amount of teasing. I've gotta spend the same amount of time on the phone, all these things. And when we get to advertising, that's gonna be an ongoing process. You don't see the big fitness earners like Kayla Itsines or whoever,they don't stop advertising.  They're advertising constantly.  They're making tens of million dollars a year and they're still advertising constantly. Coca-Cola doesn't stop advertising. Once you start this process, you have to stay on their train up until you decide you've had enough of it. It's not gonna be fast. It should be faster than 10 years, but it's not gonna be super fast. You've just got to keep putting the work in. And in terms of how much money you wanna make, there's seven billion people in the world. Now, I don't think they're all potential customers, but there's more than enough for you, me, and for everyone who might be watching this to have 30, 50, 100 whatever clients at whatever you wanna charge and make more than enough money. There's plenty of opportunity out there, provided you keep putting the work in.

- Yeah.  Man, that's awesome. That's so true. Abundance mentality. I talk about abundance mentality. Don't think there's not enough out there for everyone or for you or whatever it might be, knowing that there's seven billion people or however many there are in the world. You only need a handful to have a good level of success.  And then it's about finding, as you said, Andrew, about finding what works and sticking with it, not going, "Okay. "I've gotten some success here, "but I heard about this other cool thing. "Now I'm off doing this and now off doing this." Find what works. Pare back what you do, find what works, and just do that consistently. That's, in essence, attraction, conversion, delivery. If you get your attraction, conversion, delivery, you don't need a million  different things in those aspects, but attraction, conversion, delivery is what  it's all about. You really only need one or two paths and I know you've gotta jump on a podcast after this, Andrew, but mate, I think from what you've said, you've done the work. You've got the results. You're prepared to do the work again and keep doing to continue getting the results and take it to where you are. So it's kind of like the world's your oyster once you've cracked that nut and you're prepared to continue to keep a path.

- Thank you.

- Mate, congratulations once again. $30,000, $36,000 in initial launch. You've been doing this for many years. Obviously, we haven't been communicating for 10 years, but like you said, you've done the work and then you kind of got the roadmap to pulling it all together in that fast period. People are gonna go, "$30,000 or $36,000 "in two weeks from your launch is a crazy number."  It is. It's phenomenal.

- Look. I mean, and people  will know in the fitness industry. I'm just like everyone else. I might have been doing this a long time, but I paid 20 grand at the start of the year in bills and I didn't have 20 grand of income coming in. That really hurt. My house was paid off at the end of last year, but I never finished my  mortgage because I was like, "Oh, maybe something'll happen. "I better, just in case." I had to take money out of my paid-off mortgage, so I have a mortgage again. That was quite painful, so to suddenly have money in my bank account and to be comfortable and because we're in a winter now, a big energy bill came in, no problem. Pay it out. So it's been little things like that, or even some of those weeks where you've got massive work bills coming in and you start looking. You're going, "Well, I can pay this one, "but then I can't really afford much petrol or whatever." I've been there, and to suddenly have that kind of comfort and  flexibility is pretty cool. It's certainly, in terms of my overall stress, far, far lower over the last couple weeks. It's been really cool.

- Mate, that's phenomenal. Once again, buddy, hats off to you. You deserve all the of the results you're getting. You deserve all the success  you're getting. Mate, you're transforming people's lives, helping people. I've seen a lot of the stuff from your clients, from people in the circle around you, and mate, you've done the work. You've built a credibility, tapped into that. And now it's about just replicating and, of course, the advertising side of things, scaling, and then potentially team-building as well if you're wanting to take it to that next level. Mate, once again, if I was wearing a hat, I'd take it off to you. Congratulations, buddy, and I really appreciate your time, Andrew. Really, really do, buddy.

- No problem. Thank you, Chris.

- No worries, mate. See you later. Bye.