Episode 143: The Easiest $1000 You'll Make This Year

I'm kind of want to get into different, different themes. So can we talk a little bit about different themes and why certain months are themed certain ways?

So with the themes for us, I mean if you're already a client of ours or you're on our newsletter, you know every single month we're sending out new design ideas, whether it's a design theme, whether it's for a st Patrick's day, patriotic theme or a different garment style. So like right now in the fall we're focused on different garments styles, like long sleeves and hoodies and things of that nature. But the themes gives people variety to continue buying.

It allows you to roll out something that's limited edition that compels people to buy. And again, it's just the people like that fresh variety and keeping in step with the season . So like right now, obviously we're a gang, we're transitioning from fall to winter soon enough and we were focused on long sleeves, but now we're going to start focusing on hoodies. But again, the different themes really builds in that limited edition mindset. And that's really what sells apparel in gyms.

There's a lot of gyms out there who will just roll out the same logo tee just in a different color that will get you so far for so long. But over time, a real balanced apparel plan has different themes, garments, things for the season, things for different holidays. So if you don't use different teams , it's one of the easiest ways to jumpstart your retail right now.

even , why is hoodies something that we need to be focusing on right now when it is not below zero

They're not, they have a lot more disposable income. They're buying gifts for family, friends and people buy Christmas gifts for themselves, you know? So I think the issue is is that this is the time where people are looser with their spending. Let's offer something that's locked , step with them with what they're willing to spend. So hoodies will be your high , your biggest ticket item of the year.

They're going to be anywhere between 50 and $60 a hoodie for which I would retail price at four and I just think that this is the right month to do that when people are looking to spend a little more, and I would also try and get ahead of black Friday. I don't have to go on this podcast and talk about the dangers of discounting. So I know you're not discounting your apparel, but you want to get ahead of the black Friday, you know, group think where everything needs to be 25% off, 50% off.

So let's get ahead of black Friday. Let's, let's work with people. If they're looking to spend a little bit more money this month, let's give them a higher price item purchase. And now it all syncs up perfectly where it's the beginning of that cold season for most people across the country. If the cold weather is already there, that's fine, but at least we're at the beginning of the season where people are looking to add something new and different to their wardrobe.

Whereas if you offer this in February or March, people tighten up their budgets. People are looking forward to the spring. I don't want another hoodie already came off Christmas. I already got a bunch of apparel, so let's get ahead of this right now. Let's be a little proactive here and if you're asking me for a timeline, I would get this hoodie design in place in the next week or two.

Do a preorder mid November and get this out before black Friday hits so that again, this is the one, the first thing, they Mark off their wishlist and you don't have to worry about competing with Amazon or sales or anything else of that nature.

what are the steps I should be looking for if I'm not using forever? For years, I'm using a different company. What are the things that I should have on my hoodie, especially around this time so that people

I would suggest something bold cleaning classic that again, once it's not, people don't have to think, just put up, put the item on, right? Like it's not too intense. It's not too over the top. It's not too loud. I again, I would want something that if I'm running an errand, I'm going food shopping, I'm running to the mall, I'm going to the movies. I could just grab this hoodie, put it on and not have to think twice about it.

That's a staple piece of their wardrobe, so just make sure it's nothing too intense over the top and it's functional too. And when I say functional that I mean it's warm enough. It doesn't have to be a winter coat, it doesn't have to be a tee shirt hoodie, but should be warm enough that again, if they have to go jump in the car, it keeps them more . The other thing, if you are not using us, I would absolutely make sure that you work with a vendor who is open to providing you with samples.

I have so many horror stories about gyms who have started working with us and they tell me, I'm coming to you because my last vendor didn't send me samples and the sizing was off and I had 50 hoodies that were useless at the end. So the number one thing again above all else is make sure you get those sample sizes and make sure everyone at the gym gets a chance to size themselves.

Because I tell everyone that's as much as I wish this industry was uniform and everything fit the same in a large, as a large, as a large, it's not. Okay, so really take the time and make sure you're getting those samples. You're doing your research and you put your hands on the stuff. The final tip I would have if you're going to work with a vendor, the other issue I see a lot too is that other vendors don't check inventory.

So I work with a lot of clients too who are waiting on orders from six months ago from an old vendor because they say, Oh, he didn't check stock, but we're waiting for it to come back in stock, so make sure you're , if you're not working with us, we do all this stuff proactively for you.

But again, if you're not working with us, what I would do is one, make sure you pick a design that's clean, classic and not, you know, like a fire breather type CrossFit thing, design and then get your samples and finally make sure and double check with your vendor that they're in stock if you're working with us, the designs that we have this year, we came up with some designs that are, we noticed that people are looking for something that applies to everyone in the gym.

In the past, a lot of people were just catering towards the fire breather type thing and the more intense over the top CrossFit or someone who's like the die hard .

Now, a lot of our clients have been coming to us asking for, Hey, would you mind coming up with something that will apply to, you know, my young professionals and my, you know, my senior group, my older group, and what we've done is we've come up with the designs right now that really apply to everyone and it's that, like I was saying before, it's a no brainer design. People are going to put this on, not have to worry about it.

They can go sit at their kid's sporting event, whatever, and it's not too over the top. It's not too loud and flashy in terms of what we're offering. I would also say that a garment, a good garment to use as something that is unisex, warm enough and that you don't have to worry about getting men's cuts, women's cuts. How heavy is it? We've already done that research for you and we're using stuff that we've tested in other gyms.

We know it sells , we know it's popular and it's going to be in stock. We're not going to run to stock issues throughout this year with it. So those are the most important things about getting this order in place right now.

we have the apparel covered for our season or quarter for basically end of the year. Now I kind of have been really digging into a book called Giftology and how to never lose a customer again. And I turned that basically towards my staff and getting my staff things. Uh , I don't always try to do it around a time that the staff is thinking about that.

So like Christmas time or maybe the gym anniversary or something that they think they're always going to get something more sporadic to make it more personable. And yesterday I was actually walking through Lou lemon and they have a, I love their apparel. I love what they have, but I can't customize it. Of course, I can't put, I can't put designs and stuff on it and I really liked that, but I thought, Hey, I should get something from my coach and, but I want to have something else on there.

Maybe that's their name, maybe it's it's coach, maybe it's, it's just our little logo or something like that. But something that they could really use , uh , in the gym, out of the gym, anything like that. So if we're thinking about getting our staff or our coaches a gift, what is, what does that look like?

And what we've done is that for those who would like to do a coach item, I would recommend something like that. Athletic quarters, if you know Lou lemon, make some, Nike is making them and they're becoming way more popular now. But something that's like a nice warmup item for sure. And again, the pricing on that is going to be about 60 bucks.

And from our point of view, we feel that price points definitely doable because you know, 60 bucks really isn't a lot to spend on someone who if you're looking to achieve your perfect day and these people are coming into the gym, they're opening the gym at 5:00 AM so you know, maybe you like to make breakfast for your family in the morning or maybe you like to eat dinner with your family in the morning.

These people are up at 5:00 AM opening the gym, they're closing the gym at eight or nine at night. So I mean 60 bucks is really nothing in the grand scheme of things and we've dropped the minimum on the quarter zips to instead of 24 it's only down to six and we'll embroider them. We'll make sure they're nice, we'll make sure they're special and they're high quality. But we dropped that minimum on our end at , because people were asking, Hey, I want to do something apparel wise, what can I do?

And we settled on these quarter zip ideas. But I know we were talking before we started, but I as a GMR, what would you say, I mean, as someone who is employing these coaches, what do you feel is a fair budget for someone who, you know, they're working 2030 40 hours a week, what would you do?

If I look at the value that they've brought in month to month, year to year, $60 is pennies impaired to the amount of value that they've brought me in , brought my business. So $60 is nothing. I would have no problem spending that or more. I do every single year, spend way more than that, but this would just be one of those items.

I would definitely like to get my whole staff so that they have a little bit more, let's say with a quarter zip professional appearance when they're in class and then also out of class too.

So I'll try and find the link to , and we'll see if we can link that. But if you're looking to do something other than apparel or other than the normal retail items, I think, you know, the two brain family has figured out a pretty nice way of compensating your coaches and and giving them something of value that is personal to them.

And that makes gym owners really nervous and anxious at , Oh my God, no one's gonna pay 50 bucks for a hoodie. No one's gonna pay 60 bucks for zip. I'll tell you right now, if you go on Nike Lulu lemon rogue, you're going to get a hoodie or a zip up for that price. Okay? That's very normal for what people spend these days. And I think it's all about how you sell it, right? So if you say, if you're apologizing for the price, like, Oh my, I know this is so expensive, I know this is it .

Or you're making excuses about why it's $50 people aren't going to buy it. Right? But if you say, Hey, we're super excited to offer our limited edition hoodie. We're only doing one hoodie for this year. You have only a week to order it. I have sizing samples at the front desk. This is going to be the perfect new hoodie that you use during warmups. I definitely suggest you get in on it because again, we're only offering it for a week after that, it's gone.

That's a lot more attractive to people to buy rather than just apologizing for price or saying, Oh my God, I'm going to take a margin hit because I can't imagine selling something for $40 you know? Again, for someone who's spending anywhere between one 25 to $225 a month for a gym membership, a 50 to $60 hoodie is really nothing that's going to last them for years.

So again, if you're nervous about the price point and you're nervous about hitting your full margins, I really just pay attention to how you're marketing stuff and making sure you're not apologizing for your pricing. Because one issue I definitely see when people start ordering hoodies and zips and start offering them out to their members. Yeah,

And I still get people that say, Oh, I should have ordered this. Oh I can't play. But in order that are you guys gonna order more. And it happens every single time. My GM works, works with UMAT and orders everything. I don't, I don't even see the orders anymore. I actually jump on to our Facebook page and see the link and say, Oh I'm going to , I'm going to get that. Like yeah, I want , I want that one now.

So it's kinda nice to always hear like people are still, even though the price is at $60 or we have a long sleeve at $30 and people are still saying, Oh, are you guys gonna order more? Oh, I should've gotten that. And it's not one or two but 10 people. So it's like maybe we can do a reorder, maybe we can't get another order in there before the end of the year. So that's perfect and kind of brings me,

leads me to my next point of what's one thing that you feel like people should be looking for in the apparel section in 2019

Basically it's a free tool that we sit down with you and we tailor it for you and whatever you feel is best for you, for your community. So we're going to sit on the phone with you, your GM, and we're going to say, okay, tell me about how your marketing stuff right now, are you following our best practices and how many times a year would you like to offer a peril ? So if you respond, I want to apparel five to six times a year.

We would sit down and say, okay, in January, what are we going to offer? And if you're asking me, I would say do something for the open. Now what about may ? That's the next door may we're going to do something patriotic that's a little bit more geared towards Murph and Memorial day and all the other summer holidays coming up. So again, we're going to customize plan that's tailored to you. We're going to reach out proactively for you.

We're basically going to be an extended employee for you because here , here's the issue. I think you just said a best, right ? You've passed off this responsibility to your GM, your head coach. And the issue is is that you rely on them to stay on track and they do a good job of that. Not everyone has that luxury and I know when things get busy, life happens. The first thing to scrap or to push off is apparel. Or you say, Hey, I don't have any ideas. Oh well we'll try again next month.

Maybe I see something, but for us what we're gonna do is we're going to say, Hey Greg, it's January and you said you want to do something for the open. Here are three ideas for the open. What do you think about these hippie back in the next day or so? If I don't hear from you, I'm going to follow up. Even if you say, Hey, we're not doing something for the open this year. We're going to do something for it . We'll do something in February. That's fine.

The thing is is that I find it's very useful for gym owners to have someone just proactively reach out and get those ideas going to at least get the conversation going. And again, from the preliminary math I've done, it's that the people who are on apparel plan sell 20 to 30% more and do significantly less work. [inaudible] the the number. You can't argue with those numbers and that's, that's huge. The extra 20 to 30% that's a family vacation that's paying off a loan pay .

Maybe it's paying off part of the building you're in right now if you own, but it's meaningful money in the end and I think you don't get hurt by being on the apparel plan. Again, it's free, it's non contractual. If you decide to skip a month, it's not the end of the world. It's just a way for us to keep you on track and to be proactive with you. I think when we first started working with affiliate owners, the issue was I can't find anyone to print my stuff.

Okay, so but now we're in phase two of this and phase two we've slowly seen gym owners come to us and they say, look, I have someone who prints. They do terrible work right now. I need someone who really understands me. I need someone who's going to be proactive for me. I need someone who's going to send me fresh designs. Who's going to think bigger picture level for me. And that's really where we're transitioning all this stuff to where again, we're always going to print Rose gun design.

Rose is going to do that, but we're also going to help you set the strategy so that you're not just making up stuff and you are following best practices that are being used by affiliates around the world.

You know, we are working with almost close to a thousand affiliates throughout the year right now and the idea is we come up with are formulated and developed from them, from affiliates , specifically affiliate owners, not, you know, not other businesses and you're not going to come to me like I'm not going to understand what an affiliate is. I know what you need, we know how to get you set up. We know how to get you on the right track.

And again, I think if you don't do anything else, if you don't do a hoodie this month, that's fine, but start thinking that you need an apparel plan. Reach out to us. You can shoot me an email, shoot me a message on our website. I promise we'll reach out. We'll jump on the phone to you and tailor an apparel plan that's specific to you and your community.

And I want to use that efficiently and effectively and sitting with email after email after email, going back and forth with another apparel company to eventually get the idea of what the apparel needs to look like to me is wasting a lot of time.

And then to compound that, now I have my GM doing this and I don't want her to bill me for more time when I know that it could be used a lot more efficiently and she could be doing a lot more things that are a higher value than worrying about whether this logo has the exact verbiage that she wanted on there or the exact design she wanted on there.

You guys do an amazing job of sending out three different types of designs and saying, Hey, which one do you like pick it and then sending a proof of, Hey, this is what's going to look like. And it takes a very minimal amount of time and it saves my, my GM from having to spend that doing just apparel work. It saves me from having to worry about doing that stuff and it allows us to be a lot more effective with the other things that we need to get done.

And you guys have done a great job of that. So, I mean it's, you guys have been the gold standard and a great role model for other gyms to replicate in terms of apparel because you could just look at the emails, the email chains have gone from you know, 60 emails down to 10 you know, it's crazy if you go back and look when we first started working together where I was saying, Hey you guys come to me with designs now I say, Hey, here are the designs I came up with for you guys.

And again, those email chains had been shrunk down by you know, 80% so the proof is right there and the numbers for sure.

So if somebody wants to jump on getting hoodies through forever fierce, how do they reach out to you guys?

I mean, here's what I say is that if you are having trouble making retail priority, assign this money to something that's meaningful to you. So this extra thousand dollars you might spend, what are you going to do with that money? Are you going to save it towards, you're going to buy your Christmas gifts with it? Are you going to, you know , save it for a new cruise, pay down your car payment, whatever it is, whatever's meaningful to you.

Put some money on it and I promise, I promise you'll make it a priority. I promise we'll get you pointed in the right direction and I'm looking forward to speaking with you. Thank you Matt. Thank you for being able to spend the time with us and be able to talk to us about apparel and basically the easiest thousand dollars any business owners going to make [inaudible] in the entire 2018 so thank you. We greatly appreciate your time and we love talking with you.

All right , Greg, thanks so much for the time. I appreciate it buddy.

Lots of people are scared to do this math to figure it out what they're actually making, any hours that they're spending doing stuff like cleaning and sometimes programming . The old way of thinking is that your programming is your secret sauce, but we all know now that that's not why people come to your box. I've been writing programs for people for literally 20 years and Jason Brown is better at it than I am.

Jason Brown's box programming.com saves me about five hours a week of coming up with optimal programming for people. It's fun. People love it and I can use that time to build my business, do more important things, or just sit in a lawn chair. Frankly, for 200 bucks a month, it's one of the best investments you can make in your gym. Think about how much time you spent programming.

Divide those hours into 200 and you'll see how cheap the program actually is for the amount of value and care that Jason puts into this stuff. Go to box programming.com to learn more.

All right,

And usually these are, these are sometimes super-intense a , we get some stories that are just amazing and struggles that people are currently going through , uh, and then have gotten through or currently going through. And so I definitely wanted it to be able to share because I felt like that I should, I should be able to share as well because business of course has never been , uh , a smooth road from the very beginning.

So a little background about me, I am the CEO of CrossFit unknown element in Clovis, New Mexico. If you're wondering where that is, it's the middle of nowhere and that's okay. Actually to us, the closest CrossFit gym, it's an affiliate is 108 miles. So most people will probably, you're probably thinking in your head better yet. There's no way that's possible or you are so lucky. And I would disagree on both of those cases because it's a double edged sword.

Having 108 miles between us in the nearest boxes is great for us in the local community, but it's also bad because we have to market that way. We have to tell everybody what's going on in our local community. What is CrossFit, what are we doing, the different programs we have to offer. So it takes a lot more than what you normally would see in a normal gym. And I started the box in February, 2014. Uh , originally I was coaching on base .

We were coaching from about four o'clock until about seven 30, eight o'clock at least , uh , every single night, Monday through Friday, and then about three to four hours on the weekends. And those completely volunteer , uh, we did it because we were super passionate about it. It was myself , uh, the main coach Billy, who actually started it from the very beginning on base. And then I got us affiliated through a military affiliate.

We were coaching that nonstop along with about five to six other coaches and we loved it. But eventually when I got back from my last deployment, I realized that a lot of those coaches were getting burned out. Uh , we would have 40 people in a class. The equipment was not taken care of the way it should be. We were the only ones taking care of it and that hence the weekend trips of constantly oiling up barbells and cleaning the rowers and everything and I needed a change.

So from that I decided to go off on my own along with I co coaxed a few of those coaches that were coaching for free to come along with me. And we opened up CrossFit unknown element in 2014 February. From there , uh, we started business. Business was good. We had a few members, most of them were military, 99%. We had one finally joined that wasn't, and then we've slowly grown.

We've gotten to the point where we actually have a lot more people that are from Clovis or that are local compared to military. Um, not that I don't like military. I love military. I'm still a reservist active reserve of stuff in Colorado, but it's, it comes with its faults and those faults are usually the PCs season, which is around summertime.

You have a lot of military people PCs into a new place and the military does that because it's the nicest weather, which means they're not going to have as many delays or issues with any of their household goods or travel expenses. So the military tries to do that during the summertime. Have you said that you have a lot of people coming in and out then if they're military? Especially in the very beginning, we had a ton of people leaving and going and it was just back and forth.

Well now we speed up to , it was two years ago or about a year and a half ago. I got a letter in the mail and business was great. I made sure that I did due diligence on all of our taxes and made sure that in the state of New Mexico, what exactly did we have to pay? Well, there's no sales tax. Didn't have to pay that. Uh , there is no other little taxes really that would Curry County, Lake County or Curry County, which is where we're at. Um , the city taxes, none of that stuff.

So none of it applied. Um , and a lot of you probably are in a place where you do not have to pay a tax on services you do on products. So probably the supplements you sell on the tee shirts , uh , but you are not paying on your services, which is awesome. I know with laws constantly tightening up and loopholes getting tied down this, this could change in the future, but as of right now it's not, which is awesome.

Well, in the state of New Mexico, we have a thing called a gross receipts tax gross receipts tax is an 8.188% tax on all revenue coming into the gym, meaning my gross revenue that I bring into the gym, 8.18% of it gets cut off the top, can't deduct anything from it, can't do anything else, but pay that tax right upfront , which I mean isn't really a whole lot if you think about it in the sense of if I make $10,000 in gross, I'm paying about $808 or $818 for that tax.

But I mean that's a good amount of money. If you double that or triple that or even quadruple that, you can see very quickly that that could be somebody's paycheck. And what happened was once I was going through the glow gross receipts, tax documentation online, I noticed that it's stated that our memberships had to be, it had to be an open membership was how it would get taxed. And I said, well, we're closed membership.

We have a process that people have to go through and they have to make sure that they meet our expectations before we allow them to have a membership. So we're closed. So case clothes don't have to worry about that anymore. Well about a year and a half ago, I get a call from the state that tells me that actually I do have to pay that and there's no way around it and you can't deduct anything from it off the top.

So I had to go all the way back until February, 2014 and calculate how much we owe at an 8.18%. Of course they use the taxes that were in 2014, which is closer to about 7.8. But throughout that time we finally got done with the audit and the audit came out to be about $16,000 plus penalties. So got hit with that bill. Um, and most gyms would not be able to survive. I know at the time I did not have that amount of money sitting in reserve. We did not have even close to that amount of money.

I wouldn't even say 10th of it that we had in the reserves. Uh , so was a little Sol. And, and the real lesson I want people to get from this story is kind of this turning point here. Mistakes are going to be made. You're going to make mistakes in your business. You are going to have times where , uh , you're going to have issues and stuff like this comes up and you have point in the road where you gotta make a choice.

The choice can either be, I'm going to find a way around this because the other way is not possible. Or you stop and you close doors and you pay the tax liability that you have and you're done with that business. I did not see that as a possible solution. I wasn't going to lose my business over a mistake that I made that I could not figure out a way around it. So I need to pay it. So the obstacle is the way in this scenario.

And so what I did is I actually contacted the state and when we went into this process of finding out how much we actually owed a , they have a manage audit system, which basically means, Hey, you've , we found a mistake. We know that you now know that it's a mistake. If you help us figure this stuff out along the way, we're not going to penalize you. And we will figure out a solution. So that we don't hit you with the entire bill all at once.

Could they have yes, 100% but they allowed me to work with them and they worked with me. So we went through the manage audit process, which took awhile and about, I'd say about six months and then we still came up with the same number, still the same amount. So then I said, okay, what do I do next? What do I, what do I do now? Because I have, I don't have $16,000. I don't have the ability to pay this off unless I pull a credit card and throw it on a credit card.

Uh , was that was wasn't willing to do because you can only imagine the interest on your guys's credit cards. So instead, or even a business loan could have been another example that I could have gotten. But again, with the interest in everything that was on there , uh , so it was actually instructed by the state , uh, and I had a really great representative that really helped me through the way, said, Hey, there is a process. You can do a payment plan.

We can do it from one month to six months to all the way until I believe it was 60 months was that was the longest I could do. And so I said, okay, let me figure out the process. So it's almost like as if I got another, I got an equipment loan through the state for $16,000 and I get to make monthly payments to it. So that's why I chose to mitigate my risk.

There were many other routes I could have gone, but I decided to do it this way and I never, the one thing I definitely didn't do was I never informed my staff except for my GM , uh , what was going on. I didn't want my staff to know that we had a $16,000 bill and their job, their jobs could be in jeopardy due to this and what they wanted to do. But my GM knew because I wanted to make sure my GM knew exactly what was going on in all aspects.

I believe in completely decentralized leadership, not only from the bottom of my coaches being able to make choices to my head coach, but my GM as well and not assuming that they always have to go to me for the next solution. So I explained to my GM at the time, which was Holly , um , Holly was amazing. Her husband PCs.

Then we got another, my, my next amazing GMN, which is Sasha and she's running it full time right now, but I explain to them, Hey, this is, we're paying $300 a month and we are every single month making that payment between the first and the ninth. That's what the requirement is. And don't forget, we created a , so up for it. She was good to go. This runs into my next scenario that happened and this actually happened recently.

Um , we've gotten well into many, many payments and we've never slipped up. Well , I was up in Colorado, I was working on some things and realized was around the 15th of this month , uh, of September. Yeah, September. Excuse me. And I realized that I don't remember me and my GM talking about this payment and usually we do every single month, Hey, did that get paid? Hey did that get paid?

And so I contacted her real quick and I said, Hey , um, or even before that I , I jumped online to see if the payment went through. And uh , it didn't, the payment didn't go through and I was a little nervous about this. You can only imagine at about nine o'clock at night I call her up and say, Hey, why didn't this payment go through? And she said, I forgot. This leads me to extreme ownership. It wasn't my GMs fault for forgetting it was my fault.

And could sit here and probably ask the questions of why, why is it your fault, Greg, you extra, you instructed exactly how to do it. Uh , she knew exactly how to do it. She's been doing it. How is this your fault? And it's really my fault because I did not do a good enough job of explaining it. I did not make sure that this payment was taken out on time.

When we talk every Tuesday and I should have, there are many ways that I am at fault for this and in my business I always claim that anything bad that happens in the gym is my fault because I did not do a good enough job of explaining what exactly is necessary. Making sure also that they had the tools to do it.

And so I explained to her not that night but the night next day, because you can only imagine what my conversation was with my GM that night, but I call her the next day and said, all right, this is what we're doing going forward. But I took extreme ownership in that situation and instead of saying, Hey, you know what, maybe this is something that you need to continue doing. Uh , if she was going to have problems and she kind of let me know her frustrations with the system. I said I'll take it.

Um, it takes about three minutes to get it done , uh , from my end. But it took her about 45 minutes cause she just could not figure out the system again. It was my fault. I didn't do a good enough job in the future. Could they possibly take it on? Yes. But I realized very quickly that this is not a payment you can miss. After I called and asked what, what happens? This is a binding contract.

And if you void that contract by not paying before the ninth, you basically void that contract completely. And that's a very big deal because the state can come in and close the doors if they wanted to. So of course, I got on the phone Monday morning , uh , contacted the state and the state basically said, you're in good standing still. Don't ever let this happen again. So it was a lesson learned.

Um, I got to relax for a few seconds, but that entire weekend I didn't sleep because I was too worried about what was going to happen next. This leads me to my last point and that's be prepared. As CrossFit has taught us, be prepared for the unknown and unknowable in any situation, anything can happen. I know a lot of the people here in to brain , uh , have things that randomly come up out of nowhere and they're not ready for it.

You can only be as ready as, as many scenarios you run through and build strategic plans around those build ways for you to have alternate routes, build ways that if anything happens in your gym, what's going to happen, and I know this is going to go on the two brain podcasts, so I would really strive for every single person that does listen to this or is watching this too this week.

Build out every scenario that you can think of, build it and you're so ops , uh , put it in that book with everything else of an if this, then this happens scenarios. If somebody falls in injured themselves, this happens, which a majority of you have, I know that. But what happens when you get hit with a, a bill like that? Do you guys know that you're, you're making sure that you're following up because tax rates change, new legislation comes in.

Are we constantly staying up to date with what we need to, to make sure that the business stays alive. Cause at the end of the day it's not going to be your accountant's fault for forgetting some of this stuff. It's going to be on you. So I would strongly push anybody to make sure that that's getting done.

And then if you are going to farm something out, especially that important like I did, which was a not the best move I've ever made to make sure your staff knows how important this is and then also trust but verify. Make sure it's getting done. Set a time, a stricter time between I should , should've said between the first and the third. I should've made sure that I followed up with it and I didn't. So make sure that you guys are giving that kind of support to your staff.

And that comes from all angles. [inaudible] not only are you, if you have something like this happen , um , but make sure that they're entrusted, have a decentralized leadership so that your staff knows they can make some of these small decisions, especially in a class like you would with any athlete. You'd have them make the decision of how to scale appropriately to still get the same anaerobic or aerobic response that you're looking for out of the workout.

Make sure that they can make those choices to scale up or scale down appropriately, but then do that on every front. Do that with your joy girl. If you know that she can reach out to one more person and she knows that normally she won't get paid for it, let her know, Hey, you know what? If you deem this necessary, I will pay you that extra amount of time to do it because you can see that the client retention is going to be there. It really does matter to your clients.

Make sure that your GM understands that they need to be able to make decisions such as ordering the right toilet paper or ordering anything for the gym. That is actually necessary. Maybe you put a cap on it, make sure that your staff feels, feels valued and feels loved and make sure that they know that this isn't a dictatorship, but more of how they help you can better help the entire business as a whole.

That's basically the story I want to share with you guys that it was, that's the biggest struggle I have had. I've had a lot of little struggles, of course coaches issues leaving, coming, hiring, firing, that kind of stuff and other scenarios. But this is probably the biggest one because it matters so much from a revenue standpoint that really take down the gym. They wanted to, the state could have came in and said, you owe us for everything. We're closing down until you do.

And I would have said, well that's not gonna work. And , and they I think know that. So they were willing to work with me. So if you get put in the same situation, any state that you're in because you didn't know Velez legislation, please make sure your accountant knows if you don't have account , get an accountant. We work with insight and I love insight personally to brain. We love, we love insight as well.

They do a great job with all of our clients, but I really interest into them and interest into what what they can do for me. That's basically it. That's all I got for you guys today. I hope you guys have a wonderful week and weekend. Hopefully you guys learn from my story and don't make the same mistakes I do and really build out those systems in those strategic plans to go forward in case anything major happens in your business or minor for that matter.

I hope you guys have a good day and I'll talk to you guys later.