Intro: [00:00:08] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is fearless formula with Sharon Cline.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] And welcome to a fearless formula on Business RadioX Fearless Formula. Friday is what I like to call it. This is where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Klein, and we are lucky to have the founder of a functional fitness based gym, several of them for four of them. Is that right? Four of them here in the area called Strongside, as well as a health and wellness coach, a mentor. Welcome to the show, Mitchel Black. Hi.

Mitchel Black: [00:00:48] Hey, thanks for having me, Sharon. I’m so excited to be here.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:51] Yeah, me too. I’m excited to talk to you about how you were able to open up four gyms in five months. How did you do this? So daunting when you think about it.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:00] Yeah, it was I mean, well, it was four gyms in five months, but that was after being one gym for eight years.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:08] Wow. Okay. What was your first gym? Where was.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:11] It? So it was strong side, but it was we were on 92 and Woodstock, and we were right by exit seven on 575. And we started as six, 900 square feet and 24 members. And then we got kicked out of that place because we outgrew it. And then we moved to our second place and then we moved to our third place where we’re at now. And then COVID happened and now we have four. But it’s been, you know, I started folding towels and cleaning toilets. So it’s it’s been a work to get here.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:40] So you started it’s your gym? Yes, your official. So you’re the you’re the owner.

Mitchel Black: [00:01:45] Owner, founder, whole deal.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:47] Coach. So you although you have a history of being a personal trainer and running different gyms. Right. I read on your website that you had you called it like the global Gym, Global Globo Gyms. Yeah. And I was trying to remember. But are you talking about a place like Gold’s Gym or like One Life, which is what I belong to?

Mitchel Black: [00:02:06] Yeah, really similar. I started at Lifetime Fitness and I started an operations and I started folding towels and cleaning toilets from 11:00 pm to 7 a.m..

Sharon Cline: [00:02:16] The night.

Mitchel Black: [00:02:16] Shift? Yeah. And then I’d go to school all day and I’d work all night. And I just, you know, it was a way to get my foot in the door like I had nothing. And I was like, well, I mean, I’m going to be a trainer, so just go there and then throw out folding towels and cleaning toilets. As soon as I got closer to graduating, I was like, Well, people got to see my face. So I started begging for a job at the front desk and they gave me a job at the front desk so I could see everybody’s face. And then I started begging for a job as a personal trainer, and nobody wanted to do anything with me because I had really long hair and earrings and I’m this punk kid and like, whatever. And but it was just a dog fight. And then I was like, Just give me a minute, just give me a minute. And they did. And I worked my way up and I was able to start as a trainer and then grow the training business and then get into group training and then grow that. And then I was able to go to corporate and do some stuff up there, and then I didn’t ever want to open my own gym ever.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:08] Why?

Mitchel Black: [00:03:09] It didn’t intrigue me. I mean, I was I was the number one trainer in the company. I was making good money. I was doing what I wanted to do. You know, you have you have everything. You have health insurance, you have a41k, you got a lot of security. And, you know, I didn’t want to go, but I felt really capped out. And I started hearing know a lot and I started getting kind of suffocated with, you know, hey, hey, buddy, sit down. And I’m like, no, no, I think we can do this. Nah, we’re not going to do that. And after a while I was like, Oh, okay. But I got to go then.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:46] Well, you clearly have a propensity to grow because if you started, you know, doing the night shift and then got to the front desk and then continue to progress so quickly, I mean, you’re in the right place, you know, that you want to have upward mobility. So someone was telling, you know, I, I imagine that’s very frustrating.

Mitchel Black: [00:04:04] Yeah. It’s not necessarily the telling me. No, the the only thing that scares me is complacency. And I cannot sit still and I can’t not grow and I can’t, you know, at least try to spread my wings. So it’s not like you’re telling me no thing. It’s like a if I ever feel as if we’re not able to move forward, that’s when I start panicking.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:25] So let’s go back a little bit to your for your history. You studied exercise, physiology and nutrition at the National Personal Training Institute. Where is that?

Mitchel Black: [00:04:34] It’s super cool. So they have a bunch of satellite campuses and I equated a lot to like deep fry. You know, like you go there, you get a degree just in in computer science. Yes. But if you decide halfway through, hey, I like art. Well, sorry, buddy, you got to start over. Right? So it’s really similar thing. And I did Accelerated Program through there and loved it. I mean, I graduated high school with a 1.75 GPA and was not supposed to do anything with my life. And I graduated third in my class from there. I mean, I love.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:05] Was it always something you just. Loved.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:07] No. Oh, yeah. Did you.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:09] Get it? I assumed you were going to say yes. No. No. How did you get into it?

Mitchel Black: [00:05:13] So I weigh less now than when I was 13. When I was 13, I was five, five. I was £200. I was miserable, hated everything about myself. And I just again, maybe I felt like so suffocated back then, didn’t like exercise, didn’t like eating right. My favorite thing was you take chocolate donuts and you put them in the microwave for 5 seconds and heat them up with Saturday morning cartoons and stuff. I mean, that was that was my life.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:35] It’s like you’re at my house.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:36] And and I just got fed up, man.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:39] And something clicked in your brain.

Mitchel Black: [00:05:41] Yeah. I was getting made fun of and bullied at school, like, terribly. I was sent home from school three days in a row crying. And really what happened is this this dude that wound up becoming a really good friend of mine, but at the time he was making fun of me every day. And the first day I went home from school crying and my mom was like, you know, hey, that’s terrible. You know, kids are bad, whatever. And then the second day she was like. You know. Och, all right. And then the third day, she was kind of like, All right, here’s a deal, buddy. You can be as big as you want to be and you can love life and crush it, or you’re just going to come home crying every day or we’re going to do something about it. And I was like, Yeah, you’re right. We joined Weight Watchers and I just needed something. I didn’t know where to start from.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:26] Your mom like that?

Mitchel Black: [00:06:27] Yeah, super big supporter the whole way through. But when I looked back at why I wanted to start, you know, there’s a whole list of things that I didn’t have when I was getting started. And a lot of things that people don’t have today, like where to get education, where to get support, where to get a community, where to get direction. You know, you’re limited by so much. And I made the commitment at 19 years old when I started being a trainer that I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to making sure nobody ever had to feel like I did at 13 and feel trapped and feel suffocated. And that’s our mission.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:57] And you continue to do that every day.

Mitchel Black: [00:06:59] Every day.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:59] That’s it. You were saying right before you came here, what were you doing?

Mitchel Black: [00:07:02] You were we had a webinar today.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:05] Okay. So who do you talk to on these webinars?

Mitchel Black: [00:07:06] Anybody?

Sharon Cline: [00:07:07] So anyone can join your webinar and kind of get information about the gym or.

Mitchel Black: [00:07:11] Yeah, whether you’re in our gyms or whether you’re in our corporate wellness side of our business or whether you’re just a regular person out there, you can sign up for the webinars. And then some of them have like today was just a specific topic, but then some of them are in line with, let’s say, challenges that we might be doing. It’s such an easy way to guide a large group of people, but like today’s webinar was called Discover Your Body Type, and I walked you through the three different body types that you might be how to identify that body type, and then how to make changes on dietary supplementation and exercise guidelines to reach your goals. And everybody had a follow along packet. It’s all interactive. There’s Q&A at the end and it’s really detailed. You leave with like an actual plan.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:53] So when you had your your job at One Life and you decided that you needed to spread your wings, what how did you make that happen?

Mitchel Black: [00:08:02] So as lifetime now, not that matters. I’m saying sorry. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:05] Lifetime. Did it have the word life in it? Lifetime. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, that’s why I said that.

Mitchel Black: [00:08:09] But. So yeah, so basically I had my classes were getting really, really big and they were filling up the gymnasiums and so I had so back up. So I was down here in Georgia. I worked all the gyms down here. They moved me up to corporate, which is in Minnesota, and I worked there for two years doing like all the research and development for group training and stuff. And and that was cool. But I was like 20 and everybody there was like 45, you know, like it wasn’t like a great environment. Learned a lot, but I was like two years. I was like, I’m out. So I moved back down here to this Woodstock gym, which at the time was the worst performing club in the company. And I was like, I want that one. That’s the one I want. Give it to me. I’m going to flip it, because that’s what I did, is I would go into the underperforming clubs and flip them. I was like, I just want I want that project. I want that title. I want that on my resume. Let’s go. And they moved me there and I was able to do it. But I start getting into all this like class stuff and the classes start getting bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where you couldn’t even work out. At the time, my class was because we would take all the equipment. It was just crazy. And I had four people come to me and start offering me money and they were like, I’m going to invest in your gym. You need to get out. You need to do your thing. And I’m still in that phase of what I said.

Mitchel Black: [00:09:23] Like, I don’t want that. Like because in my head I’m thinking gym. I’m thinking these lifetimes are $42 a pop. They’re, you know, there’s no way I can compete with this. I wasn’t thinking what we do now, which is boutique functional fitness, and we’ll get there. But you know, what they were doing is all these people were offering money and it was a normal business transaction. I will give you this many dollars for this much percentage. And I’m like, Well, dude, I’ve never had anything in my whole life and I’m really not about to give up something that doesn’t exist yet for X percentage. It maybe it’s a great deal for other people. It’s not a great deal for me. I don’t want to do that. So I kind of brush it off, brush it off. And then this couple came to me and they were clients of mine for a while and they said, Here’s the deal. We don’t want any of your business. You are crushing it. We just want to give you money. You need to be doing this on your own. We’re going to do this as an angel investor. We’re going to give you a little bit more interest in a bank. I mean, it was high. It was like 12% interest, but I didn’t have to go to a bank or whatever. We’re going to do a five year deal. And then I’m still kind of interested. I wasn’t sold yet. And then they said, Here’s the deal. Our only requirement is that later in life you have to do this for somebody else.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:32] Interesting.

Mitchel Black: [00:10:33] And I was like, Those are the people I want to be in business with. Pay it forward. Yeah. And and that’s what they did. And it was I was like, okay, we went to a Starbucks, they wrote me a check and I was like, I never seen that much money before in my life. And so they wrote me a check. I start the gym. We need 36 members just to pay rent. No other bills just to pay rent, 36 members, 62 people said they were going to come with me and join. But that never happens, right? 24 people signed up. Oh, wow. I needed. 36 to pay rent. Lifetime wound up suing me because I was I was a third of their revenue. So when a third of the revenue, there’s 26 trainers and Mitchell Black’s doing a third of the revenue. I walked out. So we get in this lawsuit, I have no money because I put it all into strong side. So I went back to my investors. I borrowed another $5,000 to hire this lawyer, go into debt even more. Right. We wound up winning the lawsuit, whatever. But so there’s that. But I basically had like three months. So on top of that, it was open in December. In April, I was going to be out of business and I had to figure out a way to get more members with no money.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:45] So because I’m advertising no nothing.

Mitchel Black: [00:11:47] Yeah. And the only solution that I could come up with was the people. The only solution. I was like, All right, well, I got 24 people, so I can’t do anything. But what I can do is I can train these people better than they’ve ever been trained in their entire life and give them the best service, the best quality, bleed into them and make 24, 25 and make 2526. And that’s what we did.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:09] So did Lifetime not want you to take their members? Is that what the issue was?

Mitchel Black: [00:12:12] Yeah. So they accused me of doing two things. They accused me of tracking all these sessions and like basically for time that hadn’t been serviced yet. And I mean, it was it was bogus. It was just a way to come after me. But because I was a manager, I had a manager code and I could go in and I could track multiple sessions in a day. And the way that their systems rung up, you know, I would I would service a couple of hundred people a day because I would teach these classes. They would be in there and I would track the sessions and it would look like, I guess on paper it would look like. You weren’t in the gym that day, but I tracked your session because I physically couldn’t log all the sessions in a day, but I had to log them to get paid. And so there was that. And then they tried to get me for solicitation because what I did is I said, Hey, this is just what I’m going to do. End of story. If you choose to interpret that as you would like to come follow me. I can’t control.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:07] That. So it came down to almost like semantics.

Mitchel Black: [00:13:09] Yeah. So we had all 24 founding members signed sworn affidavits that they would that they would contest to Lifetime was trying to, like pull them into their offices and offer them free memberships and tell them that strong stuff was going out of business and all that kind of stuff. And so my lawyer was able to gather all that information. They were able to go back to him and they tried to do it with another guy who opened a gym over on Sugarloaf. So me and him partnered together and we did a class action lawsuit and and and we were able to win really quick because George is a right to work state. So if we sued first, which we did, then it fell under Georgia law, which is way easier to get it done.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:49] How did that feel to have them coming after you like that? Right as you were getting started. Amazing that they were coming after you.

Mitchel Black: [00:13:56] Yeah. Dude, you got a $2 billion company looking at little. All strong side. Good. I mean, I don’t I don’t get up in the morning and think about you, but I’m glad you’re getting up in the morning and thinking about me.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:07] I suppose it’s the best attitude to have when you’ve got someone coming after you.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:11] Like what? What are you not doing? To focus on me.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:15] That they’re so threatened by you.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:16] Because I’m playing offense so cool.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:20] And then. And then it slowly grew then. Or actually rather quickly. You said because you had, what, from December to April to be able to. To grow your numbers.

Mitchel Black: [00:14:30] Yeah. Well, it kind of grew and I only grew it to what I could grow it based on my mentality at the time because I went through a phase. Where. And I think a lot of business owners get in this, You think way too small. I walked in to 6500 square feet to squat racks, and I literally remember this putting my hands on my hips, looking around and going, This is all we’re ever going to need. And I was and then, you know, all of a sudden there’s like 20 people in every class and, like, just it’s freaking crazy and and it just blew up a lot. But then then it got real stagnant. So it went from 24 to like 80, and then it held there for two years. And then I met my wife and she my wife’s a powerhouse. My wife doesn’t work for the business or anything like that. But you want to talk about the best partner, the best pusher. Snap my mentality. I owe her everything and she got me to think so much bigger and so much of like, You can do this. And then it was like 80 became 180, and then it became 280. And then it became like, I don’t even know these people’s names, like, And that’s a whole nother I mean, I know everybody’s name now, but like, I mean, it got like, you know, just crazy like what’s possible. And now it’s now it’s 250 classes a week. Now it’s like, you know. Hundreds of members at this gym and hundreds of members at that gym. And like, that’s not bragging. I’m just saying, like, you think bigger, your think has to change.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:01] I was thinking on your Facebook page, you have thousands of of likes. You know what I mean? People follow you. Well, I think also how important it is to have the right people around you. We talk about this on the show all the time, about how important it is to have a support system, but specifically your partner being so supportive of you. It’s such a testament to having the right energy to kind of move you forward.

Mitchel Black: [00:16:21] Yeah, you get trapped around the wrong people. I mean, I yeah, don’t ever be the smartest person in the room. Get, get out, find a different room like. And I like hanging out. I don’t know how you feel about this, but like, because you’re in the radio business, like, I don’t want people in my I don’t like hanging out with people that are in my business. I want people that think like Jim has an I in it.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:43] Oh, interesting.

Mitchel Black: [00:16:44] Because they look at it with such a clear sense. Like when I hang around most other gym owners, I’m not talking to every gym or most of the gym owners. They want to talk to me about the same negative Nancy’s that. Are all your gyms the same? Oh, don’t you don’t you hate it when so-and-so. Yeah, I sure do. But but what I really want to focus on is like, can you give me some advice from a non biased opinion on how to do this better?

Sharon Cline: [00:17:10] Well, I wanted to talk to you about what makes your gym so special. You you use the word boutique, but I don’t understand what that means.

Mitchel Black: [00:17:16] Yeah. So. So when you when most people think gym, what they what they think is I wish I wish I made up the term term Globo gym. That’s from the movie Dodgeball. Oh, back in the day, I mean, I heard it. I beat it to death like it’s mine. But but you know, that’s the big mega gyms and that’s what people think. Basically, when you think gym, what you think is I’m going to go rent fitness equipment and that’s fine if that’s what you want to do. But those are your big box gyms. I’m going to pay 30 bucks a month. I’m going to go in there. Nobody’s ever going to call me if I don’t show up and I want to use this stuff and whatever. And what I realized, like I did the math when I worked for Lifetime, I was like, okay, this gym has 13,000 members. It has 200 pieces of cardio equipment. It has 5500 towels, six washers and 12 dryers. It has four lanes of a pool. I said, if if people use this thing, they’re it’s going to go out of business.

Mitchel Black: [00:18:13] Like it’s not made to support the people that it has. And then you have somebody like Planet Fitness. The planet fitness business model is so smart because here’s what they did is they said it’s ten bucks a month. You need to get in whatever. We’re going to offer it to a whole bunch of people. And then they said, okay, we’ll make it really hard to cancel and make it really low. It’s easy to get in. But then they took it a step further and they said, if the people who use the gym, what do they do? The people who use the gym, they use chalk, they use barbells, they use kettlebells, they do squats, they great. So what we’ll do is we say, you can’t do that. Any of that here, no squats, no deadlifts, no grunting, no chalk, no nothing, no kettlebells. You cannot do that here. So they take because so what the real metrics are that less than 12% of people actually use their gym membership. So you have 88% of people that will buy the gym membership and then not use it.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:04] It’s kind of depressing statistic.

Mitchel Black: [00:19:05] And then if you take the other 12% that are interested and you take away their equipment, then you have like 100% of the people that aren’t ever going to come to the gym. So so that’s just like that’s just how the model works. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t think they set up in their corporate offices and hope nobody comes to the gym. I’m just saying that’s how the model works. Those are the real numbers, whatever. And then you have on the other end, you have like like studios, like one on one training and stuff like that. And that’s that’s super private if that’s what you want. You know, a trainer rents a space, they do whatever and you sign up for that. It’s a couple hundred bucks a month. You get your sessions, whatever strong side is, definitely right there in the middle is we build these boutique esque studios and these gyms, these boutique spaces. They’re are 4 to 5000 square feet. Everybody who joins the gym gets a subscription, and that subscription allows them to come to as many classes as they want at any location. They want it any time they want. We offer three main classes, our 60 minute class, 45 minute class and our yoga class, and they’re all different offerings, right? And then that member can come to the gym and utilize those classes any way they want. However, what makes us different is our, our, our focus on community. So we focus I give you those stats before 12% of people maybe use the gym. Our goal is that 40% of our members use the gym every single day. Wow. If you go longer than one week on our software is a red freakin circle around your name that pops up for that gym’s manager to reach out to you.

Mitchel Black: [00:20:37] And at the two week mark of not using our gym, you should have been followed up with. We’re going to do monthly community outings. You’re going to start meeting people and friends. Each gym has their own Facebook, each gym has their own email group. You’re going to be as a new member, you’re going to meet with the club manager in a non. Sales meeting to get you to use our platform. Our take on the business is, is you buy a subscription. And what we want to do is get you to use that subscription. So rather than saying here’s the subscription and here’s all these up up tick up fees that you need to pay for other stuff, we just want you to use our product for longer. So we say, okay, can you do this? Can you do this? Okay, What if we gave them this and we offer everything that we can like ten, 11 classes a day? Clinics are included, nutrition challenges and stuff. Now we have things that you can pay extra for, like nutrition coaching and stuff like that. But we take a boutique approach usually ten, 12 to 14 people per class. We want 40% of the people coming in every day. The average member is with us for 18 months or longer and it’s 100% focused on general population. There’s no crazy athletes. It’s all people that have never worked out before. It is all people. It’s it’s normal people that work really hard. And and that’s what it is. And it’s good fun stuff.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:56] This model that you have, this boutique approach, did you have that initially when you started the first gym?

Mitchel Black: [00:22:02] No. I always say be stubborn in the vision and flexible in the details. So I’ve always had a vision of what I said earlier. I want to dedicate my life to making sure that nobody ever has to feel the way that I the way that I feel. And I can break it down to three things. I’m like, boom, boom, boom. Okay, well, when you’re thinking too small, you start at one little 1600 square foot place. And then it was like, okay, we’re going to be the mega center of Woodstock, Georgia. And then you start realizing all the things that you would have to do to do that. They aren’t really, like, scalable, you know, like we’re in a pretty not not we’re in a weird market. Not that many people like to work out. It’s actually a stupid business model when you think about it. Nobody likes to work out. Nobody likes to work out frequently. Hey, you know what we should do? We should open gyms that nobody wants to go to. Like it’s so you’re in a niche, right? So the only way to scale is to open more of them. So now we’ve we’ve just in the last two years or so really honed in on what that is. And what we really are is we’re the intersection of CrossFit and Orangetheory. That’s, that’s really who we are because like we’re all CrossFit coaches, I’m a CrossFit level two coach, all of our coach. But we also have been doing this 15 years. We have degrees. We’re not just going to Google and we make and curate everything that we do. So you have two spectrums, right? You have the the people that go to Orange theory F 45, burn whatever, and they have a client boredom rate.

Mitchel Black: [00:23:22] And that client boredom rate is usually somewhere between 6 to 12 months. And this is not a hate on the this is just the business. I’m not saying they’re dumb program. So what I’m saying is those programs are the same every day. It’s 12 minutes of rowing, 12 minutes of treads, 12 minutes of resistance training every time you’re in orange theory F 45 is 45 seconds on, 45 seconds off, whatever, same thing. So and that’s cool, but they get bored, but they’re never going to do CrossFit because the customer is told that CrossFit hurts people. It’s dangerous, is too challenging, it’s too hard. I don’t believe that. But I’m not here to argue with the customer. So what do they learn? They learn that it Orangetheory theory 45 burn whatever. What they want is they want an app, they want towels, they want air conditioning, they want showers, they want it clean. I agree with you, but they want more variety. They want teaching and education and they want cool exercises like CrossFit does. Crossfit is one of the best people in the world to educating people. How do we make that middle? How do we make a strong side? Clean air conditioning, shower, shampoo? You walk in, somebody giving you water like, Yeah, I’m with you. But we’re also going to do more than just these three things every day and we’re going to teach you and we’re going to educate you and we’re going to give you real certified trainers that go through ridiculous training that are full time employees that are dedicated to get to know you. And that’s what we do.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:41] If you’re just joining us, we’re speaking with Mitchell Black of Strong Side. Would you say that that is your biggest mistake? Is that you thought too small from the beginning?

Mitchel Black: [00:24:50] Everything? Yeah, 100%. 100% too small.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:53] That’s your biggest mistake you feel like in reflecting on your business model?

Mitchel Black: [00:24:58] Yeah, because it goes to everything like that.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:00] Trickles down, you mean?

Mitchel Black: [00:25:01] Yeah, I mean, like. You name it, because that affects how much. Now, you can’t think unreasonably like I’m not saying go borrow $10. What I’m saying is, like, I would confine myself in. To, you know, I’m going to build the gym this way because this is all we’ll ever need. Not looking at potential growth. So you spend so much money on new equipment. You spend so much money not realizing what could be in the future. And then you lose money on I don’t need this email list plan or, you know, like what? What could you get out of it? Is. I’ll give you an example. Like marketing. My team thinks I’m crazy when it comes to marketing because I always say that the cost of being unknown is way more expensive than any cost of advertising. And they’re like, Oh, well, you know, this cost money or this. And I’m like, What can you do with it? Tell me what you can do with it and how we could leverage it. And then I’ll tell you if it’s expensive.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:01] Interesting. I mean, we talk about marketing on the show all the time. So I’m wondering, do you what are your main methods as at Facebook? Most people use Facebook.

Mitchel Black: [00:26:10] It depends. So we view podcast is what the radio used to be. Facebook is what the news used to be. Instagram is what commercials used to be. And we play each one different and we do. We have five main streams of content and then we slice up those main streams of content to get. Our goal is to work 1000 hours a day and have 100 pieces of content every week.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:34] Wow, that’s a big goal.

Mitchel Black: [00:26:37] Yeah. So but the only way you can do that is multiply. So how can you take how do you get 1000 hours lots, 100 people working 10 hours a day? Okay. Well, how do you get 100 pieces of content? You probably need ten really good pieces of content. Like how much can you slice up a podcast? Well, if I record it and I talk, that’s two and then I can get snippets. Okay, now I’m up to six, you know, like I just how do I get to 100?

Sharon Cline: [00:26:58] It’s so analytical. Do you know what I mean? It’s not. It’s something I haven’t thought about that way in terms of having analytics and metrics, you know, to make A plus B, we’ll see if that makes sense.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:08] I mean, yeah, that’s what we do. So, I mean, I’m sure somebody out there has something like crazy plan that works better, but that’s what we do and it works for us.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:14] Now, I was going to say your track record is proven right.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:17] I mean, I feel like I feel like we’re get we got a good understanding of who we’re trying to talk to. I’m happy with what we’re doing with marketing.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:25] What do you think’s the biggest misconception is in the fitness industry.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:30] That you’re either going to get hurt doing it or that you need to get in shape first?

Sharon Cline: [00:27:34] Get in shape before you join the fitness industry.

Mitchel Black: [00:27:37] Which is I mean, that makes no sense. I mean, I used to I’ve been and that’s not new. I remember starting as a trainer, people like, well, let me get in shape first and then I’ll sign up with you. And I’m like, you know, that’s my job. That is literally 100% my job.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:55] So how do you assure people that they don’t have to be in the best shape or that they’re they’re not going to get hurt?

Mitchel Black: [00:28:01] The hurt thing is really hard. And if you ever get hurts people attached to your name, you’re going out of business and you have to be real delicate with it. And what we’ve done is really change our language. You know, we used to if you walked into Strong side 2013, 2014, it was not clean, unedited rap music. It was shirts off. It was I mean, you just go nuts, dude. And it was fun. It’s fine. I had a blast doing it. But there’s the the customer fears things that they don’t understand. And what you’re trying to do is neutralize their anxiety by elevating their levels of certainty. So when you do things like describe an exercise in a way that is using terms that they don’t understand or it’s not visually appealing because they’re looking at an ad or a video of something that they can’t do, or you’re putting people in these ads that you know, you’re as the gym over gym owner trying to show off like you’re really attractive clients that yet anybody want to see that like it’s who’s the most relatable and how are you talking to people so. It’s you can’t go to people and say you’re not going to get hurt doing this. You have to really, really just embed the story. You’ve got to be kind. You have to be assuring you. I mean, I remember being young and saying, Oh, what are you talking about? Look at look at all these people over here. They’re not hurt. They know how it works. Like, you really have to just kind of hold their hand and guide them.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:34] It’s you have to be a people person number one, right?

Mitchel Black: [00:29:36] Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That is the job is just talking to people. And then the second part of your question, get in shape first. I find that comes from insecurity. So you’re just trying to like meet people where they’re at. And, you know, I truly mean it. It strong side. Everyone’s welcome and everyone’s equal. The first person that has an ego can leave like get at you will hurt our business more than you will grow it because the people that are out of shape are the people that build our business. So we’re our competition is the couch. It’s not another gym. So we’re always competing with laziness, we’re competing with Instagram, and it’s not about how can we make you throw up, it’s how can I just make you want to come back tomorrow? I don’t care what you do today. I just need you to come back tomorrow.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:18] Have you ever had to ask someone? Leave?

Mitchel Black: [00:30:20] Yeah. No.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:22] Yeah. How does that.

Mitchel Black: [00:30:23] Go? Not fun. I’ve had to do it three times. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:29] But you know what? You’re protective of your business, so I can imagine you get to fire people too, you know, that are. That are paying.

Mitchel Black: [00:30:35] It’s so dumb. It’s like the whole. I don’t even know. Like, it’s it’s dumb. So I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’ve done it three times. I did it once the wrong way. And we have a great relationship today and I really appreciate her and I know she’s listening to this and I appreciate it. That was the wrong way and and to the right way. And what I mean, the right way was truly toxic to the culture and. It’s just You’re not happy. I’m not happy. You know, my coaches aren’t happy. The members aren’t happy. It’s it’s really dumb and unfortunate that it has to get there. And I don’t, like, walk around and be like, Who’s next?

Sharon Cline: [00:31:21] Like, scaring everyone.

Mitchel Black: [00:31:23] Yeah, it’s. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:25] All right, Well, talk to me a little bit about the talk show that you have.

Mitchel Black: [00:31:28] Talking smack with Mitchell Black. Yeah. So I. So I’ve written one book, but I swear to you, my second book is going to be called Making Something from Nothing. Because that’s because that’s just all I’ve ever done. And I had So I was in school and, you know, I never really was comfortable talking to people. And my cousin at the time happened to manage this radio show and he was like, you know, I know you need to like, talk to people. I’m sure being a trainer, you got to get out there like I had. It was really helpful because I had to curate information. But he said, I’ll give you a spot. And obviously it wasn’t very big radio show, but he said, I’ll give you a shot. And he let people call in and ask questions. And it was I got an hour once a week talking smack with Mitchell Black on Radio Jefferson.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:18] Did you love it?

Mitchel Black: [00:32:19] I really did. Yeah. I mean, and it taught me a lot of how to communicate in a flowing way because my first session doing it, I mean, I typed everything out. I typed everything out and I and I could there’d be a recording and I would go back to recording and listen to it. And it was just me reading a book. I’m like, Why am I doing this? And and then as the weeks went by, I started getting more flow with it. And that really helped me learn how to talk to people because especially in the fitness space and it’s true for most other spaces too, like the person doesn’t really care about what I’m saying, they care about how I’m saying it.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:57] How you’re making them feel.

Mitchel Black: [00:32:58] Yeah. And it’s not they’re not shopping. Trainer’s being like, which one is going to have me go through the best mezzo cycle of training to like that’s on you as the trainer to make sure you know what you’re doing and give integrity in your job to make people feel comfortable is extremely hard. And that’s so that’s what I learned of that. And when people call in and ask you some crazy question, how are you supposed to answer that?

Sharon Cline: [00:33:23] Do you wish you were doing it now? I mean, I know you have a podcast. You talked about what’s your podcast?

Mitchel Black: [00:33:28] So our podcast called The Live Well Podcast, and I’m a guest on it. I don’t run it, but so like I try to be a guest in there like one or two times a month, but it’s a really interesting take. As of now, we’re closing in on 100 episodes. As of now, we’ve never had a non member on the podcast. So our theme is like cool story within the community and like, I don’t think we’re going to take the podcast and be like all over America. It’s kind of just a neat way for our community to hone in with each other.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:55] Yeah, but don’t think small now.

Mitchel Black: [00:33:57] See, there I go again. There I go. No, I would. I would love to. I really love this stuff. Like just talking to people, hanging out with people.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:06] Just to make their lives better. Yeah, there’s something very noble about that.

Mitchel Black: [00:34:10] It’s all for other people. It has to be done in a very selfless way.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:13] Well, how did you survive the pandemic? How did it affect you?

Mitchel Black: [00:34:16] Oh, dude, that was rough. I’m just so the positive is never let a good crisis go to waste. So I so the the long answer to a short question is that in 2000 so I started as a trainer in May of 2008 and the economy crashed in September. Right. And I remember being at Lifetime and I was so so this will answer your question. But at the time I had I had 22 clients. They were paying $85 a session. They were training 3 to 4 times a week. So on the average, client ticket rate was like $100 a month. I’m 18 years old making 108,000 a year. I came from growing up on like food stamps, literally, and having my phone turned off and like, nothing, right? So I’m bawling beyond my wildest dreams for four months. And then the economy crashed and it was phone call after phone call after phone call of just, oh my God, I can’t do this, you know, because they’re all in the banking industry and all this kind of stuff. I mean, like I’ve never seen more black Amex in my life and but all those people. But yeah, but all these people were getting affected, right? So the the day the economy crashed, I’m looking up like, at all the TVs in lifetime and everybody should stay in there. I’m 18. I don’t even know what an economy was. I just knew that nobody was on those treadmills. Everybody’s looking at the TV and his phone call after your phone call.

Mitchel Black: [00:35:39] And I said, Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What’s going on here? Nobody’s saying they don’t want to do it anymore. They’re just saying they can’t afford it. So I said, okay, instead of making a lot of money on a few amount of people, 22 clients, I’m just going to make a little bit of money on a whole bunch of people. So how about I charge all of you and your friends 150 bucks a month and we start doing boot camps and I get you with like seven or eight of your friends. I don’t lose any money. Cost you a lot less. 150 compared to 100 is a lot better. Let’s just do that. All right. So I and then that was a weather storm, you know, like, whatever. When I saw 2020, if you were able to take the virus out of it, so you just strip any emotion, ties to it and look at it as just the business. It taught me two things. And the first thing was I looked right back at 2008 and I said, Dude, a lot of people came out of their billionaires. And I remember watching that happen and I said, Whenever that happens again, I want my piece. And when I saw that happen, I said, The market is going to constrict so hard, everybody’s going to pull in, Everybody’s going to be scared when this happens. Mitchell Whenever this is, I knew that in 2020 something was going to happen for 18 months. I was saying the market’s going to consolidate, markets are going to consolidate.

Mitchel Black: [00:36:55] You can’t have this many people. Nobody likes working out. You can’t have all these gyms with not anybody that likes exercise. It’s not made to survive. You’re all floating on fake cash right now. So I was like, it’s going to constrict now. I didn’t know it was going to be a virus, but that happened. Everybody pulls in and I pulled our team in and I said, Look, here’s the deal. If this doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you if you need to leave, totally cool. I got it. But we’re going to lean in harder than we’ve ever leaned. And this is going to be the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. They shut us down, and my wife is like, What does this mean for us? And I said, It means you’re not going to see me much for the next six months. I’m going to go into a hole harder than I’ve ever gone into a hole, and we’re going to figure this thing out. I don’t know what it looks like, but I do know this. We will make it through. The question is, what are you going to look like on the other side? So we just started saying, okay, what’s going on? Take the virus out of it. What are the facts? People are scared. How do you make them less scared? You neutralize anxiety by increasing certainty. What is fear? It’s unknowing of the future. How far of a future can I predict for these people and what certainty can I give them? So what we did is we said, All right, here are gyms closed.

Mitchel Black: [00:38:06] All right, cool. We’re going to give you two options. Option one, we’re going to put together equipment packages if you want to take an equipment package home. They had like three different options they could pick from. Then you’re agreeing to keep 100% of your membership, But we’re going to get you a gym at home if you don’t take any equipment, we’re going to give you 40% off. So you pay 60%. However, we’re going to offer five workout classes streamed per day. I didn’t know anything about Zoom. Nothing. And I’m just YouTubing everything, ordering everything. And I told our team I was like, Look, this gym is now a 5000 square foot media production facility. You need to imagine that it never reopens. We are running five classes a day. We’re doing a we were the first that I ever knew of to do a virtual five K. We sent people race packets, we sent them t shirts, We developed a hashtag. The fitness never stops. My hand was like broken. I wrote hand-written cards to every single member and we just mailed them just boom, boom, boom. And I was like, Connect, connect, connect. We had a we viewed strong side as a news network, and we said, if you tune into this news network, what shows would you get? And we put it was like Power Players where I had a guest on every Wednesday, I had a monday, Wednesday, Friday show.

Mitchel Black: [00:39:20] Then we had five workouts a day. We had yoga that you could tune into. We partnered with the city. Where would they would do this? Amped in the park thing. We did it digitally and I’m just like going, I mean, just going, going nuts as hard as we could. And we tried to get as much online as we could, but we couldn’t lean too far because I knew that when we reopened, I mean, all that happened within like six weeks. Like it was crazy. Wow. But I knew that when we that when we reopened, I said human nature is not going to change 100%. I’m not saying that digital is not going to be the way of the future. I’m just saying that just because COVID happened six weeks later, you can’t say that 100% of your clients are going to work out online for the rest of their life. So I saw everybody I saw everybody pivoting into like digital only platforms and 50,000 on an app. And I was like, way too early. The market’s not even primed to to be comfortable working out online. That’s what happened to Peloton. A whole nother story there. But so anyway, so we reopen and our plan of reopening and this is pivoting in. The second thing that I learned, our plan reopening was we were going to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, online and Tuesday, Thursday in gym, because that’s what the quote world was telling me to do.

Mitchel Black: [00:40:38] And we said, Hey, if you want to keep your equipment, you can keep it. If you want to bring it back, bring it back. 100% of people brought it back. Interesting. And I was like, holy crap, Plan B, we can’t support this. They don’t even want to work at home. So reopened. We did it in a normal way. I’m not saying it was like, you know, chest slaps and sweat everywhere. We did it like in a normal, appropriate way, but we brought everybody back in the gym, which had me realized thing number two. And the second thing I learned is how dangerous being small is. So when COVID shut everybody down, is that so? Well, before I get there to close out number one, because I even tell you what I learned in number one is that when we reopened, like it just went like straight up and it was never let a good opportunity go to waste. And it was like an L-shaped recovery. We grew 36% in revenue in 2020, and it really taught us how to increase people’s level of certainty. You know, fast forward into 2023. What we’re what we’re learning is it’s all about making the customer feel certain, make them feel comfortable over and over and over again. We learned that in a very accelerated level in 2020, and now we get to carry that into 2023 because most of our clientele who’s really overweight and really unhappy is uncertain, is scared, doesn’t even know where to start. They probably wanted to lose weight £40 ago.

Mitchel Black: [00:42:01] They’re just like, I don’t even know what to do. And that was a gift. And we got to learn six years of stuff in six weeks. Then the danger of being small. So when everything was shut down, LA Fitness does not own a single one of their locations. They’re all build to suits. La Fitness sent a letter to every landlord and said, This is an act of God. We are not going to pay you rent. You can sue us if you want to, but we’re a really large company and we’re going to fight you. Lifetime owns all of their locations and they sent a letter to their bank and they said, We’re going to refinance all of our mortgages, which means we’re going to have 30 days of no payment, and then we’re going to go ahead and do another 30 days, too. So it’s going to give us 60 days to figure this whole thing out and we’re going to refinance at a lower interest rate. Done little ol strong side over here calls their landlord and said, Hey, the world just shut down. What are we doing? Landlord says nothing. And by the way, I didn’t get a loan, so the first loan was taken up. I got a little bit of money after. So they did two rounds. The first round I got nothing because all like the they classified a small business under 500 people and like all the Marriotts and all this kind of stuff that are under 500.

Mitchel Black: [00:43:16] They took all them, whatever. So who cares? I don’t really care. I want to write my own check. I didn’t want any money anyways, but I just tried to get it. And then they did a second round. I got a little bit way after we were open, so I’m like, I’ll tell you that I got it a little bit, but I didn’t get it when I needed it. So they shut us down. I call the landlord, Hey, we’re not doing anything. You know, rent’s due on the first. The best we can do is you don’t pay for three months, but then you have to pay it back. I sound like bull crap, right? And I was like, Dude, if this ever happens again, I need to be huge because let me tell you how much. If I owed somebody $100 million, they would call me and they would be like, Hi. Hi, Mr. Black. I just want to make Are you okay? I want to make sure that everything’s cool with you. I know covid’s hard. Is there anything that we could do to take care of you? And I was like, I’m too small, I’m too small. I don’t know. I don’t owe anybody money. I don’t I don’t have enough liability. They don’t care. So I was like, we we have to go. And that’s how you get to that story of opening four more gyms in five months, opening a corporate wellness side of our business and just being like, and we’re still not done.

Sharon Cline: [00:44:23] But where do you want to be in like five years, ten years? Do you have a projection like that?

Mitchel Black: [00:44:27] No. Yeah. So so we were going to we were going to do 22 clubs by 2026. That’s what we were going to do. But we learned so much. And by we, I definitely mean me. I mean, I know the rest of the team learned a lot too, but I hope that I mean, my goodness, I learned a lot in 2022. And it’s. The market’s going to get really interesting in 2023. And I’m not talking about the stock market. What I’m saying is that you cannot have 5500 orange theories, 100 f 40 fives. You can’t have Peloton. Think of any other service. You have iPhone, you have Android, you have like four streaming services and people want streaming services. There’s like there’s what? There’s three phones and two phone providers. There’s Apple and Android and then there’s Google Phone. But your Android owns Google Phone and every more people have phones than bank accounts. And you’re telling me that you can have all these gyms, you can’t do that. So this thing is going to contract. And when I thought in 2022 that we were going to expand, what I’m seeing more of in 2023 is what we’re going to consolidate. I’m thinking now we’re in 2023, we’re not open. Another one. What we’re really focused on is building our infrastructure and our blueprint, and we want to be more of an infrastructure management company, more so than a gym company where we’re able to give you the blueprint to go open your gym if you need to, or absorb your current location. Because what works for us is there’s all these gyms around our gyms and they’re just they’re just kind of done. And we want to do business with these gym owners that have been trying for eight, ten years to build their business but just haven’t been able to. Or maybe they’re tired now or now they have kids and they’re looking for some type of support. You know, they’re tired of paying 20,000 a month in rent and they don’t want to deal with employees and like, you know, whatever. Cool, Come on our ship and let’s just rock and roll.

Sharon Cline: [00:46:30] So it’s like franchising kind of.

Mitchel Black: [00:46:33] Well, I don’t want to do a franchise because, like, I don’t do it. I don’t even know where to start. I mean.

Sharon Cline: [00:46:39] You figure it out, though, I will say.

Mitchel Black: [00:46:41] Yeah, that’s something I don’t know. And maybe somebody listen, I’ll have advice because of what we do. So this is just my $0.02. I don’t have any answer for it because I get asked to franchise all the time. We don’t have a cookie cutter teach this today. We literally are coaches like go through so much training and it’s so great and it’s so humanistic. How do you scale that? Like me personally, I’m just like, that is the question.

Sharon Cline: [00:47:06] You can’t replicate yourself. So you’d have to find people that have the same sort of mentality that you do, I guess.

Mitchel Black: [00:47:12] So we’ve done that. I don’t coach at all. Yeah, so we’ve done that within our four, but I’m like, Dude, if we had strong at Texas, like, and maybe I just need to figure it out, maybe I just need to just shut up and figure it out.

Sharon Cline: [00:47:22] Well, here’s my final question for you. So, you know, the show is called Fearless Formula. What are the things that you’re not afraid of anymore having gone through the recession in 2008 and obviously the pandemic, are there things that you’re not afraid of anymore that you think generally people can be change?

Mitchel Black: [00:47:41] Like, not even. Anything you want to change Right now, we can change. And it freaks people out. But change does it. So the first thing you have to do is define who you are, what your culture is, what you stand for. That can never change. But the idea that the way you do things today has to be done that way in the future. I mean, all the way down to like you walk in our gym right now, each gym has like 23 barbells, 20 to 23 barbells. If an article came out tomorrow that said barbells cause cancer and we had to sell the barbells, our business would live. It’s not built around a thing. So it’s we change and we fluctuate all the time. And as long as you can have change with reason and vision and, you know, there’s I get I’m explaining guardrails. You can’t be, you know, delirious and just change this and change that and nothing actually gets done. What I’m saying is reading the market, making changes that are in line with the market of what your prediction is going to be, but never being adverse to change, just change all the time, just in line with your values.

Sharon Cline: [00:48:47] I guess that’s important, though, because the notion of change, if you don’t really know who you are, change could mean everything could be too broad.

Mitchel Black: [00:48:55] Yeah. If you don’t know who you are and like, I mean, that’s one thing we did a couple of years ago that was extremely important. We we developed 24 fundamentals. We took those fundamentals and we put them in four different categories for people to identify with. And we just pushed out. I mean, you’ll hear me say the same story over and over again. I was five five, I was £200. I was 13 years old. This is why I started making this change strong. So started here at 24 members. They need to resonate with that and they have to understand that, you know, from the top down, bottom up, however you want to describe it, it is we are here to make people better.

Sharon Cline: [00:49:24] Your fundamentals are consistent.

Mitchel Black: [00:49:27] Yes. It never, ever changes. It just looks like, you know, if you talk, you’ll meet members over the past five years. I remember when you used to do that. Remember when you see that? I’m like, Yeah, I remember when people used to like that. Now they like this. Like, it’s okay.

Sharon Cline: [00:49:40] Well, if anyone wanted to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Mitchel Black: [00:49:44] We’re all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. I mean, Google, just Google strong side and it’ll bring you up. But then on any of the platforms, it’s either strong side or train strong side. And we’ll get back to you immediately. We don’t have any bots in our system, which is something that I’m really, really I don’t know if we’re gonna live there forever, but I’m really happy with it right now and we will contact you faster than a bot.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:06] Well, Mitchell Black, thank you so much for coming by. Cherokee Business Radio X, I really appreciate the time and it’s very inspiring to hear someone so passionate about their their work and aligning themselves, kind of being congruent with themselves and their business models. It’s inspiring.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:21] Hey, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. I know you’ve had some of our members, actually Josh Bagby, on the show, and that’s how I got hooked up with you guys. And you guys do such a great thing. I was doing some research on you too, and it’s super, super cool. I didn’t I didn’t know it was live. So everyone that I’ve listened to, I didn’t know they were actually live. So that’s cool.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:39] Did it make you nervous? You you were good.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:41] No, it’s just like, ah, okay, we’re doing. We’re going.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:45] Yeah. That’s how we roll here at Business RadioX.

Mitchel Black: [00:50:48] Oh, love.

Sharon Cline: [00:50:48] It. Thank you all for listening to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX. And again, this is Sharon Cline reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.