39 Martial Arts Statistics To Know in 2022
Josh Peacock: Our hero today is George Liu, a lifelong fit fanatic turned lead gym expert for gyms. Drawing from a wealth of compelling case studies, George demonstrates how you can generate business saving profits fast from well-designed upfront offers. In fact, George even saved a gym that was less than a month from closing down using the systems he unpacks in this very episode. Without further ado, George Liu.
Alright, welcome to the Gym Heroes Podcast, George. Can you go ahead and go into your background in fitness and business and tell us how you carved out your niche in that space.
George Liu: Yeah, for sure man. Yeah. Thanks for having me by the way Josh. So, my story is I had always, so right after I graduated from school, from college. I had a really good job lined up actually in tech. So, I was jumping to sales for LinkedIn. So very separate from health and fitness. But the thing that had always pulled me back was this passion for health and fitness because it completely changed my life when I was 18, right. So, a little bit about me on the personal side. I was actually born in Japan, raised in China and I did move to the US until I was about 10 years old. So, growing up for me it was a big shock really right it’s like culture change and everything. So, it actually took me a long time for me to just find who I was. And there’s a lot of pain to be honest to just get on the personal side, and it wasn’t until like when I turned 18 that everything turned around. And for me, it was fitness that turned everything around for me. So, when I went out to school I was like, well, what do you want to learn about so a fitness actually became like a really big piece of that. So, I studied exercise science, kinesiology, nutrition, communication, psychology, business, marketing management.
So, after I graduated, I was like, what do you want to learn more about? At the time like I’ve never started anything myself, right. I’ve always wanted to take a crack at something. I gotten really deeply involved in like extracurriculars when I was in schools. I turned into a really good student because of fitness. But after I graduated one thing leading to the next, I came across an ad. Clicked into it. Next thing I know I dropped like 6 grand to learn from this couple. I was teaching people how to build their own lead gen agency for local business owners.
Josh Peacock: Wow.
George Liu: Yeah, so that’s like a long story short, right. It’s like next thing I know is like, well, if I’m going to bet on anyone, I’m going to bet on me, right. And then for more, who am I going to serve? Well, gym owners because if I can help gym owners, I can help more George’s at the age of 18. So, like that’s when it’s stuck. And then from then on, it’s just been big roller coaster, right. So, but that’s not my story.
Josh Peacock: Yeah, that’s amazing. I’ve clicked a few of those ads too. Some of those courses, I’ve dropped a not 6 grand but I’ve dropped a few grand. At least half of that. Some of those courses are actually really good though.
George Liu: Oh yeah.
Josh Peacock: One of them helped me to get a job but just be careful.
George Liu: Yeah. 100%.
Josh Peacock: That’s awesome. So, I read, you actually ran one of your businesses into bankruptcy but you were able to rebound from that and actually get to a place where you were generating $15,000 a week. Can you tell us that story?
George Liu: Yeah, from one of the gyms that we’re supporting right. It’s like it was actually one of my first handful of clients at this point. I was about a year in into dabbling with this thing. So, I had a handful a few case studies at that point. So, it was one of clients that we had taken on and at the time for the first two-year business mind you like when I first jumped into the space. When I started deciding to help gym owners, frankly I was shocked at how many negative experiences people had when it came to marketing, right. so, I was like it’s just really bad for me right, because like I’m always the kind of person that like if I feel as though like I’m not providing enough value to and I’m charging for something that I’m not providing enough value and like I would not be able to live with that, right. Day one, I was like, oh okay, well I’m first of all I’m getting started but also like I’m going to do it from my lens the right way to help people, right.
So, I was always performance based so at that point I was a year in and I was still running performance based for two years. I didn’t really charge anything for gym owners to help them. I was like, hey, like don’t pay me anything. Once I help you out, once I make you money then you can pay me, right. Now this is one of our clients who were still actually in touch today we’re friends based out of Colorado, so Breckenridge Colorado, right. So, it was a CrossFit box and it was we’ll dive into the deep details because it’s not exactly some of the details that for me to share, but it’s actually the gym it was in a really tough spot. So, back in 2019, this is actually before COVID but it was in a really tight spot. Because previously that the owner had actually extensive amount of experience building up across the box over in New York and Staten Island. But for some reason, the market in Breckenridge it’s a little bit tough right because it’s one of those things where one of those towns in which people flock over during Vacations, right. Because it’s a scheme town.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: They have like ski seasons and also like mud seasons so like how do you consistently get in front of people and just make yourself well known in a market where people just come and go all the time, right.
Josh Peacock: Right.
George Liu: So, when I was chatting with them, it came in through a referral. I was like, holy shit dude. Like, this is tough. He’s like, yeah, man. Like, I mean, if we don’t do something like in a month and a half, like we’re just going to wonder and I was like, oh ****. Well, like let’s do like let’s do something like we got to do something now, right. It’s like, dude, don’t even worry about it. Like, don’t pay me anything. I just want to help you out. Like, let’s turn this around. Asap. And then once we do then then we can figure it out from there, right. So, we struck up like a performance deal where it’s like he covers the ad spend and then we jump into it with what I would recommend in terms of the strategy and just the whole system. The whole follow up, the sales process, the script, and everything. And then after that once we have generated fun and revenue, then we can just like split it like 50/50 at the time.
And then, it’s actually one of the craziest stories I’ve had because this was for me it was a belief breaking moment in which for me that was when I had this epiphany of the moment where I was like wow this business is what I want to do. Because it’s a win-win for everyone. At the time, I was actually working at LinkedIn. So, I had a full-time job lined up. So, I had a full-time job lined up and like on the side I was just like really consulting and I was spending a lot of time with them we’re getting things launched. And we launched in July of 2019. When we did launch for me, it was a bleep breaking moment. When we did launch, I actually had planned a trip with my sister and my friends to go to China to visit my family. Because both of my family were still there.
So, I went off to China that’s when I lost the campaign and we had a lot of communication leading up until then. But then first week and while I was in China while I was running this business helping him out, we generated so many leads. It was like we’re getting like $2 or $3 leads. And then the first week, he closed 29 people and set up $500 each. So, he went from making 3 grand about a month to $14.5000 in cash collected within a week.
Josh Peacock: Wow.
George Liu: It was ridiculous like literally like day one he closed like 7 people like $3,500 and I’ll never forget the text, right. When he sent it to me, he was like day one when we launched I just like back and forth back and forth and he’s like he was asking a lot of questions like oh about the script like what if he says this and I was just like… And by the end of the day he was like keep just giving me the reporting right he’s like 3,4,5. And then at the end of the day he was like it was like 8, I was like it’s like man yeah, you’re crushing it. It was like keep it going man you keep it rolling he’s like dude, I’ve spent like I feel like I’ve been on the phones for eight hours you’re just closing up the phone with the that I coach him through.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: But yeah, coming out of that I mean his gym still stands today and he he’s someone who values freedom and family time a lot. So, for him growing the gym so like max capacity is not the main goal. But still standing today. And for me like I was able to help him actually while I was traveling from the US to China. So, like literally like I kid you not man. Like when I was getting like the end of the week report or just like when I was like hey man like, how did the week wrap up? It’s like good. We close 29 by 500 bucks each. I was on the side of a mountain in China. It’s called it was like a beautiful mountain. We were like freaking like I don’t know like 130,00 feet above the air. I was like standing on a glass, edge of the mountain on glass. And at that moment I was like, wow, I was just able to have such a huge impact on one business owner’s life and also like we were able to do such amazing work together and I could be juniors from anywhere. And that was a moment where I was like cool like I’m going to go like all in to build what is gym pillars. Because at the time I was like do I go all in? Do I not? Because I had a really good career path.
So, that was kind of like that story. But yeah, it really struck a quarter within me and for me I was like cool like let me just help more people like him because it was honestly amazing experience for everyone. His and then he started weeks in. He started sending me his clients results and for me it just came full circle, right. So, it’s like a win-win for everyone. Like he was able to just turn his business completely around. His clients like that he signed up the 21 people like a lot and we’re able to get such phenomenal results. And for me at 10:25 [Inaudible] as well just based on the performance-based deal. Right.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. That’s a fantastic story. So, I’m sure you’ve actually worked with a lot of gyms that are really in a tight situation. So, you kind of, you talked about one of the ways that you were able to turn that around even in just 1 week. I know that some gym owners are really in a bind and could use some fast income generation. So, is that the only technique you have for turning that around? Like how is it that that a gym owner can easily add $10,000 a month and additional revenue. Listen, let’s talk about how they can approach that.
George Liu: Good question. So, at top of mind, if a gym is struggling, so this is where it’s a little bit hard, right. because it’s kind of like chicken on the egg. Most gyms, when they are struggling, the number one culprit is likely like they’re not actually not charging enough. Price point is too low. They don’t have enough of a profit margin because when they first started off the business, whether it’s when they were taking their savings out and putting everything online or taking on a loan or jumping into a deal, what it may be, they just like priced it based on what they saw in their markets. It’s like, okay, well, this person charging this, this person charge this, let me go squarely in the middle. And then when they do that, they don’t know that the other people that were pricing at the price point that they were priced at, they’re also not doing well financially, because most gyms aren’t. So, the biggest root issue is like price, that’s one of the first things, but then the second piece is, most gyms, what I have found, they care a lot about their people, they care about impact, right.
So, their chart is actually pretty good, because if you’re a one-man show and you’re in a tight spot, chances are, like you have firmly built relationship with every single person, and they’re there because of you. So, it’s not the term that’s issue you’re not losing that many people it’s just that when you have so little members if you lose even one or two it hurts. The cancellation of freezes come in it hurts. So, a quick fix would be there are two solutions that I have seen that are the quickest fix. One of them is what we call a paid in full play a cash injection, right. So, we run it on Black Fridays for our partners. We’ve run it for also other times as well right. To give another example this one gen that we helped was a small group slash personal training studio over in Miami. He was a really tight spot and he was able to afford the setup fee when we were first starting off but like I made a payment plan with him to get him in. so, we can get him some results Asap, right.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: Within the first week, he made 19 grand.
Josh Peacock: Wow.
George Liu: 19 grand and that’s from what I would call a paid in full play. Essentially, it’s something that that has to be used very spiritly. It’s a reactivation of your current member base, right. So essentially it is creating an offer that’s irresistible for your existing members to pay for a year in full ASAP. And you don’t want to sell too many of those right depending on your cash flow situation but that is a way to be able to inject cash to your business pretty quickly. Now the downside of that it’s like my reservation is like it also come down to like the gym that I’m chatting with, right. because if they’re charging like 80 bucks a month. Like I wouldn’t even want them to do that because that’s so little. Because then 80 bucks at times 12 months you’re under charging yourself it’s like you essentially going to be serving people out of a loss, it’s like so when you run the paid full play that doesn’t work as well.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: So that’s my reservation on that. So, that’s one of the solutions that can inject cash very quickly. Alternatively, to that is that if you have the second option that I have that I’ve seen that works really well. Organic marketing is the cheapest way, cost effectively. Mm hmm. It also yields the highest quality of leads, right. because it often times it come from relationship. Someone to have referrals are always going to be higher quality in terms of the person known you, liking you, trusting you, and having already known the price point but compared to someone who has never heard of you, right. So, that’s the benefit of organic.
The cons of organic marketing, slow. So, if you’re in a tight spot, this is how I was able to help the gym owner over in Colorado is a paid advertisement, paid media. But there are a lot of nuances, right. That’s involved to make sure that it works, because in order for paid media to work, you have the right offer in place for the market to want to click on it and opt in, right. So, in other words, you need to be able to generate leads at a very high volume. That’s the first step and then, secondly, once you have high-volume leads because everything’s a funnel, the next piece is how do you add friction and how do you move people down the funnel to get them in the door and then signed up, right. So, having a very strong, let’s call like a leaner trade process, right. It’s like what do you say to them how soon do you call them, do you text them, do you email them. What’s the case, what is the messaging, how do you get them toward the door, right? You have to get them in the door and then you have to be able to sell them. And this the sales process also important because if you’re here’s something that no one wants to share with any potential client, right. Paid media is the most expensive channel.
Josh Peacock: Yes.
George Liu: Actually, for a gym that’s like starting out especially starting out like let’s say like under 5 grand usually or even under 10 grand especially if they want to take a crack at it themselves. I wouldn’t recommend it at all. I really wouldn’t recommend it because the sheer amount of reps you need to go through to be able to get something that works is you’re going to be bleeding money, right. Because it costs so much. You’re paying Facebook to get in front of people instead of you personally doing it. All of it is like you’re paying Facebook to send out flyers for you instead of you just handing out a hundreds of flyers a day. That’s all it is. But the whole process needs to work right.
So, for paid media what we have found is like if you really know what you’re doing you can get a customer acquisition cost, which is how much does it cost for you to acquire a customer from Facebook and Instagram of anywhere between let’s say for a higher ticket offer with 100 bucks to even 200 bucks. So, if it cost you let’s say 100 bucks to 200 bucks today, right. So, this would be completely different numbers 7, 8 years ago, right. Completely different numbers.
Josh Peacock: Right.
George Liu: But today, like if it cost you a 00 to 200 bucks to acquire one person, if you’re charging 80 bucks, kind of shit out a lot, right. It’s like, but if you’re charging more than that, let’s say like 600 bucks or 1200 bucks or in the case of our partners, our clients we call partners, now we’re actually walking through how to charge two grand plus and be able to collect that much, right. That difference between 100, 200 bucks versus what you charge, that’s how you bake it sustainable, right. So, but I’d love to be able to show like one thing like one magical bullets like anything turns around.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: But it’s similar to health and fitness or martial arts or anything, right. Like it’s a lot of components that that works along with this one piece, right. But these two pieces, the painful play as well as paid media with a high-ticket acquisition system, rapid turnarounds if you know what you do.
Josh Peacock: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s when I was learning marketing several years ago, I always heard like, yeah, paid media, it’s the most scalable. If you can figure out a system that works for you, makes you money and you can put as much money as you want back into it and you can scale as much but it’s get, first of all, it’s changed a lot since then.
George Liu: Yeah.
Josh Peacock: Because it’s gotten so much more expensive. So, if you run a local business where you really can’t I mean you could probably charge more than $200 a month. But where you you’re potentially like if you’re in a small town and you’re trying to reach people where you probably cannot charge more than $200 a month. I mean you’re, is so difficult to get a good return on that. You have to have such good retention that you can count on someone being there longer than 6 months.
George Liu: Yes, and with what we have seen the industry average fortune is it’s about 10%, right. So, which equates to about 10 months of them staying. The other piece though is you would be surprised though in terms of what people can afford. Because what I have found is that a lot of gym owners we have chatted with especially early on, they had belief that where it’s like, oh man well like I’m having such a hard time charging literally like $89 a month or like $119 a month. Like how is it possible for me to charge someone 600 bucks or 1200 bucks there’s just no way, right. It’s like however if you know the right way to package it and how to have the dialogue most of it actually believe it or not it comes down to sales. The sales process, right.
Josh Peacock: I can believe that.
George Liu: Because if you’re just selling workouts or nutrition or meal plans it’s like they can get that any It’s not about that. But how you differentiate yourself compared to any other gym or anything else out there is how well are you able to get to know the prospect in terms of understanding their goals and how you map out a program that’s fits their goals specifically, right. And if you’re able to do that, it’s like we’ve actually tested and just felt like I was in the market. You can charge like a front-end program when they’re the most excited to actually really solve their problem for the first time once and for all like fully committed. Though there wouldn’t pay you like $99 a week. We will test it every single market.
Josh Peacock: Wow.
George Liu: So, if you know how to do that, it just comes down to the conversation, the way you package the offer, the way you present it and deliberate. But mostly actually the way you listen to the prospect and you tailor the program to them. That’s how you do that. Because I don’t know if you know, but like for online fitness coaches and online fitness programs, I mean, there’s often times when they jump into a coaching program when they’re just getting started. They’re coached to charge 3 grand, 4 grand right off of that and they do.
Josh Peacock: Wow.
George Liu: And you can and you can see so many online fitness coaches even if they have less experience than the gym owner, that’s working locally. That’s been doing it for a decade. They’re charging like 3 grand, 4 grand for like 4, 5, 6-month packages online without even certain people in person. So, it’s all possible. It just comes down to how.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. It comes down to packaging and sales what sounds like to me.
George Liu: Yes.
Josh Peacock: One of the big things that I keep hearing you because you’ve mentioned this a few times now when you’ve gone through your case studies and through the mechanics of how to do it is having a front end offer that really that overall that lifetime value of that customer. So, you need to have something on the front end. I think I know this is a huge problem. I know it’s a problem with gyms but I definitely know by experience from working in martial arts schools that that the ones that are not successful or the ones that are struggling really bad, they have a really terrible knack for it’s just free trials, free trials, free trials, free trials, free trials. There’s nothing that signals value about the program like a trial cost maybe, and there’s no, you’re at the point where the only way to make your money back is to have them on some sort of long-term contract or to bet on them to be there for a year on a month-to-month basis. Can you give us some tips on how we can think about putting together good front-end offers?
George Liu: That’s a good question. So, in terms of how to package a front and offer. What I would go to is how to build an irresistible offer, right. So, when it comes to marketing in layman terms essentially like if you have an offer that’s really good, right. So, let’s say like if you’re trying to like let’s take like real estate for example. Like if you’re trying to buy a house that’s like a 150 grand and then you walk up to the owner. It’s like, hey, like I’ll buy it for a million. And I’ll take everything off your hands and I’ll hand it in cash. It’s like would the owner say yes? Of course, they would, right. It’s like, wait, why would I not do that right. So, essentially like it’s like that, right. But the way you go about doing is important and before I dive into that though. The other piece in which you mentioned even though, I agree with you 100%. I think free trials and low bear offers they often times they end up hurting more than that helps unless they have a very strong brand recognition behind it. Like for franchise and so and so forth, right. Like those people, right.
And the person that’s taking up on the free trial they understand that it’s like the price point and so and so forth. However, I actually think, we can dive into what most people want which is what’s the shiny thing of how do we package an irresistible offer, which is what most people would want. However, what I really believe what most people need is having a really core gap sales process that no matter who it is, who’s coming in from the front end, whether it’s through a free trial or low barrier or 12 weeks or 6 week or whatever entry-level offer or beginner program. They have a choreographed sales process where you get to know prospects at such a fundamental level and you can develop a program that makes sense and you sell them to the goals and then you charge a high head tick amount. That’s actually the secret. Because if we were to look across the board across all let’s say gym owners or martial arts schools or yoga studios for free trials. Like if I were to ask them hey like what is your sales process look like. Chances are, it’s either not very strong or doesn’t exist or it takes place like in the form of like yeah, like we give them a free week and our product speaks for itself. If they love it, they’ll join.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. It’s like because like when a person’s walking through the door, there’s reasons why they’re walking through the door through your doors and there’s a reason why they’re doing it today. So, your job actually as a business owner to figure out, hey, what is that reason? In a non-combative or aggressive way or push you away but it’s okay like if you have a sales process in which you’re able to do 30 minutes, get to know a person’s goals in terms of where they are, where they want to go, and mass something out for them. I mean, you’ll convert free trials, low-bury offers, anything you want at a very high ticket as well. So, that’s actually the real secret, right. It’s similar to how, if you look across any, take a step back from health and fitness. If you look across like any industries when it comes to sales people specifically and this is also another group issue in my opinion.
If you look across any salespeople in any company, there’s a huge difference between the top sales person versus the bottom salespeople. And where business owners in my opinion often times make a mistake is that they believe like, oh like, well, I’m not a sales person. I don’t care about sales. I don’t want to do it, right. What could really help them out whether it’s getting new people on the door. Well just keeping existing members, which is the relationship building or recruiting and hiring the right team member and building a career for them and retaining them just come down to understanding of sales. And if they just chose to understand and ask themselves the question, what makes a really strong salesperson, top-level sales person versus bond level, and how do I start learning to become the top-level salesperson for my business? They’ll succeed. They’ll succeed.
But going back to what we’re talking about before, the irresistible offer, actually very closely tangents what I was mentioning on the back end as well. So, the way I see is the offer on the front end which is ideally what gets people in the door and then a sales process that’s able to convert them in person, right. For a front-end offer, he would be able to do much better than me. Search up this dude, Al Chimozi, 100 million dollars offer, I don’t know if you’ve read it, really good book.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. I have his Gym Launch Book. I don’t think I haven’t read that one.
George Liu: Yeah, his 100-million dollar offer. I won’t lie. It’s a masterpiece. It’s a very well put together, right? It’s like, I mean, the man is like really knowledgeable, right. So, if you want to put it together, I would spend one day to patch that together or work with someone that already knows how to do it or something that’s proven. That would be the simplest way. However, to elaborate further upon that. The reason why an irresistible offer is important is because picture like this, right. It’s like, if you were to take a step back, if you were to walk down the street, if you’re a gym owner. Let’s say you offer a group fitness or your martial arts school owner, whatever it may be. You’re going to hand out 100 flyers. What an irresistible offer does is essentially like, if you hand out a hundred flyers to a hundred random people, that’s ideally people that you serve. One of them says, hey, Covid’s ended. We’re back. Come in. Smiley face. Which is not really an offer, right. If you could just, right.
And then another thing that says like for the case of let’s say like a health and fitness gym, right. It’s like free 21-day lifestyle transformation challenge or a free 21-day metabolism kickstart or whatever it may be, right. Tone and trim challenge. You name it, right. It’s like out of 100 people which one would, how many people would say yes or be intrigued about option one which is like covid’s ended. We’re bad. Yeah. And how many people would be more interested? It’s like, huh, what is that. Oh, wow. It includes so many of these things. That’s interesting. That’s essentially what an offer is and why it’s so important. Because the same principle in in terms of how that intrigues curiosity within people with physical flyers that you do the same thing on the front end when you’re leveraging with paid media with Facebook and Instagram.
In terms of how you craft that, it comes down to getting really clear on who is it that you serve. What kind of results you want to deliver to them? And then actually figuring out how. But essentially what the book dives into is you go step by step. Okay, so who is it the ideal client authority that you serve? Right, let’s start there, right. And when they start to work with you often times where do they start from? Where are they? For a gym that that serves gym pop, right. It’s like often time it’s like weight loss. Oftentimes.
Josh Peacock: Yep.
George Liu: Because a good chunk of the US is overweight slash obese, right. So, if weight loss then it’s like okay well if someone’s starting off from weight loss how much weight are they looking to lose and what have they tried and all these things. Like that has to take into consideration and you also map out well where do they want to go, right. It’s like well they want a body in which they feel good about. They want to be happy. They want to look in the mirror and be like damn like, this is amazing, right. So, they want to be able to like put on their clothes and be like Holy Shit, I lost a few belts. Like yeah, belt sizes, right. That’s what they want, right? So, so if that’s what they want, you have to be able to go through it. Okay, well, step by step, what do they need to do to be able to achieve those results? But it’s losing 25 or 30 or 45. What are they? How many pounds? But most importantly, how they achieve that feeling, right. It’s going to map it all step by step.
So, it can begin with for example, well, probably like both portions need to be tackled like exercise as well as nutrition, right. It’s like for them to get the results that they want. Okay, so let’s start with, if we want to start with what are all the objections or complaints that they would have, the challenge they would have, you just list it all out. All of it, get really creative. Same thing for nutrition. Get really creative, right. And then once you identify the problem slash challenges, how do you solve for it with a solution? Right? So, let’s say a nuanced example would be and he actually gave that this example in the book. When it comes to nutrition, the very first thing is like, well, I got to find time to shop for healthy groceries, right. It’s like well and also healthy groceries like that’s a pain in the butt. Oh, it’s going to cost a lot of money, right. It’s like, oh, I don’t know what food to grab, right. It’s like, so, in those cases, all those challenges, if you flip them around, you can turn them into solutions and different products you kind of build out to solve those problems, right.
So, in the book like one of the things that I think he mentioned he built out for his gym was let’s say like a grocery shopping list or something along the lines of that, right. It’s like that’s able to do XYZ, so you can make healthy grocery shopping with take place within five minutes in a way that’s cheaper than what you were doing before.
Josh Peacock: Nice.
George Liu: So, essentially mapping it off step by step. What are all the things you could fill in to help a person go from A to Z and then package it and also naming it in the right way in a way that intrigues curiosity and piques curiosity. Without diving to the really deep nuances, that’s where I would start. Yeah, in terms of packaging that resistance.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. Okay. So, extracting all that, you want to find out who it is you serve and what their most common problems are.
George Liu: Yes.
Josh Peacock: And then you want to put together something that’s, I think he calls it stacking or unbundling is what Alex called it. Where you list everything, you get out. Every system, every service, every product, everything that gets involved with it. You want that at full force, right. And full focality to their attention. And then, that’s where you can start to slap a big price on there and say, we’re going to get you from A to B you’re going to get all these things but here’s what it’s going to cost to get there. That’s where you they decide hey is my pain big enough to is it going to get me over this mark, so I can pay this and if they’re really interested in solving that problem. Then yes, they will pay the money and they will pay the money. I really like Smack limiting beliefs. I know I still have limiting beliefs as well but I really like smashing limiting beliefs because I used to think well, I can’t charge more than $100 for Taekwondo lessons or something like that or nobody can charge more than $200 to go for a gym membership.
But if your amenities are nice if you get personal training or this or that. Like there’s ways that you can make money and add services in and products and make it that attractive and still make your money back and still bring your profits up.
George Liu: 100%. And I think what ultimately matters is, it’s the end result, right. Because I think that’s something that that we forget just as business owners and also service providers, right. It’s like pretend you you’re going to a dentist to get your teeth checked up, right. It’s like and they find a cavity, right. It’s like and if they find a cavity like would you rather then, just like do whatever it is that they do and take care of it that day. Like within like 10 minutes ideally or would you rather than just be like okay well I’m going to flex my expertise, teach you all about teeth and then for the next week, every single week you’ll come in, right. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, like I’m good.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: Yeah, and something that we, sometimes like things that we find it valuable are prospects, the people we serve, like, the less is more. And often times just overcoming that limiting belief of being able to charge more and just comes down to how you communicate it. It should communication because any service-based business, what you’re doing is you’re essentially communicating air if you think about it.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: It’s like you’re communicating air. It’s like hey like there’s nothing tangible with the like product to hold, like so.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. Exactly. The funny thing about your illustration there with the cavity is that you know there’s also the anxiety of the longer the next appointment is out the more worried you are about the cavity and then you start to get anxious about the solution too so.
George Liu: Yes.
Josh Peacock: So, hit it quick. Hit it quick, because if you don’t hit it quick, that anxiety is going to cause people to lose their motivation. Either go somewhere else to get a solution or to engage in some sort of self-destructive behavior that’s going to be the problem worse and they’re just going to leave. Which I know that’s a big problem especially in the martial arts too is that you get these problems as you’ve done martial arts for a certain period of time start to hit these plateaus. And if you don’t understand how to guide a student through that whole life cycle and set expectations upfront properly, they’re just going to drop out. Because their motivation’s going to take. They weren’t prepared for that plateau. Yeah.
George Liu: And building off of that manually I couldn’t agree more and I think there’s a lot of value in just service-based providers first service-based businesses really prioritizing early results, fast wins. Like emotional wins as fast as possible as well. Because the earlier they buying on the process, the more they trust the process and from there, a relationship starts building then you enter the relationship building phase, right.
Josh Peacock: Absolutely.
George Liu: And then that’s when you can really help them stick with it when they off, not if, right.
Josh Peacock: Absolutely, yeah. Setting those strong expectations upfront and putting those, I guess you call them anchors in that you can pull, you can tug on to pull somebody back in or prevent them from falling out. A lot of people don’t realize what goes into that because they don’t understand psychology of buying or the psychology of motivation and staying involved in something even when it gets tough because it’s always going to get tough.
George Liu: Yes.
Josh Peacock: You got to get the quick wins at first and it’s going to get tough somewhere. It’s always especially in fitness always going to get tough. The weight’s going to go up.
George Liu: Yep.
Josh Peacock: You’re going to you’re going to start feeling like you don’t want to get under 300 pounds in the bar or whatever else you’re doing.
George Liu: It’s kind of like Ronnie Coleman, right. He says like every like everyone gets like everybody want to get a really **** big but ain’t nobody wants to lift like heavy **** waist, right. It’s like 500 pounds like, right.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: Same idea. Yeah.
Josh Peacock: Absolutely. Absolutely. So how do you guide them through that? Excellent. So, that’s the front end. We’ve got our investment money upfront. We’ve given them a great offer to help maximize the lifetime value of that customer but hopefully they stay around so that we get towards the back end of it. How should we, what considerations should go into setting like your monthly gym price, right? Because you said we shouldn’t be doing like paid in fulls, with everybody. We’ve got to be careful with that. So, we want that constant cash flow for the broadest part our member base. What should go into setting your price points, because you can’t really trust the market, right. You already established that.
George Liu: So, when it comes to paid in full, I will actually like once context matters, right. Because if you have a paid acquisition system that’s profitable where you know month in and month out you have XYZ coming in, right. It’s a X number of people coming in every single month. Then at that point like paid full is actually like a really great leverage because that’s just.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: It’s cash now versus cash later.
Josh Peacock: Yep.
George Liu: Plus, if you modify your pricing and you’re charging at a price point. That’s really good. That’s going to be very helpful right. When it comes to a business, one thing that’s important to take into account is also a gross margin. How much does it cost for you to provide, how much does it cost for you to provide your service for every single additional person you take on? so, and service-based business like let’s say for a gym that office group fitness. The gross margin how you calculate that is, like how do how much do you pay your trainer or your coach per session, right. Again, what are you paying, what are your clients paying you per session, right? Ideally, you want to shoot for an 80% gross margin, right. So, you could do those one or two ways either keeping your trainer slash coaches cost on the lower end or charge them more which is the ladder is usually what I’d recommend, right. Because like the longer you keep your trainers and coaches, the happier they are, the more they feel like they’re contributing towards something meaningful that the longer they stay on. I think that for the long term, it plays out more favorably.
In terms of on the back end, once someone comes in from a friend and offer or let’s say a free week or anything, it’s what I firmly believe, it’s almost always helpful to actually have a once again, going back to sales, have a very deep conversation in terms of where this person is on where they want to be, ideally, let’s say like a year from now on. Like let’s say 12 months now, hey like, this is where you are today, right. 12 months from now on, who do you see yourself as, right. It’s like where do you want to be physically mentally emotionally spiritually, right? It’s like what kind of habits do you need to maintain for you to step into that person, right? And getting really real right it’s like that comes down to like a standardized self-process right. A process doesn’t make it less intimate or less personal. It’s just a process that you execute on, but then when you’re in the conversation you’re there, you’re present with that person, right.
Because like If you’re putting someone through a front-end offer, let’s say whether it’s you’re starting off with like 28-day thing or even 21-day thing or 30-day thing or a 6-week thing or 8 week or 12 week, whatever it may be. It’s like if you just plop a standardized process, a checkpoint if you will, provided you’ve done a really great job servicing them and also just helping them shift their beliefs, holding them accountable, building a relationship midway through like you can just have that chat and you can about where they want to be long term, right. And you can plant that seed as early as you need to, right. It’s like at the point of sale, right. It’s like just by dropping to nuggets it’s like hey like yeah, we’ll get you started for 12 weeks help but this is a long-term play. Because I want you to be able to keep the results that you get, right. So, that’s something we’re chat down the line as well.
So, start dropping those hints dropping those seats so that by the time that you have that check in with them where you discuss long term within let’s say 12 months, where they want to be. It doesn’t come off as a surprise or doesn’t come off pushy or weird. But once you have that dialogue, then you could just once again like irresistible offer for 12 months and be like, hey like I have something in mind that I think could really help you like this is something that we actually offer for anyone that’s coming through this program. Want to hear about it? Totally okay it’s not. It’s like yeah, for sure. It’s like, cool. So, this is what we call you name it whatever you want but like for us, we name it like year of change right it’s like hey like for this year of change program. Essentially includes what you’re doing right now. However, we have things added on top, because we’re in the first phase right now, right. It’s like it’s just more about pattern interrupt and breaking your habits. But then secondly, it’s like how do you make sure that this is sustainable it’s a lifelong change. But how do you have this be ingrained within your identity?
So, you see yourself as a person that works out, that eats healthily, right. That’s when you can offer maybe additional offerings, right. Whether it’s transitioning from like if you offer meal plans or what it may be into like teaching them how to count macros and so on and so forth, right. Or a high level of service. Ideally, let’s say, lower than what you charge them on the front end, right. So, so what that looks like is like for example, like in our community, when they’re selling like a 12-week package for $1200. On the back end, they would convert them for like let’s say a year at 300 bucks a month the same exact service with more thrown in. So, that just comes out of the process, but a lot of the extra pieces they have to be put together as well.
Josh Peacock: Sure, cool. So, my last question is kind of a, I guess a pandora’s box. But how is it that you can take a business owner from working all hours that an entrepreneur works. 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 hours a week to allowing them to generate multiple 6 figures a year by working only an hour a day. How in the world does that work?
George Liu: Good question. So, the short, non-sexy answer is bulk of them is always the business owner. If the business owner wants that, they’ll optimize for that, right. It’s like there’s nothing we can actually possibly do as a marketing partner that cares deeply about our clients where we can jump in there and rewire their mindset and be like, hey, like we want you to work on so little hours, right. Because at the end of the day, like our business that we build is it’s a vehicle for us to live the life that we want to live, right. So, it comes down to what the business owner’s motivation is, because there two things that we can really help with, right. It’s like, well, there, when I take it, when I look at through, through the lens of like, let’s say, team members, right. For us, for our team members, in our internal team, if someone’s ever not doing, what I think would be good for them to do, or what I think is important for them to do, is usually because of one of two reasons, right. They’re not motivated to do it, they just don’t care about it, they don’t know how, or they don’t know that I want them to do it, right. So, that’s for like an internal team member of ours, right.
If you apply that same framework towards let’s, say clients, right. It’s like the only situations that we can help with it’s like if they just don’t know how to do it, but they’re motivated to do it, right. because if they just don’t know how to do it how to free themselves up, it’s just not their business that’s something we can jump in. It’s like okay well, it’s the way of building a business is kind of like a Christmas tree, right. At the beginning, the base expands and then you got to trim. But it’s like initially like for you to get out from the stage of business you’re currently at, you need to expand more of what you’re doing responsibilities. There will be going through a more period of overwhelm as you’re learning new things for it to work, but then you got to trim your responsibilities. As in what you were doing before you have to hit it off. Because like as a gym owner or any business owner there are going to be things that you don’t want to do.
Like when we talk to our clients it’s like you probably don’t love cleaning toilets. But does that mean it doesn’t get done? It’s like no of course. Like someone needs to do it. Like not you. Someone else right. So, we have to then trim the responsibilities that they’re previously had by delegating to another person with the bring on, right. And then it’s like the next level of responsibilities where it’s like okay well once you bring on someone, then you also then increase additional responsibilities right. Because then you take on the responsibility of training and managing person, right. It’s like or even starting to understand like okay How do I recruit and hire and train and manage a person? And those, each one of those subs, we dive into those, there are additional responsibilities there, right.
By going through this iterate process, you get to a point where it’s like, ultimately, if you’re able to put yourself in a position where you have the right team members on board, right. So, you have the right people in the right seat, doing the right things, and all of the responsibilities that you expanded, and you trimmed and expanded and trimmed, when you’re able to get to a point where it’s like, all the responsibilities are taken over either by software or automation or the people that you have brought on. Then you get a step away. Then at that point, it’s like the business able to run itself, right. It’s like it’s what we call like passing the vacation test, right. But it’s an iterate process to get there and the prerequisite to afford that is if the business owner wants to attain that themselves, right. It’s like if they want that because not everyone wants that because we do talk to a lot of gym owners who like love what they do and loves the 12-hour base just like coaching on the floor, right. It’s like in that case it’s like we’re not here to like force anyone.
Josh Peacock: Yeah.
George Liu: But there’s a standardized process, right. It’s like it’s usually like more so personalized and we got them through.
Josh Peacock: Yeah. From what I’ve read from like the [47:27] [Inaudible] and things like that. There’s a number of ways to hack it. But what you really want to do is like you said, you want to figure out what are the jobs that need to be done? How much can a given person handle those jobs and then how many people do you need to handle those jobs like.
George Liu: Yes.
Josh Peacock: And then as you hire more, you realize, okay. So, these People do these things. This person needs to manage these people doing these things and then you just figure out who needs to do what? How it can be managed without you there, so you can step out and then train up the people to do what you’ve done. Which I guess is there’s an implicit part of that is you’ve actually got to understand what you did, right.
George Liu: Yeah. That’s why it’s so important, right. And I think when I do see like business owners just jump over trying to shortcut it like cool. I’m going to hire someone that they got it. It’s like there’s no way they got it.
Josh Peacock: Yeah, I just want to be able to, I hear that all the time. I just want to hire somebody and just let them go, but doesn’t work. It never works that way.
George Liu: There’s no way.
Josh Peacock: It never works that way. They got to learn how to use all your stuff. They got to learn like how it, all your tools. Maybe you didn’t have tools. So now you have like a routine that you did and they don’t have that routine. So, they take way longer to do. So, you’ve got to document it yourself and think about how can I make this easier for myself and then document that and then be like alright let’s do a trial run with somebody. Work out the kinks that way. And then it gets easier with each new employee.
George Liu: And one of the things that I’ve learned is that the role of a business owner especially earlier on is to learn what responsibility. Well, this actually goes like in any stages, right. The way I see and understand business is like there’s like this think of it as an imaginary list of responsibilities that magically gets created as your perspective shift and you identify what needs to happen for you to get to where you want to go and grow the business, right. It’s like it just these responsibilities magically pop up most of the times in your head and it gets to a point where it’s like you realize all these responsibilities. Well, then you also dive into like which of these responsibilities do I prioritize them when. That’s the hard part about business, right. But then once you have identified the responsibilities that that are able to have the highest output in the business, earlier on for most business owners just sales, just sales. Like they just, like for example, I coach a lot of agency owners as well in a community with a lot of agency owners from literally zero to 30K a month it’s just sales, sales.
It’s like you just learn set appointments and close appointments. That’s it. And because through the reps you get better.
Josh Peacock: Right.
George Liu: Yeah, that’s how I see it.
Josh Peacock: Excellent. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on. This has been really awesome. Where can people find you if they want to work with you or reach out to you and pick your ring.
George Liu: Yeah man. GeorgeL1022 on Instagram. My team has been bugging me about content so I’ve just been pushing out more content out there. So, some more to come. I think that that’ll be the best move. And if anyone wants to shoot me a message on Instagram feel free to shoot me a message there. That’ll be easy.
Josh Peacock: Sweet. Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming on and I hope we can do this again sometime.
George Liu: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Josh. Appreciate it. Enjoyed it.
