Chris Lynton From Tribefit - Interviewed On The Remote Revolution Show
Interviewer 1: Chris, thanks for joining us today on the remote revolution show.
Chris: No problem.
Interviewer 1: Yeah. So, it's awesome to have you on here. It's great to read your story and the bio that you sent me yesterday. But for the guys who were listening, where did Chris come from in the fitness industry? How did he get into it and what's the kind of journey for you to get started here?
Chris: Probably like for most people. Probably like some of yourselves, but pretty long story. I’ll try to keep it short and sharp as possible. But a thousand twists and turns. And as you kind of try and work it all out and anyone in the fitness space and fitness industry that kind of started off in that path and wonder where people, you know, face-to-face or whatever it might be, you know, the struggles that come along with that and that’s trying to kind of work it out for yourself and find your gap, find the pocket that actually works.
So, kind of from, you know, at an early stage, I played a lot of rugby league, some professional level that kind of got me most interested in the fitness space. I loved it. I love training. I love the nutrition side, the performance side. And after getting out of that, I wasn't, unfortunately, good enough to make the most of those as a player; it would have been awesome, but that's all good.
From there, I kind of didn't know what to do. So, I did what most people did; went to uni; if I study, I'll get a degree, I'll come out and I'll get the dream job and life will be all good.
So, couple years after that, I got my bachelors of science, I came out, got some shitty jobs, it didn't really help. I've tried to work with some people one-on-one, I worked in a couple of gyms. One gym– I think I related the story yesterday. I'm just thinking back; I kind of had to be the last place I worked was a big gym called LA Fitness and I remember the manager, when I first went there, the manager told me how to get clients was to hang around the gym as much as possible and maybe go hang out in the sauna and take my shirt off and hopefully, if I'm looking good and shredded enough, guys will ask me what I'm doing and that's how I’ll get clients.
And um after about a week or two of doing that, I realized that that was a pretty shit way to try and get clients and it was really pretty short-lived. So, I kept studying myself–
Interviewer 1: Can I say I've heard that one before?
Chris: Oh, man. Trying to get back in time, I thought I was lapping up, I thought, “No, this guy knows what he's doing. He's the manager of the gym. He's got to be killing it and if I just do what he says, then then I'll be killing it”. And funnily enough, it didn't work. I'm pretty sure he probably didn't stay manager for too long either.
So, mate, I didn't love that whole, you know, chasing people left right and center, sort of. Almost, I thought I didn't maybe have enough education and that's what it was. I went and did my masters in Sports and Nutrition Science. I ended up doing heaps of PR and chasing my stuff, been in magazines. I got interviewed in the news; number one news channel in Australia and once again crickets from what I thought up. I had Masters before, I was in magazines, I was on TV being interviewed and I'd be killing it as a fitness expert. But unfortunately, that didn't happen either.
You know, I was working at gyms here. I think you guys have– I don’t know in the US, I'm not sure if the UK has gyms too who change in {inaudible 03:41}. Well, I ended up working there for about 32 thousand {inaudible 03:45} in a year. In uni, that was about {inaudible 03:48} and I did that for about six months; that was shit. And pretty much, when I was there, because it was so shit– oh yeah, I've read a couple of motivational books and that got me excited to try and start my own business.
I had all the contacts, I borrowed money, bought $40 thousand worth of supplements, traded these really terrible A4 black and white home-printed brochures and I started selling to all the clubs that I knew; the 40 clubs, people I was training at the gym and it was good. I made some money from it. I paid back some of my debt; my duty debt. But then once I sold it all out, I realized that I was running short on friends to sell it to and in clubs and scrolling through my phone, I was running out of contact.
So, once again, I had no way to do my marketing, no way to generate clients other than just trying to sell to the people around me. And so, I didn't end up buying any more of them, because I knew I wouldn't be able to sell it and I’ll just have a whole lot of stuff in the garage.
And I got reached out by a supplement company, one of the biggest ones in Australia. They heard what I did. They hired me. They were well known in Australia, but once again, I was trying to sell their product again to guys that wanted to buy, you know, BSN and Ronnie Coleman and Cutler; sponsored brands, Muscle Tech and all that sort of stuff.
And once again, I found myself selling stuff that no one wanted, because that company didn't have a market itself. And it was kind of soul-crushing, I guess, selling stuff that, you know, chasing people left, right and center that don't want to buy this stuff.
So, I kind of, at that stage, said to myself, “Well, I'm never going to sell anything again that someone doesn't want to have or what he doesn’t want to buy. I need to learn how to create demand. Otherwise, I'm always going to be chasing people and trying to sell shit that no one really wants to buy from me. I must certainly create a demand”.
So, I ended up getting introduced to my first mentor, worked with him for five years. We started a company in Australia when I was working with him. Went from a million to 32 million in five years; all in Australia. I was TV, newspaper ads, radio ads, all offline; this is before online was kind of big. We’ll spend like six-seven million dollars a year. You've got to write ads. I was working with all the best copywriters from the US and all that sort of stuff. And it led me to really cut my teeth in the marketing side. And it was all direct response. Everything was direct response; everything self-funded.
And after about six years, they sent me over to Europe actually to UK, to set up an office over there and test the UK, US and Europe, all online advertising because the printing, radio is little bit different, regulatory wise. And that's when online was kind of kicking off.
They gave me a nice budget. I was doing every type of online advertising possible. I had a good team. We could have all this split test. So, I learned and hate some stuff really fast.
The company sold over there a percentage share of the sale; which is pretty awesome and then that's when I kind of started off and thought how I'm going to do it for myself. I started the marketing agency; which is our digital marketing agency. Worked with a lot of big fitness companies in Australia, a couple of public companies, a couple overseas. And then because of what we're doing, we got introduced to a couple of big names in the space now, back in the day. And actually, we spent days with Taylor {inaudible 07:33} here in Melbourne, when they're about a year in the business. And the week later, we spent a week with Emily Sky and they were kind of direct competitors, obviously.
Emily Sky wanted us to be exclusive. They ended up giving us a sizeable share of the business. They were about one and a half years in the business with multiple six-figure at the time. In about 12 to 30 months, we tripled it to doing multiple second figures and ended up exiting. A lot of conversation around that. But they were awesome. They were absolutely killing it. We came to our age with them.
Well, from there, we kept getting ads from fitness dude, “You know, can you help us do what you did with Emily” or whatever it might be. They heard about what we're doing. But unfortunately, you know, the big companies were able to pay us what we were charging, those little guys couldn't and we just kept turning people away for like about a year, a year and a half and it sucks.
So, we ended up starting Tribefit out of necessity, because we coached people on how to do it all themselves. They didn't have to pay my agency retainers every month when they couldn't afford. So, it is, you know, kind of the whole analogy of you could teach a man to fish, ate for life kind of thing.
So, that's how Tribefit came apart and then the coaching arm of my business. I don't have a lot to do with the agency anymore. It's kind of self-sufficient. My business partner runs that and we've been running Tribefit now for about two years, I'll say two and a half years. And yeah, just absolutely loving it; helping people all over the world. We've been massively successful. I'm really proud of all the stuff I've been able to do.
Interviewer 2: Awesome, dude. I love hearing that story and how you've– one of the big things I took away from all of it, to be honest is the audience piece. That you were talking at the start of like you basically did not have an audience.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: So, you were talking about when you were in the gym, like go into the sauna, look all fucking ripped and lean and you might get a few people to sign up, then you're knocking on doors, trying to build an audience. And it's like you've been on this consistent hunt, trying to find how you can grow your audience. So, I think that's–
Basically, now, what essentially you teach and provide, service wise, for fitness professionals is all about growing that audience, growing that community. I know you've got your Facebook group, your free group, which is awesome. And that's all the same sort of thing; right? So, was that a conscious effort from you just to go, “Right, this is now about me just being able to grow a following” and do that for other people?
Chris: Yeah. Well, I guess from my sort of things, the time I did with my mentor, that was all tally sales and inbound leads and advertising in a direct response PR. And literally, that taught me that if you can have control over your lead flow and your client generation, if you can have complete control over that and predictability over that, then you're never going to have an issue. If you're trying to sell shit that;
a. Has no demand
b. That no one wants
you're going to have to kind of just hang around in the sauna all day and do these ones and hope for the best kind of. But it's exactly just admitted. You know, there's free strategies to building audiences. Paid strategies; that's kind of my background. The most, we spent, like I said, a lot of money. A lot of advertising allowed me to test a lot of things, learn a lot of things. And I guess the free strategies that is something that I've consciously probably worked on for the past two or three years, because it is such a good balance to having the two for a number of reasons.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. So, let's take a little bit deeper and try and get into the kind of nitty-gritty stuff. If we've got someone who's starting out in the fitness industry, let's say they've got their branding on point, they know their audience, their avatar, their niche, they've got that all dialed in.
Chris: Yeah
Interviewer 2: They may be generating, I don't know, let's say enough to spend three to five hundred bucks a month on ads, but they have no real audience right now. What's your typical strategy for these guys? Bear in mind, if their audience is on Facebook or Instagram, that's where you’re hanging out right now, what's your typical approach these guys?
Chris: Yeah, great question mate. So, pretty much. I guess, first and foremost, a lot of people we speak to have this preconceived conception that you need to be an Instagram celebrity or you need to have a huge Facebook following to be successful online. We've helped people with literally no following; people that are, you know, self-confessed introverts, that don't really like social media.
The only way to do that is through advertising. Because like I talked about, you've got the free strategies, you’ve got the advertising strategy. If you don't like the free side of things, there's the content side of things; you have a high reliance on one or the other. So, it really comes down to your own personality and what suits.
But going back to your question. If there was someone that knew their niche, they had a couple clients, they had a bit of a background, how do you scale your business starting with advertising? First and foremost, it's about finding that, as you said, you can get your audience is on Instagram or Facebook, but it's about finding specifically where they are.
The kind of is the first mistake most people make when they go to ads is thinking; “Hey, if I just write an ad and I type in males and I go into the interest targeting bar and type in weightlifting and then Facebook will just suggest a million other things that I have nothing to do and I’ll just start clicking away and it's got to work”.
And unfortunately, it's about you know the age-old message to market-match. So, you’ve got to have the right message and then you've got to find the right market and you're going to match those two together. You can have a rocking ad, you can have a phenomenal ad and if your targeting is off, it’s going to tank. Or vice versa; you could have the best targeting the world, knowing exactly where your audience are hanging out on Facebook or on Instagram, but if you have a shitty ad, it's going to tank. So, you've got to match the two together.
And a lot of people can write a good ad, but then they've got no idea about targeting. So, when they speak to me though, “Chris, I can't ads to work. My ad sucks”. I say, “Well, it's because you don't understand the strategy behind the whole thing”.
So, it really comes down to what we teach all our clients. It’s an activity called scouting. And scouting is about finding; going online first and doing your research to find out what pages your target client is hanging out, where or what pages are they following, what interests have they, rather than just letting Facebook and just typing in and guessing. Actually, doing the research work, finding where it is. And then when it comes to the ads, it's so easy; you know where they're hanging out, you know where they are and now you know I'm just going to drop an irresistible message in front of their eyes and it's rock and roll.
Interviewer 2: Yeah, man. So, that's something that we're massive on. I think when I read Nicholas Kuzmic’s Give, he talks about in there, he goes, “Marketing isn't about manipulation. It's about matching”. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong is they try and they try and think, “Right, I can just appeal to everyone and I'll manipulate them or persuade them unethically into buying my shit” and you're just going to have an uphill battle from then on in.
And second part, which is really interesting, of what you're saying there is that a lot of guys, like you say, can write kill a copy or they can write decent copy, but they're broadcasting it to the completely wrong audience. And I've been guilty of doing exactly what you've just said before where I've just gone, “Oh, weight loss right here is a load of big brands that people follow. I think they'll kind of follows Slimming World and Weight Watchers. Yeah, let's bang those in” instead of actually getting specific. Like I'm sure you might do targeting where you might actually target people who like Emily Sky or Kayla Incidence; that might be a more direct strategy than go for the big companies.
So, when it does come to the targeting, is there an approach that you follow or is it simply you get the guys to do their research obviously and find specific influencers or specific companies who then you will then go and target?
Chris: Yeah, good question; very good question. So, pretty much spot on. A lot of people– just going back to what you said, a lot of people think when you write an ad or you write a post and you click the old goose button and put 10 or 15 bucks to it and then, you know, you're going to have a thousand clients coming back. And that's kind of the worst option because Facebook just shoots it to everyone, every gender, every age such as so.
In terms of having success with advertising, let's just say for example, you know your audience, you know your market and you can you can write an ad that has a bit of sizzle to it. You know, and there's this simple template to it, there's as simple structures to it, they're very straightforward.
In regards to a targeting perspective, like we talked about before, the scouting activity that we take everyone through, is a couple exercises to scouting and searching for your audience online; where they're hanging out. And then what we do is we give them a couple exercises where they test the pages to see how interactive, engaged the pages are and open to an actual offer for what they're going to put out. And you do that through three techniques.
And then as soon as you get some traction in a certain page and you're able to quantify the few that that's where they're hanging out, then you know, “For sure, if I put the right messages and I blow this thing up and get it in front of a hundred thousand that are of there or the five hundred thousand there is going to work.
So, it comes down to that; it's the research first and then as I'm sure you guys know, then it's about testing; setting up your advertising the right way. So, you've always got to have a couple of ads and you've always got to have a couple interest. Some of them will be shit, some of them will tank, some of them will rock.
But unfortunately, where most people go wrong is they do one ad, they do one campaign and they just click away and they just fill up all these different interests. And one day, they get a phenomenal result, the next six months, they don't get another client and they’ll pull their hair again, “What went wrong?”
It's because there is a small pocket in there that is very profitable, but unfortunately, because you didn't set it up correctly, you don't know where and because you don't know, you can't tap into it predictably. And unfortunately, you're just going to be doing these ones again and wondering why one day it works and then to six months later, you pump money into and it doesn't work. It's because you have no control, you had no idea what worked.
And so, it's important to have a couple of different interests; at least two to three different ads. You know, you can write one ad and put three different images to it and put it out there. Facebook will tell you which ones worked, which one is didn't. Cut that cut the losers, ride the winners. You know, if something sucks, then you know it.
Really, you don't need to spend a lot of money. I was doing a training the other day. You know, if you have five interests and you put $20 to each, if two of those interests come back with a lead and a client for example and three of them don't, awesome. You've spent 100 bucks and you and you've identified two highly profitable advertising targeting spaces that you can scale and ride your business on that for some time. So, that's the important part; tracking and the mindset of how you need to set it up for the learning.
Interviewer 2: Yeah, I think one of the things a lot of fit pros are very guilty of is they're really fucking lazy when it comes to creating ads. So, they will just batch, like you said, as many interests as they can one in one bucket and as you say, you can't really identify that.
But say they do split these up, the next fear that a lot of fit pros are going to face is, “Alright, a hundred bucks?” We know in the grand scheme of things that that's nothing to do a test and to find your audience, but these guys out there who are concerned about that, they worked and they don't see an immediate return on their ads, they will just go, “Fuck Facebook; ads don't work”. Like, “This is pointless. This is a waste of my time”.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: How do you approach that objection? Because I'm sure you get it all the time where someone spent two-three hundred bucks and they're like, “Fuck them. I haven’t got a client back”. They might have built their list, but they haven't sold any one yet and they have that immediate fear and they're like, “Screw you Facebook”, they go back to just knocking people’s doors. How do you approach that?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, good question. That's actually an awesome statement. And something that that I'm– because of having the background, such a strong direct response background, everything with direct response and if it were offline or online and you guys would know it and I'm kind of just telling this story; just saying it for who doesn't know. But with direct response, it's about knowing your return to every single dollar you spend and it's also about generating a return as quickly as possible; a return on investment; an ROI.
I've got a huge {inaudible 20:47} and I get really frustrated when I speak to people and they're like, “Hey, I'm building my business. I've spent five hundred a thousand dollars in advertising. You know, I'm getting dollar leads and you know, this is awesome” or whatever and then when you ask them, “What's the lead?” “Well, I got some email addresses because I had an e-book out there and I'm building my list; been doing this for two years and spent this much money or whatever, but I don't have a client yet. And I've got no idea what I'm going to do with this list and that's about it.
So, for me, whenever I talk about leads, you should have the shortest funnel to a return as possible. Why? Because if you said if you spend two or three hundred bucks and you get to me, my guess is you don't make any money back, then guess what you're going to do. You're going to give up.
You need to have– I'm not– me personally and you know, each to their own, but I'm not a huge fan of funnels that then requires 30 email autoresponders to go the next 90 days, to then hopefully build enough trust and then make an offer. I believe if you need funnels like that, then you're doing something else wrong. So, it's a dangerous place to play in. And when people say that, it is because they've got the strategy wrong.
Generally, if you've spent two or three hundred dollars on Facebook advertising and you've done it right, you should at least have had a couple of application calls from people; you may not have closed them and that's cool. It's a journey. Your conversions might not be through the roof or you might have screwed up and know where you screwed up. But at least, you know predictably, if you put in another hundred dollars, you'll get X number of calls. You only need to close one and you'll make two-three times the returns back completely.
The kind of the toughest thing with advertising it is an investor mindset. It is just like being a stockbroker. But unfortunately, a lot of people play with advertising like they're going to the casino and just kind of put it on black in and doing these ones and not really giving it much thought other than that, if that makes sense.
Interviewer 1: Yeah, I think it's huge when it comes to being in the right headspace when you're seeing the money go out.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 1: Because I've suppose you had before and they've been like, “Alright, it got to a few hundred dollars and there was no leads coming in. So, I just turned it off” and I was like, “Alright, like you know what was actually happening? Like did you look into it? Did you track anything? You know, did you look at the clicks? Were the clicks any good at all? Things like that.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 1: And the thing is we can't expect people to know that kind of stuff; right? So, you know, you've obviously spent the time to learn about the Facebook ads.
Chris: Yes.
Interviewer 1: And it's a shame that this stuff is not like– not more available and it's awesome what you're doing. I think it's super cool that you're making that kind of information more available.
I wanted to ask; what would you say is that people need in place before they perhaps run Facebook ads? Do they need any kind of systems sales, systems or do they need to know what their product is more? What does that kind of look like on the on the after-the-sale for someone who's starting out?
Chris: Yeah, awesome question. And I guess, just to go back to your point then is; what you actually hundred percent need when you first start advertising– if you don't have tracking in place, then you may as well just go to the casino and go to the slot machine. You’ve got about just as much chance to actually get a return.
And after you have you tracking in place, you need to have rules of thumbs on certain steps. And just as you said then, you know, your click-through rate or your clicks will happen fast. You'll get more dialed on that faster than you will your lead. Why? Because it is a process.
So, if you if you haven't gotten a lead but you're within your KPI's of say clicks or in engagement or, you know, your click-through rate, whatever it might be, then you know you should have the confidence it's all going to multiply out.
So, I always like to give {inaudible 25:30} when I talk about in lead measures and lag measures. Lag measures is the money in the bank. Lead measures are what happens before that. So, tracking, and you need to have rules or some KPI's to know early on if you should turn it off or if you need to ride this thing out because it's going to pay you back.
And by having that, it allows you to kind of you know put your finger on the pulse and go, “This is the good ad. This is the bad ad. Keep on, turn off” and then everything kind of flows on from there.
If your conversion– going back to your question. I always love to say that maybe you should, with the scouting activities, everything we teach them, we should be able to pick up two to three, even more; we've got a lot of people who do a lot more, but I say at least two to three clients with free strategies; putting your message out there in the right places, with your scouting. Why? Because you're confirming the theories that you had. You know that your message is working, you know where your market is, you've had sales calls, you've converted those calls, you've got the cash coming in, you've got the confidence and your sale call conversion rates are going to go up as well.
So, you should at least, through the scouting activity, be able to get a couple of grand in your bank with the free strategy and get some confidence up. It'll get your conversions up because you know what you're selling rocks, you know those clients got a great result and then you've had a bit of a track record, you've had a bit of experience. And at the same time, I always love to say to people, that way, you get two, three, four, five thousand dollars coming in from free strategies. All you need to do is put aside a small portion of that cash and put that back in your advertising to then scale and then that'll multiply on itself. That way you're actually never putting your own money down and it is not as scary, you've got the clients, you know it can work, you've done all of the work, you know where the market is, you know where the message is, you've had sales calls, you've done the delivery, and then it's just much more {inaudible 27:43} work.
So, from a headspace, it is a lot easier. Your conversions are going to be better, versus just going cold into ads and kind of not knowing what you're doing. And you're not actually investing your own money. You're investing in a small portion the cash it's already coming in.
So, from a psychological perspective, it is so much easier and come time and time and time again. That is that. I've got guys who just go straight to ads and they crush it. They go all the way, but only if you have that mindset. If you don't have that mindset, I would say 60 to 70 percent of people off the bat need to start with the free strategies first and it doesn't need to be a thousand clients; two or three clients. Prove your theory, have that confident, put a small amount of that cash back in your advertising, and it's much easier all you're doing is investing what you're making from your current clients, rather than pulling out of your back pocket and going to use these hundred bucks that'll work.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. One of the things we we've noticed, because we work with a lot of trainers who are brand new on the online space or they're transitioning right now and they haven't validated their product yet.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: And I know it's true of everyone, even though if we think our product is killer, if we haven't got enough social proof yet, we're going to second guess ourselves. And it's making sure that you do that validation piece and say to yourself, “I don't know. It could be five customers you're getting the kick ass testimonials from and of course, you going to use all of that as well.
But once you've done that, you'll see the confidence skyrocket. And that is the biggest thing with personal trainers. The hidden thing that's missing is the confidence piece. Because no one's going to buy shit from someone who's got no confidence. Like that's the truth of it. You can have the best-looking products in the world, the best website, if you get on a sales call with someone and you are just someone who's so, so insecure inside yourself, you ain't going to sell shit.
So, it's just a message to everyone out there as Chris is saying right now; like before you go spending money on ads, just make sure you are in the right place. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to sell. And like we talked about the investor mindset, you won't sit on your hands and you'll just start quitting stuff as quickly as possible.
Chris: Yeah. {crosstalk 29:44 –45} a hundred percent man. And that kind of reminds me of something that literally happens time and time again. I think this is pretty important for people to know. Literally, in our coaching, every single client that comes through, that I speak to, that comes to our program, we do what they're offering, we do the pricing, they know the right prices, we show them these instructions is what's happening in niche and all.
Couple of days before they launch, I'll speak to some of them. They're like, “Yes, this is phenomenal, cool. I got my pricing, rocking, all good”. I'll speak to them the week after the launch for a couple days after the launch and they'll text me and say, “Chris, this is awesome. I've got so many clients. I've launched with a big bang” and the first question I always ask them is, “What price do you charge?”
And honestly, about 80 to 90 percent of them will say, “Oh, I know we talked about this price, Chris. But I kind of pulled it back a little bit. You know, don't laugh at me”. And I even tell them on the first call. I say, “You know, in our training, we say don't get upset at yourself if you feel that way, but it's a mindset perspective”.
And then after– just one of the girls I was speaking to earlier– two sisters– they got, I think, 16 clients in this first week of launch and three of the clients on the call, they're doing, “God, that was cheap. We would have paid a lot more” and they were kicking themselves. And then afterward, straight away they increased their price. Why? Because they then saw the value in what they were doing because they had done it and they stopped devaluing themselves.
And that's just a journey. That's a journey you've got to go through; a personal journey. And even if I tell you, “Don't discount your services” most people will. And that's cool; but just knows that this is a journey. And straight after you do that, you'll kick yourself and go, “I should have listened to what Chris was saying; pricing wise”. But that’s human nature.
Interviewer 2: Yeah, one of the things to remember, for all the guys listening, is your current state of wealth, and I mean financial welfare, is not directly related to your customers financial wealth right now.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: And that's the thing to remember. If you're a new {inaudible 32:03}, you're starting out online or you've maybe even, you know, spent to jump on Chris's course or our course, whatever it is, on a credit card because you're so fucking pissed off with what you're currently doing, that you'd be like, “Screw this. I'm going all-in”. I'm sure you'll get some people like that. That's how I started by the way. Alright, I spent $8,000 on a credit card and luckily, it all works out.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: But that's what a lot of people do. And one of the things you've got to remember in that situation is if you have put that money onto the credit card and you are, you know, just living off baked beans and toast, it doesn't mean that the person that you're speaking to is doing that.
So, just always keep that in mind. Try and put yourself into the shoes. We talked about it with the target, in understanding your audience, but actually psychologically as well; what is that person going through? How do they live their day? How do they live their week? How do they live their month? What do they spend their money on? And once you see that and you can fill that and you hang around with these people, if you go to– I don't know, if you go to some upmarket restaurants or some shops, you'll see that people spend money all the time. And that is a complete different mindset shift and you've got to put yourself in that; where people are abundant with their money, instead of scarce like you might be right now because you're worried that your business is going to flop and crash and burn.
Interviewer 1: Solid. Yeah. Chris, I'd love to ask you. So, we've talked about what you do and how you do what you do and I think I admire your process as well. Because it's very rare I hear– I hear people who do Facebook Ads who are like, “Oh, we do this recon first, we go out there we find out what's working, what's not working and do the work”. There's a lot of people that are like, “Yeah, we're just going to bang an ad up see how it goes and you track the numbers and then we're going to change it and change it”. I used to do that. I used to do that a couple of years ago for local Facebook Ads, because it worked. It was easy.
Interviewer 2: It did work.
Interviewer 1: Did work. To a degree, some of them still does, luckily. But I love to hear that that you've got the proper process in place. But I wanted to ask you; why is it that you do what you do?
Chris: Why is it I do what I do? Well, like I said, we got the agency and I guess from my side of things, my business partner has more of, I guess, a traditional marketing background, bigger business marketing background and that side suit in really well. And from my side of things, it just really sucks, turning back people time and time again. You know, we were getting knocks on doors; not literally, but figuratively, of people that were like, “God, like I want to do this. I've such a passion, I've such a good message to share, I want to impact lives, you know I've seen this is my passion”.
And I guess, the reason why I told this long story of my journey at the start is I didn't just have one shitbox, I had multiple shitbox and it sucked. Like honestly, I remember when I was telling {inaudible 35:05} to the company that no one wanted to buy. Like I was trying to book meetings with store owners and we’d have a meeting time and I go in there and I'll stand for 10-15-20 minutes waiting and waiting and then I couldn't even bother to speak to him. And it got to a stage where I was like, “I don't even feel like going in. It was shit”. And it was being called a factor of me not having any control over my lead generation, my client generation.
I thought if I just studied it, then somehow, you know, rock and roll, life will just be good. I'd get degrees and everyone would just come rushing to me. And unfortunately, I studied my ass off, but I didn't learn. I learned heaps about fitness and how to improve people's lives and a lot of sort of stuff, but I didn't learn how to do marketing, sales and business ownership. And unfortunately, you can be the best– and this kind of the most unfortunate of piece of advice there is, but it's a truth; it's reality. You can be the best trainer in the world, you can be the best fitness trainer in the world, you can impact and change so many lives, but if you have a shit business model, a terrible trainer that has no idea what he's doing with a good business model and can do lead generation and client generation will always do better than you, will always have more clients, will always out there impacting more lives. You won't be able to impact any lives because you have to go get a job being {inaudible 36:43} security or something. You don’t have another option.
That's unfortunate. You might have the best message to put out there and really positively impact the world, but if you don't know that stuff, you ain't going to be in the industry long and that shocks.
Interviewer 2: Yeah, there's actually an episode we did, one of our early ones, with Justin Devonshire. I'm not sure if you're aware of him, but he talked about how he's got a friend who's an internet marketer, who's overweight, obese and he serves diet products; literally millions worth a year. And he has no idea about fitness, but he understands marketing, he understands psychology of people. And that's the truth.
Chris: Yeah.
Interviewer 2: Like you've got to– I say this to people all the time, “Getting a personal training degree is a piece of piss”. He is in the UK anyway. Everyone thinks it's this big hard thing, it takes weeks and months to do. Realistically, anyone who can like fucking bang rocks together can get a PT degreed; really, really easy. Like it seriously is. I was like, “This is actually piss day when I was doing it.
And so, you get that degree and then one of the things, like you said when you have with your actual proper graduate degree, that everything would be fine. And, you know, that's only 1% of the battle. 99% of it is, “Can I build a business?” And that's what we really get out of all the guys we work with. As people say to us, “I'm still doing my qualification” or “I'm just going to play it by ear, the first bit”. I'm like, “You need to transition and understand in your mindset right now. If you're currently doing your PT qualification, start with your business now. Start understanding because that takes time. It takes people years to get to where you probably want to get to. And you can shortcut that with certain strategies and with the right help and the right mentoring, of course you can. But to be in the mindset where you're just going to wait try and get a few clients first, it's just going to destroy your confidence. So, you've got to go in in my mind of like get that support from day one and start working on your business from day one; not on day 100, day 200, day 300”.
Chris: Yeah. You're spot on. And kind of, I don't know how it is in the UK with some fitness qualification or what they call RTO is over here; Registered Training Organizations, but the ads are so sexy; like it's like, “Do you want to be a business owner? Do you want to be your own boss? Do you want to work outdoors and work the hours you want and pull out of the line?” and it sucks a lot of people in. And unfortunately, you come out with a qualification, knowing how to train people, but you've never learned how to be your own boss, you've never learned how to run a business and unfortunately, you end up– it's just not even a reality of what you actually went in for.
Interviewer 1: I mean, we get clients come through, we sit down and we listening to what they really want to do and we're like, “You know you could get a job doing that?” and they're like, “Yeah”. So, people have gone and got jobs. Because like, “I'm going to go get a job, I'm going to keep trying to do bits on the side to see if it pulls me back in, but I'm going to–” yeah, and I'm like, “Good”.
Interviewer 2: There's no shame in that and that's to everyone listening right now. Some people just aren't cut out to be so cool entrepreneurs, because a lot of them end up just being self-employed and slaves to their own business. That is not being an entrepreneur, when you're a slave to your own business. And people think they are and I call them Plastic Entrepreneurs or Solopreneurs or Opportunity Seekers, whatever you want to call them.
And, you know, if that's what you want? That's cool, that's fine. But be aware of what you're getting yourself into. You'd probably can get paid less than a job, you're not going to have as much impact as you would in your job, you would be more frustrated than you would be in your job, so just be aware. If you're that person who's not willing to take risks like we were talking about at the start and sit on your hands and have the investor mindset, then you're probably going to find it very difficult and you might just be best staying as, you know, a high-paying PT and we know PT’s that are getting paid, you know, five-six grand from, you know, working under a big studio where they're basically running their own little department in there. And there's nothing wrong with that.
There's no need to have this big, like gold star; like and being like, “Hey, you're a business owner”. Like, it's just not for everyone. By thinking the Millennial culture, it's like, “I've got to be a business owner. I've got to be an entrepreneur” because that’s what Gary Vee is doing and Gary Vee is really fucking cool” and it's like–
Chris: Handsome man. Yeah.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. But we’re not Gary Vee, let's be honest; alright? He's one in a million, one in a billion, kind of thing.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. So, there's no shame if you guys are uncertain on this and you're not at that level yet. It's cool, maybe take another couple of years and you'll get there. But I could probably say maybe I jumped into it too soon, but it's just one of those things you have to go through. And I've really admired your story by the way; how you did the work for someone else first and you probably shortcut 10 years, probably, of trial-and-error of yourself and a shitload of time and money as well. I'm sure you wasted lots of money.
Chris: Shit loads of money. Yeah.
Interviewer 2: But at the same time, there's probably big benefits from that. And I think of that sometimes; it would have been great to work under a big entrepreneur before I went into it myself; just to get some real learnings and insights.
Chris: Yeah, absolute spot-on. I always talk to people about are you a business owner or do you have a job in disguise? Do you really own a business? And like you said, it's all good. We don't all have to be business owners. And, you know, entrepreneur is kind of a cool word out there at the moment. But at the end of the day, you're creating a business to create impact and create freedom for yourself; whether that's financial freedom, whether that’s time freedom, whatever freedom that means to you.
And if your business doesn't exist without you or can't exist this without you doing the hustle and grind every day and as soon as you take a week off, you don't make any money or you can't take a week off because you can't pay the bills, then unfortunately, there's a bit of a job in disguise.
And yeah, everything you said made absolutely spot-on. Yeah, good old Gary Vee, I think, made easy.
Interviewer 1: I think it could be possible to have to have freedom and impact without being an entrepreneur, because– and this is what we believe in, you know, the remote revolution, like I see that more and more small businesses are going to start up online and they're you know they're going to become more business owners than there are just coaches. And they're going to hire coaches that can then work from anywhere in the world. Like anyone on our team works from anywhere in the world and is able to do what they love; like if they don't enjoy what they're doing, then we're not going to give them a job, kind of thing. That’s really important.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. Well, really one of my best pieces of advice for coaches out there; like because we're a team of six people now who– some are full-time, some are part-time, but one of the best things that you can do is identify what you suck at and get rid of that as quickly as possible. Because there's a big ego attached to people in the fitness industry; they think they have to be a master of everything, whether that be Facebook Ads, sales, coaching and of course, when you start out, that's true, but you do need to be able to do a little bit of each.
But really, identify early on what you're great and what you suck at and get rid of that stuff that you suck at and there's no shame in getting someone in who is better than you, who you might only be paying 10 bucks an hour to do a better job than you. And I'm not just talking about VA work, I'm talking about community work. Like we have a Community Manager who manages all our community and our clients and he's awesome. He's better than what I could do because he's more organized than me and I'm just like an absolute wrecking ball who just sort of runs in and destroys stuff.
So, you've got to identify where your shortcomings are. Like George does a lot of the team work. George oversees the team, where I'm sort of more front-of-house kind of thing. And we said this to our students at our event recently, “Maybe look at getting a business partner or at least getting someone who you can be bouncing ideas off on a regular basis if you are on your own in this journey. There's no need to suffer alone. Go and find people who can help you”.
Chris: Yeah. {inaudible 44:40} you're spot-on. I talk about that regularly is that the most difficult path for us as an entrepreneur is this solo entrepreneur. By solo, I mean you literally a silo and you don't have anyone to bounce anything off because all the bouncing only happens in here. And walking out five minutes before, you might have had an awesome idea or an awesome campaign that was killing it and five minutes later, you've overthought the thing {inaudible 45:08} in different ways and you're convincing yourself that somehow the economy has crash then and no one has any money and Facebook algorithms have changed and maybe your conversions, for some reason you can't talk properly or whatever it might be and it's that battle is inside.
So, it's good having a sounding board. It's good having, you know, a bit of a community around that are going through the same sort of things that you kind of go, “Oh, look man. That happened to me last week” just play the part and {inaudible 45:43} to shut up and go to the gym, think about something else, whatever it might be.
Interviewer 2: Sweet, man. So, speaking about community; what is it– I know you've got a free Facebook community, we'll wrap everything up in a second, but where can the guys already get hold of you? What's the best place that they can hang out, get around your space? Because I think both George and I, we obviously haven’t exchanged this thought yet, we have really enjoyed this show for sure. It's really refreshing to hear a guy who knows his shit in marketing and has also done it with other people and himself as well. So, that's really nice to see.
But if the guys want to get hold of you, there will be stuff in the show; notes, links and stuff like that. But if you can just let us know where we can do that and also your free group as well. So, that looks pretty potent.
Chris: Yeah, exactly right. Well, if you want to find any more information, check out our website at www.tribefit.co and Facebook group, the online personal training movement group, if you want to check out that out, just check out Chris Lynton on Facebook, you'll see my account. Hop up, connect, say Good day, Say, hello.
And yeah, if you're just looking for information about heaps of stuff on the website; we've got blogs, we've got approved trainings with free webinars. If you're an absolute starter or if you're someone that's got a handful of clients for your stuff and in cash scale, you don't have that consistency, we've got training for both people, so check that out.
And like I said, if you want to just connect and say Good day, it's always good to have more friends in this social media world where people are even less connected, I believe. So, reach out say good day. I'm more than happy to have a chat and if I can't help you I'm more than happy to point you in the right direction. That's what it's all about I guess.
Interviewer 1: And if you've got several hours, you can scroll through Chris's extensive collection of testimonials on his on his website. We were having a look at this the other day and we’re like, “Alright. Oh, wow. He's got a lot. Whoa, okay”. It just keeps going and going and going and we’re like, “That’s the power right there of finding what works”.
And actually, it's having the right process in place. It's not just seeking the quick fix. You know, you've got the right strategy to not only get clients but help clients too.
Chris: Yeah, and that stuff is really important to us. It's kind of the love of the clients and just seeing the results. It's our biggest goal to have the biggest success walk in the space hands down. And not just one more testimonial on the person becoming second, we want to be heads and shoulders above the rest of the rest.
It does take a lot of time up taking that bloody page. We only get to do it every couple of weeks. So, if you look at us two-three weeks later, you might see it's a lot longer, because we don't update it daily. It's just absorbs a lot of time. But it is something important and I do understand the, you know, if you are an entrepreneur and you're not 100% sure, they're the sort of things you want to check out. You want to check out real people, real results too from different walks of life, different nations, different ages, different genders, different countries and so that's what we try to do with keeping a cool snapshot of it all. So, hopefully, there's one there that you can resonate with your own story and go– you know, you want to do it, but you just don’t have that thing, you just need that that push to really make your dreams a reality and that's what that page is all about.
Interviewer 2: Yeah. So, once more guys; it's www.tribefit.co. Go and check that stuff out. You'll look at success stories. And the final thing we need from you, Chris; which is a question we ask about every single person on the show and that is what does freedom mean to you?
Chris: What does freedom mean to me? Good question. For me, it's predictability and confidence in what you have. So, you could have a rocking business that you can work from the beach anywhere, but if you don't have the confidence and the predictability that next month, two months from now, next week or whatever, it's going to be and just as good of a situation, if not better, then you're going to be locked to your keyboard, you're going to have a lot of stress.
So, for me, freedom's about being able to be in your area passion, be in your area where you can impact the world most and do what your kind of with what part you can do. But being able to have the confidence that you can put it down at any time and pick it back up and it being just as good in shape, if not better.
Interviewer 1: Love it.
Interviewer 2: Perfect Chris. Thank you very much for your time buddy. It’s been absolute pleasure.
Interviewer 1: Yeah, thanks Chris.
Chris: No problem guys. Thanks {inaudible 50:36}, the interview was awesome and look forward to speaking more soon.
Interviewer 1: Indeed.
