Episode 22: Jeff Moore and his $42 million seafood empire

Transcript of EPISODE 22:

(With background music) Hello and welcome to Fiit professional podcast, the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build its fitness business. If you have low clients, more income and more free time, then you have come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com today.

Brad Campbell: Hello Fiit Professionals, Brad Campbell here today, and I am back with another fantastic episode for you. I have a very good friend of mine. His name is Jeff Moore. We actually have never met in person actually. But with the relationship that we have wired around social medium Facebook it almost feels like we’re good mates already. Umm, so that’s really exciting to have Jeff on-board now. This is little bit of a different episode today. Now, Jeff is actually not even involved in the fitness industry, umm, other than his personal fitness of course. Umm, but, Jeff actually owns a rather unique business which I am gonna be probing Jeff today on some, some really good techniques, marketing strategies, those type of things that you could sit there and listen to, and find out how you can incorporate that into your own fitness business. So Jeff, a good friend from Facebook, how you doing my buddy? And thanks for coming along today.

Jeff Moore: Thank you very much it’s an honour to be here. I feel the same way and I think we’ve interacted for over a year now on Facebook and you know social media and big respect for you and what you do and actually was talking to my wife about you earlier tonight because it’s a business model that we really respect and something we are working our way into with her business, so

Brad Campbell: Yeah excellent. Really appreciate and I guess Jeff to give our listeners abit of an overview on who you are. So to tell us a little bit about Jeff Moore, what does he do, and why are you so cool?

Jeff Moore: (Laughs) Well, I guess it depends on who you’re talking to. But, yeah, I am a lifetime food guy. My family and fourth generation food and food service out here in California in the United States. And have really been in, pretty much, every position in the supply chain for food on the food service side of the business and that is the restaurants and the hotels, resorts, distributors, suppliers, sales agencies, the whole, the whole gamut. And I am presently president of two companies – International Pacific Sea Foods, is a company that sells primarily to food service in the sea food obviously but we sell to distributors and we also contract with major restaurant chain across the country. Your folks might have heard of cheesecake factory. The Cheese cake factory out here, VJs restaurants, it’s all in the states, is where we operate, I do have the coolest job in the world and that means I get to travel around the world sourcing sea foods and then come back and tell stories about. And that’s umm, I am a big story teller, and then I am also a president of another company called Lie Out Things sea food which is a direct to consumer clay, where we sell online and then we also have warehouse sales in our building. Once, about once a quarter used to be once a month and now once a quarter. Got a list of couple thousand rating fans and continuing to grow that business and absolutely love it. And then I am also the founder of a mastermind group that you are involved in, called the Thursday night boardroom. Started with four people in August of 2010. Just watching some videos of some seminars that I went to. And it has grown now to I think just at three hundred and forty members in twenty three countries. So I am a husband a proud father of four great children. Three girls and a boy. And just really feel blessed to have tremendous network of friends and you know people such as yourself that I interact with on a daily basis.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. And who would have thought, you know, probably yourself a few years ago thinking you may have such a rich and with people in so many different countries really is. I need to pinch myself quite frequently actually to be able to realize the opportunities that we all have as individuals to be able to make a larger impact on such a fast scale as well. Well, let’s just put it into context little bit here for our listeners. I know the scale of your business is quite large we are not just talking average fish and chip shop hunter here, we are talking quite a large establishment. So give our listeners just a little bit of overview of, you know, the size of the corporation that you actually do run so we can gain a bit more perspective on that.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, umm, the International Pacific Sea Foods which is the parent company, the mother ship if you will, is 35 million dollars in a year in sales. And we are on a trajectory to, by end of this calendar year, to be almost 45 million dollars in sales. So, pretty big trajectory. It’s kind of scary to get to that volume. But we started off, we bought the company back in 1999 from a gentleman who founded it back in 1975 and, excuse me, it was 10 million dollars in sales, so we have almost tripled business, in, well, we have tripled the business in about 11, well, now 15 years I guess.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. So in regards to that and I know you said it can be quite scary and most people go what’s another 10 million a year but that’s exactly it’s another 10 million a year. So let’s look at this from where I am gonna go. You bought the business back 15 years ago. What are the, what would you say are some of the key concepts that has helped you grow it from where it was when you first purchased it to now almost reaching 45 million a year.

Jeff Moore: I would say that the biggest factor for us as a company has been that regardless of whether are in our B2B or business to business space, or we’re in the B2C space, the business to consumer space, everything is P2P. We treat everything as person to person. We don’t spend a lot of time fortifying our brand in the traditional sense of trying to, you know, fix our logos, or make prettier fliers, or plan a sale pieces, or fancier videos, it’s really about optimizing and maximizing our relationships with those key individuals, that we end up being business friends and partners. And we have really been great at the type of partner, the partner is so overused, but the type of partner where if somebody, if one our customers is a distributor customers looking to go out and blitz the market and really make an impact in sea food. We ride along their side and you know where other companies will say Oh yeah we’ll go out and we’ll support you and they send them some fliers or a plan of sale pieces or maybe some samples and they go here you go, go out and sell it yourself. For me, you know, we get an opportunity like that just and they go what do you need from us and I go just get me tube sock and a roll of quarters because I am gonna be kicking your competitor’s ass with ya. You know, so we’re aggressive. But we’re, I don’t know, we’re just that type of guy you know. That type of company that they can always count on to be at their side. And the same thing with restaurant customers. They really look to us as trusted advisors. So they’ll call me and they’ll ask me about a piece of sea food that isn’t mine, that I am not selling. And they will, they’ll say, you know, hey tell me about swhypinkKC (this word wasn’t clear) and all and explain it to them like OK well how could we get a sample well it’s not mine but can certainly have their process, the customers not using the best available option and over the last six years since we have started doing this we saved the restaurant operator three and half million dollars in annual food cost. So I guess, that’s a, that’s probably our biggest USP is these five questions that we go through. And by the way, those are all on the back of our card, the business card. (Yeah). So everybody knows exactly what we’re looking to do. And we get there and it’s not about necessarily just trying to sell him something. It’s about trying to create, find and reveal the best available option for them.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. So I guess if were to recap on that is what you’re doing in essence you’re coaching your clients or your prospects into making the right choices and also on that if your company can’t deliver on that you send them to the right place, you know, leaving a good taste in their mouth time to time. So let’s look at those five questions. I have heard you talk about the five questions before but I think it’d be good for the listeners out there to look at and while, Jeff, going through these questions, look at how you can relate this to your own business model.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, it’s really important to realize that none of these questions had anything to do with sea food. Okay? They have everything to do with the customer. So when I was showing my business card, I gave my business card to David Bock who was New York Times best seller for 11 or 12 books now that he’s put out that are New York Times bestsellers. He looks at my card, he turns the card over and he goes what are these? And I go those are the five questions we ask every customer to turn them to best available option and make sure they’re using them. And he’s like Whoa! He’s like I have seven questions that I ask every prospective client. Can I put those at the back of my card? I am like Yeah, I guess you can, you know, and so these questions are simple, people are expecting these wonderful, you know, symphony to come out. I call it the blinding flash of the obvious. And so , umm, the first thing is What do you using now, you know, kind of get to the point of foundation where the person is right now, put this customer and we’re going out to see him what are you using now, what is the brand of sea food you’re using, the origin of the sea food, the label, we even take a picture of the labels, you know, we’re not fair, we have somebody else take the pictures and send them to us so at least we know we’re doing, umm, what are you doing with it. And it’s probably the most important question we can ask. In sea food, if we’re cutting portions or customers taking and buying a portion and then doing extra work with that is their particular portion that they can be using that fits their needs the best and so what are you doing with it, how are you preparing it, how are you menuing it, how do you pricing it, we’re really kind of identifying not just where they are now and what they’re using now, but what they’re actually doing the physical act of doing it what is that process and so we get to uncover that and discover that, what is their, for us, what their potential weekly or monthly volume that they use and that’s not really kind of to ask for our purposes, you know, if we care or not, you know, is this big enough for his team to continue the conversation. For us, sea food is the last hunt of food of man. And so  if all of a sudden there is scarcity, like right now there’s a world-wide scarcity of mokhi mokhi, frozen mokhi mokhi whether it’s out of South America or Taiwan or wherever. And so all of a sudden we’re talking to testimonies like yeah I goes I want to use 20,000 pounds a week at this particular kind of mokhi mokhi. Chances are that that’s probably not gonna happen. So, you know, we need to be able to help them recognize options before they get to a point where they run out and they fall short of a customer’s expectations coming in for something in particular like that. And then where are you getting the product now, you know, we know who the suppliers are, we know who the distributors are, and we know their threshold for quality, we know, you know, how they do their business, so that’s very important for us knowing who they’re working with now. What are you paying for, and that’s kind of an obvious like oh gosh you know maybe they’re not gonna tell you, they’re gonna lie or whatever, that’s fine. But in fact now they are talking about a certain species of sea food and let’s say  they’re talking about a pacific rockfish, and that pacific rockfish they say, but I am paying you know a dollar ten a pound for it. Since we know there is some adulteration or there’s some specie substitution or something that’s going on because those things don’t match so we have an angel to look at that and make that determination is what are they really selling, what are they really doing because we’ll ask these questions and we’ll go through these five questions and we’ll go back to the freezer or the refrigerator and look at that product again, and lot of times it’s not the product they think it is. So that’s a big reveal for us and that helps us understand and by the way we do this with our customer it’s not with our particular item or any particular agenda or particular item that we wanna sell them that day. And I think that’s where a lot of suppliers or providers of the service or product or even the deliverer of the message. They’re so hooked on their own agenda when they’re going into this that they forget that meeting the customer where they are is gonna help you guide the customer to a decision that them to their better self, to their better business and you’re going to be their guy, you’re going to be their trusted advisor, if you help them understand that they are the primary agenda when it comes to this particular interaction.

Brad Campbell: Yeah, and I guess, you know, the key takeaway point that I certainly get that to reiterate the fact is the questions, the better you questions the better the answers you’re gonna get and it all comes down to investigating, like you said, you’re gonna meet the client or the prospect where they are currently out on their journey, so change gear little bit there and let’s talk about marketing a little bit and let’s look at how do you go about getting client, what are your best strategies or best practices that you’ve used in regards to generating new business?

Jeff Moore: You know, that’s a good question and it’s always evolving for us. And I would say that our best avenue for us has always been word of mouth. It’s you know whether it’s a distributor or a restaurant operator. Just move from place to place and they evolve and they grow in their career and first thing managers and those people they move around and we build our business that way, but we’ve also built our business penetrating at our distributor so a distributor isn’t just a distributor they’re actually a sales and marketing agency and we have helped them pull through business, go out and paid new business and working through the distributor and using our sales agencies across the country but mostly it is really really truly been our relationship with the distributor and the large chain accounts. And you know to say all what we ran or add or we did anything like that we did something about 12 years ago. That brought people to food show and it was we had I mean it was a direct mail piece that had surplus response I have to tell you that story because that was amazing. And the most amazing is that we never did it again but the stupidest part I should say we brought, you know, several hundred people to the food show and you know kicked ourselves off and things which we were doing but for us it’s been the long relationships that have and the word of mouth that has carried us forward. There are some things that we’re doing now that are gonna develop some greater pre-eminence on a more broad scale. Market reporting, certain marketing reporting that I am doing, but beyond that it’s been good old fashion word of mouth orchestrating referrals.

Brad Campbell: So let’s talk about that and let’s talk about the word of mouth you know in the fitness industry what a lot of people will say is well, is majority of their business is bought on by providing your clients with good results and in your case, obviously delivering good sea food. So let’s talk about how you can orchestrate referrals, how do you go about in your businesses.

Jeff Moore: I think that what we’ve done we’ve got better at it and we are able to be so helpful when we get to, you know, we work with the customer that people are always looking to us to do more of that with them whether it’s a distributor sales rep, or a chain account. They’re always bringing opportunity to us. And when it’s when they’re talking about a lead or when they’re talking about a customer that they want us to go see we tell them this is what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna go through this five-step process or gonna reveal this process and reveal the great, the best available options for them. And we help the sales reps that are working with us to give us these leads, we help them understand the ultimate strategic position in your relationships is to be the go-to guy for education of the information and Czech Home said that couple of years ago but Czech Home is a master salesmen, the ultimate strategic position is to be the go-to guy for education of the information. And in the sales world, if you’re selling a product like sea food, or any type of food or anything, your customer is looking to you to be the, and you’re the go-to guy for any education of the information for them you’re in control of that count 24 hours a day 7 days a week whether you’re in the account or not. Because anybody if comes and says hey I’ve got a better widget, I’ve got a better piece of sea food or I got something cheaper or I got this I got that. You’re the go-to guy, then the next phone call’s to be to you. And they’ll say what do I, you know, somebody just showed me this and it’s a dollar a pound cheaper than yours, what am I not seeing? And now all of a sudden you could put back to power position whether you’re in the account or not. The customer’s calling you saying hey I am looking at this, what is this, what is different in your product versus what I am doing.

Brad Campbell: Hmm, excellent, and let’s look at that a little bit deeper there and go into how do you become that person, how do you become that person that your current customer actually rings you up to let you know that someone else has offered them something of cheaper value and you get that call, how do you become that guy?

Jeff Moore: I think it is from the very beginning, Brad. I think that it’s when you establish that initial contact you make such great impact when you’re able to articulate the needs, desires, challenges, fears and aspirations of your customer better than they can do themselves. As you look and see what they’re challenges are, for me whether it has to do with sea food or not I am so learned in the industry that I can see and hear the challenges that they’re facing right now and have a conversation, so from the very beginning, we establish a relationship with people that they look at us and even you know how this goes when somebody is talking to you and you’re talking to them and they start articulate it back and you’re like yes you get me you understand me and that to me is really where we started. I think we’ve been that powerful presence. But we’re also not doing it the same way. That we walk in and even with our competitors. My competitors are looking and saying this is I am doing how can we do it better. And, you know, they’re asking us questions like that because we’ve established ourselves as an authority and a trusted advisors. My good friend Jay Abraham says pre-eminence, you know, so when we’re able to establish that from the very beginning, and be able to articulate that and there’s an exercise, there a process to that. And we do that in the boardroom, we really need to identify that one customer, you know, the ideal client that you really understand better than anybody on the world, in the world and that’s what we’ve done we’ve been able to articulate the needs, desires, challenges, fears and aspirations of our customers better than they can do themselves, which sounds like a hard thing to do, it’s really not if you focus that way.

Brad Campbell: And the power in that is, you know, unbelievable, as you can imagine, so our tragic transformation franchise we have an avatar, a target market,a particular one client. We’ve got a list of questions, comments, a list of information about this person. So a name Sara, she is mid-20a, brown hair, etc etc etc, until you can really know and narrow down to the psychological side of things as well like what do they do at night, where do they hang out, who are their friends, those type of things, so I’ve seen the similarities and it’s you know a real big eye opener to everyone listening there that the same fundamentals whether you are a fitness business or on a multi-million dollar, you know, mothership, of sea food, like you put Jeff is. You know the fundaments are the same and you know business rules apply. So let’s look at, I always like to, to try and learn some lessons and get people around the world, listeners the opportunity to take away something, lesson of sorts that they don’t need to go through the hardships. Now, I know for example that you talked about, couple of minutes ago, that story about your best and probably worst ever marketing campaign, so tell us that story because I know there’s a good lesson behind that.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, there is, and I worked through the professional marketing agency, that was a directory marketing agency, that I don’t know if they’re well known I mean I did know directories spots from hallo peens when we were working with them. But we started out invite, we identified who were gonna invite for this particular show and we had mailers, series of mailers, that was going out to this group of people and there was 200 and there was 200 decision makers at major restaurants chains and distributors in the western United States. 200 is all it was. But they were major players, I mean the collective decision for sea food with these 200 is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so we figured hey you know not a bad deal so we sent out the 1st mailer, the mailer was like a tube that when you opened it up, it had that kind of sensor that played the sounds of a crashing waves and seagulls and things and it was tied to a border that was you know had this note in there it was letter that cam e a fishing boat captain and talking about how it’s morning and sun’s just coming up, the fog is thick. But you know we’re catching sea food maybe glovagla for the restaurant. And it was really well written but because it was the only thing it made it so special and beyond that letter, was the fact that when you opened that up, it made noise, made a sound, and people were really impressed by this right, this was by in, you know, 2000. It was back like 1990 does. And so maybe more than 12 years ago but thefunny thing was as we sent out 200 of those set, we got 300 responses. (Laughs). And we’re like 298 responses, and so the next letter that went out, now we’re inviting people to come to this show because we are giving away 3 days of 3 days show, each day we’re giving away a shark fishing trip. So the next mailer goes out and it’s in this kind of Manila on blow account wannabe male thing and it’s a little plastic box with a pad on it, and inside this plastic box was a bleached chicken bone that had an evidence tag tied to it and the story goes that our friend was fishing off the coast of California and a great whale came and tumbled out his boat and took him down and we’ve been dragging the ocean for days and all we could find was this bone and now we’d want your help, we want the hunter to become the hunted and now we’re feeling this picture about this fishing trip and the shark fishing trips that we’re giving away we got like over 400 responses to that and then the final one we sent out and we’re almost, we sent out 200 and we got total 500 sign-ups to attend the show and we’re giving them free passes to the show, on the whole deal. We had almost 500 sign-ups for the free passes from this mailing sequence. And it was extraordinary and we never did it again.

Brad Campbell: Let’s speak to that so, what was the one results from it that you found and secondly, the second part to this question is why haven’t you done it again?

Jeff Moore: Well, I’ll tell you what were the results. The results were that we were starting our own sales agency at that time as well as being an importer, a processor and a trader of sea food. We ended up building a sales agency was generating about 50,000$ a month in commissions, we generated an additional or probably nine million dollars in annual business from this, from this event and from what we did. And we never did it again because the show was so impressed with the quality and it just brought the show back out, it was a skull of the sea fair, they just brought it back to Los Angeles. And they were so impressed with themselves on all these high value customers that showed up, that we brought (laughs).They doubled the rate of the show next year and so we did it the next year and that was the year that we attacked Afghanistan. And so nobody is at the show and they said no, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna give you any kind of refund, credit, you know, you’re in tough luck type thing. So we never did the show again, but we have list of people we interacting with and in the sea food business it’s not like a digital product, you know, if all of a sudden, Brad, you have your business and as a trainer and not you because you are the you show trainers and you’re obviously are the expert in creating the training business a part of it as well as being a trainer. But all of a sudden you got 50 new clients, you know, in a course of few days, that’s a totally different business. You know, you can’t do 50 more clients, add 50 more clients to your business or a 100 more clients. And just be the same person that you were before that 100 clients and so we really for several years were chasing our own infrastructure, were building our own infrastructure, to be able to support adding 9 million worth of new business and a 50,000 dollar a month agency. The business was coming in faster than we could really you know conceptualize it or scale it and so we were always chasing it and so (laughs), doing another part of those mailers! Now you’re gonna hear same kind of response, hear the crap part of us. And so it just and we’re still you know growing like we gotta grow right now like we are growing right now. It’s like where is putting together another direct mail and something that’s gonna explode you know like that. You’re afraid it’s like it was a great, it was great. But you don’t wanna, you never get a second chance to make a first impression and so all of sudden your marketing exceeds your capacity to serve. I can’t think of anything in business that’s more anxiety people working, because if you can’t, your capacity is served, is not up with your marketing capacity, then you’re kind of a little bit fraudulent in what you’re doing, you kind of hit the grabber, you’re making promises that you can’t keep, and how word of mouth goes the other way.

Brad Campbell:You bring up really valuable points there, Jeff, and first of all there’s that 9 million dollar lesson but I mean it’s that question right you got to flip the coin and go it’s not a bad problem to have I suggest but you hit the nail on the head there right the invite saying  that’s where the word of mouth can go the opposite way if people are trying to relate to that to the fitness industry what can happen is that there are, you would have heard of Group On, and all of those type of daily deal sites. Now, what happened is a lot, I guess I should say untrained business people so personal trainers who want extra clients who don’t about the business side of it, they don’t how to set up the backend technology side. You know, they go to a Group On place and get 150 people willing to join their boot camp for 1$ and then all of a sudden they don’t know how to funnel the clients through. And then, like you said, ends up in a big mess. At this day and age, with social media, you do one thing wrong, and the whole world knows about it. So let’s go back to that for a moment, Jeff, I know you touched upon there and coz what’s happening to me right now is I am going well, there was a 9 million dollar addition to your total revenue. What have you put in place since then and when do you plan to run it again or something similar?

Jeff Moore: Right now and I just have this conversation, I caught up little bit with Dean Jackson and Jaw Kwalish on marketing about, you know, the opportunity of exceeding our capacity. I don’t know what I am gonna do, something like that, that is so just significant and almost over-whelming, I don’t know if am gonna do that like that but I am going to do and I am publishing something called as the deep dive report and it is talking about the top 30 species of sea food. It’s literally though instead of these reports that come out from the sea food companies, and nobody can really make heads or tails what the hell they’re even talking about and the perspective or the context which they’re talking about, like if somebody says we’re having a strong year, that means what? That means hey business is good for us, right. But the person that’s reading it, so if the sea food supplier that in particular specie is having a strong year, that means that they’re I guess that’s a good year. It’s been a good year for Salmon, let’s say. So it’s a good year for Salmon, Salmon suppliers, does that mean it’s a bad year for the guy that’s actually got to buy it? Does that mean he’s paying more this year? So there is a lot of confusion when these reports come out. So what I did is I am able to repurpose these reports in what we call the deep dive report, story beneath the surface. And to be able to bring these reports to the actual user, the person that needs to know what’s going on in the industry the most and that’s the end user of the product or the restaurant owner of the chef, the buyer, and be able to provide a report that says what is going on, what does this mean to you and what should you do right now, soon or eventually, using absolutely no jargon totally unspoken and being able to explain what is going on, why is all this stuff happening, what does that mean to you as a restaurant owner and what should you do right now, soon or eventually. And it’s gonna, that will drive a ton of business our way. It will drive pre-eminence, it will well establish ourselves, continue to establish ourselves, is that kinda if you will celebrity trusted advisor and that will be a tool that we use going forward. But as far as the big demonstrative play of bringing 500 people to a show, buying them tickets, doing shark fishing trips, I think that literally filled the funnel way too fast

Brad Campbell:And I think if we look at that for a moment and we go, and there’s no shortage I am sure you’d agree with me there’s no shortage on strategies on how to generate business. But there are shortage of clever strategies that require less work from the business side, so for example, you talk about, going to set up the trade show, you know, all of those type of things and we’ve set up a trade show before we’ve done it, spent three days at a fitness convention you know we paid for the boat we paid for the flights, a combination all of those type of things and was quite a stressful exercise in itself and so now the results were great what we discovered was hey no matter what we can actually get similar or if not the same or ever a better at times results for doing a easier strategy and what you’re guess out of prospect out there is, when I use the word easier, guess is probably the wrong word. I am looking for more of a tactful strategy where now you’re goingback to the relationship building perspective where you’re gonna implement education-based marketing to get them onto your list and then once I receive what’s the next steps, what do you do, do you just pitch them some products or do you put them in a funnel is there any follow-ups to this, what’s your process around that

Jeff Moore: Yeah, well, at that point, there will be phone call. There is a funnel by the way, the funnel is such that this report comes out it’s like, it’s, you know Gary Harbor, it’s Steve like the Gary Harbor letter. So it’s not just a gorgeous saying but it’s always supporting by a website called the deep dive report on the website. And so there’s updates, there’s going to be offers, there’s stories that we’re telling and you were talking earlier about branding. That for me is going to be our greatest purport to be able to share stories of other people’s successes. And in that, as we build our list and we start to tell our stories about how restaurants were successful about our product, because that’s what I believe branding is anyway. Brand is a stories starring our customer using your product or a service. And the brand identity is the more about the story where the two – you and the customer/client live happily ever after by then consuming, continuing to consume your product or service. And so, to us, that’s how we’re gonna continue to build our brand is to be able to celebrate and share the successes of our customers and to be able to show what they’ve done. That is an ongoing funnel and we know how these if there’s consistency in the process, we know how this creates and will orchestrate leads for us and we will guide those leads by the way. You know when we’re going to say what is going on what is this mean to you and what should you do now, sooner or eventually. It is certainly gonna be that call or action, right down there. And that will be you know the we can help you with this, you know, we have a this or we have a connection with a particular supplier and Peru or wherever that is able to provide this particular product for you. So you could sell about you know you could continue to sell with confidence.

Brad Campbell:Excellent, so I guess for everyone listening there, you know, Jeff just just struck some bombs in regards to not just having a basic and online talk in a newsletter. You’re talking about sending out a, an actual, something in the mails, is that correct?

Jeff Moore: Yes

Brad Campbell:Yeah, so what’s happening there is that your customer is gonna receive something tangible and if we’ll understand that whenever we receive anything in the mail that is isn’t a bill or a speeding ticket. Then you feel like being given something of quality. Now, like you said, it’s not gonna be a beautifully printed kind of glossy newsletter, but what it is gonna be is, it’s gonna be quality that is going to be able help the end consumer who’s gonna be reading it. So, I guess Jeff, we’re looking here and I know time’s ticking out little bit. I just want to finish off with a couple of, I guess you should say quick five questions. Just want to put you to the test.

Jeff Moore: All right.

Brad Campbell: In case, whatever comes to you first here, ok?

Jeff Moore: Okay

Brad Campbell: Alright, so. Who is the best marketer of all time? Come on I hear you thinking, I hear your brain thinking.

Jeff Moore: Jesus Christ

Brad Campbell: Okay, what is the best business of all time?

Jeff Moore: The food business

Brad Campbell: The food business?

Jeff Moore: Everybody’s gotta eat, everybody’s gotta eat

Brad Campbell: So what’s in store for wealth in sea food and Jeff Moore over the coming 12 months?

Jeff Moore: While I think sea food is going to continue to expand in the healthy tracy arena and start to work with a lot of, dieticians and people in the fitness world, connecting with them, nutritionists, and we’re gonna develop a lot of fitness centres, and work with them, but do more on the healthy aspects of why sea food as well as grass-fed beef, I got a lunch tomorrow with the New York Times best-selling author and just a wonderful person, guru. That is in on TVC and PBS and everything so we’re gonna talk about developing a market place of organic and wild and grass-fed products. So that’s where lot of things is going continuing to evolve as a local go-to place for them. For me, Jeff Moore, I am gonna also, I am working with my wife and that’s something but a different conversation I’d like to have with you is my wife is a high-school counsellor, and she has a business where she helps kids get into college and she believes her mission is pure. Her mission is – anybody that supplied any student, any student that supplied them enough in high school to be able to get into college, deserves expert guidance regardless of their financial position. And right now if you wanna hire a private high-school counsellor, college counsellor, you’re gonna pay anywhere on the low end of 4000 dollars to 14,000 dollars a year to have a private counsellor help you through and be your guidance counsellor and we’re gonna, she’s doing that, my wife’s doing that for far less and it’s had such a tremendous success I couldn’t be more proud of anybody on this planet. And so I am gonna commit all my network and all my marketing acumen towards really helping her and that’s gonna be a business that will definitely yield a significant resources for us moving forward.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. Also exciting and look definitely open to helping you guys out. So, last question, Jeff. What is the best fish species around, what’s the best tasting fish species you’ve ever had?

Jeff Moore: Well, you’re asking Jeff Moore what his favourite type of sea food is? I am gonna tell you it’s the sea food that makes me the most amount of money. (Both laugh). But you know I have so many favorites. I am gonna tell you a little story though. You’re familiar with Cosco. Is Cosco in Australia?
Brad Campbell:No, I don’t think it is but I am familiar.

Jeff Moore: Ok, cool. So Cosco big box warehouse type store. And they did a, they conducted a study and they took all the wild salmon, fresh wild salmon, foreign salmon from around the world, king salmon, all the different species of salmon. And they did a test. A taste test with these global panel of experts. And the test revealed that the frozen Atlantic salmon from Norway, with a 4% salt solution, was the most flavourful salmon in the world. And it’s it’s as the taste goes and I would tell you that some of my favourite sea food I love is a good wild salmon. I really really love salmon. I like Chilean sea bass if it’s gone properly or padygony and two fishes people know around the world. And those, those are probably my two favorites. And I really can’t steer away, or shy away the stakes and big toolads and falaeds, and while I think we sell stakes and sea food and all sorts of fun stuff and have a good time and there’s a last one you know people will show up to a party and they’ll have cocktail strip and there’s like hey it’s a great cocktail strip, it’s my favourite, I don’t show up with cocktail strip. I show with a laskin snowcrab cocktail claws. And there are literally snowcrab claws that are fringed, so the meat’s coming up, still have the claw on one side and then I serve it with a worm drawn certified organic butter, churned with a fresh sea salt. And I think that one is probably. That’s the one that’s people remember.

Brad Campbell: You’ve got my mouth watering right now and I am gonna have to work out how we get you over for Barbeque (both laugh).

Jeff Moore: Yeah, great. Yeah.

Brad Campbell: Lot of nice sea food around the world but look Jeff, once again really appreciate you taking your time out in your evening now to get on the call and share your wisdom and your thoughts with our listeners. I am sure these are really good takeaways here and I certainly got some myself. So where can people find out more about Jeff Moore if they wanna investigate you little bit furthermore?

Jeff Moore: Well, you know, wildthingsseafood.com is probably the best way to get hold of me be at sea food side of it. But we talked a bit about our global mastermind that we’re members in. if you wanna connect to me through the mastermind and really engage and interact with some world-class marketers that can really help take your business to a new level. And nothing, we don’t charge for for doing anything, it’s something that’s just run by the members and such as yourself. And that is at thursdaynightboardroom.com, thursdaynightboardroom.com and we’ll start engaging you, just register there and you’ll get a little email from me, you can join our Facebook group and that’s probably the best way or my email is jmoore@internationalpacific.com

Brad Campbell: Excellent. There you have a team, thanks again Jeff, I will be speaking to you online no doubt very shortly, do reach out to me regarding your wife’s new project, really look forward to that, providing any assistance there possible. So until then you have a fantastic day and everyone out there remember go take action and make it happen.

Episode 20: Kris Cochrane on Building a Team of 30 Trainers

Transcript of EPISODE 20:

Introduction: Podcast background music plays

Host Brett Campbell: Hello and welcome to Fit Professionals Podcast; the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build a fitness business. If you are at the local end, want the knowledge, or have more free time then you come to the right place; visit podcast.fitprofessional.com better you today. Break in between start of interview

Host Brett Campbell: Hello fit professional I am your host Brett Campbell and back today with a very good friend of mine and an extreme genius in his field. Kris Cochrane welcome to the show brother. Break while awaiting interviewee response

Kris Cochrane: Thanks for having me, nice.

Brett Campbell: Excellent, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule this morning. I know you got a lot of things going on which we are going to talk about today. Opening another location; which is exciting. So what I’ll do is I will give or run a little bit of a brief background on how we met. Feel free to fill in the blanks because a you know my memory can rag me sometimes. But a Kris and I met a little bit over three years ago. We ah we met Kris came to us a business seminar that we were running and we noticed that overtime when you see people and you just get a feeling about the particular person you know that they are going to do something great. You don’t know what it is but you get that feeling that people are going to do something great. And Kris was one of these people so yeah Kris at the time was a one on one personal trainer.

Brett Campbell (Cont): yeah doing well, had, you know had his clients booked up and he was in a bit of a position where he wanted to take the next step and ah someone like myself who definitely has that entrepreneurial feeling as well and saw him, I knew exactly where Kris was at his stage. So I personally worked with Kris for about 12 months here helping him get on track and give him a little bit of extra guidance in the industry and I guess if we fast forward to now Kris is he is a leader in the industry hands down he is the top guy.

Like I said back three years ago when you see someone you know that they are destined for something. This guy would turn up the business days with a bowl of cereal in his front seat of his car and he would have his lunch packed and you could just see the dedication and I would said if he had as much dedication to how good he looks he and he put that into his business and he go go places. So Kris is now up to ten locations nationally around Australia with teams of personal trainers running out of these locations and I’ll get Kris to tell you more about that. But a mate it’s an honor to a to a one be a part of your journey and to see where you are hitting today and also to see above the horizon where you are going to be hitting. So that’s a brief background on how we met, I’d like to a for you to listeners to learn about who is Kris Cochrane and where did this guy come from.

Kris Kochrane: Many thanks to the ah very humbling introduction and I am really glad to be a part of this and a you are obviously killing it at the moment so and a its funny how you are so instrumental into the whole rapid journey. Yet, you were obviously my first business coach working with business coaching and properly tracking me well and there is a time where yea I was just I was just a young lad who was on the gym floor working 50 hours a week personal training and I was almost completely burnt out you know. I got a really bobbly head personality and I love helping people and I really love being a personal trainer and I love sharing with results with as many people as I could and I did work my ass off and I guess I had a fanatic work ethic and not only discipline but I found my focus was really spread and I didn’t know where to put all these work practice into so I guess ultimately it just end up being gain more and more and more wants you know and it got me up to doing stupid amounts of hours in the gym and then my back end stuff, programming, doing your business stuff you sought as your marketing (hear sounds of Cochrane clearing his throat in between interview) uh with uh you know I am not sure if you remember mate but there was a time where I had an idea there is a local 24 hour gym down the road and I was looking at some sort of sign from God as to how to get me off this gym floor. I may have lost a couple months of sessions I had on the gym floor I was in this tug of war in my head it was like I was in that session with that person but I wasn’t there because I was thinking about how the hell did I get so sucked into working for long term and I kind of had this little thought as I was in this 24 hour gym that was happening down the road it was new town fitness and I would say that it was out of business for a couple of months and I hadn’t really taken action on it at the time. I was being coached by you at the time and we were having a chat and I really got into this situation¼.and I didn’t know where I was going and you were just telling me well why don’t you just send them an email and so alright I well alright and so I said wait a minute can I have a talk. So at the end of this talk I send the email to the email address that’s on the website to Anytime Fitness that I was looking into and tried and chat to and boom that was a start to a beautiful and healthy business because you got your personal training out the way now. Because what ended up happening was I got a meeting with the owner who had just been a couple of months left from opening her first gym she was an accountant and if I notice the push now for her was that gyms are not all about making people it’s all about investing. Its fitness people who are all about making money not all about managing personal finance. Know what makes a gym and what works so she was sort of scratching her head and she had problems, she just advertised for a lot for personal trainers. What we care about is people who do not understand anything about management and personal trainers and she didn’t know what to look for, what to charge, and what I want and the name was like a blessing in disguise so a low and behold I found that huge gap in the market and so that’s my wrap and mate thank you for that. Cause I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that little that pep talk up.

Brett Campbell: Yea excellent manager, you know I just got goose bumps because I remember that conversation because there was something that I identified with myself that I actually identified within you might as well was that you are also a great trainer and you know your shit when it comes to training and getting people in shape and like like myself if I could get anyone put them on the gym floor talk them through a killer routine and make sure they are getting their results. But what one thing I identified and rang true to myself and I seen it in you was that you weren’t a personal trainer you were destined to be a business owner, an entrepreneur, a visionary who leads other people and people out there could actually be listening and saying yeah I actually sort of feel the same way. .because if we look at,  I am not sure if you heard of Dan Sullivan but Kris Dan Sullivan world renown entrepreneurial coach who you know coached the most millionaire entrepreneurs in the world. Basically he talks about consequent unique ability and your unique ability that I found was with yourself is that you are a leader and you were destined to be able to lead people to a particular place and that’s what I found within myself well also I love training and I still love training people we would be doing the industry and you would be doing your trainers now which your October 30 trainers you would be doing them a disservice if you weren’t doing what you are doing now so my colleague remember that the good listener I think any one listening is that all it took was for you to take some action and send out an email. What literally and that was the opening of the door that has now started the rapid empire as we call it so, yea my Excellency so a couple of things that I picked up Kris was yeah and because I know you really well was you struggled to gain focus. Your not going to like to that very well myself but someone like yourself who always something going to be there, there is always going to be a new opportunity. What would you say to just tame the base and remain focused on the particular task?

Kris Kochrane: Wow yeah, look really right question. We are in a war somewhat sometimes like myself yeah I am not sure if I am A.D.D. I am just really. You got the always in school I was always distracted easily distracted I was always off playing ping pong and in school I was always trying to actually see yeah always I really found it hard to concentrate and the average time it takes the average person to get into focus  24 minutes, 24 minutes to actually get focused on the task and if you get interrupted you get another 24 minutes to actually get back in that zone and yeah if that’s the average person it will actually take me about 67 minutes to get into my focus zone. So I really found that working with a couple of the my mentors Jason Edge he coached me into a bit of meditation and and on and off I find that when I meditate I practice a bit of mindfulness in which I try to be in the moment without trying to think about the future also with a task I find I can you know get myself focused and throw myself together. I also find case on habits if I’m in around my place on habits such as a 4:30 am wake up and it will happen for a lot and when I am in a bad space I find if I am wake at 4:30 am in the morning and I get sad around work I get bit of my goal setting and my vision and focus on what it is that I want out of life what fortunes I need to have to get that. I at least about as half as much on talk and all of these announcements plus its much as I need to speak and just things that I need to focus on like I am gonna go read a book and go get a goal book and and I look at that every day and yeah trying to get up at the same time 4:30 am in the morning I just know that I am not stopping me from doing that yeah and trying to get all the distorts out of for the day. I am not getting emails I am not getting phone calls, yeah so really it’s a mixture of things but I think it’s just a big thing to capital K your habits, capital K tackle a couple of things tackle a couple of habits that you know you want to do for yourself but yea also focus on your goals and what it is you want and do what you need to do to get fit.

Brett Campbell: Yeah excellent, and you mentioned Jason Edge, Jason is a good friend of the show, great mate of ours he has been on a few episodes here as well where we just about talked about everything so but yeah great great guy. You talked about Keystone habits elaborate a little bit on that for the person who is not really sure what keystone habits is.

Kris Kochrane: yea, well keystone habits is yeah if you are, well let’s just talk about (audio interruption occurs for two seconds and not able to hear the speaker). Ways to motivate yourself about fixing your life but keystone habits is a habit like as if your life is a domino effect. For example someone who is disciplined with a lot of fruitful things kind of like the same as mine but I know my sales manager he makes his bed every morning which he never uses to do. He makes his bed and makes sure he has a clean room. If you are talking about around the clock you know something is a mess. For example if I know that I don’t get up on time and if you don’t have breakfast some days  and  you  have  breakfast  some  days  don’t.  It’s  about  building the habit to ensure they get up at the same time without pressing the snooze button and build the same habit that helps them feel that they are in control. Other things that I will feel more impaired to eat breakfast I may probably feel more motivation to train and eat because the rest of it they set themselves up properly if you just focus on one thing these capital K different of things like for me it’s getting up at 4: 30 am. If I am getting up out of bed at 4: 30 I feel  like I am in more control I feel like I am accomplishing one thing. If I don’t, If I press the snooze button or have a sleep in I feel as though I am starting from behind and everything will seem to fall. Now does that make sense? This whole capital K of habit is really it’s a yeah extremely interesting and it talks a lot about a lot of keystone habits. So I am a huge believer in capital K a few keystone habits can change a shit load in someone else’s life. You don’t have to focus on 20 different things like if you are going drink more protein, if you are going to go train 5 days a week, if you are going to get out of bed same time, if you know what you have to do, and then you just do a couple of those things consistently, you tend to be in a bit of space. Is that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yeah that makes sense, I guess what I want to do is I want to put out a challenge to anyone listening you probably got something in your life right now that is either holding you back or confusing you a little bit. But what I want to do is I want you to think of a habit that you either want to break or a habit that you want to create and I want you to that and I want you to sit with this task for 14 days, 14 days and maybe it’s make your bid if that’s something that you never done before. Go through the moment and make your bid every morning and see what it actually does to you mentally and how it makes you think what the carry over effect of that is what is the carry over effect for everything that you do. Then once you get proof, you can then keep creating other habits that just becomes easier and easier. This is like generating leads on line, we are generating leads into your business once you get that first client from online you already know that this thing is possible and you can just generate more and more. So set the challenge 14 days I want to hear from you if you’ve a broken a habit or you created a new one. So Kris let’s get into some juicy information here for any personal trainer fitness professional out there who is wanting to be more than just the one on one trainer training where their training own clients and that’s it, I want us to to give a listeners a bit of a background on what were the key things that first of all enabled you to start having trainers working for you and your rapid PT business?

Kris Kochrane: Ok, I guess you gotta be a leader. You know it is a funny thing you don’t want to fully detract from one thing but being a manager I never managed anything and here as I was in my first job interview you know the rapid position which was the first one it was coming up within months when I was getting ready to recruit and when I sat there in front of this person, this new trainer she was just fresh out she was just booking it with me and I didn’t feel like a business owner because I didn’t know what it was like. So obviously I wasn’t quick to be huge leader I found myself asking her and I said its going to be good us she said it’s the money and I said and this is this but a leader is someone who to first lead you must lead yourself I talked about those keystone habits before. You really need to get your shit sorted first and be at ease and confident in yourself and before you can have any influence you must believe in yourself. But as fitness professionals you should be someone who is leading people every day anyway because you are leading many other people to change a life so exceptionally we need leaders in society. So I always say number one always lead yourself to be someone to follow and number two you must also have a vision. Have a dream, have a vision and have someone you know get excited about it. When you tell someone your vision, yeah my visions is am happy with that. If a if we just had a world of fat people with no winning smiles we will all get pissed off about that. I know a lot of people that are overweight and the way that they treat their body they got to be miserable. 80% of people they are going to be wearing frowns and you know just as much as I do that energy is so contagious. So if 80% of the people are going to be miserable than you are going to affect 19% so now 90% of everyone in the world is going to be miserable. So I call it the world of zombie apocalypse. Yea every person we save from being that overweight or obese another person we don’t have to fight against in the zombie world. I guess you better call it you got to have a vision, you got to have a dream you got to have something that inspires others to be more. Because the day they go on to getting up out of bed to try and then training. Trying to just get up out of bed at 430 everyday, just trying that one person. But if you are getting out of bed at 430 every morning because that training that one person is a stick and stone to your way is going to leave a dent and stone in your legacy and that makes you want to get out of bed. So as I said you know November last year I had to google one of the CEO, I actually did. He was kind enough to tell me that. I try to give a common example that you are on the saddle you are giving a speech and you are riding the flag then you are the first in on that horse riding into the sunset and now you got all these people following you because you just helped them bond to that vision. Because most people need something to believe and they need to know that what they are doing to make a difference. If you can show them that path then you got the saddle you are way ahead of the game. Does that make sense? Franchise, I remember speaking about the downfall of franchise because you are working rapid and I said what’s going to help, what is the demographic, are we going to be successful or whatever? A Franchise is really hard it’s hard to have your vision it’s. Franchise it’s hard to have your own vision its kind of like a dent in the universe you have to have that vision and that strain and you have to have a to have 10 million impaired but exhausted smiles by 2030 which is impairing an exhausted as far as money is concerned. and the reasons is that you know, today’s society is on a one way track to adding that the world of people will be overweight or obese by 2025 which is fine I why a strong why, why why? I don’t want a zombie apocalypse and A zombie apocalypse is going to be screwy for everyone.

Brett Campbell: Yea, I love the way you put that and even gained bring some perspective back to me that factor and this why and I, and I really hope you are listening to us to really grasp the power of that because it like you said Kris energy is contagious and if you got someone who is walking around unhappy I mean and you can see it. I was walking into the gym myself I was walking out pumped, happy, and also tried some brand new workout that we have been testing that we are going to bring out real soon. So I was pumped happy walking out of the gym and someone was walking in and she just looked miserable and she looked unhappy and I was like good morning, and instantly by me just going good morning she started to look really happy state she probably thought I was on drugs but I was really happy to see her it changed her state instantly and it put a smile on her face and she carried on. But can you imagine you know one unhappy person walking unhappy and another person is contagious of that and I really love what you just said and I can agree more on having your mission. Mission for Fiit chicks is to kind of motivate one million females by 2020 on how to live a healthy active fulfilled life. The funny thing is most people think is just mission is hoorah hoorah type of thing. The amount of people that actually by into the mission that we create and trying it out there as well we got a franchise business as well. Trainers out there as well now that we got to Franchise and trainers are actually thinking that the vision is stronger so if you don’t have one right now get one. So, Kris I guess because you have a lot of information because you have some experience with hiring and finding trainers to join your team and I like mentioned over 30 trainers where is the best place to start or where would you recommendations be for someone that is just looking for their first trainer.

Kris Kochrane:  Good question. What’s your business overall who are you targeting? So, I would work out who your customer is actually going to be, who you have on sales. And who do we have to try to complete the task. You made the right person do the job and you want to first ensure you get the staff members someone who is a trainer first and go with all the qualifications. Until then I looked qualifications for four and a half years, but I want to say exactly my values embodies in this person so culture is the first one and its someone who I really want to spend time around, is this person going to be reliable and someone who is worthy of me spending enough time to educate them in helping with the longevity of the company first. We go with culture, longevity, and reputation. Be different but always be disciplined, but so we recruit people on those values. And then we go well let’s also have a look at their qualifications and then if they are actually a trainer then you don’t have to spend a lot of time to go to teach that one person. Yeah there is just certain rules we have to make before we you know like basic so we can’t train them from the ground up. Yeah you can train on certain number of things last I am not going to stick around to be someone who is going to help you build your business and let me tell you now. The difference between someone who has been in there one year or one month is going to make a difference so hire people that you know are going to stick around.

Brett Campbell: You mentioned a couple of really good points cause I just want to talk to that for one moment where all of our level trainers where and it’s not hard whether or not you are looking for trainer, an admin, or a manager or a sales team etc. You really need to identify like you mentioned there Kris the culture of what you actually want in your business and what your business values are about and do they fit with that so don’t just go straight to seek put on a 270.00 ad which may I say is another business model that’s another story. $270.00 ad to hire someone and get 100 applications and you are just now finding a needle in a hay stack. so I love that and I get some actionable points on that would be (Kris Kochrane begins to speak).

Kris Kochrane: Just on that line I saw really handy recently in an online job application in a job app I had a candidate where I would go on their application site check out their values and brought it back which one’s been the most and then find out which one would come up and it says these are the reasons because you kind of have to have some specifics or instructions on the job application. When do you plan for them to follow instructions when you expect them to tell them to follow instructions when you expect them or when you tell them and I thought that was pretty cool.

Brett Campbell: Yeah I couldn’t agree more with that and we have admin staff and we always have a three step process where they need to fill out a personality profile, and they need to fill out a cover letter and they need to send in a particular subject headline and if the subject headline is not what we told them to do we just totally just don’t even look at their application. So, there is a heap of things that you can do to like you said to look really good at the person you are looking for….so that’s really cool that , Kris let’s move into a couple of quick questions here and one of them being what.. in your journey what was the biggest moment that you had that you know you finally realized I finally cracked it or made to hit down towards.

Kris Kochrane: Yeah this comes more in the market so we, are our only business. I was a self-trainer and when I was a self-trainer I basically had a trainer and I just do my taxes whenever I can. I never actually thought that I was in business now but the day that I realized I was in business it was a rocky road. Then once I realized I was in a business I thought that maybe I should get some skills and then thought about doing a business course or something like that so when you have the experience in your business you get more and more knowledgeable and I think mine most recently was probably a year or year and half ago was realizing that I am not going to be in T company anymore I realized to achieve my goal and to spread rapid on where I needed to be I seriously bought for the g-minus that we were working for the market. We went from being a big big company to a not so telemetry company for 24 regions we got back into the service that we promote to the community around and then we got so to where we were creating a business triangle so. Probably just the three elements of smart business and how you are made to really segment off on to segment ours. One I had to tie all of my solutions to the gym owner but some emphasis around that and then a value proposition for the business owner to the gym owner and then a personal trainer. Right now you got to market as vigorous as you do today to balance. So what’s the benefits and values of being a rapid trainer and then yeah for the crowd. Well I try to be a rapid trainer what’s the difference now if you want me to work for Walt Disney industry which means trying extraordinarily a good customer experience every time but it’s probably a bit more pay job as profound as it sounds but yeah it’s probably a bit more pay job for you so.

Brett Campbell:  Mate it’s what’s profound for you and that’s all that matters so you know again you touched on three valuable points and you actually got three different markets and I can totally relate to that as well because if it is national we have the market to the personal trainer on the hunt looking for highly motivated personal trainers to become franchises we also got the consumer side to our business like we say our mission is to educate and motivate a million females. So we need to produce product services for that industry so the key to those is that each of those modalities are marketed differently. In essence you actually got three businesses inside if you want to look at it like that so a lot of a lot of things going on. So when there is a lot of things going on, generally there is a lot of a I guess and don’t like using the word values but people can relate to the words failure I like to use the word listen. So there is generally a lot of words learned in business and I know someone like yourself who takes action so fast and so frequently there is generally a lot of lessons we learned so share with us one of your biggest business lessons or that you had along on your journey so far mate.

Kris Kochrane: All I can say is hire the right people because you never settle, never hire across, that can be the biggest business lesson I have learned the hard way every time. I guess you have a spot and you need to fill it and it probably will stringer up your career. You not cannot send or doctor a list also, you can’t send the wrong person, you can’t change a person you need to hire a super human guy who is an eagle and pick people as our product and one right person is equivalent to three people. See I am a really a systems oriented type of guy and I like to hire a 12 year school boy to do the same job as a 40 year old and the physicist who can put the people down and lay down the law you know? Since it does work that way, you have to have the right system for people to be able to run. Never ever ever ever hire anything less than what your mission or position it could be in a district where you got enough back work and you cannot get the work done because you got somebody that doesn’t fit the right spot.

Brett Campbell: And not only that they can end up tarnishing your business credibility and as well you have all the motives to be the best in industry and that type of stuff and when you start expanding you got other people you know utilizing your brand and coming underneath your brand you got to make sure that my ah advocates are good at doing everything they can from their side because it’s fair to say that you can’t manage and look over the shoulders of thirty trainers every day, so tell us a little bit about how you are able to have ten locations and how does that look at the basic running of that work? What’s your set up with that?

Kris Kochrane: It’s kind of a ah community catsmite (both parties exchange laughs) where we got all these 10 locations and got contractors working in them and it’s very easy for them to sort of get off track and then send out the¼. self-manage is really hard to do so we rely on their culture. We rely on hiring a lot of people that stick to our values and then we have a really astringent culture that we try to maintain through get togethers, through our education programs, through our face book programs forum, and also then we got management structures too, that’s management, so each location will have a team leader who is a cultural flag of me basically just an extension of me in that gym to kind of maintain the integrity of that culture which is progressive disciplined and fun; and be very proactive. So as I¼I definitely think, you know, and the best how to motivate someone who survives the expectations you got of them so and we’ve got our management team ready to extradite with a little bit more running and a bit more responsibility. ..and then we got to automate to when they get paid, the percentage of the trainers, and we got a regional manager that looks after all of the managers. I mean any service industry is based on core separation it’s not as easy as writing a book and then selling all your books. You gotta work on your service and do a favor to retain a key element. Any 24 service industry if you want to get into any service industry it’s a huge operation, it’s huge. So there it’s not a real simple way to do it but you just got to break culture, if you are a people person you just got to break culture once. The best advice we have them do we just rely on our people trust them, sit with them, coach them, and manage them¼.break and someone laughing in the background.

Brett Campbell: Excellent…so, Mate I know we are sort of at the end of the episode here you your already at the gym you are going to get to a cranking into some work very shortly but before we do wrap up, a zip. So what ¼ I guess parting advice would you give to the ah¼ fitness professionals out there who are kind of in a bit of a position right now where, you know, they want to make the next step to grow their business but they are not really sure whether or not they want to?

Kris Kochrane: Yea, I would say that business isn’t for everyone and really mate that make the decision if you are prepared to ¼if you are prepared for the ride don’t give up. I had a conversation with I guy at breakfast last week and he is approaching 40 now a school teacher he was just telling me that he is trying the program so that he can go ahead and get in shape and you know I just don’t know how it’s going to take he has got a lot of body fat and he is a little overweight and it doesn’t necessarily say that he made a messy decision but a so I would really sit down and map up your life and whether or not this is the ride you want to take or whether or not you are ready to sacrifice your life I can tell you that my life worked out balance it’s a myth its really myth.

Brett Campbell:  For a work week yes more hours.

Kris Kochrane: You just have to be prepared to grow your body and make a decision but that’s probably advise if you want it bad enough you will find the why. You will always find the why. You will find someone to encourage you, a mentor, someone to coach you, you will do everything you can to make it work, if you fail most businesses fail most fail the second time that’s as good as I can give you mate.

Brett Campbell: You are saying how it is because it is so true there are so many people out there who preach the its easy its easy well it can be made easier but you still need to put out the work you know with our fit chicks transformations franchise we have made it as easy as we possibly can now for a personal trainer to run it run a successful group but you still need to put in the time and effort to actually run in the systems and the procedures and so forth so 100% agree with this mate and if you are listening to this and you are not really sure what you really want to do in the industry sit down and even ask yourself the question. Is this industry for you? Then if it is then find out great, what avenue do you want to go down because we got Kris here who is an expert on building teams of trainers working in a gym fashion working in a one on one and the total flip side of that, the total opposite side of that spectrum also our business model is based on group training. So there is also lots of business opportunities out there you just need to pick the one that you want to master put in the hard work the rewards are far worth the way and the effort that you need to put into it if you just don’t give up. Well Kris before we shew off where can everyone find you stalk you and find out more about Kris Kochrane.

Kris Kochrane: You can look online, its funny every time I look online I have a fitness page and a facebook page but if you want to go to RapidPT.com.au you will find out more about us and go to faceboook.com/rapidpersonaltraining and if you want any advice or tips its Kris@rapidpt.com.au.

Brett Campbell: Thanks Kris for that, if you are interested in personal training and you listen to this podcast I don’t often recommend too many people in the industry but if you are a PT out there and you know you are little bit worried about starting your own business right now and not sure really what to do then you want to be led by a master in the industry go check out rapid PT and you know ask Kris a question, there might be a gym opening around Euro area and you can get in and work for the rapid team and Kris will put through the team I am sure but make sure you make contact with him. By the way mate always and I will catch up to chat with you anyway and all the best with the new gym that you opened up there and have a fantastic day out there.

Kris Kochrane: Thanks and have a good night.

Brett Campbell: Awesome, so we had another fantastic episode with Kris Kochrane from Rapid Personal Training. Now I just want to give you a quick update of what we have up and coming. The 16th of May in Brisbin, The 23rd of May in Sydney, and the 30th of May in Melbourne we have the fitness business blueprint event. Now this event is only for the personal trainer who is looking to set up run their successful six figure group fitness business. If this is of interest to you, hit over to fiitacademy.com.au/events.