Freedom, Transparency,
What’s up fellow Super-Trainer’s
Mike Salvietti coming at you from Long Island New York.
If you’re anything like me than you probably got into this business for one or both of the following reasons:
1. Passion for helping people (especially people in your niche)
2. Freedom (finanical freedom, freedom to train who you want, freedom to train when you want, freedom to teach your clients the way you want, freedom to charge what you want, freedom from authority etc.)
After all I am an American and America is
Now imagine if someone tried to take away your freedom?
Last I checked America is not a communist country.
So I thought?
Well that’s what one so called Fitness Guru has tried to do to me. Check out this e-mail I recently received:
Want to know why I was refunded my ticket to this fitness event? Because I strongly dislike the bootcamp franchise model that the event hosts happens to be the Founder and CEO of. It probably also had something to do with the fact that I openly expressed my feelings to him personally, but mostly it comes down to these 2 facts:
Dollars and cents….
1. He plans on selling spots to his XYZ bootcamp franchise at his event
2. He doesn’t want me expressing my honest opinion of XYZ bootcamp, having been a member of XYZ bootcamp for a whopping 90 days.
See the things is that XYZ bootcamp is not worth the money. It’s over hyped and they overpromise and under-deliver.
Do I have anything specifically against him? No. I actually love a few of his other products
Close clients? Awesome.
Art of Selling Fitness? Loved it.
Fitpronewsletter? Still use it to this day.
So I’m actually still a customer of his! So if he doesn’t want to do business with me then why not refund me across the board and just not do any business with me?
Now I understand him not wanting me at his event saying something bad about his franchise, after all I wouldn’t let a bootcamper in my program if they were talking bad about my bootcamp. In fact I would probably fire a client if they did that.
But you know what I would do first? I’d see why they were saying those things and if it was for legitimate reasons, like me over promising on my website sales copy and not living up to what I promised, I would probably apologize, man the fuck up and improve my service. I would probably even refund that person’s most recent months membership.
You see if the complaint about the business is legitimate it should be owned up to, apologized for and then addressed so that it doesn’t happen again. That’s what Toyota did when they had massive recalls on their vehicles for sticking accelerators.
In today’s facebooking, blogging and tweeting world transparency is everything in business. You can only ignore complaints for so long before it has a noticeable impact on your business.
Not being open and transparent is also a disservice to prospects of his XYZ bootcamp franchise. He’s not providing full access to all the information a prospect may want before making a buying decision, only providing the information he wants them to have to influence their decision making.
I’m sure there are many disgruntled XYZ bootcamp franchisees that failed and it was more than likely their own fault, but I’m not one of them. I have a 2500 square foot (soon to be 4000 square foot) bootcamp facility that grosses $18,000/month. I knew I would be successful no matter what and didn’t see the value in paying for XYZ bootcamp when I didn’t need it. Neither did the following trainers who are successful today after LEAVING XYZ bootcamp.
Here are just a few I can think of right now
1) Justin Blum
2) Kaiser Serajuddin
3) Leanne Ellington
4) Dustin Martarano
5) Giovanni Cogua
6) Jana Holland
7) Shaun Hadsall
8) Victoria Ainis
9) Mark Lopez
10) Monty Miller
11) Michael Giles
12) Brett Riesenhuber
13) John Thompson
14) Marcos Sayan
15) Tony Wood
16) Thomas Patterson
17) Jonas Deffes
18) Brad Pugh
19) Angelo Hunter
20) Sako Yakinian
21) David Wayne
22) Lenin Rueda
23) Zach Tedevski
24) John Thompson
25) Mike Duivis
To wrap things up I will leave you with this, Complaints suck but be open about the ones that are legitimate and have good reasons because those are the ones that fuel your growth and help you to improve your service.
Failing to do so will inevitably lead to the same complaints being made by other people with more twitter followers, more Facebook friends and more influence in your community.
Word will spread whether you like it or not. Instead of trying to hide your problems from your prospective customers how about trying to address them?
Here is a 3 step plan to save your bootcamp franchise.
1. Survey your past and current customers and find out why some of them are unhappy.
2. Ignore the stupid ones and address the ones with legitimate complaints. Apologize to them and admit your wrong doings (heck you might get some customers back!)
3. Go back to the drawing board and address the legitimate problems
4. Pay your designer $50 bucks to slap a 2.0 next to your logo, re-launch with full disclosure of what you did wrong in the past and how you have improved it.
BOOM!
Peace out,
Mike Salvietti
Some people are all sizzle and no steak. Some people target the weak and naive. I think that’s the case here.
Mike major props for exposing the truth!
Great Post Mike!
Mike was great meeting up with and hanging a bit more at Sam’s show. You’re one of the strongest hustlers in this business and considering you’re only 22 it’s pretty mind-blowing. You’re gonna be a major leader in this biz for years to come. Talk soon bud.
Hey much appreciated! As a matter of fact, you can add me, Jay Ortiz to that list!
Ever since hooking up with 7Figure Sams sight and real info, I have been able to achieve REALISTIC numbers and start at REALISTIC goals…….
I left at the end of the two years that I signed for and no one called to ask why. After consulting my clients I found that not one of them were with me because I was with them. If the monthly license was priced properly (less than half what it is) then I might have considered staying on. I also got the impression at last year’s event that it was all about joining the white tablecloth group.
I’m just a girl who started working out at 14. Joined the Marine Corps at 17 and went to REAL bootcamp! Lol. I find all the “omg…I’m doing this bootcamp thing” to be hilarious. Only because, personally, I don’t like the hustle. I don’t wanna be hassled and I don’t like the hard sell. Give people something genuine and teach them something tangible and you’re golden. Do your own thing and don’t sweat what the other guy is doing if you’re legitimate and “real”. You will be successful long after people have figured out he is in it for his own gains only.
Interesting post!
As a gym owner in a small town, I realize that you have to listen to what your customers are saying because if ONE has the nerve to say it to your face, then FIFTY+ are saying it to everyone else in town behind your back.
Sure, every business is going to hit bumps in the road. No program is ever started without having some troubled spots here and there…
The take away is that we should all be adults and ADMIT the error and HUSTLE to correct it.
Keep fighting for your success…
LB
Legit post man. Real like Sam.
Mike, you killed it! Spot on brotha! I was one of those guys who already had a decent business but thought getting on board with them would help me grow…WRONG! I actually ended up wasting money on bogus hype.
Thanks for keeping it real and being true.
Hey you got my name wrong man:) Great post Mike. I can’t believe that they did that. But from other side when think off how they treat me, it is pretty normal for them. And he is talking about customer service and shit. BS!!! Since I drop them my business grow 10 times. We gross more than 20000 at all locations. We are 90% capacity, and looking for new bigger facilities. With I couldn’t even pay my bills. And the marketing strategy was from the owner and the coaches, energy and lead boxes. Ha!! BS !! Anyway I’m getting pretty upset just thinking about them, so f… Them, you can’t learn anything new anyway
MIKE, I honestly do believe that many successful trainers could do BETTER on their own than with Fit Body Bootcamp (I don’t want to call it xyz as I want to name shit for what shit is).
When I was with them, in the red 5 months straight. Now I am “winging” it and actually seeing growth. With them I LOST clients (yes, LOST), and without them I am growing.
In a few months you can add my name to that list because I know for a fact that me wasting time on dead end campaigns like the human billboard system and lead boxes are a HUGE reason why my first months into my business I was struggling horribly and stuck at 0 full priced EFT clients for a long time (trials and Groupons don’t count).
When I used 7 Figure Sam’s strategies from his FREE Black Friday promo, I actually began to see profit. Yours and Sam’s email product is also doing well for me considering how small my list is (254 lol)
So while I agree that it might be a trainer’s fault that he or she isn’t being profitable with Fit Body bootcamp, I know for a fact that I was doing OK without them (3k a month) and then with them I went into negative numbers and lost clients. Hey, 3k ain’t shit but considering I was only 3 months into my own business (not FBBC) with no experience, I got into FBBC and then ended up having to start at 0 again. So while it may not be right to blame someone else for your problems, I can put two and two together and say that ever since LEAVING that dumbass franchise, I have been climbing back up (fighting hard but well worth it) and this is without any coaching
Zack is from the Chicago area like me and we chatted on Facebook a bit about this. I too could NOT pay my bills with FBBC. So again, motherfuckers, put two and two together and realize that if someone is following shit advice, they are going to get shit results. You could be the best trainer in the world but if you rely on lead boxes and “energy” as your only fucking strategies then you won’t see profit either, numbnuts. What gets me is they are fucking brainwashed that their strategies actually work.
I won’t give any of my respect to thieves and liars who refuse to acknowledge legitimate complaints. Legitimate complaints such as
1. Why the fuck did Bedros and Steve sometimes miss their own coaching calls
2. Why the fuck does Cara Eckerman say one thing and Steve says another (get a TEAM EFFORT going dumbshits!)
3. Telling you to keep doing the SAME shit over and over even when it doesn’t work (because it’s YOUR fault lead boxes failed). Then when you adjust your action to fit what they tell you, they later contradict themselves and say you did it all wrong, even when you did exactly what they said.
I remember the CEO telling me to say a specific phone script for when people called. I used it. It got people angry with me. Then I told him. Said I did it wrong. Fine. Changed the script to his 2.0 one. Then he said that that one doesn’t work anymore. WTF are they just pulling shit out of their ass in an effort to save face?
It’s not any trainer’s fault that
1. They change their marketing every week because nothing works
2. They hype stupid marketing campaigns and then have trainers waste precious money making time on shit with zero ROI
3. Their best and only go-to strategy once everything fails is to “change your mindset bro”
You’re right. I did change my mindset. Changed it into not relying on fake experts and into doing things that actually worked. Tell me why as soon as I left them I actually saw profit? I will definitely say that a stupid franchise is to blame for me being in the red. I make no apologies, so fuck whoever defends them.
However like Mike said, there are good products from this guru. In fact all of his other products have helped to get me clients. This one has not.
I honestly think that if the CEO left and put no input of his into this thing, the product would be way better.
woah @Eirith what a journey you’ve had. first of all 3k a month after 3 months of business is not bad in my book. you don’t need 6 figures in 5 seconds. our stories are very similar. keep your chin up.
Yeah Mike, I realize that now about 6 figures being something you need to work hard for, not just make a couple phone calls.
Also to those who were offended by the words I used in my earlier post,. I actually did lose my cool reading about these guys, so hopefully you’ll understand.
Again, I don’t think it’s right to blame someone else for your problems. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to sign a lease on my space. But when you’re suffering and all you’re being told is to get more lead boxes out there and to just turn it all into a multi-level marketing scheme in order to get any revenue, you really get frustrated. And when everything fails they tell you you’re doing it all wrong and just to change your tone of voice when calling leads or answering the phone.
I didn’t go from selling Cutco knives to be told to repeat the same failed strategies over and over again. I know Zach Hunt loves him some lead boxes, but this guy actually has SYSTEMS in place for making them work, plus he has hundreds placed and employees servicing them. Lead boxes are just not a tactic that someone starting out should really employ especially when they have no money; it’s too labor intensive. Also, multi-level marketing schemes like the human billboard system are VERY hit or miss, especially when the franchise encourages you to hound people to a level of annoyance for referrals. There are proper ways of conditioning your clients for referrals and then there are FBBC ways, in which you make the person uncomfortable.
Their coaching calls are a huge waste of time, too. 20 plus people fighting for the attention of one coach (stupid for hundreds of franchisees to have ONE coach). They went from two coaches (Steve and Bedros) to one (Cara) and then finally added the other kid after such a long time. However I will say that even with two coaches, it’s still not enough. Plus, the coaches just parrot what the two owners say. The two owners haven’t got a damn clue as to how to grow bootcamps because they’ve been out of the industry for a while. What used to work no longer does. Shit, what works in California is not going to work in Chicago, etc. Different markets means different cultures (Cali’s glitzy health and body conscious culture as opposed to Chicago’s blue collar and almost hostile to fitness culture).
What makes me mad is the fact they refuse to own up for their negligence. You know what else is shady as hell? The fact that your own client’s testimonials become THEIRS. Steve or Bedros did not train my clients, so why should they own my testimonials? When I turned in my testimonials, these assholes edited them so my name doesn’t appear on them, and then they simply become generic and canned testimonials that anyone in the franchise can use. It’s so stupid, they want to make it ALL about the franchise when people go to see a TRAINER, not join a franchise. My clients wrote specific testimonials about me, and then FBBC edited their testimonial so that it seems like they just wrote a testimonial about a bootcamp, and not necessarily about me. I refused to use the canned testimonials that FBBC has on their corporate site to make my FBBC site more personalized, and then they still made my testimonials look canned.
Too many complaints on my end to list. But again, ever since I stopped following their shit phone scripts I have converted WAY more clients than with them. Their scripts have about a 10% conversion rate. Winging it by myself I’m at 85% so waaayyyy better. When I say winging it I meant I made up my own script based on how my market responds. I find that using someone else’s script is too fake and people can smell it a mile away. I STILL use a script loosely but it’s one that I CAME UP WITH and it’s doing well for me. I find the whole “interview the client and peel the onion to get emotion out of them” script only angers a lot of people in my market, so I stopped using it. Now when people call in I simply answer their questions, get ’em in the door and then easily sign em up.
Hey Eirith just a question where do you hold your boot camps? im starting out and it’s impossible to find a gymnasium or studio for evening time. Any tips??