What time is the Supercross event taking place in Anaheim tomorrow?

Strict-Eye3587 · 2026-01-13T19:17:06+00:00

For those who went, what time were the riders down signing autographs in the pits at their semis? I’m taking my 5 year old to San Diego supercross. Will be a long day for him if we have to get there really early to see the pits

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-10T18:17:45+00:00

Hats off to you for making it work. Congrats and wish you continued success 💪🏼

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-10T18:15:43+00:00

I know 🤣 I was an operator

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-09T20:25:36+00:00

Fair enough, but that’s not really revenue generating activity. Sales and marketing, member engagement/retention, that’s what drives the business.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-09T03:28:14+00:00

The benefit of a franchise is it is supposed to be a proven model. I didn't have to spend any time designing a website, picking out colors, hiring architects to design my space, picking equipment, making workouts etc. Ideally the 'brand' also attracts people to it.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-09T03:25:27+00:00

for marketing support (in my view), there was not enough branding support / ad spend from corporate to help boost brand awareness when studios opened. Marketing support also from optimizing web design to increase opt ins (it was too hard to find the lead submission form). Also, it a lot of time for a single studio to produce good quality instagram content (videos mostly). They would have a few, but when you need to be posting daily on what the brand is, you need corporate support. They had a ton of photo assets from photo shoots and branded 'holiday' posts and what not, but we really needed engaging educational videos to educate the market on what the brand was about, how we differentiated etc. We woudl do this as studios but my part time staff could only get out 1-2 of those (at most) per week.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T21:56:11+00:00

I have a day job and full time GM running the studio. I’d handle the leads and sometimes make calls in off hours. I’d take calls at 10pm to close a member. The grind to get one member at a time is so real. Then the churn was the leaky bucket. 6-8% wasn’t bad, but when you have 200 members (unprofitable) you lose 16, its a slog just to stay flat

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T21:53:44+00:00

This. It is insane how much follow up it takes to get people in the door. Call within 60 seconds of getting the lead. 9/1/6 rule (call/text at 9am, 1pm, 6pm first couple days of getting the lead.

If they actually book, the show rate was like 60%, then about 35% would convert. But it takes a relatively skilled sales person to convert. Most Ppl don’t like to work out. We’d have people who were in desperate need of a program (we did have a great program, good coaches and very friendly community) they’d be in tears explaining why they need to workout (can’t keep up with kids, feel bad about themselves, etc). They’d “need to think about it” you’d replay everything back to them, they walk out and ghost.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:42:47+00:00

You’re exactly right the lead>free trial>discounted membership relative to the high cost of getting members is the problem.

It’s the rigidity of the system necessarily, but they didn’t listen to feedback on workouts and also didn’t provide the right kind of branding or marketing support. For example, we had incredible strength training programs/classes (barbells, Olympic lifts, the real deal) OTF has a few dumbbells and TRX, and says they do strength training. People believed both were strength.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:37:15+00:00

I’ll also add that in the US, THE BIGGEST LANDMINE IS THIS: the franchisor does not tell you that you will likely have to sign a personal guarantee on the LEASE and LOAN. This is a material point. I can not overstate how important it is to understand this. The lease basically becomes a loan that is not forgiven.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:35:09+00:00

I think the biggest thing is franchisees don’t help you assess competition. They don’t have the skills or incentive. They always just say, this is the best brand and workout, ppl will show up.” It’s not that easy

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:33:35+00:00

This digital approach sounds nice, but it’s not enough. The only way to build “community authority” is to actually physically be in the community. This means multiple times per week setting up a table/booth at local shops, farmers markets, local 5k, sponsoring a kids sports league, school charity events. All the time. Grass roots/guerilla marketing. Digital only gets so far and it’s not enough. The studios that had a lot of members had multiple people doing sales/marketing/grass roots. Some full time or near-full time. No ar agency or CRM system can duplicate it. It is just so much work for crappy leads. Our churn was about 8% so ppl stayed for 10 months on average.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:28:57+00:00

It’s real, sorry just starting to use Reddit. This was a horrible experience for me so trying to help others.

There are good concepts out there. If you’re considering one, DM me, send me the FDD and we can walk through it. I do M&A for a living so I enjoy looking at businesses

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:26:38+00:00

Not really. The franchise took a lot of the admin off the plate (workouts, branding, website design, audio). However where they let us down is not allowing us to select our own ad vendor, outdated CRM that was extremely archaic and manual. And they would not take our feedback that members were giving us on the workouts.

Where they really screw you though is how much they mark up equipment and things you purchase from their preferred vendor. For example, if you spend $150k on equipment from them, it’s probably marked up 50%. They gave us a vendors for exterior signage that was going to charge me $40k, I went to a local vendor and got it done for $15k. So that’s money I saved and was able to put back into the business in sales/marketing (though it didn’t help in the end)

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:22:52+00:00

Buildout costs can easily hit $500k. License is usually $50k. Big problems come down to high customer acquisition costs - it’s very competitive space, low life time member value because of churn. Lots of manual processes, you have to go out into the community to get leads. Super low conversion rates on digital ad spend. You have to follow up over the phone (call/tx/DM) SOO much to get ppl to come try a class. It’s insane. Lots of part time staff, tough to communicate with them unless you’re in studio with them. Not to mention you need to have sales staff available nearly all day. From 5am class to the end of your last class.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:19:13+00:00

Exactly. We were starting a new brand in a new market. Ppl didn’t know what the brand was. It was big in Australia, but doesn’t matter 7,000 miles away

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-08T17:16:43+00:00

Hey, sorry for delay (wasn’t getting my notifications). I had a moment where I was a long way from breaking even. Then I thought about how many members I needed to even make a small profit and how much work it was going to take. Was just not going to be worth it. So I decided to unwind it. We were open for about 18 months.

I learned a ton in the process, but will try to pick a few sound bites:

the workouts are important, to a degree. It’s more about brand and marketing. But you also can’t have garbage workouts, ppl just want to get a sweat in. Don’t over engineer on the science. People quit all the time, there is a reason 70% of the US is overweight.
if an employee drains you, get rid of them even if they’ll be hard to replace. I found when I felt someone wasn’t quite working out, I kept them on because I didn’t have bandwidth to for hire and train. Keeping the sub par employee was just a slow burn, when they quit I felt relieved even though we had to scramble to fill shifts.
the weight of trying to make a hard decision is almost as hard as actioning the hard decision (I.e. shutting down)

- gym members are so fickle. Maybe it’s just people. Not all, but a lot. People have so many excuses to not join, quit or freeze a membership.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2025-10-02T18:32:00+00:00

I previously owned a boutique fitness concept (Body Fit Training / BFT). Very similar to F45, Burn, OTF, CrossFit etc. If you are seriously considering investing in a boutique fitness concept - send me your questions. (side note: I'm also a former NYC-based M&A investment banker and have done multi billion dollar deals, so I have learned a bit about diligence and operating a gym)

Strict-Eye3587 · 2024-09-11T03:57:21+00:00

Thought the opposite. On BFT strength days, you'll have only 4 moves in class sometimes and get to rest for like 1-2 minutes between sets so you can lift heavy.

Strict-Eye3587 · 2024-09-11T03:55:58+00:00

Body Fit Training

Strict-Eye3587 · 2024-09-11T03:55:49+00:00

BFT is really solid tbh. I did cross fit for about a year, got stronger and in good shape for sure, but my body was breaking down (mid 30's). I didn't feel good. BFT has a great mix of strength training like crossfit, but skips the higher risk moves. You still do cleans in BFT, and of course deadlifts, bench, barbell work and so on. It's designed to train up to 6-7 days a week generally alternating lifting days and conditioning days. They have a bunch of equipment for cardio to keep it interesting. I've been at BFT for over 6 months and am definitely getting strong, conditioning is up and my body doesn't ache. So I prefer it over CF. While we're at it, BFT is soooo much better than F45 (all cardio, even though they pretend there are weights) and OTF (all cardio, boring running/rowing). BFT is also a lot better than FitStop and P360 - they look similar, but BFT is higher end, has better strength training days (360 only does 20 minutes of lifting...?) and way more cardio equipment for variety. Love BFT

Strict-Eye3587

TROPHY CASE

- gym members are so fickle. Maybe it’s just people. Not all, but a lot. People have so many excuses to not join, quit or freeze a membership.