Eye On Franchising

Revolutionizing Fitness: The Power of Franchising with Body20 and Best Practice Harvesting with CEO Greg Breitbart

Episode Summary

Discover the endless benefits of franchising with the latest episode of the Eye on Franchising podcast. Our guest, Greg Breitbart, CEO of Body 20, shares his journey from the electricity industry to revolutionizing the fitness industry with electric muscle stimulation. With a successful franchise model, Greg reveals the ideal franchisee for Body 20, emphasizing their competitive nature and willingness to follow a proven system. Bursting with valuable insights, the podcast also explores the effectiveness of electric stimulation in whole-body workouts and how Body 20 is capitalizing on this trend. Plus, learn about the presale system that has broken records and the recommended staffing model for Body 20. Don't miss out on the power of franchising and the business experience it provides. Tune in to Eye on Franchising now!- Benefits of franchising- Greg, CEO of Body 20- North American Power success- Greg's Body 20 journey- Electrical stimulation for muscle strength- Interview with Xponential Fitness CEO- Body 20 workout details- Body suit for electric stimulation- Whole body electromuscle stimulation- Ideal franchisee for Body 20- Competitive nature of franchisees- Process of becoming a franchisee- Body 20 partnership with Benatrends- Importance of marketing- Success through member referrals- Importance of presale- Staffing model for Body 20- Benefits of franchising- Best practice harvesting KEY POINTS [0:1:28] Experience unprecedented muscle stimulation and results in just 10 minutes with Body20's revolutionary workout - significantly faster than traditional gym workouts! [0:6:7] Experience a revolutionary, full-body workout in only 20 minutes with Body 20's unique isometric suit containing 15 electrodes to directly induce muscle contraction and create resistance without any discomfort to your tendons, ligaments or joints. [0:6:7] Potential franchisees can experience the full franchise selection process, including a compelling presentation, comprehensive review of the FTD and item 19, a corporate studio workout, and a Discovery Day visit to connect with current franchisees – all to ensure confidence in their ability to make profitable investments. [0:6:7] By investing in a comprehensive presale strategy, businesses can expect to see a dramatic increase in success and growth, fueled by a strategically staffed team of a studio manager, coaching team, and sales team. [0:7:16] Experience the power of acupuncture for yourself! By using electrical stimulation through acupuncture needles, you can instantly activate weakened muscles and provide long-term relief for chronic low back pain. [0:8:44] Experience a revolutionary 20 minute full body workout with Body 20's state-of-the-art electrode suits, providing a powerful and effective way to activate and strengthen your muscles. [0:25:30] Our customer acquisition and franchisee growth has been fueled by an impressive word-of-mouth success, with an exponential increase in referrals and repeat business! [0:33:21] Experience the high-performance of Body 20--a franchise renowned for its commitment to recruiting financially-qualified, business-savvy franchisees with a competitive drive and respect for the franchise system. [0:39:11] At Body 20, we are committed to providing our clients with the very best fitness experience - which is why we only hire trainers with a strong background in personal training and a deep understanding of fitness, all led by at least one coach with an NASM certification. [0:41:3] With a highly successful presale model, Body 20 has achieved remarkable growth, rapidly building an impressive membership base before the grand opening. [0:44:56] Eager hosts who enthusiastically welcome guests create unforgettable experiences. --- Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising

Episode Notes

KEY POINTS

[0:1:28] Experience unprecedented muscle stimulation and results in just 10 minutes with Body20's revolutionary workout - significantly faster than traditional gym workouts!

[0:6:7] Experience a revolutionary, full-body workout in only 20 minutes with Body 20's unique isometric suit containing 15 electrodes to directly induce muscle contraction and create resistance without any discomfort to your tendons, ligaments or joints.

[0:6:7] Potential franchisees can experience the full franchise selection process, including a compelling presentation, comprehensive review of the FTD and item 19, a corporate studio workout, and a Discovery Day visit to connect with current franchisees – all to ensure confidence in their ability to make profitable investments.

[0:6:7] By investing in a comprehensive presale strategy, businesses can expect to see a dramatic increase in success and growth, fueled by a strategically staffed team of a studio manager, coaching team, and sales team.

[0:7:16] Experience the power of acupuncture for yourself! By using electrical stimulation through acupuncture needles, you can instantly activate weakened muscles and provide long-term relief for chronic low back pain.

[0:8:44] Experience a revolutionary 20 minute full body workout with Body 20's state-of-the-art electrode suits, providing a powerful and effective way to activate and strengthen your muscles.

[0:25:30] Our customer acquisition and franchisee growth has been fueled by an impressive word-of-mouth success, with an exponential increase in referrals and repeat business!

[0:33:21] Experience the high-performance of Body 20--a franchise renowned for its commitment to recruiting financially-qualified, business-savvy franchisees with a competitive drive and respect for the franchise system.

[0:39:11] At Body 20, we are committed to providing our clients with the very best fitness experience - which is why we only hire trainers with a strong background in personal training and a deep understanding of fitness, all led by at least one coach with an NASM certification.

[0:41:3] With a highly successful presale model, Body 20 has achieved remarkable growth, rapidly building an impressive membership base before the grand opening.

[0:44:56] Eager hosts who enthusiastically welcome guests create unforgettable experiences.

---

Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA

---

Lance Graulich

Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising

Eye On Franchising

Episode Transcription

Lance Graulich 00:00:05 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another fabulous episode of Eye on Franchising. And guess who I am? Your host, Lance Graulich. Nice to see everybody. Nice to hear from everybody. Thank you for your notes. Keep them coming. Today is a special day. As always. I have a fabulous guest. And this guy has the power. Literally the power. So, uh, the power started because his family business was electricity and natural gas. And, now he continues his journey in that sort of realm, if you will, revolutionizing the fitness business with what I call the power workout. This is Greg Breitbart, CEO of Body 20. Welcome, Greg.

Greg 00:00:56 Thanks for having me on, Lance, love the introduction not many people when they're a little kid, want to go into the electricity industry. I did not plan this. Shocking. It's shocking to me. And somehow I've somehow spent my entire career in the electricity business, but in completely, really unrelated sides of it. So initially in the utility space, with actual electricity, and natural gas. And now, unrelated. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of crossover benefit of my experience. But, we do a pretty novel and interesting workout using electric muscle stimulation.

Lance Graulich 00:01:37 This is going to be exciting because I just love your concept. It's an amazing brand. So let's go back to so you're in the family business. And then how did that transition happen to become you becoming sort of that accidental franchise or I ask people all the time on the podcast, how the heck did you get into franchising? Because most people don't get out of high school or college and say, I'm going to get in the world of franchising.

Greg 00:02:07 Yeah, and I wasn't one of those either. So, it ended up being a family business. But I actually started the company with my father. So we kind of created a family business together and he had spent his career in the commodities industry. I was pretty early in my career. I was 25 years old. And it was 2009. The stock market had just crashed. He had actually been retired before that. And, because of money lost in the market, money lost in real estate, he realized at a fairly later age that he was unretired and that he was going to have to do something again. And so we ended up, he hadn't worked for somebody in 25 years. So that wasn't really part of his plan. And we just decided we're going to start a business together. We always wanted to do that. And we ended up starting a company in the retail electricity and natural gas space in Connecticut, originally called North American Power. So essentially in 13 states, you, can choose where you get your electricity from. you don't have to buy it from the utility. They still deliver it. But you can pick a different supplier. So that's what we did. We got in the right business at the right time. I was the Chief Marketing officer, was my title from the get go, which is basically just because I knew slightly more than my other partners on marketing but we got in the right business at the right time. We had a lot of skin in the game. He put his last penny into the business. we borrowed a lot of money, actually, from my mother, his ex wife, who was nice enough to loan it back to him. And we were just all in. So we were working our butts off, and also pretty clever, and ended up just kind of on a rocket ship. Every entrepreneurial venture, it's never this, it's always kind of up and down like this. But the downs weren't that bad, and we just took off. So we brought in 100,000 customers in our first year we did over 125,000,000 in revenue in our first full twelve month period. and ultimately built it up to around 400 million a year in revenue, and brought in over a million customers over seven years. And across 13 states. I stayed in my role as Chief Marketing officer kind of the whole way through. And we sold it in 2017 to a public company. And I stayed on, helped manage, another brand that they had acquired. And my father literally and figuratively sailed off into the sunset, bought a boat, lived on a boat in South Florida, in Miami, which is where he's from. And he retired, hopefully for good, uh, at that point. And

Greg 00:04:35 that's kind of what led me to Body 20, which, I'll get into. So he ends up calling me out of the blue. It was two plus years after we sold. I had left the company that acquired us I had a one year non compete, which I was compensated for, so I really couldn't actually work in the industry. And that was the only industry I knew, was the electricity industry. So it was a good excuse. After a lot of stress over those seven years, I stayed on for two years, with the company, but I ended up leaving. And I had a one year non compete that I was compensated for. So I really couldn't work in the industry. And that was the only industry I knew. so it felt to me like this is a good time to take a year off. I was thinking of starting another electricity company after that, but I was going to take some time off. And probably the main reason I was excited to take that time off, one seven years, a lot of stress. My family had every penny in the business. We had a lot on the line, so that was a lot on the shoulders of a 25 to 32 year old, was my age during that time. and it all worked out, which is fantastic, but it's taken its toll and I put a lot mentally and physically into the business, and I developed a lot of, office injuries from sitting all day, bad posture, not taking care of myself, just the stress and all that. And I developed initially, I was a runner. I got back from a run one day, and I just had low back pain for the first time in my life after a run. And then that didn't go away for two and a half years, was, like, debilitating at times. Really, really bad. In and out of physical therapy. And then that same issue, which was in core strength and muscle activation issues, turned into, tennis elbow in both arms, plantar fasciitis in both feet, and Achilles tendinitis in both ankles all over the course of about two and a half years. So everything is great in life. My parents are set for life. I'm doing great, but I'm physically like a 60 year old just kind of falling apart. So I said, I'm going to have a year off. I'm going to just devote myself. I'll pay out of pocket. I'll go every single day to physical therapy, and I'm just going to kick these things because they're just so such a, damper on your quality of life. That's what I did. And I went to a new physical therapist, and I go in and I tell them exactly, because at this point, I had a PhD on what was going on. I just couldn't fix it. I was like, I have a muscle. My glutes my glute media on my right side

Greg 00:07:10 that I've lost connection to, it just doesn't work anymore. I can't strengthen it. Every time I'm given exercises to strengthen it, I use other muscles. My It bands tighten up, I get sciatica, and it gets worse. So the more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. And I, tell them what the issue is. They're like that sounds right. You diagnosed yourself. They're like, We've got a great new thing we're doing that we think could be really helpful. And so they ended up doing acupuncture needles in my glute medius connected to electric stimulation. And they explained, we're going to contract your muscle directly using electric stimulation for about ten minutes deep inside the muscle. Those signals are actually going to go back to your brain, because your brain normally activates muscles by sending electrical signals from your brain to your muscle. What electric stimulation does is it sends the same signals directly to the muscle to tell it to contract. But the added benefit is that that signal then travels back to your brain. And if you have a muscle activation issue like I had, it reminds your brain that the muscle is there, and it says, oh, yeah, oh, there's this muscle here. Maybe I should use this thing again, and stop ruining Greg's life. My brain gets that signal ten minutes, contracting my muscle directly, and then after that, they say, all right, now do the exercises you've been trying to do to strengthen it. And for the first time in two and a half years, trying to get rid of this low back issue I had, I could actually feel that muscle, and I could feel that I was using it. I woke up the next day, it was super sore because I hadn't worked it out in so long or even used it in any way. And my back felt better. And then the next day, felt better, felt better. And week goes by, and I get a phone call from my father, who is my old business partner. And he goes, Greg, I just tried this workout, which he hates working out. So I was like, you have the wrong number. Tried this workout. He's like, Raving, just tried this workout. It's incredible. It's 20 minutes. You wear this suit that has all these electrodes, and it's this incredible full body workout in 20 minutes. And I'm thinking about investing in this company. And so normally, we're really good partners. I'm more of the operational person, the person that kind of has to put pieces together, make it happen. He's an incredible visionary. But, sometimes every idea is the greatest idea ever. So oftentimes I'm

Greg 00:09:28 the Negative Nancy voice of reason. Yeah, the voice of reason or Negative Nancy. But this is like a week after my back is. I'm like, dad, it's so weird that you're calling me about this because and he knew all about my issues. I haven't had back pain in the last week, and obviously it's a different form of that, but from electric stimulation and physical therapy. So I told him. I was like, look, send me what you have. I was like, I don't know enough about this to say yes or no, but I'm a believer in the basic premise. And that was kind of all he needed to hear. He became a partner in Body 20, which is my company today. And he partnered with the US. Partner and the original founder in South Africa. Body 20 was started in South Africa around eight or so years ago. They, have around 40, 50 locations there. The founder came to the United States to try to franchise here. Met my partner today, Christopher Pena, in South Florida. They partnered together to open the first location, and then they partnered to franchise it in the United States. first location was in Fort Lauderdale, which is where my father went. And so he went there. He loved it. He's like, this is going to change fitness and networked into the owners and became their partner. And he actually is retired. And so I think his game plan was, I'm going to call Greg, and I'm going to get Greg involved in this one too. And so he did. I wasn't interested at first just because the company was in Florida. I live in the northeast. but I came down to see my dad. I tried the workout, and when I went down, I went down to do a squat. And I always had kind of glute activation. I just couldn't get my glutes to work right. And so I'd always have to think so hard about contracting my ABS, contracting my glutes. I go down to do my first squat as the device is turning on, it's contracting and activating all of my muscles as I'm doing the squat. And it just hits me, I don't even have to think about it. My glutes are contracted. My ABS are contracted. And it just hit me that if I'd just done this once every two months in the past, I never would have had the issues I had because it would have been strengthening these muscles that, uh, are hard for me to strengthen. And it's reawakening them, reactivating them. And so that was it. It was like, love it for a squat. Uand, we ended up, buying out, actually, the South African partners, um, and kind of taking over the brand. And initial plan was kind of rebrand re-conceptualize

Greg 00:11:53 it for the US. Market. which you can see behind me is one of our studios, our new kind of 2.0 studios. And then we kind of realized, sharp. Thank you. We love it. And we realized, kind of as we took over, there was a lot more that had to be changed other than just kind of how it looked. And we really needed to make sure the franchisees were performing at a level that made us want to sell to new people. and it was an uphill battle. we seem like an overnight success right now because we're having incredible success and growth, but it was a really tough first two years or so. and right as it was getting better, once in 100 year global pandemic, of ah course. But we've persevered and we're probably better off for it.

Lance Graulich 00:12:58 Yeah, you made a point earlier, and I believe it because I understand EMS, or electro stimulation better than most people. and I work out all the time. I absolutely believe you when you tell me, and tell everybody listening that this will change fitness. This is going to be or this is the most effective workout. And it's 20 minutes. For those of you listening, everybody, always, everybody I know, including myself, we're all fighting for time. We're all fighting. The only thing, the world's most valuable resource is our time. And I know so many people that tell me I don't have time to work out. Well, guess what? You can find 20 minutes. And, boy, this is an incredibly effective workout. Let's talk about the investment. Actually, before we get to the investment, Greg, let's go back to a, deeper understanding for everyone listening. So what is this workout like? So 20 minutes. Describe what this is all like and you're working with a trainer. Is it group? Everybody wants to know.

Greg 00:14:10 Yeah. So before I answer that, I have to because you just made me think of something that I just realized. And it's funny. Before the last year, I actually couldn't necessarily relate to the I don't have time to work out. And so I knew that that was a huge appeal for so many people, the time and being time constrained. I just had my first child seven and a half months ago. And so now I fully understand how it's just fitting in that workout, whether it's every day or for us, once or twice a week, it just becomes really hard as you have kids and life gets busier. I can relate more to the people that come to Body 20 for time, which is the main reason most people do come, is the time efficiency. But let me walk you through. So Body 20, it's boutique fitness. It's in a retail beautiful retail spaces, beautiful centers. you walk in front desk, you can be greeted. You're going to go back and you're going to meet a coach. All of our training is one on one. So every session you do, there's a coach, there one on one, personal training. So if you've ever done personal training, similar experience, except for a huge difference. There's no weights. You're wearing the suit. and you're only doing it for 20 minutes. so come in, you're going to get strapped into the suit. The suits that we use have 15 different electrodes on all of your major muscle groups. you're going to put the suit on. You're going to feel like a superhero. We actually have kind of a Robert Downey Jr. Picture wall. You can take a picture with, which a lot of people like to do. It's a cool feeling. You're kind of strapped in tight. It's unique the first time, for sure, then you're going to go in and you're going to do the 20 minutes workout. The first session we do, which we offer a free demo for everyone's, first time trying it. But once you get into it, it's 20 minutes. First session is twelve. And you're going to do a very basic over 20 minutes, a very basic Isometric workout. So this is not the AB built. They both use electric stimulation, but it's a very different application, a different frequency and all that, a different type of technology. But the biggest difference is that you are actually working out. So if you turn the suit off, which the Mayo Clinic actually just did a study, which is great. I'm really glad they did it, where they had people work out in the suit with it turned off, and then they had people work out in the suit with it turned on, and they measured their results over the

Greg 00:16:39 course of, I think, eight weeks or twelve weeks. And so it truly measured doing the exact same workout, the exact same movements over the exact same period of time with the same kind of cohort. How much is the actual suit doing? And the results were I don't have it off the top of my head, but the results were fantastic. From a cardio standpoint, from a strength gain standpoint, fat loss standpoint, it was a really positive study and done by the Mayo Clinic in the United States, which is great. so you're going to put the suit on. You're actually going to do a workout over 20 minutes, but it's very basic, and it's isometric movements. So isometric movements think like yoga, almost. So yoga poses planks, body weight squats. But you're doing a body weight squat, and you're also doing a bicep curl. And the reason you're doing both at the same time is that our workout is full body. Every time you come in, we don't focus on one muscle group this time and then another one the next time. And every single movement over the 20 minutes is also full body. So every second of body 20 is a full body workout. So when I'm going down to do the squat, it's activating my glutes, my quads, my ABS, my chest and my biceps. And so I'm going to do a bicep curl too. And because it's contracting my muscle directly when I go to do that bicep curl, and it doesn't matter if your 70 year old grandmother or her professional NFL player, son or grandson, it's going to feel like for her, it's going to feel like she's got 20 pounds in her hand. For him, it's going to feel like he's got 100 pounds, because the more muscle you have, the more resistance is created when we directly contract that muscle. And you essentially fight your own contraction at body 20. So when I go down to do that squat, even though there's no weight, it feels like I have a, ah, weight on my shoulders, but I don't. And that's a really great thing because there's no strain because there's no weight. There's no strain on your tendons, ligaments and joints as you do it. So you do this workout over 20 minutes. The stimulation turns on for 10 seconds at a time. You do a couple of squats, a plank, bicep curls, very basic movements. Then it turns off for 10 seconds, and you rest. So you're working out your muscles under tension for ten minutes of the 20, which you and I were talking, inside baseball here. We're talking before the podcast, and you're talking about going to the gym. And you watch these people, and they're on

Greg 00:19:08 their phones, and they're barely working out. Ten minutes. Even if you turn our suit off, ten minutes of muscles under tension is probably more than the average person is going to get ah at a gym anyways, because how many minutes or seconds are you actually working out if you go to the gym for an hour. It's not an hour, I'll tell you that. It's probably closer to seven to ten minutes. Yes, I've witnessed it, yes. You know, that's essentially the experience. You leave, you think, wow, it's your first time. Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought. I'm sweating. I'm, tired. You're like, wow, this is like, you get it, but you're also like, well, but did it work? I obviously burn calories. I'm sweating, but is that going to replace me going to the gym and lifting weights? And then you wake up a day later, two days later, three days later, and you realize, wow, I'm, um, sore in my biceps, I'm sore in my quads, I'm sore in my ABS, my chest, my back. As if you had gone to the gym, like, four times and done all your major muscle groups. And then you remember, I worked out for 20 minutes one time to get that benefit. And so I'd love to say we invented this. We didn't. This has actually been a technology and a workout that's existed in Europe for around ten plus years. it started in Germany. In Germany today, around 14% of all fitness facilities use whole body electro-muscle stimulation. It's like Pilates level popularity and awareness there. It's just starting to really take off in the United States because the devices need FDA clearance, and that clearance for the manufacturers just started four years, four or five years ago or so.

Lance Graulich 00:21:02 It's so exciting. So talk about the investment and how big is the studio? It looks like it's about 1200 less.

Greg 00:21:10 So investment is, roughly around 400,000 to 500,000. to open a body of 20. We're evolving that over time. We're trying to optimize every square foot. Do we need this? Do we need that? Is this making us money? Is that making us money? You learn, you get better and better and more refined as you build more and more of these. And we're building a lot of them. So we're getting good. the square footage has kind of steadily increased, and we may pare back a little bit, but we're around 1400 to 1600 is what we're looking for as the sweet spot for what we do today that allows four training spaces, four one on one training spaces in the locations, and which allows enough member capacity, to match your wildest dreams. we haven't run into that issue yet with the Forum studio. What we're thinking through now is we think we can actually do it probably even in a little bit of less square feet. U so we're looking at some models that have smaller footprints.

Lance Graulich 00:22:16 Got you. Super exciting. So who is the ideal franchisee that you're looking for?

Greg 00:22:23 Ideal franchisee, again, evolving for us what we thought four years ago. four years ago, in five days, it'll be my four year anniversary. at the anniversary. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I've got to make it five more days. So who are we looking for? It's evolved over time. I was in the unique scenario. I didn't. Found body 20. I came in as CEO, uafter we had four or five locations open. And we changed a lot. So it feels like mine. But one of the reasons I was able to is because I wasn't the founder. I didn't have that connection.

Lance Graulich 00:23:03 Bill Gates didn't create windows. Right. So there you go.

Greg 00:23:06 Exactly. So it's or of the movie, the founder, Ray Crock at McDonald.

Lance Graulich 00:23:11 Ray Crock did not create exactly.

Greg 00:23:15 I'm the steward, I guess, of the business. So, what was the question again? Everyone off on a tangent.

Lance Graulich 00:23:22 No, the question is ideal franchisee.

Greg 00:23:24 Ideal franchisee. Yeah.

Lance Graulich 00:23:26 And really, let me rephrase that a little bit, Greg, because when you look at some of your most successful franchisees today, what did they do before? I would imagine they're from different walks of life.

Greg 00:23:38 Yeah. So ideal franchisee. Table stakes. Obviously, you need to be financially qualified. We're looking for 250 to 350,000 in liquid capital, 750,000 net worth. Um, so you need to make sure that the candidate is financially qualified. That's a box that we check. So once we have that, then it's trying to understand who's going to have success here. We look for business backgrounds, management background. Sales backgrounds can be very helpful. Or sales management. but some way that we can understand that you have management abilities, you have leadership abilities, and you have a general business background that can be applied to this. once we get that, one of the more psychographic things that we look for in franchisees is because when we looked at somebody asked me at a Discovery Day dinner, a year and a half, two years ago, they said, what do all the top Body 20 franchisees have in common? And I hadn't thought about it that way necessarily, but it popped into my head immediately, which is they're all super competitive and competitive with each other in a good way. And we play on that. That's our culture here is like, we want a bunch of people that want to be number one and want to have the biggest, the best, the most profitable Body 20. And the more of those people that can join our culture, it just builds on itself. And that's really what's taken us to this point, which is our studios used to open at this level. And then all of a sudden, someone came in through our work, through their work. Someone opened here. And now that's the new record holder, the new benchmark. Then someone opened here, and it just kept doing that. And then someone opened here at a number that we couldn't even fathom. And just that competition between the franchisees in a friendly way is great. So we look for people that we try to find. Do they have something in their background, if their resume or just something they say, where we can see this person probably has an unhealthy level of competitiveness. That's what we look for. It's almost like a problem level. Like, they have to win that paired with we also need people that actually want to be franchisees. And you understand this, Lance, that's not someone that says they want to be a franchisee. That's somebody that actually understands or has taken the time to understand what it means to be a franchisee. And the whole reason you buy into a franchise, we want to make sure that we are weeding out anybody that either certainly didn't

Greg 00:26:29 if they said they didn't want to be a franchisee, they should be weeded out. But also the people that say they want to but maybe we can see maybe franchising isn't for them. They're too entrepreneurial. They need to do it their way. so we are looking for rule followers, competitive rule followers, if you will, that will challenge us, that we love getting ideas from our franchisees. That's where some of the best ideas come from. But they understand that they're buying into a system and that if they use the system, it's going the right way. They follow the operations manual, they follow the training they file. They follow the recipe that they're going to have success versus the people that come in that think they need to create their own recipe.

Lance Graulich 00:27:19 So talk a little bit about the process. You mentioned discovery day. So myself, as a broker, if I introduce you to a great candidate or a candidate finds you, they have a great workout. They want to be a franchisee. You have an initial call. You mentioned Discovery Day, but walk me through some of the process. Do they have an opportunity to talk to existing franchisees? How do you do it?

Greg 00:27:43 Sure. so I'll just preface it by saying I spend most of my time on the operations side of the business. We've got, you know, our franchise sales team, Bob Mcquellan. They're spending most of their time there. So I'm going to do my best to, take you through. But once there's interest and we'll do kind of an initial presentation, you'll get put into the process. Ultimately, that process is leading you to hopefully coming to visit us in Houston to, come to our corporate studio, try the workout, come to Discovery Day. Along the way, you're going to have an opportunity, one, to review our FTD. Umitem seven, what's it cost to open a body? 20. We have an item 19 that we publish that gives you we try to give as much robust of kind of a data set on the financial side so you can understand what is entailed there.

Lance Graulich 00:28:35 You can make money.

Greg 00:28:37 Yes, we provided an empty pro forma, but you make it so you don't have to reinvent the wheel from an accounting standpoint to be able to try. To understand on your own, but try to understand how the business is going to work for you financially. so you're going to get that. We're going to introduce you, you have a list of all of our franchisees in the FDD, but we're going to introduce you, to ones that are more readily available. You, know, Lance, being a franchisee, you're pretty busy sometimes. we have some franchisees that just are happy to always take the call. but ultimately, people can talk to everybody. And then you're going to come visit us for Discovery Day. You're going to try the workout. We're going to go to dinner. We're going to get to know you. Dinner is fun. It's a great time. But it is also on both sides, it's you getting to know us on a more personal level. It's us getting to know you on a more personal level. Your family, your background, just kind of who you are. and that can come through sometimes more at a dinner. and then the next day, we're going to go through the whole business. So we're going to go through kind of soup to nuts. What is entailed in opening a Body 20? What's entailed in running a Body 20? what makes a Body 20 successful? What are the pitfalls of the people that don't, have as much success? And so you'll get kind of the full run through of the business, the support systems that we have, the entire team, that we have supporting you. Umand so you'll get all that at Discovery Day.

Lance Graulich 00:30:08 Love it. So, you had some exciting news recently. You have a relationship with Benatrends. Care to talk about that a little bit?

Greg 00:30:16 We do, yes. It's very exciting. We, have a partnership with Benatrends. They've made $30 million available through our franchisees for financing, through a network of banks that they work with, to help facilitate our Body 20. Current owners opening their second, third location, and then new franchisees opening their first location. And so, paired with SBA and other options, we've got kind of multiple options for our franchisees. From a financing standpoint. Not all of our franchisees finance their business, but a good deal of them do. and so it's important for us because money is not the only it's the checkbox for us. It's not necessarily indicative of your success. And so we want to make sure that this isn't just an opportunity for people that have a lot of money. But some of our best operators are the ones that, u either going to choose to use financing or that may be more of their financial position where they're going to be using financing, at least for their first business.

Lance Graulich 00:31:20 It's really a spectacular relationship that you've struck with Benetrends. Because so many other franchiseors don't go out of the way, out of their way to establish those relationships, or in some cases, benetrends doesn't want to work with them because maybe their concept isn't as strong as yours. And look, if it's, let's say, a $400,000 investment, you're talking 20%, 25% down payment. You have to have some working capital. But a lot of people can get involved in this business if they have the right financing in place. But, uh, I think I also want to recognize the fact that what you said about the multi unit ownership here, you have quite a few people that are committing to open location two, location three. And to me, having been in franchising almost 30 years, it's the biggest sign of health in an organization is that people want to do it again. They didn't just do one,, they want to do more. So, great job there.

Greg 00:32:20 Let's talk to you. Sure, that's my background. I'm happy to talk about marketing. That's my background before this. That's my baby. But, u yeah, we're very excited. That is for me, that is the greatest sign. There's two health checks in franchising for us at Body 21 is are our members telling other people about this? And that is we pass that one in spades. We monitor it. It's a huge part of our business is referrals, which is our members come in and they refer other people because they love it and they're getting results. And so that's a huge component. Almost 50% of all of our members came from another member. So we're going to get into marketing. We do our own marketing on top of that. But a huge share of this is word of mouth. And my friends doing this, they said they love it, and now I want to come in and try it. So that's a great kind of health check for us. The extreme version of that, which has happened many, many times, and that's where almost all of our original franchisees came from, is I love the workout so much that I want to own one of these. and we have a lot of especially our original franchisees, a lot of them came from actually being a member before this, having either a fitness experience that was impactful for them and results, or some of them. Had more injury that was improved or something more life changing, where they just said, I need to be a part of this and that we love that's. Like another great health, check too. that's kind of what we look for. We're at the stage now where a lot of those original owners are looking at their second location. A lot of those already secured their territories, we just had, a multi unit open in north, Carolina. That franchisee is actually now looking for a third and fourth unit. so we're really excited. The average franchisee coming in is typically getting between two to three territories, um, which if you want to open one, that's fantastic. But there's a lot of benefit in having, multiple territories around each other, as you know.

Lance Graulich 00:34:32 Lance absolutely. So one of the tricks that you're doing, and you mentioned this earlier, it's not so much a trick, but it's a membership model. And you're doing a lot of presales. And as you mentioned,earlier, the presales keep growing and growing as the brand continues to grow. So talk a little bit about that entire marketing program and how you do all that.

Greg 00:34:59 Yeah, I love talking about this. So we didn't invent presale either. but it had such a huge impact on our business. This is actually something that we weren't doing before I got here. it wasn't my idea, it was my partner's idea. Chris Pena and it's pretty standard in fitness. We just didn't do it for whatever reason before. And essentially what you're doing is you've got this period of time when you open, whether it's a Body 20 or a chick-fil-a, or any retail business, you have this period of time. It could be a frustrating period, too, when you're building out your space, you're getting your lease, you're finding your space, getting your permits, and then you're building it out.

Lance Graulich 00:35:40 All you're doing is spending money.

Greg 00:35:43 Exactly. And that window of time for us is often tightening up a lot. It's almost getting too quick. But that's around a 90 day period where you're spending money, but you can't bring in any money. And you'd normally just kind of be sitting on your hands waiting to open. And then you open day one. You put your we're Open sign up, and you hope to get your first customer on your first day. But you have your full team. You've got a manager, you've got a, usales associate, you've got your trainers, your coaches, and your staff. And so wouldn't it be great if you could open on day one and have a full or close to full membership base on the first day of business? And so that's what we focus on. And it's a huge emphasis at Body 20. ultimately everyone's results are up to them. But what we try to do is we try to through presale and through pre-selling memberships and the programs and kind of the recipe that we have for that. We try to get you to a point where you've accumulated enough presold membership so that on day one, you're starting and you're not putting the dollar into the machine, you're hopefully taking the dollar out of the machine.

Lance Graulich 00:36:59 Right.

Greg 00:37:00 and that is our goal, and it's something that is possible by 20. We've got at this point, we've always had a pretty good system for it, but we just keep getting better and better. And so we've, kind of raising the bar, breaking our own records for the largest presale. Um, and we've got 15 studios in Presale right now, which is almost as many as we have open, which is incredible. And we've got some new record breakers in that mix. It's a great way to start your business. So got your presale period, your construction period. You're working your butt off during that time. Your manager is working their butt off. But once you open your doors, we want it to be off to the races at that point. And that's the goal of presale.

Lance Graulich 00:37:48 It's so exciting. Let's talk about staff. who are these trainers? Are they personal trainers? Do they have to have a degree in fitness related stuff? I mean, who are you looking for to, ube on staff at a Body 20?

Greg 00:38:06 Yeah, so our recommended staffing model, we're semi absentee. So franchisees working on the business, not in the business. You're going to have a manager, a studio manager. the studio manager is going to have two teams. They're going to have a coaching team we call training coaching at Buddy 20. And they're going to have a sales team. So they're going to have a sales associate or two sales associates that are focusing on sales and sales activity, following up with leads, calls, text, going to events, things like that. And then you're going to have the coaching side, which is the individual trainers, that are training the members. Those coaches typically have a background in personal training. That's kind of one of the most common background before this. We don't require it, u just because we've been able to take people that don't have that background, but have. And if you think about fitness, is somewhat unique from the standpoint of I may not be a personal trainer, but I may know more about the human body than 90% of personal trainers because I work out seven days a week for the last 15 years and I'm in incredible shape. And I understand that. So it's either personal trainers or it's people that have a strong passion and knowledge of fitness coming in. And then we can teach them how to administer to Coach Body 20.so for that, you're going to have a requisite amount of coaches to correspond with your membership base. And so your coaches are your hopefully none of them are let's say they're the food cost here. And so as your membership scales or contracts, hopefully it never contracts, but as it scales, we have kind of a formula for you of how many coaches do I need based on my membership base? And then with those coaches, you have one lead coach that's the person that's kind of responsible for the training of the coaches and kind of your lead fitness person. That person probably, or I think it's actually a requirement, is going to have a NASM certification or other, u forms of fitness certification.

Lance Graulich 00:40:07 NASM, what does it stand for? Give me that acronym.

Greg 00:40:11 U put me on the spot. How fast can I do it?

Lance Graulich 00:40:13 North American. Something about sports medicine.

Greg 00:40:16 Medicine, I think.

Lance Graulich 00:40:17 Yeah, sports medicine.

Greg 00:40:20 Anyway, as it came out of my mouth. I was like, don't ask me, Lance.

Lance Graulich 00:40:26 No, it's like, national, Academy of Sports Medicine. That's what it is.

Greg 00:40:32 It is there. Got it.

Lance Graulich 00:40:34 Anyway, so let's see. Final thoughts, final words of wisdom for today. Mr. Greg. This has been, enlightening and a lot of great information here.

Greg 00:40:43 Thanks, Lance. Final thoughts. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're either in the industry or you're potentially considering getting into franchising. that was a decision that I had to make too, not as a franchisee, but to am I going to invest and get involved and try to lead this franchise? Or and what I'll say is, just in franchising in general, it is such an incredible industry for the right person. You have to actually want to be a franchisee, as I talked about earlier, you have to want to follow a system. You have to be an entrepreneur, but not so much of an entrepreneur that you can't be happy making money following a very simple playbook that has to work for you. but in general, if it's right for you, it is such a great industry. It's such an amazing opportunity. and if you're a business executive, which I was before this, whatever your background is, you may have the most amazing background ever. If you haven't been running businesses like this, small businesses, franchise locations, you're going to learn. And maybe this is the end of your career. But if it's not, you're going to learn so much about business too, while hopefully making a lot of money, having a good time along the way, because we teach you every aspect of it. And so we as a franchise or I've learned so much about business, being the CEO of a franchise, or I thought I knew a lot from running, helping to run a company. 400 million in revenue and 125 employees. I learned more in my first year being CEO of Body 20. Because we have to be able to teach you how to find real estate and the right lease and how to negotiate a lease. Then we have to teach you how to build your location. We have to know all the pitfalls. We have to teach you the pitfalls and make it as simple as possible for you. Then we have to teach you accounting and how the accounting is going to work to make sure that everything is unified. And then we have to teach you marketing, and we have to teach you advertising and teach by teach. In a lot of this, we're providing and making it very simple. But you're kind of seeing every aspect of a business, whether it's something you're doing or something that we're making very easy and providing. And so you just get this incredible experience and this well rounded understanding, but with, like, training wheels on too. Because you are one of 200 people, 300 people that are all doing the same business. And you get our support or your franchise or support, and our help and

Greg 00:43:14 guidance and training and everything but you also get all the other franchisees. And that is maybe the most powerful part of Franchising. We call it best practice harvesting. And we're just scratching the surface on what that's going to mean. And the impact of that about 20, because we have 20 open locations, 15 in presale, another 15 that have leases signed that are about to start presale. We're going to have around 80 open, 85 open by the end of this year. Our Best Practice harvesting is getting four X this year of, smart, really intelligent people that we're bringing into the system that are going to open their Body twenty S. And every one of them is going to come up with something that's better than the last. And so that's that kind of last part where you're not coming into this to learn business, but you're getting this full business experience, but with training wheels to make it as easy as possible. And you're getting the benefit of all of these brilliant people in the Body 20 network or whatever franchise you choose. So it's not just you trying to come up with, that next idea, it's us. And it's our entire network of franchisees. That's my pitch on Franchising. but you have to want to be a franchisee. And if you do, it's, incredibly rewarding.

Lance Graulich 00:44:31 Best practice harvesting. It's the ultimate collaboration. I love that you brought that up. Best practice harvesting. I got to remember that.

Greg 00:44:40 Greg now I have to cite my source. We have built Lance a Dream team because we've sold almost 200 plus units. We have 225 sold we've sold almost 200 of those in the last year and a half. we are growing like a rocket ship. So what are we doing as a brand is we are investing every penny we can in building the best possible team that we can. And so we've got the past CMO of Cycle bar is our Chief Marketing Officer, chief Experience Officer. And the person who coined this phrase is our Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Stores. His name is Jared Pajarski. He was in that same role at Hand in Stone Massage. From 100 units to 600 units they just had a transaction. They did very well. Incredible brand he was the one that drove performance there, and so he coined that phrase. Or maybe he got it from someone else, so I can't take it.

Lance Graulich 00:45:34 Well, we gave credit to him at least, so I appreciate that. Greg, you're awesome. Body 20. Check it out. Thanks for being here.

Greg 00:45:43 Thanks for having me, Lance.

Lance Graulich 00:45:44 My pleasure.