07/19/2015
OUR AWESOME SUMMER PROJECT
Written by Daniel Rosen, co-founder of Awesome Partners, LLC.
ABOUT SIXPAX GYM
SixPaxGym.com is the brainchild of world-class bodybuilder Siavash Fashi and his wife Jennifer Bouras, the hardest working couple I have ever met. With big dreams, determination and $3000 to their names, they managed to take an abandoned gas station and turn it into the #1 personal training gym in Culver City.
Recurring-revenue businesses are my passion, and a gym is the perfect recurring model, so when I started to train with Siavash i was so fascinated by this amazing little gem of a gym that I began to ask him many intrusive questions. What is your churn rate?" I asked one day. He said “what’s that?" I said "how many people cancel each month?" He said "none!" I said ok, how many cancel each year? And again he said “None. No one cancels!” This got my attention. I've never seen a recurring revenue business with a churn rate of zero, so i knew this was a very special business run by 2 very very special people.
THE PROBLEM
Siavash's classes were so popular that his calendar was always full. Normally this is an awesome problem to have, but Siavash’s sessions were 1-on-1. Since there’s only 1 Siavash and only 12 hours in the day for him to work, he was spread too thin and overworked with no room to grow the business any further. He had painted himself into a corner. You cant scale that kind of business because you can’t scale yourself.
Jennifer’s customer service skills are world-class and she managed the office, accounting and collections with ninja-like skill, multi-tasking cell phone, text, google calendar, email, post-it notes, but there just aren't enough hours in the day to do so many manual chores, and you cant steer the ship if you’re down below rowing.
Additionally, the clients were paying a fortune for training in large lump sums of cash paid 3-4 months in advance with no credit cards and no automation. Most people don’t have that kind of cash on hand and being paid so infrequently made it difficult for gym budgeting.
The challenge was to keep the “old school gym” while adding new technology and infrastructure under the hood — and to change the business model to one that could scale and replicate.
THE SOLUTION
The solution to Siavash’s predicament was to introduced a new "Semi-Private" class (with up to 3 people) to enable Siavash to train more people a day.
The Solution to Jennifer’s predicament was to add software to manage and automate the operations, the clients, payments and schedules. For clients to pay conveniently by credit card, with smaller automated monthly payments and to be able to sign themselves up and manage their own schedules and accounts from any computer tablet orsmart phone. Additionally SixPax needed a way to see an overview of their business analytics with a KPI dashboard.
THE RESULTS
Siavash and Jennifer now have predicable revenue that grows. They can now step back and focus on growing the business. Clients are thrilled because they're getting a better workout (with a new found sense of competition) at a lower monthly price. Smaller monthly payments by credit card are more affordable for the average customer and they can now comfortably increase their customer base.The result? SixPax gym is now on track to double their revenue during the 12 Months.
SHORT TERM GOALS
- A Google Ad Words campaign
- Blog articles and drip emails about fitness.
- SixPax Gym clothing
- Additional staff to enable Siavash and Jennifer to operate on a higher level and maybe take a vacation (or at least a day off).
LONG TERM GOALS
- Maximizing the potential of this location.
- Adding a second location.
- Growing the SixPax Gym brand into a franchise.
- Direct to Consumer Sales of Siavash’s Proprietary patented fitness equipment bundled with an online subscription fitness course.
www.sixpaxgym.com
