Scott Colby on Marketing Fitness Boot Camps

I am here with Scott Colby.  Scott, who are you and what do you do?

Hi Chris, thanks for having me.  My name is Scott Colby, I am currently living in Dallas, Texas, and I own personal training business and have been a fitness professional for about the last eight years or so.  Right now, the main focus of my training business is actually not private, personal training, but I actually run outdoor boot camps for women.  I’ve been doing that for a little over two years now and I’m having a blast doing it.  I find that it’s great for me financially because I am making more per hour so it frees up a lot of my time during the day to work on my business and I enjoy doing it more than private training.  It allows me to be more creative in designing the workouts, the working out with women in a group setting is beneficial for the women, they love the support; they love it because it’s less expensive than hiring a trainer to work with them on a private basis.  Really it’s been a great part of my business which I’ve been growing for the last, a little bit over two years and I urge anybody who is trying to leverage their time and is getting maybe burnt out doing private training or who wants to make more per hour to consider starting up an outdoor boot camp.  Now it’s not for everybody.  Not everybody likes working with people in a group setting, so you’ve got to try to find and see if that is something for you, as a personal trainer, would like to do.

How did you get started?

Well, like I said, I’ve been a personal trainer, at least certified, since 1999.  I started on a part time basis because I had a full time research position.  I decided at soon as I got my first corporate job, as you will that I wanted to be in business for myself.  I never really thought I would go in that direction when I was in college.  Just going through all the red tape and politics and things like that, that everybody in corporate America has to go through, I decided pretty early on that I wanted to run my own business. 

I started out, like I said, on a part time basis-training people in their home, like in the evening after I got off from my regular job.  Even doing private training on a part time basis, I wasn’t doing it full time like some people do it, forty to fifty, or sixty hours per week.  I don’t know how they do that because I got burnt out just doing it two or three hours in the evening.  I was never one who liked to — like training three clients in a row non-stop that just killed me.  I don’t know why, it just wasn’t something that I liked to do and I know a lot of trainers out there are training eight hours straight and maybe ten hours straight, and I don’t know how they’re doing it.  So, I was getting burnt out already, doing private training on a part time basis. 

I always loved the outdoors, I always loved anything I could do outside and be active at the same time, I enjoy doing it.  So, I started hearing a little bit more about the popularity of fitness boot camps and I decided I wanted to give it a try.  Back, probably four years ago I started to try to put together a boot camp program.  I found a park to hold my first camp and basically, I was just advertising via flyers and word of mouth.  That wasn’t my most effective means of advertising because I could only drum up about four or five people.  I’ll tell you, a little bit later on, more mistakes that I made and how I corrected them.  But, it got me my start and I did it for about three months.  I was never able to grow it sufficiently so I kind of gave up for awhile.  Then about a year and a half after that, so we’re talking about two and a half years ago, I took a coaching program through Jim Labadie and Ryan Lee and they helped me really find what I loved, what my passion was, what my niche was and I decided, yes it is running these outdoor fitness camps.  So basically, at that point, I decided to devote all my energy and time to growing my boot camp business and I decided again, from that point on, I’m not to grow my private training business.  I stopped trying to look for private clients.  I told everybody who asked me what I did, I didn’t even tell them I did private training although I still had some clients that I trained, I focused all my time, my energy and my thoughts on growing my boot camp business.  So, that’s a little bit about how I got interested in it and how I started it up.

What are the best ways to promote your camp?

The best way to promote my camp — it’s a little bit different now.  When you are just starting out and you don’t have any boot camp members versus when you are already established.  So there are different ways about going about doing it.  When you are first starting out, which some of the listeners may just be starting out, they don’t know where to turn, it’s kind of like any other component of your business.  You’ve got to get your name out there and there are different ways to do that.  Some of the things that I did; number one, the easiest thing to do, is to tell everybody that you know.  Your friends, your former clients, your current clients, maybe if you do an online training and they’re local to you, tell your online clients.  Hopefully people out there have a database of e-mail addresses of everybody interested in their services, so they can just send out an e-mail instead of having to call people or sending a regular US Mail type letter to.  So that is the first thing you should do, tell everybody that you know what you’re doing. 

A couple of things that I did.  Number one, I wanted to — after I took that coaching program, which was in September and October, because I was going to start my camp in the January of the following year, so, I needed to start quickly getting the word out if I wanted to get enough people to run my first camp, three months after my coaching camp ended.  I did a couple things, I picked out a park that I wanted to use and  there was a corporation, a company right near that park fortunately, that was having a health fair.  They wanted me to come set up a booth, so I thought that would be the perfect opportunity for me to get my name out to a bunch of people — the hundreds of people who work for that corporation.  It was perfect because of the proximity of that office to where I was going to be holding the camp.  Basically, what I did, was I set up a booth at the health fair.  Everybody who came, I had them put down their name and e-mail address for a special report and then I asked them — it was also a good opportunity for me to survey the corporate employees on what they wanted.  For example, I didn’t know whether an evening camp or a morning camp would be more popular.  So, I asked when I was taking down their names and e-mail addresses, I asked them to answer the question, would you prefer a morning or evening camp because some people like the camps before they go to work, some people like them afterwards.  So that really helped me, that was very key that I collected those e-mail addresses and that I did that short one question survey to find out what time of day they wanted their camps.  You always have to deliver what the potential customer wants.  If everybody wanted evening and I decided to start up a morning camp, it wouldn’t have been very beneficial or easy for me to get clients to sign up.  So, I got all these e-mail addresses, and the reason I got all these e-mail addresses, is because I’ve got a data base where I can just click a button and send out an e-mail to everybody who has expressed interest in the camp and tell them when it was going to launch and get them excited about it.  That’s one way I started to get the word spread that I was going to be running these camps and to get potential interested parties. 

Another thing that I do, which is very good on my part, every October here in Dallas and I know in other parts of the countries they do this, maybe in another month, we have a Breast Cancer race, a 5k race, and the charity: Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, all the money raised for that charity, for that race, goes to the charity.  What I did, I decided I was going to be doing a women’s camp, a women’s only camp, because I had surveyed, again I did a survey, of current clients at the time, which happened to be all women, but I said to them, would you rather have a women’s camp or a Co-ed camp?  They all unanimously said they wanted a women’s only camp.  So that was another key piece of information in my research before I even started my camps.

Anyway, here comes this 5k Susan G. Coleman Breast Cancer Foundation race and I decided, why don’t I run a boot camp for charity and everybody who comes and makes a donation, I will give all the proceeds to this Breast Cancer charity.  So, what I did, the way I set it up, it wasn’t just a one time event, it was actually a six week camp and I made it coincide so that at the end of the six weeks, was right when that 5k race was going to begin.  I just set it up as a two day a week camp.  It was a Wednesday evening and Saturday mornings.  I just picked those days and times to fit within my schedule at that time because I still had a full time job.  It wasn’t anything that people had to commit to for the entire six weeks.  My goal was to get as many people coming in on any of those days within that six weeks and collect their names and e-mail addresses.  So, that’s what I did.  I spread the word around again via my friends and people already on my e-mail list.  The great thing about doing something like that for charity is it’s pretty vital.  In the sense that it’s a good cause so the people that come the first day, they’re going to tell their co-workers about it and their friends saying, hey, I’ve got an exercise boot camp I just did where you make a small donation and all the proceeds are going to charity.  Why don’t you come with me the next time?"  So people start brining in all their friends and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Again, two key points for me besides it being for a good cause, was, number one; I collected all the e-mail addresses of people who are interested in this kind of workout and number two; it got me better practice.  I didn’t have that much experience teaching a large group.  My boot camp that I had tried a few years prior to that.  I only really had four or five, that got me a little bit of exposure, but now I’m getting ten, twelve, fifteen people at a time and it gave me good practice working with a large group like that and coordinating a workout, being in the outdoors and using the park I was going to use for my real camp.  So, it was a great learning experience for me, it was for a great cause, and again, I collected a lot of e-mail addresses.  When my camps were actually opening in January I had this big list of people to e-mail that I knew were interested in my camps.  They had already raised their hand and told me, “Yes I’m interested” either at that health fair or they came to that charity boot camp.

Any other ways to get members for your camp?

Yes, you know, those were the ways that I got my initial members, so my initial members came from the health fair, they came from the charity boot camp, they came from current clients, and past clients.  The cool thing you can do about camps is that you can invite people to come free and it won’t cost you anything.  Here is what I mean by that.  If you, let’s say you’re trying to start up your personal training business and you say, yes, you can come to the first– you can have two free personal training sessions.   Well then you’re wasting two times and not getting paid for it, but if you’re running a boot camp where you already have paying members, it’s no real skin off your back to toss somebody in the class.  Hey, if you bring three people, I’ll let you in for free because you’re already there anyway getting paid by all the other clients, so it’s no real big deal if you let somebody in for free, provided that they do something for you.  It’s not going to cost you any extra time.

One other way that I got three of my clients in that first camp was actually a good friend of mine.  She worked with a lot of women and she was looking for a new workout program when I said I’d let her in the camp for free if she brought as many people as she could from work.  So, she brought in three people from work that paid in the first camp and two more in the second camp and so I let her in for free.  So that’s another method you can use. 

Publicity, which everybody should be going out and trying to get publicity for their camps, there are different ways to go about it, just from what I’ve learned from a lot of the experts out there.  It’s been easiest for me to get publicity when I’ve been piggybacking on a national story or piggybacking on a holiday or an event of some kind.  I guess it was my fourth month of doing camps, in April, that I sent out a press release — I got this idea from Jim Labadie.  There was a national story on the end of the low-carb diet craze.  So, Jim helped me come up with this idea of, why don’t you call your camp a rehab clinic for former low carb addicts and he used that exact terminology and it worked out great, it was a compelling press release that had a great headline.  The local NBC came out and filmed an entire day of my camps, they interviewed me, and they interviewed some of my camp members.  The key when you’re getting publicity, which the listener may know and they may not, is you’ve got to have a way for people to take action.  Let’s say, if somebody is doing a story on you, whether it’s NBC or any other network or even a newspaper, more than likely, hopefully, they’re going to put your website up or announce your website and that’s something we haven’t really talked about yet, Chris, but it’s important to have a website.  You really need something on your website to collect information from any visitor that’s going to be visiting.  We all know that most people don’t purchase the first time they see a service or a product.  It might take them multiple viewings of an offer, so when my story was on NBC, I made sure that I had a free report to give away to anybody who came to my website and I had a way to capture e-mail addresses and first names and things of that nature.  So, people who saw my story, they weren’t just left hanging.  They weren’t just led to a website, seeing my camp and then, oh well, I’m not ready to purchase, so I’m not going to do anything.  That’s not what happened.  I collect about 250 new e-mail addresses just from being on TV that one time and now that I have their e-mail addresses I can send them my newsletters with great content, remind them when the next camp is going to be starting up and things like that.  So really, once you’re on TV or get an article done about you, you might not get any new clients right away and that’s alright.  Your main concern is just to collect as many new leads as you can and then they — I’ve had people who saw my story on NBC and they didn’t join my camp until maybe eight or nine months later.  You always want to make sure you capture all the names and e-mail addresses that you can.  Prove yourself to them that you provide good content, that you’re a reputable trainer in your community, and eventually you’re going to convert a lot of those leads.

What kind of website do you use?  Do you use a sales based website or; what do you use?

Yes, I use a sales copy based website.  When I first started my camps, it was just a one-page sales copy website with a great headline, which we know is key, and my website is: Womensfitnesscamp.com, so www.womensfitnesscamp.com so anybody can kind of see how I’ve designed it.  It’s got a great headline and it’s got audio testimonial, it has a video of the camp, it’s got some before and after pictures, it’s got written testimonials, its go all these benefits.  So if somebody joins the camp, how is it going to benefit them.  So, it has all these benefits of joining the camp, it’s got — I put value in it, I make them aware that — if you were going to work with a personal trainer for twelve sessions, which my camps are twelve classes, so they’re four weeks at three days a week, I put a value on it.  If you work with a trainer on a one-on-one basis, you’re going to pay upwards of $1,000.00 possibly and by signing up for a camp, you’re going to save hundreds of dollars and your going to get better results because working in a group setting you have more accountability and more compliance.  Then I have like a nice — I have all these bonuses listed out and I also have a money back guarantee.  That’s how I first started, and I still have that same sales copy because it’s done good for me.  Now, when you go to my web page though, I have a squeeze page set up; meaning you have to enter in your name and e-mail address to get more information about the camp.  So, try to capture those people who are really serious about finding out about the camps.  So, if you go to the page now, it’s got a real short — it’s got my picture and an audio message from me, a different compelling headline, and some old points about what you would get when you join the camp.  It’s just a real short squeeze page, but then they have to enter in their name and e-mail address to get more information about the camps and to register for it.  That way we capture only the people serious about joining the camp, and if they don’t join right away, again, I now have their e-mail address, so I can send them my newsletters and remind them about future camps.

What are some strategies you use to keep members coming back over and over again?

Well, I think first and foremost is to make it an enjoyable fun camp, a great workout, positive atmosphere and get results.  If you’re just doing that, making it a fun place to be — a lot of people dread going to the gym and exercising, which is one of the neat things about working outdoors.  It’s totally different than being confined in a gym where you may have to wait for equipment or if you have to — I don’t know, it’s crowded there, it sometimes doesn’t smell that great, they’re playing music you don’t like, your confined.  You may be stuck in an office all day and now you’re stuck indoors at a gym trying to get through another workout, so being outdoors just provides a whole new element to it.  You can do your boot camps out on a playground that adds a fun component to it; you can make the exercises into some type of game or a challenge format that adds a fun component to it.  At the same time they get this fun component, these workouts are hard and challenging and get results.  The camp members, they love working out together.  Since I knew women usually are more interested in that supportive atmosphere, that comradery that comes about in attending a boot camp program.  So, there is a lot of times when we’re getting towards the end of a camp and the girls are asking each other, are you signing up for the next camp?  They’re encouraging each other to sign up for the next camp, so it’s really not something I have to do.

I do though give a lot of e-mail support to my camp members.  I’m constantly e-mailing them with strategies, like mindset strategies, inspirational quotes, nutrition help, exercises or workouts they can do outside of the class, so I’m always staying in contact with these camp members.  Also, when I have a new camp member, I have an assistant call them before the first day of class just to welcome them to the program.  So, if somebody mentions — I just started doing this, this year actually, so it’s only been two months, I’ve started taking attendance.  The camp members check their name in when they come to class.  That way — now if somebody misses — you’re going to have people miss class here and there due to they can’t get off work or other obligations, but if somebody misses three dates in a row, then I know, because I’m taking attendance.  I can place a phone call to them or I can e-mail them and make sure that everything’s alright. 

Some other things that I do are, like this last camp that I did, I sent out a survey to my camp members.  I just asked them one question, what could I do to make this camp better, either the rest of this camp or in future camps.  Whether it’s different music, or if it’s a different exercise or more support from me, just anything that they could think of.  Then each person that responded — some people said they loved it and most people gave me positive feedback, but there may have been one thing they were looking for.  So then, I responded to these people individually and said, “Yeah, I read your survey.  I just wanted to get back to you individually.”  People love that, “Hey, that’s pretty cool, I’m getting personal attention now”.  They know it’s a group setting and that I’m not going to be working with them one-on-one during the workout, but they appreciated that I got back to them on a personal level.  So just little things like that.  I set up a blog where people can go and look at what we do — I list all the workouts, so when we finish a day of camps, I go there and start a new blog post and I put the workout we did and I take pictures and video clips and put all that up there.  People love seeing the workout, they like sharing that with their friends.  If they miss a day of class, they can go to the blog and see what we did.  I think just being as supportive as possible; again, it’s not the type of camp you think of like the military.  There is no yelling, it’s all encouraging, it’s a hard workout, but again, it’s done in a supportive manner.  I’m trying my best to over deliver and give them as much value as I can.

How many people are in a camp in one group, one workout?

That can vary, but I’ve had upwards of twenty-five people, that’s probably the most I’ve ever had.  Let me tell you how I structure it; I teach three different camp times.  We do a 6:00am class, a 6:00pm and a 7:00pm.  The way I chose those, remember back when I was doing my health fair before I even started, I asked people if they wanted morning or evening, I got more votes for the evening, which was good for me at the time because I wasn’t really a morning person, so I was like, yes, evening.  So I think I started my first camp at a 6:30pm time.  I think I had some people who liked 6:00pm, some who liked 7:00pm, so I kind of compromised and did a 6:30pm.  My first camp I started with twelve people and I limited it to twelve just because it was my first real time doing a bigger class size.  I didn’t want to get too overwhelmed and as a marketing strategy, I could say, hey, we are limiting this to the first twelve so sign up quickly.  As I grew and I got more people interested, I branched off into two evening classes, so instead of one 6:30pm class, I did a 6:00pm, and a 7:00pm class in the evenings. 

The other thing that I’ve learned quickly — we started off with our first camp as a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening.  We didn’t get too much luck having those people come Friday evenings, you can imagine a lot of people like to do different things whether they’re going out to dinner or maybe going out of town for the weekend.  So, we quickly switched the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings to be Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. 

Then about eight months into that, I got a lot of – people in the evening class really, really wanted the morning camp and they said they had all these neighbors that they could have sign up for the morning class.  So, then I offered a morning 6:00am and I think my first 6:00am class I had ten people which was pretty good because I had just kind of put it together quickly and – again, once people like your camp, they’re going to market for you, which is the neat thing about this.  They’ll spread the word for you if you do a good job. 

So now, I had a 6:00am, a 6:00pm, and a 7:00pm and I’m still trying to limit it to about sixteen people in each class because I didn’t know what would happen if twenty-five people showed up and if I would be able to handle that.  You get really good at teaching in a group setting and now, the workout I do could work for two people or they could work for thirty people really, because it’s structured in a way that it doesn’t really matter how many people show up.  Except for the more people that show up, the less time, you’re going to be able to spend with one particular person that may need extra help. 

After I started the three camps, I decided to offer this Platinum package, number one, to make more money, but number two, to offer my camp members more options.  The reason I did that was, when you have a 6:00am, a 6:00pm, and a 7:00pm, you’re going to have all these requests.  Well, I signed up for 6:00pm, can I come to 7:00pm on this particular day?  And I got all these special requests and I didn’t really, at that time, didn’t want to have people switching over between classes because, as an extreme example, what if you had ten people who signed up for 6:00pm and now want to, on a particular day, come to a 7:00pm class. 

Then we have all these people at 7:00pm and nobody at 6:00pm, so, I decided to offer this Platinum package where, what that means is, they pay $30.00 more and they can come to any class that they want and as many classes as they want.  So, not only can they come 6:00am one day, 6:00pm the next day, they can come to as many classes as they want too.  So, if you get somebody who is really looking to accelerate their results, they can come to more than just three days a week, they can come to four or five days a week. 

I’ve got this one girl; she normally comes about five days a week.  She’ll come to like, Monday morning and Monday evening and then she’ll come to Wednesday morning, Thursday evening, and Friday mornings.  She gets in five classes a week, so she’s really getting two extra classes a week than somebody who just signed up for the regular classes.  So she’s getting twenty classes in all instead of just the twelve and she’s only paying $30.00 more.  So it’s a real good value for her, and for me, again I’m making anybody that signs up for Platinum, I’m making $30.00 extra without doing any extra work.  The reason I mention that, is now I really don’t know in any given class how many people I’m going to have, because of this Platinum package.  They can come – Camp, time and time again, you know, camp in and camp out if you will, I get the most people signing up for this Platinum package.  So I really don’t know from day to day how many people to expect, but you kind of get a good feel. 

Like right now, I can say without a doubt, 6:00am is going to have the biggest crowd because that’s just how the trend has gone for the last few months.  So I know I can expect at 6:00am right now, with the number of people I have, upwards of twenty people coming to the class.  You get a popular month like January, which was really popular; I had up to twenty-five people coming to particular classes.  I always make sure that I can handle a few more, like the first day of my January camp, I knew it was going to be really popular, so I was prepared for thirty-five people but we only had, I think, twenty-five that first day because we had more people come in the evening. 

So, we got to the point where we can pretty much accommodate everybody now.  If you consistently go over thirty, you might want to get some more help or start limiting it a little bit, just because, again, you won’t be able to watch people as much on an individual basis when you start getting numbers that high.  Generally, my evening classes are ten to twelve where my morning are twelve to twenty.

 How do you work your pricing structure?  Do you charge the three-month lot, or what do you do?

Right now, I’m charging just a month at a time.  So, every month they’ll have to re-new if they’re interested in joining again.  First of all, we do, like I said, the camps are four weeks, and then we usually take a week off before we start the next camp.  A couple of reasons that we do the week off, number one, after teaching four weeks its good for me as the instructor to get a week off from teaching those camps and recharge my own batteries and make sure I don’t get burnt out.  Two, some of the clients like it in the sense that if they’re taking the evening classes, they like to have that week off to do things in the evenings that they hadn’t gotten a chance to do for a while.  And if we ever have to cancel a class – we really don’t cancel class much, but if we ever did, it’s nice to be able to put that make-up class during that week off. 

So anyway, I charge for four weeks, so they pay for four weeks and then they are asked to pay again if they want to re-new.  So, they are paying for the four weeks up front, I charge — I guess what I charge, there wasn’t really any reasoning behind it, I started off charging $130.00 for the four weeks and this was not — I didn’t have Platinum at the time.  Then I gradually increased it here and there.  And now, what I do, I charge new members more and returning members get a little bit of a price break, so, new members have to pay $177.00 for the four weeks, and then if they want to sign up for Platinum they pay $207.00 and then prior camp members get a $30.00 discount.  So if they’re signing up again, they pay $147.00 for the regular package and then $177.00 for the Platinum.  I’ve had those prices for a few months and again, I don’t raise them very often and that’s I think, it’s working out on both sides, the clients have been happy with the way the price structure has been and I’ve been happy with my income, so there hasn’t really been a need to deviate from that lately.  But yes, I do charge one month at a time.

How do you find space for your camp?

Well, I guess a lot of it — I talked at the beginning about a lot of this being outdoors and the advantages that I saw being outdoors.  You can definitely run indoor camps as well, but we talked a little bit about outdoors.  Really, probably the most common, the first idea that you might think of is to run it at a park.  There are other places besides parks, but that may be the first place that you want to look into in doing an outdoor camp.  You should definitely check with your local parks department to see if they have any types of rules or regulations or boundaries or restrictions about you running a camp there. 

For example, here in Dallas where I am, I went to the Dallas City Parks and Recreations Department and they would allow me to run my camps at any of their parks, but they really wanted me to apply for a permit, which was going to mean paperwork, which was going to take a few weeks to get that approved.  They wanted me to submit my roster of boot camp attendees from each camp and they wanted to take, I think it was 30% of what I was making.  You can look at this a couple of ways.  In return I guess, they were going to – the city parks and recreations departments, they have newsletters that go out to the local residents, they would advertise my camp for me as well as put flyers up in their rec centers and things like that, so it’s a great way to start.  I was kind of stubborn and I didn’t want to give up money to use an outdoor facility, but some people are fine with that and there’s nothing really wrong with that, especially if they’re going to be advertising for you, it could be a great place to start and a nice trade-off.  I opted not to do that and I went to a different parks department.  We have Dallas city parks and recreation department, we have other, I guess they’re more like neighborhood parks, we have a couple of, I guess they call them neighborhoods or separate districts that have like their own police department, their own fire department, their own set of jurisdictions and rules and their own parks department.  So I went there — actually I did something I probably shouldn’t do, I started using their parks without asking.  We got stopped once by the local police wondering if this was something, I was allowed to do and after that, I checked with that local parks department and fortunately for me it was okay for me to be there.  They didn’t require any permit, they didn’t require me to give them any money, they just wanted to know what I was doing, and they wanted to just know about it.  I encourage all the listeners here, not to do what I did and just run your camp there, I encourage you to check first with the authorities so you don’t get in trouble later.  Just make sure you tell them exactly what you’re doing and see what the regulations and rules are. 

Should you run your camp to a specific niche? 

Well, I don’t know.  I think it’s easier to market to a certain niche, meaning if you run your camp and invite anybody and everybody.  It’s harder to market.  If you pick a niche, it’s easier to market, so there are different schools of thoughts and I don’t know if there is a right or wrong answer.  I have friends that run co-ed camps and they work out just fine.  The cool thing about when you run a co-ed camp, sometimes when you’re doing a camp challenge you can put the men versus the women and that ups the intensity a lot more, the women really want to beat down the men and the men don’t want to lose to the women, so that provides a nice element to it.  I just found for me personally, marketing to women is nice because, for example, I said earlier, women usually like that supportive, you’re doing a great job and the women tend to like to talk more during the class, which is fine for me as long as they’re working.  So, they like to gossip more and they have fun doing that, its fun for them and as long as they are giving me a great effort, then I’m fine with that.  That’s where I think a women’s only camp seems better than a co-ed camp.  The other thing you can do for women’s only.  You know you can market — there’s a lot of ways to market a fitness business and a certain type of workout, but with a women’s only camp, you can market to certain women’s businesses like a women’s group or a hair salon.  There’s a store here called LUCY, it’s a women’s athletic wear store and you can market to their customers.  Really, it narrows down your marketing effort a lot better if you have a niche like that.  One of the things I did was I had this was kind of creating some goodwill for my camp members and got some old camp members to sign back up — was I had a camp appreciation party at that store LUCY I just mentioned.  The women’s athletic store and after they closed their store they invited my current and past camp members in for some wine and hors d'oeuvres.  And for me, again, it was creating goodwill for my camp members and it got some past camp members to sign back up again.  My camp members spent a lot of money at this store, so the store was happy, so the win for me was the camp members and the win for the store was – and that’s something that was easy to do since my camp was niched to women versus I wouldn’t have done that for a co-ed camp.  I think if you niche it – I think you can be successful either way, it’s just that your marketing efforts are going to be a lot more focused if your camp is niched.  It’s really about getting the right mindset type of people to come to your camp.  Meaning the person who goes to Jenny Craig and people of that nature may not be the right type of person for your camp because they’re not going to like the intensity of our workouts.  Really, I think you can be successful co-ed or niched.  You could even do a kids camp, but your goal is to find that right type of person who has the right mentality that, “Yes I love these boot camp workouts, give me more”. 

What are some different niche markets?

Different niche markets that I’ve seen, again I haven’t really tried these; there’s moms camps where moms and their babies come and they workout, so there’s franchises like Stroller Strides and Baby Boot Camp that are just that.  Actually, I thought about starting one and I had my website built and I actually started to market it and got two or three people interested, but once I didn’t get more I didn’t put a lot of effort into it.  I decided it wasn’t really something I wanted to do.  If I did a moms camp, I think I would hire an instructor to teach it for me.  I think with the moms and babies’ camps — I get frustrated when a camp member misses class.  I know people have reasons, I can imagine with a baby camp, you know anytime that baby is sick or has to go to the doctor, the moms going to miss class and I think the frustration level for me would be a bit too high, but — There’s mom and babies’ camps, there’s kids camps; Brian Grass over at the IYCA, the International Youth Commission Association, he’s big on training kids and running camps for kids.  I think that trend is going to become bigger.  I think it’s great, I think a kids camp is perfect because kids love to play and you can make a lot of these workouts more play or game-like.  I think running kids camps would be a great program to start.  There are athletic camps where they’re not really boot camps, but of course, there are speed camps for athletes that want to get faster.  I know there is a growing trend for that.  Then for — I guess you would call this a niche, there’s military style boot camp where there’s a lot of ex-military personnel teaching in a more military style fashion where they’re wearing the fatigues and they’re blowing their whistle and they’re yelling at you and it’s for somebody who wants that military type of training.  Then of course, you can do a women’s only camp or a men’s only camp or even a teenage camp.  Really — Seniors’ camps.  Really, any type of niche that you could think of probably with the personal training business, you could also apply to a camp type of business.  You could do a family camp where the parents and the kids come out. 

How do you measure fitness or progress in a group setting?

Well, we don’t measure aesthetic results if you will.  I know a lot of personal trainers will weigh the client and do circumference measurements and body fat and heart rate and blood pressure and things like that.  That we don’t do in camp, I tried, back when I tried my camp about four years ago and I didn’t do very well as far as marketing and getting people to come, I tried in one of my classes to take measurements and I really only had, I think three or four camp members at the time.  It was taking too long as far as; I think I gave people reading material, nutrition stuff to read while I was measuring one person.  And so it was really taking too long, I mean, you can do that if you want, I would probably set up — you could probably charge for that if you wanted to measure aesthetic type of variables along with like heart rate and blood pressure.  Anybody who wants that, you could set up a separate one-on-one appointment and make some money out of it.  For me, my camps are more about performance because I know the aesthetic results will come if they do what I say in camp as far as performance variables, so we really look at performance, like; has their endurance gotten better, has their speed gotten better?  So one thing you could do is –– actually what we did was, in one of my classes yesterday, we took a four exercise circuit.  We took; they had to do six burpies, nine push-ups, twelve of some abdominal movement and then fifteen squats.  Once they did all those that was one round and they had to do as many rounds as they could in sixteen minutes, which was a great endurance test for them.  Then we recorded the scores; how many rounds they did in sixteen minutes.  Now, we can go back and look at that six to eight weeks later, have them do the same test and see how much they’ve improved.  That’s a great measure because, even a lot of my camp members that have been there for a few months, they’ll be like, is this ever going to get any easier?  They’re still way out of breath doing the camp.  I tell them – they think they’re not making progress, and it’s not that they’re not making progress, because I’m always challenging them and they’re always challenging themselves to do better.  I can design my own workout for me, I’m in good shape, but I’m going to kill myself and give it my best effort and feel out of breath after because I’ve tried my best.  So, it’s great to have a performance test and record the numbers, because when you do it again six weeks later, and then your client comes to you and says, is this ever going to get easier, I’m still out of breath.  I can say, well, the reason you are out of breath is you did eight rounds in sixteen minutes six weeks ago.  Now you’ve done ten rounds, so you’ve pushed yourself to your max each time.  Look how much faster you are and how much your endurance and fitness has increased.  Then with that, they’re going to see the results, the results are losing a dress size, losing inches and things like that.  I do encourage people, if they want to measure themselves, like their waist and their hips and take pictures and put on a tight pair of jeans at the beginning and monitor progress that way on their own.  We really look more at performance type measurements and improvements in class versus more traditional measurements.

 How long should the camp be?

Well, as far as the number of weeks of a camp, I’ve found four weeks works well.  I’ve done three weeks, I’ve done four weeks, I’ve done six weeks, but since we’re — I think people are — six weeks can work, it’s just that people may not want to commit that long.  Especially for new exercisers, six weeks of a boot camp sounds a lot more daunting than four weeks.  You have people who sign up that worry a little bit, what am I getting myself into and a six-week commitment to this type of workout, as well as financially, it’s going to cost more for people so it may be a little bit more intimidating.  I think you are going to have better luck signing up people for a four week program because — understanding the psychology of “Four weeks, I can do this”.  Four weeks is also long enough though, that they can start seeing the results.  I have people, even though we don’t measure weight, people in class do measure it on their own a lot of times.  I’ve had people who have lost a substantial number of pounds in weight in just four weeks.  As you know, you can gain some amazing endurance and strength in just four weeks as well.  So, it’s good, I think four weeks is a good compromise when you’re looking at not asking them for a commitment that’s too long, but long enough where they can start seeing the results and get excited and then sign up for the next camp.  As far as our class length, we run forty-five minutes.  I’ve seen camps be as long as an hour and a half.  And I’m not sure how those camps are run, they must do more stretching at the end than I do or they take longer breaks, because forty-five minutes, I’ve found, is plenty long enough to get a great workout, especially with the intensity levels you can do in a camp setting.  Thirty minutes, of course a lot of trainers are going for that for personal training.  I don’t do thirty minutes because really, the classes have the intensity of such that we really need a good warm-up, so we need that extra time for a really thorough warm-up.  Also, gathering people in a group setting takes a little longer to answer questions on an exercise that I’m teaching or going over a routine or what-not.  So, you need a little extra time, I think, than a thirty-minute class would allow.  Again, we definitely don’t need an hour.  People, you know Chris, we are a society now that wants to do things as quick as possible.  I think an hour or an hour and a half camp is possibly a little bit too long.  We get people in at 6:00 in the morning or in the evening or at 7:00 in the evening and get them out by 45 minutes after the hour.  Then if you’re running two back-to-back camps, it’s great.  You have one at 6:00pm and at 6:45pm, sometimes we go a few minutes late, that’s plenty of time in between, I’ve got fifteen minutes in between to answer any questions or welcome the new people who are coming in at 7:00pm.  I’ve found, definitely that four week camps in forty-five minutes in length of the class is what has worked well for me.

What equipment do you need to run a camp?

Well, somebody who’s just starting out who may be on a budget probably doesn’t want to bring too much.  You can, again as we know, there are more, and more things we can do by just using our body, as the resistance.  There’s plenty of video and books out there now showing body weight exercises.  I’ve done plenty of classes where I didn’t use any equipment.  I usually, usually the first day or two or even the first three days of a class I just do body weight exercises because — especially if we are having a large group.  Once you introduce equipment, it takes a little bit longer to teach the exercises and movement.  Body weight only is sometimes the hardest workouts.  Now for variety sake you might not want to do body weight only for the full twelve classes because you might want to introduce some variety into the workout, but you could if you had to.  If you were completely broke you could definitely get away with body weight only.

Some other things you may want to consider — I’ll just tell you what I use.  I use dumbbells, I use medicine balls, I use kettlebells, I use steps, and I use sledgehammers and really, I didn’t buy all those things at once.  When I first started out a couple of years ago, I had maybe two pairs of dumbbells, a couple of medicine balls and I think at that time I was actually using a resistance band.  And the way I set it – I don’t really run my camps like this anymore, but when I was new, I would set up these eight station circuits and each circuit I would put two people.  Since I had sixteen people in class, but I would put two people at a circuit and the circuit would be either have dumbbells in it or medicine balls, or resistance bands or maybe just their body weight and had eight different exercises.  Doing it that way, you don’t need sixteen medicine balls because not everybody is going to be using the medicine balls at the same time.  The way I had it initially set up I only needed two medicine balls because only two people were going to be using the medicine ball at one time.  They would do an exercise and then everybody would rotate.  As you expand, as you grow, as you make more money, you can get different size medicine balls, different weight dumbbells, introduce kettlebells, introduce steps and things like that.  The way I looked at it is I would gradually increase my equipment list over two years.  I definitely didn’t start out with everything.  So you just want to build up gradually, again, there is just so much you can do with body weight.  You’re camp location may have stairs and benches, swings, monkey bars, anything like that.  Hills, ramps, anything you can think of that your location has, use all that.  You can get a great workout using what you already have out there at the park or playground you are at.

What do you do in case the weather gets a little bit interesting?

Well, I hate canceling class, so we’ll do it rain or shine.  I tell my camp members upfront, don’t expect me to cancel class unless there’s lightening right over head or there’s hail coming down that’s dangerous, as far as safety is involved, we’ll cancel class, but if it’s just a steady rain or something of that nature, then we’ll get our workout.  So, I really don’t like to cancel class.  We usually, even if they know the policy, it’s usually if the weather is wet I’ll have less attendance, and then I’ll do it on a case-by-case basis.  A lot of time it’s not raining or it’s raining where people live or maybe lightening where people live, but not at the camp location.  So I try to encourage people to come out to the campsite no matter what and we’ll make a determination there.  If we see lightening then, we’ll have to cancel it.  I do make some concessions, we recently had ice here, and the ice was not bad where the camp was or where I lived, I lived close to the camp.  I was there, but the roads were bad elsewhere and a lot of people, their car doors were stuck because it was so cold they were frozen shut.  So, they wanted to come and they couldn’t, so this was actually the first time this has happened, I was there and nobody else was.  So, I didn’t officially cancel the class, but I understood.  I was understanding and we did a make up class anyway.  In general, we’ll do this class no matter what.  Like I said, if we do a make up class, we’ll do it in that off week in between camps.

What are some mistakes you made when you first started your boot camp business that others should avoid?

Well, I think a lot of the main mistakes that I made, were more of the online variety.  I think it’s crucial to have a website dedicated to your camp and maybe even a sales copy page like I have mine set up.  When I tried to start my camps a few years ago where I didn’t get too many people attending.  I had a website for my personal training business, but it was more those ones that — you still see a lot out there, meaning a one-size-fits-all website where you’ll have information about your personal training and then the other services that you offer; corporate training, an about me page, products, I had a page for boot camps.  So I had a webpage set like that.  And there was this one page in there dedicated to my camps, but it was hard to find and when people asked, “Where can I read more about your webpage”, it’s easy now, you just go to womensfitnesscamp.com, before I had to tell them the domain name, forward slash, another word and it was harder for them to locate it.  When I had that webpage for my boot camp, it was not written in a sales copy or a manner that would entice people to sign up.  So, I think your sales copy is very important.  I didn’t have one written out like I do now when I first started and that probably lost me a few sales. 

I also encourage you to, especially if it’s dark out, like when I first started I was running this camp, I don’t do it at this location anymore, but it was a camp, it was in the morning, it was very dark.  It was in a tennis court and there was a fence around the tennis court with trees around it and it was completely dark.  There were lights there, but I didn’t know at the time I could manually turn the lights on and off.  And it was a women’s camp, so it was tough because I was asking these women who didn’t know me to come to a dark tennis court that has a fence around it and trees around it and they don’t know what they’re getting into.  So, who knows, I could have had people drive up and then drive away because they were a little bit nervous about that. 

The other thing that I did at the beginning when I wasn’t very successful, I didn’t make people pay up front, and I think that was a mistake.  Right now, everybody pays in advance.  Almost 100% of the people pay online with a credit card, that’s another thing I didn’t accept credit cards back in the day, I do now, so everybody is signed up before even that first day.  Back when I wasn’t successful, what I tried to do was to offer a free demonstration class.  So before the first official day of class I had what I called a ‘free demo day’ and it was basically, “Come for free, try out the camp and if you like it then you can pay and here is our first day of the official camp”.  So, I had a lot of people who verbally or e-mailed me that they were going to come to this demo day, but I think because they weren’t financially bound to coming, you know 6:00am a lot of people hear that alarm and, oh I didn’t pay for it so I’m going to go back to sleep and maybe I’ll try it again another day.  They weren’t financially bound to coming, so I think I lost a lot of people that way. 

I think the one good thing that I did was – again, I was marketing mainly via flyers at the time, which really wasn’t the most effective way to do things, but I did have pretty good answers from those flyers as far as people e-mailing me or calling me.  And I did my best to at least capture everybody’s e-mail address and put them in my database.  I actually had one girl; she was interested the very first time I was running the camps in this tennis court.  She didn’t sign up, but I put her on my list and two years later when I started these camps that I’m running really well right now, she didn’t join those at the beginning, but she joined about six months in.  And she’s been with me for about a year and a half now, all because I was able to capture her e-mail address.  She didn’t come to that demo class, but I kept her on my list, she signed up two years later and she’s been my best success story.  She’s lost 70 pounds through the camp, she’s going strong, she refers all these other boot camp customers.  So, starting at the very beginning it is very important to capture that contact info.

Awesome!  Scott, where can people learn more about you, your products, and your services?

SC:    Let me point you to two things.  If you want to get a good idea of how I structure my website and see how I write my sales copy and my squeeze page, my camp website is:  www.womensfitnesscamp.com.  If somebody wants, it’s not our product; it’s actually a free tele-seminar I did with another gentleman who runs camps named Jerry Hill.  We did a free tele-seminar that basically gave away a lot of our strategies on how we run our camps.  Now some of it’s going to be repeat information that I’ve shared on this call, but there’s going to be some new stuff that I left out and also, Jerry, he’s very successful at running camps; he’s going to give them all his strategies.  If you want to download that tele-seminar, and again this is free, its: www.fitnesscampsecrets.com. 
 

This has been a boot camp and personal fitness training marketing interview