28 May Episode #336: Kory Angelin, COO, Volofit
Pete Moore: This is Pete Moore. I want to tell you about a company that is going to change the entire recruiting in the halo sector companies called game plan. Wearegameplan.com. What they do is they connect employer brands with D one D two D three athletes across the country. The power of the software that allows these employers to get in front of tens of thousands of athletes. If you watch the NCAA, a tournament, the hustle, grit, preparation, determination, and absolute desire to win, embodies every athlete out there. Now you’re going to be able to put your brand in front of those athletes. Start to get them to understand after their college career, they can get into the halo sector, go work at a studio, a health club, fitness equipment, company, supplements, anything related to this industry. They can now parlay those skills and bring it into the sports and fitness industry that we are going to have the best athletes become the best employees and create the best companies. And that is the future of halo. 1, 2, 3, halo. We are game plan.com. Check it out.
Pete Moore: This is Pete Moore at HALO Talks NYC hosting this podcast, courtesy of the county of Nassau county in Suffolk county, combined Dave from Oceanside, Pete Moore, Westbury, and Kory, coming from old Beth page.
Kory Angelin: Oh, that’s right. I like the old page
Pete Moore: Page old Beth page. Yeah, it’s got a little higher demo, probably a little higher property value and awesome S more taxes. So Corey, welcome to the show Volvo fit and a sales expert and Ary experience. Good to see it.
Kory Angelin: Good to see you guys too. And, and a pleasure to be part of the New York crew.
Pete Moore: All right. Awesome. So we’ll try and expand this outside of the tri-state area. If we’ve got any listeners here, please stay with us with a public courtesy announcement. <Laugh> so Corey, talk about your background and what kind of gave you the opportunity to get to the point where, you know, you’re an expert in you know, optimizing bricks and mortar businesses, and basically any business that, you know, really has loyal customer base. They just maybe don’t know it yet.
Kory Angelin: Yeah, gosh. Right. I mean, talk about going back a ways now. So it’s funny to think about, you know, your own career and how long it’s been and when you’re in the fitness industry, you know how that goes, it takes years off your life, right. Cuz it’s a grind. Yep. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I always tell people when I got my start, I always, I always talk about lifetime. If you’ve never been in a lifetime, I know you guys have, it’s a great place to start understanding the business side. I always say two things. I always say, if you’re a trainer, which was where I got my start you have two, you come to a fork in the road at some point when you’re a trainer, you could either continue to grind as a trainer Uhhuh, you got one point I was doing 220 sessions a month, which is not sustainable.
Kory Angelin: I had no life, of course. Or you can try to start on the management side of the business. And there was a period of time where I contemplate that. And when I was at lifetime, it afforded me the opportunity. So I really learned the business side of, of lifetime and the fitness industry. And then from there, I was fortunate to work for some of the premier companies in the world, Equinox most recently F 45. And then I made the switch to Volvo fit because of the opportunity that I have there. So yeah, I mean, it’s been a long career, but I’ve certainly been in every position along the way.
Pete Moore: Gotcha. So, you know, I’ve listened to a lot of your videos that you’ve done recently and you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, either build a product or build a location and then they’ve either got trouble retaining members, they got trouble bringing on new members and they kind of blame it on, well, they don’t just don’t get it. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that I’ve kind of come through with Dave is, you know, look, you built a business, you know, that’s your responsibility. So kind of how do you go in and you know, either gently or, you know, more aggressively like hit somebody with a stick and be like, Hey man, this is on you. Like, you’re the education, the sales, the marketing, the relationships like you, you you’re actually, you can’t outsource that. I’m going to give you the tools that it’s got to become part of your DNA.
Kory Angelin: Yeah. So being from New York, we can hit them with a stick. So, so, you know, often early in my career, that’s what I used to do. But this is, this is the evolution of my, my mindset throughout my career, which is, I understand now that a business is made or, or broken starting with the owner, right. Or, or, or ownership group. And that’s just the bottom line. Owners will blame it on the GM and their staffing will blame it on their, but like you’re setting the tone at the top. Right. So with that said again, the evolution of me was I never really studied sales. I was a trainer at one point I was a trainer on the show, the biggest loser. I got to train a lot of pro athletes. That was awesome. That’s kind of what I thought I was going to do the rest of my life.
Kory Angelin: And I started to reflect on like, why was I so successful at that? Sure. My training was great, but really what I, what I reflected on was that the relationship between you and the customer, even before they become a client, has to be genuine and honest. Right? Yeah. And so the first half of my career, I sum up by saying I wanted to sell the most expensive package because it brought in the most money. Right. And what I didn’t realize is that is not the most important thing. In fact, I don’t even care about money. There’s a funny story. My first ever pro athlete, I’m dating myself, but you guys will, you guys will recognize the name. My first ever pro athlete was Vinny Testa Verde when he was the quarterback of the jets. Right. Oh, so sure. Back in the day, Vinny played for 20 years had a pretty good career.
Kory Angelin: Most people know him from the jets and I’ll never forget. He, he contacted me through a friend and was like, Hey, could we, could we work out? I’m like, sure. And he’s like how much do you charge? And at that point I was like, I’m going to charge this guy a hundred dollars a session. Right. And so he is like, how much was it for 10 sessions? That was the question. How much was it be for 10 sessions? And my answer should have been a thousand dollars, right? A hundred dollars a session. He asked me how much it was for 10, but my answer was a hundred dollars a session. And the reason why I didn’t say a thousand dollars was because I was afraid that that sounded like a lot of money. Right. And that was a big mistake. That was the first time in my career that I understood that.
Kory Angelin: As long as my program, my service, my product is a kick ass service and product. I don’t care what the price is. And so the first thing we have to teach an owner is they have to believe in their brand. They have to be passionate about their brand. And I use a ton of examples. Apple, apple never discounts their brand. They give you a gift card. So most recently for the holiday, they’ll say, if you buy an iMac, we’ll give you a hundred dollars gift card. They don’t take a hundred dollars off the iMac because what it does is right. Devalues your brand. How many times in the industry P have you seen personal training discounted like every single month. Yep. Right. It’s so annoying. And it’s so disheartening to a trainer. So number one in ownership group, when I go in and teach them, we, they have to understand not to devalue their brand and they have to be really passionate about it. And if you think about what passionate brands do or great brands, they do two things. Number one, they’re passionate about what they sell and number two, their price reflects it. And they might be a, a, a really big price tag for it. But you can bet that they believe in that. So that, that’s the number one thing we have to teach an ownership group.
Pete Moore: Yeah. We work with a company called promotion vault. I don’t know if you’ve been exposed to them, but they basically do gift cards in complimentary businesses or aspirational businesses. So you want to give, you know, that thousand dollars personal training, you know, you give a hundred dollars, you know, Lou lemon card, which doesn’t affect your revenue. It doesn’t discount your value. You know, there definitely has been a race to the bottom, you know, when it comes to planet. And I think people cut price because they think that that’s the only thing that they could think of to do on, on the marketing side, instead of, you know, optimizing it, I bring this up a couple times in some recent podcast where I’ll bring it on now, you know, there’s a, there’s a company out in California franchise they’re in the weight loss, boot camps side of the business, and they charge $695.
Pete Moore: And then if you go 24 times in the first six weeks, they leave a check on the counter. They actually reimburse you the 6 95 at the end. And no one takes the money. Wow. Because you change their life and they want to roll that into, you know, nutrition plan or a or, or a membership plan. You know, but price discounting or selling off a price, I was kind of hoping all that was going to go away. You know, once COVID hit you, like our industry can, like, let’s get rid of that because, you know, people should be willing to pay, you know, at least $500 a month for their, their health and fitness and their wellbeing. And I feel like somehow people start to forget about that over the last couple months, cuz their Jones didn’t bring in more clients and they’re nervous and, and what people do and they’re nervous is they cut price.