Rick Mayo, Alloy CEO and Founder, and Suzanne Robb, Alloy COO, share insights on 5 things they’ve learned from awarding the 100 Alloy Personal Training Franchise locations. We are all proud of this great milestone here at Alloy, and we look forward to opening these locations and selling even more going forward.
“The 100th franchise milestone is a testament to the strength of our brand and our dedication to providing entrepreneurs with an excellent investment platform and opportunity.”
Rick Mayo – Alloy CEO
Read on as we discuss the lessons we have learned growing our personal training franchise, and how we make it easy to be successful. .
Five Lessons Learned From Awarding Franchises
Importance of Purpose
One of the greatest lessons we have taken so far is the importance of purpose. Purpose is a bigger deal than we thought when we started the franchising journey. Fitness franchising offers an opportunity for return on investment, but there’s a much higher purpose which helps when things become difficult.
In our case, the purpose is multi-layered. We provide a vehicle for people to get into better shape, be healthier, and live better. Because it’s really important to people to do something that makes a difference in the world. Our franchisees really love being in the community and promoting the benefits of exercise, good health and fitness. But we’re also providing a framework for a franchise business to help people realize their dream of entrepreneurship.
Passion for Fitness
Rick is just as passionate about what we do now as I was when I owned one gym or a couple of gyms, because the purpose behind it is so big, and we’re providing a vehicle for people to get into better shape and to be healthier, to live their lives better.
Passion for Entrepreneurship
Rick Mayo is just as passionate about entrepreneurship as he is about fitness. A successful businessman recently asked Rick why he was franchising fitness versus corporate stores. After he thought about his real purpose, Rick said, ” I really have a passion to help other people become entrepreneurs as much as a passion for fitness.
While Suzanne never considered herself as an entrepreneur at first, as a COO running businesses she realized she was providing a vehicle for someone to not be in business for themself, but not by themself.
2. Not Everyone Is An Entrepreneur
Some people are up for the challenge, and some folks just aren’t cut out for entrepreneurship, and that’s okay.
There are some people who just are not wired to be in business for themselves and you can’t teach everyone to be an entrepreneur. They can’t deal with the pressure, the unknowns, or making decisions. Entrepreneurship is a self-help journey disguised as a business.
If you stay in business for a long time and to be successful, you’ve got to be able to take responsibility for everything in your business. You can’t point the blame at anyone else. You have to be able to do everything that is required of you to be a success, including upskilling yourself, be brutally honest with yourself, give your best effort, and kill your ego. Failures begin and end with you, so don’t blame anyone else You need to focus on the things that you can control.
We incorporate tough questions with potential franchisees in the first CEO call with Rick to help identify those that aren’t really cut out to be entrepreneurs. The CEO interview is a preliminary call before they even get invited to come to meet us.
3. Setting the Right Expectations
When we first started franchising, we thought we needed to do everything for the franchisee, including setting up their CRM, helping them find real estate, and managing their construction project. But this backfired, because it set the wrong expectations.
We want people who want to be involved in their business and they need to recognize that this is their business. They need to be responsible for hiring the right talent, leading their team appropriately, and doing all the other things. required to run the business.
I interviewed a franchise consultant, Wes Barefoot, in Personal Attributes That Contribute To Franchisee Success. He said the top three attributes of a good franchisee are having the right expectations and realizing that a franchise alone cannot make you successful.
The way that West talked about it, a franchise is a bicycle. The franchisee gets all the right components on the bike that make it ride well, but at the end of the day, the franchisee has to pedal their bike.
The Alloy business model can be a semi-absentee ownership model, but you have to put in the effort to make it work. As a franchisor, we provide advice and lots of Alloy Franchise Perks: Benefits, Vendors, & Buying Groups where we connect you with real estate vendors, hire the right team, and buy the right equipment, but you will need to do the work and make the decisions ultimately.
4. Simple Scales
We have pared it down to what we think is the simplest model, because we understand we need to keep it simple to scale the franchise model. IWe make it easy to start the business and make a return on your investment if you follow the business model. We provide franchisees tons of resources, including a franchise business coach and an onboarding specialist.
I think you’ll appreciate how simple we’ve made things for you in the bandwidth that you get. Rick Mayo says that his messaging is simple and that people recognize that. If you’re not used to entrepreneurship, it still might be a bit chaotic, but being aware of the basic expectations and resources will help you.
5. Hire The Right Team
“If you put the right team together, with the right desire and skill sets, and the right thought processes, you can accomplish anything. And I feel like everybody on our team, and there’s only six of us, can do hard things.”
~Suzanne Robb, CEO ~
Recruiting the best staff for your fitness business is arguably the single most important factor that will determine your success as a business owner. However, as any fitness entrepreneur will tell you, finding, hiring, and retaining the best talent in our industry is an enormous challenge.
We have done a lot of work for you already and one of our other perks helps you find the right talent. In How To Recruit The Right Talent For Your Fitness Business you will learn how a recruiter helps you find the right talent for your franchise.
Come join us with an Alloy Personal Training franchise. We are growing fast and have signed over 100 franchises and will be executing additional development deals in the coming months to further its domestic US expansion. Current deals underway in major markets across the US; including single and multi-unit deals. Interest from global master franchisees has resulted in negotiations to develop and grow the Alloy brand internationally as well.
Key Takeaways
- Intro (00:00)
- Purpose is very important (02:59)
- Helping others become entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship (08:38)
- Not everyone is cut out to be an for entrepreneur (14:32)
- Setting the right expectations for franchisees (22:14)
- Simple businesses scales (29:43)
- Put the right people in the right seats (37:07)
Rick Mayo, CEO and founder of the Alloy personal training franchise and the 2018 AFS fitness business of the year award winner, developed the Alloy concept in 1992. After having grown the brand to thousands of locations via a licensing mode, Mayo launched the Alloy franchise in 2019.