How does an Austin, Texas studio owner generate $98,000 months? Mike knew every other studio owner in our orbit would want to know. To find out, they took the stage at GSDCON: Money to get the whole story from optimizing membership sales to growing through team accountability.
The Generator Athlete Lab Brand
Delfin Ward and his wife own and operate Generator Athlete Lab based out of Austin. Delfin’s personal background is in healthcare and their studio offers a unique set of services with a focus on wellness as well as fitness.
Generator Athlete Lab offers multiple wellness modalities such as infrared sauna and contrast hydrotherapy. They also offer a compression lounge, massage therapy, as well as self-massage tools. The primary fitness offer is semi-private personal training.
Their studio averages monthly revenue of $82k to $86k, with several months over the $90k mark. But their top month so far was May of 2022 when they reached an all-time high of $98k in monthly recurring revenue, largely due to optimizing membership sales.
Mike himself has been to Generator Athlete Lab and seen firsthand the success of their operation. He immediately understood the value of their unique value proposition in offering wellness and recovery services.
With Delfin’s background in healthcare, he has a singular perspective on the market. “I know that 70% of people walking around…have chronic pain or some kind of pain issue. Whether it’s an overuse injury from their job or an overuse injury from their sport, we can help with that.”
“Those are my kind of people, they’re focusing on their health, they’re focusing on their wellness. It’s a journey for a lot of people and there are some healing powers to it. And they become an evangelist for your brand.”
Where It All Started
Generator Athlete Lab has only been open since the fall of 2018. In four years they’ve grown to eleven employees, both full and part-time. Delfin believes self and team development played a significant role in their evolution as a brand and as a profitable business.
He attributes it to “drinking the Loud Rumor Kool-Aid” and surrounding himself with other smart people in the same industry. This gives inspiration and recipes for replication in his own business and opportunities for innovation in the industry.
The Power Of Team
Delfin and his wife are a leadership duo that care deeply about their team. As they began to grow, they had to shift how they viewed their hiring and firing process. He attributes the training from a previous GSDCON with helping them reframe their interview process and hire for core values rather than skill or personality.
When you bring people on the team that are already bought into the core values of the company, it’s much easier to recast the brand vision and remind them of those core values. It’s easier to keep the team focused and on target when they have a deep and authentic connection with why they do what they do.
If you’re looking to improve team development or your hiring process you may be a good fit for our Loud Rumor consulting program, click here to learn more and jump on a free strategy call!
The Path to $98k: Optimizing Membership Sales and Product Experience
It should be no surprise to anyone that you don’t arrive at $98k in monthly revenue without optimizing membership sales. Delfin humbly and causally addressed how they got to those numbers.
“One is just making sure the experience, the product, is good. If that’s there, those members are walking billboards…And dialing in our sales process.” Delfin cites that hiring the right studio manager to handle sales training made all the difference in their success.
Where They Had To Grow
Delfin admits that having tough team conversations was not their strong suit. He even admits this not being on his radar as something he wanted to get better at. But he knew the long-term success of his company depended on his willingness to do hard things.
He learned how to optimize and set expectations as early as during the interview process, and holds monthly team check-ins. He also learned how things were negatively affected when he didn’t follow through on his end to conduct meetings consistently.
Generator Athlete Lab now has an employee scorecard process that they go through at each monthly meeting with their associates and leadership team to ensure everyone is on track. The studio manager also holds weekly team huddles to keep the lines of communication open.
Optimizing Processes (Membership Sales to Following Up)
Delfin attributes much of their financial success to optimizing three primary processes:
- First impression experience
- Optimizing membership sales
- Follow-up procedures
As a lifelong learner, Delfin was eager to leverage the tools he got from the GSD 360 program and implement everything he was learning, both at the studio and on the back end with training and bookkeepers. “Now, when I look at the numbers I know what questions I need to ask.”
There’s no question about where they’re going next. Generator Athlete Lab is well on its way to its first, and probably not last, million-dollar year. To get the full story, watch the interview here.