Ep. 27: Training fitness professionals (with Barry Ennis & Shay Kostabi of Fitness Career Mastery)

Through their business, Fitness Career Mastery, Barry Ennis and Shay Kostabi dream of elevating their industry as a whole, and creating a world where the Fitness Entrepreneur is taken seriously and valued by both professionals and its consumers. They strive to provide a pathway to become a better human through purpose and action, and to share a direct quote, “We believe that if we can raise the standards and take better care of ourselves, we can take better care of each other and our environment.”

Over the past year and a half, Fitness Career Mastery has grown exponentially from its roots as a podcast to a fully-fledged business with instructor trainings, live continuing education workshops, online courses, and 1-1 trainings, and consulting services.

Where to find Barry & Shay

• Website: fitnesscareermastery.com
• Podcast: Fitness Career Mastery Podcast
• Facebook: facebook.com/fitnesscareermastery
• Instagram: @fitnesscareermastery

Read the full transcript below.

This transcript is created by a helpful but imperfect transcription bot. Please forgive any typos or errors.

Barry Ennis 0:00

Fitness is so much more than just exercise it for a lot of people. It’s one of the few places that they can go to find community nowadays, and so it’s a mental escape. for them. It’s a stress release. It’s transformative.

Melissa Guller 0:17

Meet Barry Ennis and Shay Kostabi. Together, they are the co-founders of Fitness Career Mastery, an educational resource for fitness entrepreneurs. In this episode, you’ll hear how they took very different journeys to become global fitness instructors, and how they’re turning a decade of fitness industry experience into a full training university for fitness entrepreneurs.Their approach to serve business owners instead of consumers wasn’t a decision they took lightly, and you’ll hear them explain just how many factors go into online fitness education, from teaching skills, to online production skills, to, of course, the actual fitness. We talk in-depth about why you can’t simply take your offline class and turn it into an online course, and we also discuss the fine line between what you should give away generously for free, and what you should always charge for.Finally, we end the episode by exploring the power of being flexible as an online business owner, and no, that isn’t a yoga reference. At an uncertain time like this, the ability to change course as a business owner is more important than ever before, and Barry and Shay share insights into how they’ve quickly adapted their plans when the whole world shifted overnight.

Announcer 1:39

Welcome to “Everything is Teachable,” the podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses and businesses. To introduce this week’s guest, here’s your host, Melissa Guller.

Melissa Guller 1:58

Hey everyone, I’m Melissa from Team Teachable, and today I’m excited to be here with Barry Ennis and Shay Kostabi. Their vision and dream through Fitness Career Mastery is to elevate the industry as a whole, and create a world where the Fitness Entrepreneur is taken seriously and valued by both professionals and its consumers. They strive to provide a pathway to become a better human through purpose and action, and to share a direct quote, “We believe that if we can raise the standards and take better care of ourselves, we can take better care of each other and our environment.” Over the past year and a half, Fitness Career Mastery has grown exponentially from its roots as a podcast to a fully-fledged business with instructor trainings, live continuing education workshops, online courses, and 1 on 1 trainings, and consulting services.

Barry Ennis 2:55

Hey, thanks, Melissa. It’s great to be here.

Melissa Guller 2:58

So before we dive in, More about your business. I want to learn more about each one of you. So maybe one at a time. Can you tell us more about your own fitness career journeys?

Barry Ennis 3:08

Of course, why don’t you go first?

Shay Kostabi 3:09

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Barry Ennis 3:11

Ladies first.

Shay Kostabi 3:12

So I started fitness, maybe in 2008. At the time of the like, boutique fitness boom, I was living in New York City, I was working as an actress, and I just wanted to get in shape. So I actually joined a test group. And that whole experience changed my life and I wanted to pay it forward. So I quickly went and got my certifications. And I started working at some studios, and then I started teaching. And I think because I had a background in performing and teaching dance since I was really young. I think I started teaching at 13. My career took off really, really quick. I was like, Okay, I think maybe I found my purpose. So within a few years, I joined a creative team like working on programming for class modalities, and then I became a master trainer and then I was managing I was the East Coast director of a program for a while

Barry Ennis 4:05

Break that down a little bit more for those that are not familiar with the fitness industry like, what all that means. Yeah.

Shay Kostabi 4:12

Well, so I went from teaching classes and I was super super, my classes were very popular. I became very well known in New York City. And my classes were always fun and creative. So I was invited to join a creative team to create more programming for other instructors. And then I got to a level where I was ready to teach other instructors how to teach. That’s what a master trainer is. And then I got a management role. So I was overseeing lots of instructors at multiple studios in multiple states. That’s actually how I met Barry. I was he was living in Dubai, which will tell you about in a second, I was sent there to train, Barry and we became really good friends. After a number of years. I just, you know, I wanted to do my own thing. So I started consulting essentially on my own Working for boutique fitness studios, helping them launch their programs and train their instructors and sort of get clear on what their vision was. And I was working purely by word of mouth. And I did that. In the States. I’ve done it internationally that took me to Taiwan. That company wanted to expand into China. That’s I brought Barry in on we had known each other at this point for five years. So I brought him on to work with that team and left him there. I didn’t want to live in China. So I left Barry to take the place. And I started my own company. And that’s that’s basically what I’ve been doing teaching training, mentoring new instructors creating programs for studios around the world. And now with Barry, teaching online. Yeah.

Barry Ennis 5:49

What’s interesting about the two of us is I would say we kind of summarize the two different paths that people tend to take to get into the industry shows us a little more of the performance. route we see a lot of actors and dancers who become fitness instructors

Shay Kostabi 6:03

And also my own transformation story. So I didn’t grow up being a very athletic human, you know, I always got notes to get out of PE and stuff. And so entering the fitness world was a bit daunting for me. I had to go through a huge mental, physical, emotional transformation, whereas

Barry Ennis 6:23

Whereas it was very different for me, because I grew up playing baseball very seriously. I wanted to go pro. I was doing like all this summer camps, I was spending like eight to 12 hours a day doing training. So I was like, very used to the physical conditioning required to do that. But maybe it was because I was living in LA, still living in LA, but I had some very progressive baseball coaches who required us to do yoga as part of our training, not just for the physical benefits to reduce injury and to be able to activate more muscle groups but also for the mental side as well. Baseball is a variable Mental sport, there’s a lot of time to think and get in your own head. So, visualization, which is actually just meditation with a little sprinkle of imagery on top of it was very powerful. And that really caused me to really gravitate towards the practice of yoga. So much so that when I played baseball through college, yoga became a real part of my daily routine. I started doing it in the hallway of the dorm and other people would want to join in. And it got so busy that I was asked to teach on a public space on campus. But in order to do that, I had to get certified so I was actually drawn to get my first teaching certification, just out of the demand from the people around me on campus and while baseball didn’t continue for me after college, and I struggled with what a lot of college kids Graduates struggle with what am I going to do with my life now, I decided to continue to practice yoga. That journey ultimately took me to India to study in more depth. It was my first time out of the country, but I was so passionate about the philosophy behind yoga, and the program that was presented to me over there that I just took that leap. And that just opened up this door of international travel to me, like Shea said, I found myself in Dubai shortly after and I was building like flexibility training programs for boot camps. I got into teaching indoor cycling, there’s a big brand called flywheel that’s out of New York. That’s the one that she was teaching for. That wanted to open in Dubai and I helped open manage and run that studio. That’s how Shane I met each other. I started training instructors there very quickly. And when I was ready to move on, I moved back to Los Angeles for a time before this operation To move to China, that shape presented to me opened up. I had a very similar role in China was overseeing the team of instructors. So not just teaching but also in this mentorship role, where I was helping build the new crop of teachers that would come onto the schedule to teach classes. And it was through that process that I realized that I mean, about 10 years had passed at this point. I had learned so much along the way that I just kind of took for granted that a lot of these new trainees didn’t know and really needed to, I decided that I needed to share this in a bigger way. So I started a podcast called Fitness Career Mastery for fitness professionals, not the consumer, in order for them to learn what I had learned and what the guests that I brought on, which included Shay in a very early episode, and multiple sense and now she’s a co host So they had the ability to provide to learn how to provide really high quality experience. So people could feel more gravitated towards their classes. You know, fitness is so much more than just exercise. For a lot of people. It’s one of the few places that they can go to find community nowadays. And so it’s a mental escape for them. It’s a stress release. It’s transformative. It plays a really big role in their lives. And a lot of the people that we consult with that are opening new studios or people that came from other industries that were so taken by their transformation in fitness that they want to pay it forward. So

Shay Kostabi 10:47

But in order to do that, it requires a great many skills, right so not just knowing your modality knowing enough about exercise science and how to train the body But also how to motivate how to work with music, coaching, cueing psychology, and all of these other skills that you don’t get. So in our industry, typically, you take a certification a lot of times online, that just teaches you what to do and what not to do, but not how to do it. So that’s kind of where Barry and I came together. The podcast was this incredible free resource for the fitness industry. And an excellent lead generator was reaching thousands of people, but there was no company behind it. And there were no there was no turtles, no products, no resources for sale. And after I had come on the show, I started getting more international clients. I was like, Okay, this is amazing. I have so many things to sell and to share. But I do not have a vehicle megaphone. Yeah, I don’t have this this amazing vehicle. To get them out to the people, you have the vehicle let’s hitch our trailers together and and see what we can do. And that’s basically where Fitness Career Mastery as a business, not just a podcast was born. And you know, we worked with people in person, but we went straight to creating online content, like, almost right away, I would say six months in. We were we we had sold our first course online. Yeah. So that’s, that’s where we are today. Right.

Melissa Guller 12:33

And when you say you went straight to online content, what did the state of your podcast look like at that time? How big was it?

Barry Ennis 12:43

At that point? I’d say we

Shay Kostabi 12:45

not even not quite 10,000

Barry Ennis 12:48

listeners per month.

Shay Kostabi 12:49

Yeah.

Barry Ennis 12:50

Yeah, probably about five to eight, I would say. But we had a pretty strong community growing at that point. We’d been working on growing An email list so we had people to reach out to. And alongside that, we just had been in the industry for so long that we had a lot of connections as well that we could reach out to a lot of whom were our some of our first clients, customers once those online courses came out.

Melissa Guller 13:16

Well, I love hearing you guys talk about your two very different journeys, because I think it really highlights the fact that there is no one right way to become an expert or to follow a passion or to become a business owner. And I’m sure now, having those different perspectives is what makes your business unique. And it’s great to hear, too, that you talked about this whole journey even before it became a business because I think too often. It feels like businesses happen overnight. But both of you it really started in 2008 or 2010. And it’s been a long time coming yet 10 years absolutely before all of it came together as a viable business and

Barry Ennis 14:00

Right. I think what’s interesting to point out is that what we’re teaching right now are things that we’ve been teaching live in person for groups of Trainers, Studio owners for many, many years.

Melissa Guller 14:14

Something interesting about your entire business actually, is that I think fitness is often thought about being very in person. Yeah. And it’s very hands on exactly. And so I’m really excited to learn a little bit more about what you guys do, because sure you alluded to this, but not everyone is taught like how to teach the psychology behind it. And so you guys have to deal with teaching, but also creating an online production and also fitness. So you have quite a bit going on. And I’m curious, can you talk us through a little bit more about what maybe sets fitness online businesses apart or what are the good ones like yours doing really well.

Shay Kostabi 14:58

Wwhere to begin. This is This is such a big question, because so because the type of business that we have, right we serve the leaders in the industry, we don’t we don’t serve the consumer, right consumers of fitness. So we are helping the businesses that serve the consumer. So if we look at what makes those businesses do well, online, it’s things like we start from from the ground up. So what is the intention of your business? What are your values? What is your mission? What is your vision? How do you want to show up for your community and your clients? How do you want to serve? That’s number one, above all, not what is your space look like? Or what is your platform look like? And if equipment Do you have, or what colors or how much money are you going to make? Yeah, so that’s, that’s number one. And that kind of guides everything and then knowing who your client is your ideal client, and then therefore your audience. So Your vibe attracts your tribe is a very real statement to us. Right? And then from there, I think the thing that’s exciting about fitness in real life is the community and the experience. And this this kind of ritual, absolutely, we’ll have a routine. It’s this place that they go to sometimes they see their trainers more than they see members of their family. So how can you recreate that online? So we teach people how to create those touch points, or to translate those touch points that you focus on in real life,

Barry Ennis 16:39

what you feel and experience live? Yeah. How to bring that online. So yeah, we do focus on both aspects.

Shay Kostabi 16:46

So definitely your equipment, your technology is important, what platform you’re using, and then what camera you’re shooting with a wooden microphone, you’re using all of those things. We walk people through all of that But then the soft skills as well how to coach on camera it’s very different from coaching in real life as I’m sure we’ve all experienced, you know, when you see you know if you’ve ever seen a stage play versus a film, and maybe you’ve seen the same actor in both scenarios, they have to make big adjustments or even just listening to an acoustic a live acoustic performance versus like a big concert productions. Yeah, right versus a music video, right? So there’s like different skills so we teach the instructor you know how to make those adjustments. And then we talked about like lighting and your set and all of the all of those things. So there’s, there’s a number of things that can make you successful. I think when you have all of those set up, and in alignment, then once you go to market and you start promoting your product, your ideal client can easily spot you, they can find you. And then they can get to know and like and trust you and buy into your business.

Melissa Guller 18:08

What I love about this strategy that I think any course graders can appreciate, is that it is different to teach online, and that you should embrace the setting. So instead of just taking what you were doing offline, and then assuming throw up a camera, and it’ll work. Now, you really have to ask the question, what is this experience going to be like for somebody when we’re not in the same room when they’re in their own home? And how can I create a better experience with that in mind?

Shay Kostabi 18:36

Yes, so for us, because we want to practice what we preach. It was really, really important for us that we had a simple, easy to use, beautiful looking platform to present our courses on. And then it was also really important that we had a mix of text and video knowing that everybody learned differently,

Barry Ennis 19:01

especially our audience, fitness professionals, they tend to have a very short attention span, they need to be engaged constantly.

Shay Kostabi 19:08

If they don’t like to sit still, they don’t notice that, you know, it’s better if they can see it visually rather than just reading. So originally, we had thought, okay, maybe this will just be a written course, that didn’t feel like it was enough. So then we wanted to do video and we started by shooting in our apartment, and then we hated the way it looked. You know, we set up our own lighting, and we used a teleprompter and the way that we had it set up, you could tell that we were reading it. I was like, oh, gosh, like we’re trying to teach people. How because one of our courses is called learn to live stream. We have another one called the art of coaching and cueing and we’ll be launching some more this year. But ultimately, everything comes back to how do you create this immersive experience for your clients. Like we cannot put this out it like we have to show them what it looks like. So then we ended up renting a studio, hiring A camera crew did some editing, and really spent a lot of time and money on this course before we launched it. And

Barry Ennis 20:10

because we know the material so well, we know that it works. We’re so passionate about it, we were willing to put in that investment to reach more people. Ultimately, there’s only so many places that we can travel to, and work with people live. And in fact, what we’re even more passionate about is not helping everyone learn the basics, but helping them Excel once they have the basics in place. So putting these this course out and making the investment allowed us to make sure that more people were understanding the basics of creating an awesome fitness experience so that hopefully, down the line, we could go in and help them even level up hire.

Melissa Guller 20:56

Oh, that’s such a great business model in general. That Right now you’re focusing on people who are just getting started. But then the more people that you could help find success with the basics, the more people who are going to really know and trust you, and they’re already in your community, and then you can help them level up even more.

Barry Ennis 21:15

Right?

Shay Kostabi 21:15

Yeah. So I think for anybody out there who’s you know, who’s just start looking to launch a course online if you’re used to teaching in real life, because I had to jump over this hurdle myself. I was like, Okay, I right now, my life looks like this. I somebody reaches out to me, they booked me, I fly to them. They put me up in a hotel. I spend any number of days with them from a weekend to up to three weeks, actually with their entire team. This is very exciting, but it’s exhausting. And I can only do that so many times in a year before I feel completely burnt out. And also, I can’t take every single client that comes my way. It’s great problem to have Also, a lot of times, I find that my time and my expertise is not used as efficiently as it could be, because I have to spend so much time on the basics that people aren’t getting. So being able to create an online course, was our solution to that,

Barry Ennis 22:17

right.

Shay Kostabi 22:17

So just as Barry said, it’s like, we can take people from zero to 60 in these online courses. And then if they have the budget, if they’re willing, and they, they see the success, they see the return on their investment that they made online, they go, Okay, now, I want to bring this person here in real life, to get hands on with my team, and really take them to that next level. So now we can go from 60 to 100 in real life, and then that client gets more bang for their buck. And we get to do the really exciting stuff that we love, about our work in real life. So that’s been Really exciting and, and, and really helpful. And I honestly, I was resistant at the beginning, I was like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to put this online. And of course, like, I can’t do what I do in real life in a video webinar or a written course that’s impossible, right. But it’s actually been really successful.

Melissa Guller 23:21

It’s so helpful to hear you describe, I think the two phases this year to 60 to 60 to 100, because you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing the foundational building blocks are pretty similar from person to person. And then maybe in phase two, it starts to get more personalized, so it makes sense that you’d want to like systematize, create the course reach more beginners.

Shay Kostabi 23:43

Yeah

Melissa Guller 23:43

And then the personal spin, right?

Shay Kostabi 23:45

Yeah. And that beginning, those beginning steps can it’s not just one level of courses, there’s a level one a level two or level three, you have to go through multiple phases before you get to that level where you really need that hands on coaching. And then that personalized coaching,

Barry Ennis 24:02

more bespoke.

Shay Kostabi 24:02

Yeah. So again, for anybody else that’s listening. It’s not like oh, well, there’s only this one thing I can do we have a whole business plan of like levels of courses.

Barry Ennis 24:15

online university. Yeah as professionals Yeah, these beginner courses are like the prerequisites you have to take before your your major right?

Melissa Guller 24:24

Mm hmm. I love that. And I also want to circle back to a word that kept coming up earlier, which was community. And how are you guys thinking about community? Because you did mention that it’s so closely woven into how a lot of people see their fitness and especially as the instructor, I imagine you’re not just creating your own community, but encouraging them to create community as well.

Barry Ennis 24:47

Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah, that really comes from knowing who you’re trying to serve. I think that’s something that Shay mentioned earlier, but if you really know who you’re ideal client is and what it is that they struggle with, then you’re able to speak more clearly to them and they feel closer to you and you wind up attracting more people that way. One of the best examples that I’ve heard from a guest that we’ve had on our show before, as he said, If you describe yourself as the best personal trainer, and if someone types Best Personal Trainer into Google, what’s going to happen? I got 100,000 best results. How do I sort through that as a consumer to find you are right, so whereas if you put Best Personal Trainer, post menopausal women, then

Shay Kostabi 25:45

that’s going to narrow that list that comes up, right be much easier for somebody to find you.

Barry Ennis 25:51

Right and that ultimately builds a stronger community as well because you have more like minded people that are searching for the same solution. They’re able to engage with each other as well and find support.

Shay Kostabi 26:03

And we talk a lot about specializing and niching down, getting super clear on who you are, what lights you up, what kind of clients you want to serve, so that you can more easily attract them. And then we take our own advice. So we decide it’s the fitness community is much smaller than the fitness consumer. And we’ve been working with the consumer for so many years. We could have started a podcast on fitness and nutrition, or some of your linear sir Yeah, okay. Yeah, whatever. And then we could have created online courses for the consumer, knowing that you can cast a wider net and reach more people and make more money and all of those things, but we really, really wanted to hone in on what we’re most passionate about. And that is working with boutique Fitness Studio owners and what’s called freestyle instructor. And coaches. So those are people that that teach they make up their own programs or they have the freedom to kind of design their own workouts for their clients. They don’t subscribe to a membership, like maybe some of you have heard of Zumba that’s pre choreographed, an instructor has to license that and then memorize it. So they kind of already have that that whole group already has, like a built in infrastructure for them. The freestyle people don’t. Same thing big box gyms have their own corporate infrastructure, Mom and Pop boutique fitness studios don’t. So we really wanted to hone in and serve that community because we felt that they were underserved. And they didn’t have the resources available to them that these giant corporations did. That doesn’t mean that those big box gyms won’t find value in our podcast or that they might not or that they wouldn’t buy our courses for their businesses or For their instructors, and in fact, we have had those types of clients in our community. But the majority of our people are, are what I just described. They’re the sort of left of center rebels of the world, right, that really need guidance. And so that’s, I think, what’s made us so successful and what’s contributed to our, like rapid growth. I mean, we went from when we started just like a year and a half ago when we came together, and we decided to go online. And we had mentioned we only had, I think it was something around 8000 weekly downloads, right? We, within nine months, were at 100. Okay, and we just the other day reach 200,000. So there’s been exponential growth and I really believe that that’s because we know who our ideal client is and who our audiences and we speak to them and then we have a You know, a support system around the services that we offer our Facebook group and our Instagram and all of those things. So we’re building that community online, right?

Melissa Guller 29:10

I think this is such insightful advice. And something that I don’t know if many maybe aspiring course creators have thought about is that there’s always a business behind the business. Like you said, you guys could have chosen to teach directly to consumers. But there’s always somebody who needs to be taught how to teach. And even Barry, I think you’re the beginning, you mentioned that you took for granted knowledge that you had, that a lot of other trainees didn’t know. And I think a lot of really excellent instructors, whether it’s fitness or any industry, that is such a skill, and maybe one that we don’t talk enough about being a true skill, being able to teach being able to present information in a way that other people can understand. And if you’re somebody who has that skill, then maybe talking directly to the business owner or the teacher. Could be a great path?

Barry Ennis 30:01

Yes, absolutely. I’m so glad you said that. And I would encourage anyone listening to think about that if you’re looking at creating your own online business, you could go that path of serving the people that you have become an expert. I don’t know. You’re really good at gardening. You could teach people how to garden or you could teach other people how to teach gardening. And I think that’s an interesting business that we’ve really gravitated to, which is teaching people how to teach.

Melissa Guller 30:34

Mm hmm. And I want to also circle back to the podcast. First of all, congratulations on such incredible growth over such a short amount of time. And I know you mentioned that it comes from knowing your ideal client, and I’m curious to hear how does your podcast now tie into the business? How do people eventually become customers or clients with you?

Barry Ennis 30:57

Podcast is an incredible lead generator for us something that we’ve learned over time, which I’m sure you’ve heard before, and everyone listening may have heard before. But for people to purchase a product from you, they first have to get to know you. They have to learn to like you, and trust you, if you just present them with the course, hey, buy this thing. Man, that’s a huge hurdle to get over. But giving them the opportunity to hear our voices, hear our expertise, and share our philosophy behind what it is that we teach, allows them to really warm up to us through consuming free content that makes it so much easier for them to say yes, when we present them with the opportunity to feel like

Shay Kostabi 31:43

they’re a part of the story of our business. Right. And that makes it so much easier to sell them something.

Barry Ennis 31:53

And I think it’s really funny because when I first started the podcast share, remember you came to me and said you can’t put this stuff online and give it away for free. This is what I charge people for.

Shay Kostabi 32:03

Yeah, I got really upset. Yeah, but full of fear.

Barry Ennis 32:07

But what happened next? Well,

Shay Kostabi 32:09

I came on as a guest. And the feedback was so incredible. And all of these people reached out to me wanting more. And I thought, okay, okay, there’s something to this. I came on again, this is where this was an episode about my shoe store analogy, like building a business. And I got three international clients after that, right. That’s when I went, Okay, I take it back. I totally understand. I’m positioning myself as an authority. I’m giving them free advice. They’re getting to know me. They definitely like me. I think they trust me because they’re calling me and now it’s so I don’t have to sell I don’t have to promote myself. They come to me and they say I need you. I want what can you sell me I want to buy something from you. which feels really good.

Barry Ennis 32:59

Yeah. which allowed us when we launched our first course to really not have to do any marketing at all, we just presented it to our audience and found tremendous success that way.

Shay Kostabi 33:11

Yeah.

Melissa Guller 33:11

You did nothing at all, after 10 years of hard work, and

Shay Kostabi 33:18

Nothing at all.

Melissa Guller 33:19

Yeah, but it is helpful to hear because I do think a lot of creators, in addition to the, you know, overnight success, we’ve talked about this fear of giving things away for free, I think is really understandable. And it’s maybe a relief to hear che that people started coming to you. And it’s almost that the more you give away, the more people want to come to you because they see you as generous, knowledgeable, helpful. I do have to ask, Is there a line like, Is there something that you shouldn’t give away for free or is your game

Shay Kostabi 33:53

100% and we talked about this all the time with our clients. So right now is a really good example because of the pandemic. And businesses shutting down studios have had to and instructors have had to pivot and put their businesses online. So what happened in the fitness industry is everybody gravitated towards Instagram Live and they were putting their entire workouts all of their programming all of their IP up on the live streams for free,

Barry Ennis 34:23

for free,

Shay Kostabi 34:25

which completely devalues their product, their service their brand and

Barry Ennis 34:31

their knowledge

Shay Kostabi 34:32

detrimental to the success of the industry as a whole. So, we went to the front lines were like Absolutely not. We cannot do this which is why we built our course learn to livestream we did it in four days and put it up we had no plans to launch that we did it the day that was Angeles when it shelter in place. When we have to we have to be on top of this. So we’ve had to teach people you know, do not give away your the whole playbook whatever it is for free use social media, as the marketing tool that it is. So if you want to do a five minute workout or 15 minute workout as a teaser, and then put out a call to action, hey, I’m doing a 60 minute yoga flow this Sunday at 9am on zoom, let’s say, this is where you sign up. And you can do that you could do that every day until you get gather an audience and they go, Oh, actually, I really, I love this trainer. I love this workout. I love this brand. Whatever it is, 10 minutes isn’t enough for me. I gotta get my full workout. I’m gonna pay for this. Okay, you go do that. I love this workout, guess what they’re offering a membership or a package. Okay, I’m signing up for that. And now you have a client hopefully, for life. So it’s the same thing like as a teacher as a consultant. Again, it’s that zero to 60 and then that 60 to 100. I can pull from my resources in the zero to 60 bucket. So foundation level stuff and your high level talking points. Okay. This is what you need to do. It’s steps 1234, and five. And what I’ve learned through this, what we’ve both learned through this, is you can actually give away a ton of free advice. That’s great. But the success lies in the integration of the knowledge and the application of the knowledge. And that is really hard for a lot of people they need hand holding, especially once they get through that foundation level stuff. And now they’re like, okay, I feel like I know what I’m doing. But now I want to reach more people, I want to make more money, I want to open up a second location I want whatever it is, I want to do more. That’s when they’ll come to you and say, they’re ready to pay the big bucks, because you’ve given them so much already. And they’re like, okay, I don’t understand. I have 100 tools, and that they’re sitting there all over my desk. I have no idea how to put them together my

Barry Ennis 36:55

instruction manual.

Shay Kostabi 36:56

Yeah. So guess what we do because we’ve done it 1000 In times all over the planet, so now we can help you put it together.

Barry Ennis 37:06

Yeah, I love that answer shade of being really strategic with your free offering. So it leads into what you’re an expert at. Yeah, is the way to go.

Shay Kostabi 37:16

Yeah.

Melissa Guller 37:17

This has been such a helpful walkthrough too because I think what you guys are sharing is that you can give away, you know, pieces pages of the playbook, but don’t give it to them in order. And on the other hand, you still shouldn’t just only be salesy, like don’t just tell people about the things that you know, you should still give them little five minute or little downloadables things that are truly valuable. It’s just not the full thing.

Shay Kostabi 37:42

Yeah. And the other thing is, is that that person who who saw your your free content, maybe they were able to apply it directly and they got to work in there like this was super helpful. That person is can now be a magnet. phone for you can be your cheerleader can be your, your influencer. Yeah. Right? they’ll they’ll go out and say, Oh my gosh, I just got this free tip from this company over here, you have to go check it out. Well 100 more people might come over and in in that group, there might be a handful, you know, 1020 people who cannot put it together themselves, right? So don’t worry about who gets the free information and what they do with it. Because actually, if they do put it to use, they’re going to speak on your behalf and they’ll spread the word for you to the people that actually needed even more,

Barry Ennis 38:43

right? Or they may be able to figure out what they need to do with the free content that you give but when it comes to something else, yeah, they may not know what to do. They’re gonna think they’re either already established trust with your brand, they’re going to will be willing to come back and purchase something else that they don’t know how to Do

Shay Kostabi 39:00

Yeah.

Melissa Guller 39:01

Mm hmm. Great point. Well, as we start to wrap up a little bit, I would love to know, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you think people have about your work or about your business?

Barry Ennis 39:13

I think a lot of people believe that we’re serving the consumer of fitness. Number one.

Shay Kostabi 39:21

I would say most people think that we put up an online course. And then we’re hanging out on a beach all day like, yeah, people always ask us, well, are you working today? Our parents, especially my dad, just doesn’t get it. Well, what are you doing today? Well, this morning, we did an AEG live where we gave away some free content. Now we’re doing a podcast interview where we’re sharing our knowledge and our expertise with other like minded individuals.

Barry Ennis 39:53

Later today, we’ll be refining the copy on our website and make sure that it’s really speaking to our ideal client

Shay Kostabi 40:00

Then on any given day, we may have a coaching call with a client. We may have a consulting call with somebody that we’re helping, you know, build their business. We have questions to answer in our Facebook community. And on our Instagram, we have questions that come in through the people that are enrolled in our courses,

Barry Ennis 40:20

or scripting a new online course. Yeah.

Shay Kostabi 40:21

10 million, you know, there’s just 10 million things to do in a day where we’re always busy. So it’s not just, you know, put the course online. And, you know, sit back and watch, watch the casual annual and yeah, we have to work at it. You know, we’re already talking about when do we relaunch our first course that we put up on Teachable the art of coaching and cueing. We did a live launch, it exists, you can go to the site and purchase it at any time, but we always do a live launch. And it’s time for us to do that again. So what’s that going to look like? What’s our strategy, you know, right, so

Barry Ennis 40:58

at least we don’t have to Create all that content again. Yeah. But there’s there’s so much work that goes into keeping the machine running.

Shay Kostabi 41:06

So this this idea of passive income, it isn’t it isn’t, you have to work really hard for it. I think the that term passive comes from the fact that sometimes you go to sleep at night, especially when you’re in the launch phase, you wake up in the morning, and all of that work that you did during the day has paid off because 100 people have signed up

Barry Ennis 41:29

emails from Teachable,

Shay Kostabi 41:30

yeah, 100 people have signed up for the course, overnight, and you’re like, Yes, I made money in my sleep. Literally, you made money while you were sleeping, but you still did all of the work during the day.

Barry Ennis 41:44

Yeah.

Melissa Guller 41:45

It’s so helpful, I think to hear you guys talk about even all of those various tasks that you do in your business because that’s a big goal with this podcast is to take a peek behind the curtain and something that I think a lot of online business business owners really love about having a course business is that there is a lot to do. You get to interact with students, you get to write scripts, you get to, in your case, have podcast episodes or put out content or go on Instagram. And I think it’s a very creative way to be a business owner. But a lot of people don’t associate the word creative with business.

Barry Ennis 42:21

Oh, that’s so true.

Shay Kostabi 42:23

I think anybody who runs a business in any industry is a creator, right? You have to make up things as you go. Sometimes you’ve got to pull from your years of experience and expertise and from other experts and put it together you have to be innovative.

Barry Ennis 42:40

One of our recent guests said being an entrepreneur means being able to create something out of nothing. And I think the more you put yourself into that mindset of being a creator as you are a business owner, going through this pandemic, it allows you to open up your mind to reach out and find different, seemingly unrelated things to put together to allow you to continue to succeed. We’ve seen that through this time as well in the fitness industry, those gyms and studios that have been able to think outside of the box outside outside the box, step into that space where they are a creator, and an entrepreneur again, have thrived through this time. Mm

Melissa Guller 43:26

Mhmm. Absolutely. Thinking about the future and as we start to, you know, say our goodbyes to you what is up for you guys next, not just in light of your own business, but also kind of in light of the state of the fitness economy right now.

Shay Kostabi 43:41

Oh, my goodness.

Barry Ennis 43:42

We’re gonna have to,

Shay Kostabi 43:44

it’s a little bit up in the air.

Barry Ennis 43:45

Yeah, we’re gonna have to discover it as we go.

Shay Kostabi 43:47

Yeah, we’re definitely going to launch more online courses and resources for people because they’re more easily accessible. They’re more affordable. And we can continue to have an impact. But we may have to adjust what we launched because some things that we felt were really necessary and relevant, aren’t going to serve people in quite the same way during this time.

Barry Ennis 44:19

Fortunately, a lot of the content we produce is relevant, whether it’s a live experience or instructors or teaching online. So,

Unknown Speaker 44:27

but making a few tweaks to really speak to what’s happening now. And one of the things that we always look forward to in the fall is traveling to studios to help them open, which nobody is planning to. I don’t think anybody is in the mindset of opening a new brick and mortar business right now. So

Barry Ennis 44:46

not in the United States that we know of.

Shay Kostabi 44:48

Yeah. So that will be different for us. But the day that Los Angeles went into shelter in place, we were at a team meeting and we were talking about launching a public product. And we’re like in the middle of our, you know, strategy session. And then we got the email and we, we close to that book and we put it to the side and we said, okay, we have to save this for later. This is nobody’s going to want to buy this right now. And we put our heads together and we went, we should we just instantly everybody’s going to go online. We have to teach them how to do it. Right. We’ve been doing this for years, you know, something that we haven’t mentioned is that Barry and I, I was live streaming before it was cool. Like before anybody knew what that was like on YouTube and on Yahoo, you know, channels that don’t even exist anymore. Barry and I have both done live streaming on demand workouts over the last 10 years. I also have a background in production. So I was like, we are primed for this. We’re going to do it. And we made that that pivot. And that’s the beauty of having your own business and having an online business is you can be flexible, right and you can look at what’s happening. And say, Okay, how do I serve my community right now. And this goes all the way back to the very, very first thing that I said, which was, you have to know what your intention is for your business. You have to know what your core values are, what your mission your vision is, who your client is, and what they need.

Barry Ennis 46:19

That’s exactly what I was about to say. So important to know, I think we were able to make that pivot because we’re so in touch with our bodies of our audience and clients.

Shay Kostabi 46:31

We knew that these small boutique fitness studios would need a lot of help moving online, as opposed to a company like equinox, which already has an online app, and they’re like, great, we’re just going to put all of our marketing dollars into making sure that people go there. Independent trainers and instructors and small businesses don’t have those kind of resources. So we were able to, to really help them and serve them and make sure that they are still in business. Today, which we’re very proud to say that we’ve saved helped save these people’s businesses, and therefore their lives, their livelihood, additional

Barry Ennis 47:07

revenue streams. It’s been really cool.

Shay Kostabi 47:09

Yeah. So being being flexible and having the ability to be flexible is such a gift.

Barry Ennis 47:17

Yeah. So to leave you with something it would be just to summarize what Shea said, know who you are, and know who you’re trying to serve that is going to allow you to be successful.

Melissa Guller 47:31

Yeah. Such great advice. And I think a nice theme to all of this is that, like you said, Hey, if you know who you’re serving, you can always pivot but you also don’t have to stop. And you can always say we’ll do this later. And it’s okay to adjust priorities, and especially in an uncertain times, like right now, just like giving yourself permission to do that, I think is great advice. And before we wrap up, I’d love to know, do you guys have any final words of wisdom or inspiration? For our listeners?

Barry Ennis 48:02

Final words of wisdom, I think knowing that there’s never a right time to start, you may think that because it’s in the middle of a pandemic right now, it’s not a good time to launch an online business. But,

Shay Kostabi 48:15

so many people are feeling lost and they need help.

Barry Ennis 48:18

Yeah.

Shay Kostabi 48:19

So and you might be the person that does that for them,

Barry Ennis 48:23

or completely different feeling you may feel like you’re not quite ready yet. And, you know, fortunately, we weren’t fully able to make that decision for ourselves. When we launched our first online course. We just been let go from our jobs in China, we had to find a way to continue to sustain ourselves and that that event helped push us to create that first online course. But I think if that didn’t happen, we would have been maybe struggling a little bit more with the feelings like Oh, is this the right time? Have we put in enough work to really start Start. And I think you really just have to make the decision to start and to get going. And

Shay Kostabi 49:06

you’re not always going to get away, you’re not always going to get that push from the universe. Sometimes you just you have to push yourself out the door. And I would say the last sort of piece of advice that I would love to share is that you don’t need to know everything. You don’t have to be a master to absolute serve your community, you really only need to be a few steps ahead of the people that you’re trying to serve. You don’t need to have all of the answers before you begin.

Barry Ennis 49:41

Absolutely.

Melissa Guller 49:42

Great advice. Well, it’s been such a pleasure having both of you finish each other’s sentences throughout this whole episode. And I’d love to know where can listeners keep in touch or learn more about you both.

Barry Ennis 49:52

Fitness Career Mastery is where you can find us across all platforms if you hop on to Spotify or Apple podcast. Google Play you can search for Fitness Career Mastery and listen to our podcast you can search for Fitness Career Mastery on Instagram and follow us there or you can go to fitnesscareermastery.com And that’s our website, fitnesscareermastery.teachable.com is our it’s our new university online.

Melissa Guller 50:21

Perfect. Well, again, thank you both for joining and I hope that listeners gained a lot, whether they’re in the fitness industry or not, I think there was a lot of great advice in today’s episode. So thank you again. Thanks so much for joining us this week! You can learn more about Barry Ennis, Shay Kostabi, Fitness Career Mastery, and Teachable in the show notes at teachable.com/eit27. That’s teachable.com slash E I T 2 7.

Before you go, make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released. You can either subscribe right in your favorite podcast app or you can sign up for email alerts at teachable.com/podcast. And if you’re enjoying the show, I hope you’ll let us know! We love reading through your reviews in Apple Podcasts, and if you have a minute to spare, we’d love to read yours, too.

On behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about fitness entrepreneurship and teaching teachers with Barry Ennis and Shay Kostabi. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.