We recently connected with Jonathan McGrael and have shared our conversation below.
Jonathan , appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
I love this question! This is one of those areas in brand building and in business that is often discussed and so rarely well executed. We are talking about STRATEGY and then the TACTICS that are used to support the strategy.
First it’s important for us to have a shared understanding of what strategy means. The word strategy is thrown around so often in business and by failing to first define what it means, you almost certainly fail in execution. The simplest working definition of strategy I have heard is this: “how we will win”. By understanding this, everything else becomes clear quickly. The saying goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do”. We all need a clear path forward!
If we are intellectually honest, most businesses operate using a completely reactionary model. They introduce some energy into the space and then follow the responses. Regardless of what happens, they introduce some more energy, often in a completely different direction, and then wait for something to happen. With this approach there is no synergy, nothing builds because the energy is non-linear and random. There is no cumulative effect from random.
You must first crystalize your focus. Early on we narrowed where we thought the World Famous Kissimmee Muscle 24 hour gym could be successful to only a handful of areas. Once we decided what might work, we tested it. We messaged and positioned in these areas and were consistent with it over a long enough period of time to learn from what we measured. Based on the learnings from our testing, we knew where we needed to win and from that flowed what we needed to message on and where resources should be allocated. The two resources most scarce for nearly all businesses are, money and time. Because of this you must narrow your focus and understand that strategy is more of what you don’t do than what you do. There are no shortage of really cool areas where you can spend your money and time, though there are only a handful that will benefit your brand best. We all must stick to only those most aligned tactics and forego all other activity.
Once we knew where we needed to win, we deliberately crafted the positioning and began testing the specific words that support that positioning. After many attempts, the words “Welcome to the World Famous Kissimmee Muscle 24 hour gym” began to resonate with our guests. we used this verbiage and a couple of other phrases that sell in every execution, again measuring what we heard back from those enjoying our brand.
To own a positioning, people must know that this is where you are positioned. When our guests began to use these same phrases unsolicited in their communications with us and about us, we knew they at least understood our positioning. Owning a positioning and living up to it are two very different things and we took great care to ensure that the experience of our guests was aligned with our positioning. Positioning must be believable and your behaviors either help to make the positioning believable or to undermine it. Finally, positioning must cause someone to undertake a change. It does little good to have your positioning known, understood, believed and then no change in behavior takes place. Behavior change in your customer is the real measure of result. Only then will consistent application of your messaging and positioning create traction in the market.
Getting back to strategy, even when positioning is known, the benefits of your brand supporting your positioning and strategy may not be easily articulated. I remember early on fumbling over my words when asked “what makes you different”. It was a couple of years before this became an automatic response for us. As a travel and tourism company operating as a hard core old school gym, we are America’s Travel Destination gym. We are where the world comes to train. Even though these were clear to us, the “why” behind these facts took us some time. I firmly believe people can really only remember three things about your brand and as such we have three core message bullet points. We have become the destination where the world comes to train because of our 1) Equipment, 2) Environment and 3) Ease of Access which set us apart.
Equipment – hand picked or hand curated equipment from the best lines of equipment ever made
Environment – more disciplined, more mature and more respectful than a commercial gym. Our members and traveling guests are serious about effecting change.
Ease of Access – largely stemming from our proprietary online Instant Access 24 platform
Once in place, these elements drive behavior so long as you assess whether resources are applied in line with strategy.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We have the pleasure these last several years of building a global brand in the World Famous Kissimmee Muscle 24 hour gym providing an old school gym experience for more than 500,000 traveler visits from 100 plus countries and counting and all 50 US states. We continue to build this brand and serve in this space.
In the first half of 2023 we are completing a project that has been more than 5 years in the making as we look to take our Instant Access 24 platform for online gym instant access, out to the public. More than 5 years ago, we developed an online platform that allows for a traveling guest to gain instant gym access 24/7 even outside of staffed hours, even if they haven’t ever set foot in the gym in the past. They build their profile online on our platform, pay for gym access via credit card through our payment vendor and are issued a QR code to their smartphone that allows them to scan at the door and obtain gym access anytime 24/7
For our traveling guests this has been the difference for many in being able to remain on track as they travel for business or pleasure and it has been the source of deep satisfaction with their overall trip. To date, we have positively impacted an incremental unique 10,000 guests resulting in 200,000 successful gym training sessions and we are growing this channel at greater than 21% year over year.
For us in the World Famous Kissimmee Muscle 24 hour gym, this has resulted in significant passive revenues that have fueled our continued growth and helped us to weather the challenging economic times that have resulted from the devastatingly poor political decisions we have experienced as an American Society these last several years.
For our customers running great small businesses in the gym industry and having to compete with mediocre giant corporate fitness centers, this may be the difference in them running a great old school gym and remembering their great old school gym once its out of business. We all deserve to be able to train in these great facilities and with Instant Access 24 helping them to realize additional passive revenues, we can!
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
We do a robust merchandise business in support of the World Famous Kissimmee Muscle 24 hour gym brand and we have spent a ton of time and money to get to the sales levels we currently see.
It was inside the first year in business when we attended a seminar held by one of the top authorities in the industry who is known as the top consultant on making money from the gym business in the USA. Much of what was discussed on the day long session reinforced things we were already doing and that felt good. A few things were new for us and we took good notes and immediately set plans to incorporate them as well.
At one point I asked an accounting related question because I was curious as to where the seminar leader typically accrued for merchandise sales. “Where do you account for t shirt sales”, I asked and the response was both dismissive and surprising. I was told and I quote, “Don’t sell t shirts, you will just get stuck with them”.
We’ve introduced our brand into the world more than 10,000 times in the form of branded merchandise (t shirts) at this point and weekly, our t shirts and other apparel show up in posts from Kuwait City, London, New Jersey, Kansas City and most other major and minor metropolitan areas around the world. We have had success building this as a global brand and we did so flying in the face of this expert’s advice and convention in the industry.
In 2023, our apparel side of the business is responsible for nearly 25% of our overall revenue, positive energy continues to be generated in the world from our traveling tribe and we have just launched our first brand ambassador team the TRIBE in the TRENCHES to continue to fuel this fire in the market.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In this article we’ve spoken a great deal about being laser focussed on your strategy and one lesson we had to learn that forced us to pivot back to our core strategy is surrounding who our real customer is.
At its most basic element, our customer is a traveler with no distinction between business or recreational travel, needing a hard core challenging gym experience with easy access 24/7 to meet their schedule.
Many of our travelers are athletes, but many are not but all are travelers to central FL. Over the last couple of years we needed to remind ourselves of this fact as we had shifted our business model, positioning and messaging a bit because of market opportunities and dynamics as a result of the global pandemic.
Our travel revenue makes up nearly 70% of total revenues and in 2020, travel especially international travel all but ceased. We needed to do something to meet payroll, to remain relevant and to remain in business and fortunately an opportunity presented itself. Because Florida was more quick to open than most of the nation and well ahead of the broader world market, we had the opportunity to host nearly every major amateur and professional national and world championship bodybuilding competition in 2020 and 2021. From this came the traveling athletes to train with us and a ton of content through social media channels where we were quickly characterized as a hard core bodybuilding gym and the home of bodybuilding in FL. This was a great experience and we are blessed beyond words to have been a part of it and it was technically also off strategy for us. Because of this market induced shift in focus, we began investing time and money slightly off strategy.
To again return to our core traveler strategy and messaging that followed, we had to ask ourselves some difficult questions on the heals of the positive energy and HIGH we were feeling from all this success. When we did so we arrived at this: We are the home of bodybuilding in FL, providing that we recognize that these bodybuilders that are traveling here are first and foremost travelers needing a memorable hard core gym experience for their work or pleasure travel. Once we shifted back to our core, our investments and success have followed.
Contact Info:
- Website: kissimmeemuscle.com
- Instagram: @kissimmeemusclegym