Devan Kline - Founder of Burn Boot Camp

 you're listening to the ride cast a top 25 worldwide business podcast if it's
 radical we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the least
 addition of the rad cast. We save its radical. We cover it. And you know, we're talking
 burn, baby burn, talk with Devon Klein, CEO, founder of burn boot camp. What's up, Devon?
 What's up, everybody? Hey, Ryan, good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.
 Yeah, man, pumped literally figuratively. There's going to be so many puns on this episode.
 I'm pumped up. I mean, I think I saw I figured you were hitting the gym based on
 based on your energy levels number one. I don't even need to see you to know how much energy
 you have to know that you're hitting the gym. And then I see you'm like, oh, I make sense.
 He's jacked. Keep it going, man. 46 strong. I don't know. I'm sure for you, part of some of your
 passion. I know I read about you, but it's once you get the bug and I mean, I've been like this,
 they all feel like you're naturally wired this way. My dad worked out all the time,
 what I was growing up. And my sister is the same way. It's just like auction for us.
 If you do this 20 minutes, just getting it in. Yeah, I think being like having something that
 is the anchor to your day, it's one of the most challenging things you could do in a day is
 like physically move your body. We all know we've all felt it before, right? You go physically
 move your body. You feel the emotion, the energy, the endorphins that are coming after that.
 The runners know it well. The runners high. When you do a burn boot camp or you get like a great lift
 in the gym, you just feel that energy. So we we really lead with that, right? We're not just
 the fitness company. We're a lot more than that. Obviously working out is the anchor to all the
 things that bind the mental, the emotional, the spiritual, the relationships, even you can
 anchor yourself inside of that every day. We try to teach our members that and heck, I had to do it
 too. That's right. I know we could probably cut it up. We'll probably have parts one, two,
 and three of this. They will get into the functional exercise parts of life and they don't have
 you on my vacate podcast to talk some of the more specific throughout fitness and wellness.
 There's a so much there with how it's all tied together. But let's back up a second, Devon.
 Burns certainly becoming a fairly household name. I think if anyone's heard of fitness and
 studios do that, especially where I was healthy, snouts were, and I know you're based close to
 how to show all it. But Devon, let's just tee that for everybody on your background and get into
 where and how and why we started burn boot camp.
 Yeah, so I'll take you back and I'll make it quick, but I'll take you back to the beginning. So I grew
 up, Battle Creek Michigan, my mom and my dad were like doing this button heads there chaotic and
 abusive relationship. Dad in and out of jail mom ended up leaving when I was a teenager.
 And unfortunately, he ended up passing away. My mom were still, unfortunately, I forgive her.
 I had, she's out there somewhere. Let's come back. We can talk. And I had this entrepreneur
 D&A kind of growing up. You can, it's either out of where they say it's either out of desperation
 that you start something, right? Or it's out of addition that you start something. And mine was
 really out of desperation. And I just didn't want to be the broken anymore, right? I didn't want to
 be the kid that was on welfare that had to couldn't get the chocolate milk in the line. Like they're
 actually the kids. And so that was ingrained in me from a very early age, 12 years old, the classic
 D&A as a kid of an entrepreneur, Shullan Driveways. That was my first franchise, slaying in CDs,
 burning CDs, all the things. And moving into I found out that I had a good arm. I was a picture.
 And so that kind of set all of that down. My last adventure was, in my teenage years,
 was eBay arbitrage. So I was flipping cars on eBay, buying them with cash,
 marking them up 50%, slipping them, driving cars to Detroit to meet people at the airport to
 to flip cars. And then, oh, my God, this caused baseball scholarship. All that went away. I set it
 down. And I just focused solely on baseball. I always wanted to make the big leagues. And so,
 anyways, six years, I'm playing college baseball, professional baseball, I'm signing a pro baseball
 contract with the San Francisco Giants. And then, I don't know where I just, I had a little injury,
 but I didn't think it was going to derail my career. But I know where I just get released from
 the Giants. And this is where I'm 23 years old. And I've worked my whole life to be a professional
 baseball player. I haven't remember since I was a kid, five years old. This is all I wanted to do.
 And so if anybody out there is an athlete, that void, or a part of a club, or a team,
 or anything where you share a common mission and a common language and a common bot,
 and then that all of a sudden is removed from you. And you're taken out of the,
 taken out of the culture, if you will. There's this huge void. And I wanted to fill the void with,
 I wanted to make money, but I also wanted to make money doing something that I love to do.
 And it wasn't never the most talented ball player, but always worked the hardest. And I always
 said, it was the best teammate and really had a great attitude, great effort, really believed in
 myself had to. If no one around you believes in you because where your family is and where you come
 from, then there's two people, there's two entities that you and whoever your maker is. And so for
 me, it was God and I wrote something. And so you know, we just do this together. And we bet on
 ourselves. And I bet on myself. And after I got released, I'm like, I'm just gonna, I had a
 little stint at lifestyle family fitness, being a personal trainer, school beat to the game,
 and then we can get into that later. But I stopped doing that. We moved to Charlotte, Morgan,
 my wife, CEO, I've known since we were 12 years old and she was my rock growing up. She
 gets a job from Southwest Florida up to Charlotte. And I follow her. And I'm like, when I get there,
 I'm gonna see you gonna go work for Kellogg's. I'm gonna start my own company. We started in a
 parking lot in 2012. I had 600 bucks to my name. Morgan was paying my cell phone bill,
 our rent. She's paying all the things on her pretty decent Kellogg salary. About eight months in,
 she saw what I was doing. She was helping me out in the evenings and in the mornings like working
 two jobs. And Morgan ended up about eight months in joining me whole time. Then fast forward to
 2015. We have five locations, two licensees, one in Durham, North Carolina, one in Concord,
 North Carolina. And we had seven gyms going into 2015. And by the way, just real quick,
 Burnt Boot Camp is 45 minutes. And you have pretty much a camp every hour on the hour led by
 certified personal trainers. Morgan and I have done over 3000 themselves. And then we ended up
 catching fire and we ended up franchising that model. Sad. We have child watch at all of our
 facilities, which really differentiates us with each space. But to me, the fitness product is the
 differentiator. And we've really focused in on that. Like product sells itself that we never
 have to be competing with other. We don't have to compete. We get a chance to dominate. And so
 2015 rolls around where we hang up banner up in one of our gyms. They'll awarding franchises
 in all states. We did 200 units in the first 18 months of all of our members that were just
 raiding fans of the brand. And they jumped to the next city and then eventually to the next state.
 And so on the whole time, Morgan and I are, you know, seating locations in Florida and Tennessee
 in North Carolina. And yeah, next thing, it's like boom, burn is one of the biggest fitness concepts
 on the planet. And we're doing it in what I believe to be a really sustainable, really
 warm term focused way. So I'll stop there. But wanted to give everyone a quick little background
 of myself, the business, everything we're into. I love it, man. I think it's fascinating. I've had
 a few guests recently that have had that kind of transformation. They've been an athlete. They've
 played professionally or at a high level. I went through the same thing playing basketball from
 sixth grade to 12th grade. D1 athlete shattered my ankles. My last playoff game in my senior year.
 Never played again. But channeling the energy and grit and what it took to work hard to get to
 there generally translates into business or elsewhere. So it sounds you were really able to do
 that with the passion of health and fitness. Yeah. And you know, yourself, you felt the same thing
 I did and so many athletes steal that. Your guests included that you mentioned. And what I've
 seen is that it's actually really extreme. There's a few of those athletes that are able to take
 what they learned in sport, the leadership qualities, the qualities of teamwork and really
 ownership, like especially in baseball, like stats, like there's a direct translation of
 finance from baseball because everything is measured by numbers. And you'll get to just pretend
 that you're good because you throw hard or look good and pass the eye test. It doesn't matter.
 Like you my walk to strikeout ratio was one of the reasons why I think I got released.
 Walking too many guys from too many balls. And you know, what we look for now is those,
 that's my number one recruit. Like I don't care what your resume says. I don't care whether you've
 got a high school diploma or you graduated college or not or whether you came from the Wharton
 School of Business or Harvard, it doesn't matter. If you've got that grit and I can see that you've
 got this void from being an athlete and you need to hone for that. Man, I'm telling you like,
 I think this is probably a near 6,000 employees in our system now between myself and the rest of
 our franchise partners to employ them. And there is a lot of athletes. I don't have the exact
 numbers. People are attracted to this culture because they can see the parity in their former team.
 They can see it here. And it's very rare in business to have it be so and so similar.
 What's the what developed a protocol for you hear about boot camps got huge. I don't
 remember what it was. I've been a fitness guy myself for a while and have done different boot camps.
 I never got into CrossFit, but CrossFit or whatever. But how did you develop your core
 approach to building the product of your business, which is the boot camp itself?
 Yeah, answering that question through the Entrepreneur's lens, I've always believed that
 you can see this in modern day products like Tesla. For example, there's not a lot of marketing
 needed there because the product is the differentiator. You don't see Tesla commercials often if ever
 they likely will get pressure from stakeholders at some point and begin to market and to commercialize
 their product. But up until this point, like the product's the differentiator and it's the same
 for us. And I was going to lead the company, then I was going to lead it to where we really want to
 go, which is 10,000 units across the globe. What we're going to need to do is create the best product
 that is in second to none. It's to anyone else. And that takes a lot of work because there's a lot
 of great concept and products and different opportunities. It's everywhere. And today's society,
 you almost have to be not looking for health and fitness if you're not healthy and fit. It's because
 it's just going to knock on your door regardless of whether you want it or not. So that's a competitive
 environment, probably one of the most competitive environments out there in terms of a business sector
 because the barrier of entry is so low and it's sexy, right? To be like a trainer, to be in fitness,
 and to be like inspiring people, impacting people, changing their lives. It's a business that
 gives you a ton of purpose. So I put those two things together, right? How do we create? How do we
 make a lot of money? And how do we help a lot of people? And the number one philosophy is that
 the product is the differentiator. And so to this day, as the visionary, my wife is the CEO, I'm
 not the CEO of the company technically. I'm the visionary. She's the CEO. She integrates it.
 She's got all the VPs that roll to her. I'm up and out. I'm net new territory. And part of that
 net new territory is staying number one in at least our perspective that our fitness product
 is the reason why we're here today. It wasn't our operational prowess or experience or our
 C-suite team that was had 27 years experience. It was because we were fitness people. And I was a
 trainer and I did 15,000 camps in Morgan to 10,000. We spent the first half perfecting it. We
 spent the second half of those camps teaching other people. And I'm still training today once a
 month and maybe once every other month because I think it's so important as the fitness engineer
 to continue to focus on the craft that got us here. And we lose that. And you lose the essence of
 the brand. You lose the core focus of the brand. And everything starts to break down from there.
 So the only if I look around and I observe companies that begin to maybe crumble or go the opposite
 way, the first thing that goes is the leadership's oversight on the actual product itself. And they
 let it go too far. And that's just the beginning of the house of cards. Interesting. Yeah.
 Fringe or how did you differ my advice? How did you differentiate? So you differentiate your product
 by not giving the competitors a seat at your table with your building. Don't do things because
 they do it or against what they do or trying to fill the market. They don't feel I didn't even know
 of an orange theory or an F-45 or whatever when we first and I just did what I thought would
 empower families in my community and provide the solution that was the problem. So the original
 days of it were really a combination of a couple of things. Number one, what got me seeking about
 it was P90X. I saw Tony, I did the whole P90X program. And I saw Tony Horton just like crushing
 it as a trainer. I'm like, this guy is so freaking cool. Like I want to be like him. How do I
 help people like this? And how do I do it in a way that's like his type of attitude, right?
 Hey, we're here to work hard. When you work hard, you're going to get results. When you get results,
 you're going to gain confidence. When you gain confidence, you gain character and life is all
 about what you're becoming. Not what you're getting. And I saw that inside of myself inside of him.
 And so there's a lot of P90X S conditioning bodyweight moves that are a part of the program.
 Then you got professional and collegiate strength and conditioning, right? You got myself in the
 football team and the basketball team and the baseball team at Central Michigan University,
 all just playing in and banging weights in the weight room, right? Like that type of cheering
 each other on. You know what it's like. You're in the weight room and you're with your boys.
 And you guys, you're getting after you're trying to win a championship. It's loadable, load
 the bar. Let's go see what clients got today. You got them guys spotting you and 10 guys behind
 you cheering you on. So we brought that type of culture, mixed it with P90X. And then
 you take, you take, you take pitching specifically and there's a lot of recovery nuances,
 a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of, we really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't be,
 we couldn't have our product meet our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right?
 We tell people like this is going to be long hard and difficult and you're going to take
 consistency and discipline and dedication. You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. Likely,
 you're not going to wake up one day and it'll be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years.
 And are you in for this ride? Are you believe that you're worth it? And so we have
 that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what
 everyone else is saying really in the macro sensibly. Hey, come do this fast. Oh, you're not okay?
 That's okay. Let's come in anyway. Do it fast. Join in membership. You can lose 30 pounds real
 quick. And it's okay. That's flat. You get companies that say one day it says they're signed on
 their building. The next day it says for lease and you're like, why is that happening?
 So yeah, I think that's yeah, that's a combination of
 sounds like I think a little bit of bigger. You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger,
 faster, stronger in there from my high school days too. If anybody's ever heard of that program.
 Oh, yeah, I'm right. I was sitting here thinking as you were talking. I see our intensity,
 community, recovery. That's what I got. Dude, I'm going
 that is right. That's what I did in nutshaws. My answer was real long waited.
 I simplify for my for a bit in marketing blogs. I like acronyms and simplicity. But it's great.
 But that sounds like the building blocks of a long-term program and not like you said, a gimmick
 because everybody gets that fire when they're ready to, okay, I need to lose some weight.
 I've got an event coming up, whatever. They get fired in their belly, but then it dies if you
 don't have the building blocks of something broader. You need the community to keep you in it.
 You need to recovery because if you're chilling yourself and not recovering at all,
 then they get down and out like you said. So I can see and I, all I know is a periphery.
 And I've heard I've had people many times need to burn or whatever. So I'm going to make a
 promise to you. I'll go, I'm going to go hit burn up here at Grigville eventually. But what's
 it been like growing the business man? Go up just that kind of scale is incredible. What's that
 road coaster been like? Definitely one, right? You went at 2015 when we announced that we are going
 to franchise in all 50 states. We thought and all run might be awarding 10 units in our first
 year and really getting those stood up and you were always concerned with unit economics.
 I'll talk about that in a minute, but I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months.
 And frame data did this article out of franchise time magazine. It was like one of our first,
 it was one of our first earn media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of.
 And it said that we're that in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises of any franchise
 that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in and I'm like,
 okay, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open? We got to focus on
 we call it ULE's unit level economics. It's you had a guest on Jeff Dudent who is from this area.
 He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine throughout the years.
 He taught me validation in franchising and that's in validation really in any business.
 It's a sort of franchise particular concept, but it's the stakeholders of your business being
 happy. It's your network promoters score. How likely are they to recommend this business or
 doing business with you to somebody else? And number one thing is to number one box the check
 if you will is are they making money? And what type of money are they making? So I'm always looking
 for a this might be this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you like a
 strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Okay, let's say the
 investment is at $500,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one in order for that investment
 to be considered at a plus investment for me. So it's a two to one investment cash to year one
 revenue ratio. And that's how we that's the how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do
 all of them do that? No. But what that's really done having net expectation is we've aligned
 clearly and early with our franchise partner who are really driving the unit level economics.
 We've learned that when we have that expectation they start higher they start with more members.
 They start better off and getting to that place of having world class economics and
 boutique fitness was there's a long road but definitely a doable one. That was our focus the
 whole time from the very beginning. The big what the hell are we going to do moment was when we
 had 200 and we had 10 open like in franchising it's the similar it's similar to fitness what we're
 just talking about everyone wants to just go fast fast. It is a vehicle for sale and I love the
 vehicle for scale but you can also scale yourself right into the ground and you see that happen
 all the time in this industry particularly the industry that I'm in the boutique fitness
 franchising industry. It's a think about it's logical right like I care about my people so much
 this isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners who invested their 401k
 who invested their life savings who liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to sold
 their house and moved across the state who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri
 and stayed in the hotel room for three months away from their children so they can go chase their
 dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them with that type of mindset that real people first
 core value we're able to take what's in the gym translate that up to a franchise partner
 network translate that into an HQ culture now we're on the east coast so we're on the west coast
 by coastal headquarters operating the business that way and we're economics are better than they've
 ever been we use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising how much each individual gym
 makes on average and we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year which is top three in our
 space so people first like people first and I'm gonna preach that to the day that Morgan and I
 hang them up which we're in the big leagues now so I'm gonna stay as long as we can but you take
 care of people that take care of you that's how that's usually it's right reciprocation is powerful
 just when you're trying to do the right thing what you said to start light I heard licensing in
 there I've talked to Jeff about this a little bit licensing versus franchising versus what
 the thought process there and you mentioned it if you aren't serving your franchise ease then what
 are you doing as hard as going to business because again if you're serving them they're making
 money they're happy to get more franchise ease and you grow but what's it like like truly what's
 been some of the secret sauce to scale and like that like now that you've done it was there
 stuff that you would have gone damn I wish I'd done that sooner or what are some of those learning
 lessons like definitely the number one thing is if you're gonna scale your business fast you
 want to invest ahead of that growth curve you've got to anticipate that I heard 20 Robins want to
 say that the anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur and you're able to see
 over the hill before anyone else can you can see the horizon when over the horizon when no one
 else can your ability to navigate your way there is geometrically advanced and so what I always
 try to do is set big goals for the system starting with economic unit economic goals and then set
 more broad range targets so I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021 and I said we're
 gonna build 10,000 units to the mood and half my system was like because we're a competitive culture
 they were like let's go they're all pumped up and the other half was like I don't think we can
 do that I don't know I trust you that's a lot of units right it's like how we gonna do that the
 beauty is I don't need to know how we're gonna do it I just need to know that's our big enough
 fly there's big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also
 in other countries and they deserve the same thing they deserve of people first business product
 and but we're only gonna do that three you guys right that how we're gonna do that is focus all
 of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee you're able to get
 those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand so for us to give you a lay of the landscape like
 bird brands is that's bird boot camp and that's the run it that's the front runner that's the
 spearhead franchising really is about distribution so now we come in and we have a nutrition business
 underneath an activewear business underneath a real estate business underneath an investment
 company underneath that takes non passive non controlling states and companies that we're
 partnered with and you start to think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that
 you have the infrastructure and the distribution and it's that makes the return on investment for
 the franchisees even more important in putting more chips our baskets our opportunities get bigger
 as we go forward yeah that's what it is just freeway listening bird boot camp as a brand or
 bird as a brand the way you grow brand awareness isn't always just advertising when you have
 200 400 500 1000 locations and the signage and thus in market marketing and word of mouth it
 grows the brand it's reaching frequency at the highest level with that distribution there's a lot
 of way to grow brand recognition and brand awareness that's not always just advertising in its
 true sense because every new location that throws up the sign and community for bird builds the
 bird brand yeah I love I love your marketing mind and if I had to pick if I had to I'm an entrepreneur
 right but if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident and definitely be branding I think
 as a more specific term than marketing and what I say branding what I really mean is measuring
 things like brand equity tier one imports is a good example here when imports went out of business
 and then their logo sold for 50 million and they were they were just burning cash right if you're
 real estate portfolio is burning cash unless you have some brand equity is some recognizable logo
 or something that's going to sustain it it just crashes there's nothing there's no recovery element
 there I think of being what I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all
 entrepreneurs I'm it's obvious that only in your own business number one of brand or number two
 real estate portfolio arguably are the one of the two best ways to build the wealth initially
 and I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something I've got a logo that
 means something to people even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore and so for me it's
 always been about the marketers try to they try to measure this but I think it's just them trying
 to be smart it's like smoking mirrors that I said try to measure like brand lift it's okay
 yes what you're talking about right is okay all the impressions from the sign it's all the
 impressions from social media all the impressions from word of mouth or one time in the mountains when
 Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim then takes his family and Seattle Washington
 you can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so finitely that it
 disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift so I don't know if anybody has ever
 confused by brand lift I love the branding expert and I still don't get it but that's
 what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective eyeballs
 on your brand Gary Vee says attention is currency right and he's so right what he's really saying is
 that brand awareness is your currency and once I got once I got all of the different units of
 rocking and rolling you'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork my buddies from like my
 junior high baseball team texted a picture of that logo it said my wife just joined so
 yeah and then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the
 contemporary marketing stuff like that like we did and I think that's the recipe so you got to have
 the layer over the top you've got to have the the brand lift elements and then the
 hyper local community where you're in the field our fp's are in the field with their team
 shaking hands kissing babies running for mayor like just making sure that they're
 bell conversation when it comes to fitness in the town yep we call it you got to drive brand
 and demand it's Brandon it's those two things that's what we freestead clients and
 sometimes all clients they just want to drive the demand I'm like you got to invest in the brand
 that's what's going to pay over time everybody wants sales overnight but brands built over time
 and so it takes a bit down that brand line so what's the burn brand what's the mantra what's the
 when I say and you what do you want people to think feel and do when they think about the burn brand
 I we thought we think a lot about this right and how we frame how we want our brand to come
 across starts with this it's not what we think the brand is it's the millions of different
 interpretations of what the brand is we call it the coffee table brand when you're sitting at the
 coffee table with your team and you're talking about this podcast we're different brand to you
 then we are to maybe your wife or maybe your sister that goes to the gym in a different state or
 somebody in southwest New Mexico that goes to the gym they have a different perspective of what
 our brand is and what it means them and an effect there's millions of different interpretations of
 the brand and all of those things make our custom to people and we give our brand a spirit a life
 something that people can universally connect to called inspire and power and transform
 so that's these three particular words that should evoke and a certain motion in people right we
 want them to feel excited slash nervous we really like that we want them to feel because of
 their nervous they care about it right like they're nervous to go that means there's something there
 that it's really just another way to say excitement and as soon as you start to feel the
 confidence from the workout you go or the confidence from the product that you bought now that
 anxiety about on the purchase becomes excitement about the purchase and what we try to do is
 take those people right away as soon as you can as soon as you feel that they felt your business
 and we try to rope them in right away and do what Jay Abraham used to say and that's conditioned
 people to do business with right away as soon as we possibly can so that we can help dictate some
 or at least dictates a bad word bad choice so that we can help enable a healthy conversation
 around the coffee table about what our brand really is and give our members and our
 readers listeners viewers followers and opportunity to have a narrative to speak about
 this business with their friends and so in effect we're a marketing company more than a fitness
 company and in fact I would say that we're not a fitness company at all what we do is fitness but
 who we are is a marketing company whose product is confidence and if that's the narrative that we're
 putting together a bunch of coffee table talks start happening about our brand who now they're
 all kind of echoing the same thing in a different way shape or form and now what the people say about
 the brand then becomes the brand and then we listen to the people we're gonna and I went to 80 gyms
 this year we're going to 30 in the back after this year we would we spend almost every single one
 of our gyms it's a bit hard to keep up that's for sure it is a blessing in the curse as but we're
 going we're out there as much as we can listening to what people are saying bringing the problems back
 in number one thing in our company is called the issues list the 15 top issues and we tackled
 both one by one and that's all found from reverse engineering what people are saying about us
 and not getting too fancy on who we think we are who we are is our core values that's who we are
 we're our principles we're people first we're authenticity we're pride and results we're integrity
 but who we are to them is their interpretation of those things that we
 what's what are your goals this year next year where people that are listening and that sounds
 like an interesting franchise like what's that process for becoming a franchisee and where are
 you guys looking for burgers and tastes like that so we have 13 markets starting with the major
 metros like Chicago Houston LA New York we're really getting into the bigger cities we're in the
 suburbs and 41 states we're gonna really start getting into those more urban markets but listen
 to be a bird blue camp franchisee is not just like a normal application process it's a recruiting
 process it's just like I'm putting to I think about it just like us I'm putting together a
 shaping chip team right let's say the gold state warriors for example they have the best record ever
 what 71 and nine or something like that 71 and nine so you're gonna take losses you're gonna take
 at least a few of them so you're recruiting people that can take the loss you're recruiting people
 that believe in the brand so deeply that they don't really want to do a different business in a
 business they're calling this is their passion and you have a validation process and I expect
 I would expect any franchise or or anybody that's running a business to run it like you're
 recruiting a championship team it's not listen if I take myself back to the startup days and I'm like
 hey Ryan let me be honest with you for a minute brother was I ended I had the same mentality when
 we first started no I couldn't believe that 200 people wanted to buy a franchise I couldn't believe
 I was just I said yes more than I should have you know and I learned a lesson from that we had
 a location we had a major metro and we had eight units of the major metro we opened one they had seven
 more to open and it just was clear to all of us that it wasn't going to happen we did not do a good
 job validating they bit off more they could chew we should have stopped them from doing that and so we
 made it right we basically closed down their gym required the territories and made it right
 financially with those franchise partners so that we could weave in a win situation and we
 learned our lesson and we never did any like knucklehead deals after that where we were all about
 how many locations we could grow and how fast because it immediately came back to bite us and so
 from that moment on I was like hey validate validate validate and make people
 earn it in a sense make them like go jump over some boots show that they can follow this process
 like the best running backs in the NFL they look at the playbook right and they run the plays
 they run the place and so if you're through entrepreneur you're true entrepreneur you've got to
 follow the playbook and you get that it's stretched inside of a franchise by your ability to scale that
 but most of our franchise these are they're entrepreneurs they're people that don't want to go out
 and risk it all like Morgan and I did to just eat dirt for five years before you're ever getting
 in there and but they also want to have that freedom and control so they're entrepreneurs inside
 of something entrepreneurs we've probably heard of that before I love them man we're
 doesn't have to have a part two I think you got yeah you and we can get into some of the future
 stuff and maybe a little more personal stuff for what motivates you to the guy that something
 that's pushing you so I appreciate that and I would love to do a part two as we move forward
 working everybody learn more about Burmute Camp there's a yet go on to YouTube is probably our
 best channel to go interact with the brand and experience the product from your couch at home
 can't be in your couch technically and and then all the social media platforms instagram people
 will be we come hang out with me on devonclad dva at aiity and always keeping people up to date with
 what's going on and I'm gonna start a YouTube channel as well just I'm doing like 10 minute
 videos a couple times a week just talking about stories of burn and I have I've been like head
 down building the health and fitness audience for 10 years and building the business and so I've
 learned a lot along the way part of me getting out reaching out to you and being on your incredible
 show is just to start talking about it more about some cool stories to share people tell me it's
 pretty rare I look around it's pretty rare in fact and so I think I have an obligation to
 share out with young kids like me who didn't have a mentor who want to look up to somebody who's
 been there done that and somebody they can such as yourself who they can lean on for great advice
 and just mentorship so that'll be coming soon this October yeah then let's let's do a part two
 in the studio we'll talk more about that what and when that gets to I gotta I gotta come see you
 I'll come see the green build gym we'll we'll do a workout we'll do a podcast we'll hang out
 maybe the extended one in person will bring the camera crews and we'll get it fired out we'll make
 I love it I love it cool really appreciate you Devon everything burns doing really inspiring
 and respect the hell out of it really appreciate you coming on hey likewise right thanks man keep
 it going red cast is awesome hey guys will find us the radcast dot com search for all of today's
 highlights search for boot bird bait camp you'll find all the highlight clips to full up so there's
 everything all links to Devon to find me at Ryan offer does verify before you buy it see you
 next time the radcast to listen and watch full episodes visit us on the web at the radcast dot com
 or follow us on social media at our Instagram account v dot rad dot cast or at Ryan Alfred stay radical