Luke Carlson (luke @ discoverstrength.com) is the CEO of Discover Strength, a strength training business located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Discover Strength operates 7 personal training facilities including a private studio in Edina.
Luke is very active in sharing his expertise on business management, leadership, and strength training. He and his team at Discover Strength also host the Resistance Exercise Conference.
In this episode, Luke Carlson shares his microstudio story, which will help you understand how to better test ideas with less risk, how to measure performance, how to manage expectations, and much more.
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Show Notes
- 2:19 – What is a microstudio?
- 7:46 – How to ‘rifle shot’ better in your business
- 11:59 – Promotion, messaging, workout protocols
- 17:53 – Launching mistakes and tactics
- 22:56 – Scorecard, results, measuring performance
- 32:37 – Why playing small hinders business growth
- 41:31 – Learning from failures, Counter examples
- 48:06 – The value of a ‘rifle shot’
Selected Links from the Episode
- Discover Strength
- Nautilus Inc.
- ARXFit
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins
- MedX Machines
- Hammer Strength Equipment
- Traction/EOS
- Fabiano Designs
- Smart Strength
- Resistance Exercise Conference (REC)
429 – A Deep Dive into Joint-Friendly Fitness with Bill DeSimone: A New Paradigm in Exercise Safety
428 – Unlocking Synergy or Sowing Confusion: The Risks and Rewards of Adding HIT to Your Health Business with Luke Carlson
427 – The HIT Protocols Pete Cerqua Used to Grow a 7-Figure Personal Training Business
Matt Headman – The Perfect workout
More then 60 studios nation wide
*Hedman
Great point!
Matt Hedman and the Perfect Workout studios has done incredibly well on the whole and by virtue of the number of facilities. However, each individual Perfect Workout studio is turning nowhere near the sessions per week numbers or gross revenue/profit that Luke’s facilities is doing. I’ve visited several Perfect Workout studios and the session volume appears low as the facilities were closed or empty for large portions of the day.
Fascinating story…
Seems like a lot of HIT studios were modeled after the Super Slow ideal, which sometimes felt like it had an ascetic feel: clinical, sparse, medicalized, totally focused on the protocol and quality of the workout. That obviously appeals to some people. But maybe that did narrow the market unnecessarily.
Much of what Luke says here is based on his context in business. There are many other ways to get this is done.
A small studio with a few pieces of equipment is the best way for most to start.
Luke is trying to sell franchises. Don’t take everything he says as gospel.
Don’t take anything he says as gospel because he’s selling franchises? It sounds like you have reservations about building businesses that scale. Maybe anything you say should not be taken as gospel.
Everything—not anything.