We’re in an unprecedented time right now. As coronavirus continues to spread throughout Canada—and in fact our world. We’re starting to hear remarkable stories of how businesses are rapidly evolving and innovating within their space. In this next interview, I had the opportunity to speak with Vik Gill, Founder & Lead Trainer at The Fitness Lab. What I love about Vik’s story is how he had been actively investing in a digital strategy and how that investment enabled him to rapidly transition his business online as the Coronavirus outbreak eventually caused him to close his physical doors. In particular, listen for how he’s working to build out content, to actively communicate with his customers, and on how he’s making the most of every opportunity he has right now. [INTERVIEW] Ryan Kononoff: Vik, welcome to the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast. Thanks for joining today. And, uh, so tell us a little bit about the fitness lab. For those that haven't heard of you, what do you do and who are your typical customers? Vik Gill: Awesome. Well, first off, thanks for having me, Ryan. I like to start off by saying that we got started back in about 2015 with our fitness programs. Back then, we were just offering personal training and group fitness. And over the years we've grown quite a bit to now offer nutrition services. We do meal planning, body composition, scans, supplement sales, and we also started to get into a little bit of corporate wellness. Ryan Kononoff: Wow. And talk a little bit about your revenue model for your business. Is it recurring? Are they workshops? Do you sell products? How is your revenue model made up? Vik Gill: Definitely more of a recurring model where we count on people using their workouts and then coming back for more right afterwards. We did start a membership model just last year, and I would say that that's definitely the way that we're going to focus on taking the business from here on out. Ryan Kononoff: Okay. And if someone signs up for a membership, do they gain access to all of the classes and things like that that you mentioned, or are those additional add ons to your membership program? Vik Gill: Our memberships are actually based on the classes, so you're welcome to just take the drop in model, like you would purchase that 20 punch pass and you just use those 20 punches over six months with no type of commitment. Or reoccurring monthly auto renewal now takes care of all your classes for the month. And we also included our nutrition services within it. So you get more of a full rounded approach rather than just, you know, come in once in a while for a workout. Ryan Kononoff: Gotcha. Okay. And do you sell any products as well to supplement that? Vik Gill: Yes. I would say about a year and a half ago, we opened up a full nutrition store within our gym, and now I have a full time nutritionist on staff. And. Plus all the supplements sales that come out of it. Ryan Kononoff: And how did you get into the fitness space to start with? What's your background? Vik Gill: What originally got me into fitness was just from a young age, my dad was always working out, like he would always take me to the gym. I would just sit there, watch him workout, and then afterwards, like over at the rec center and I jumped into the pool or like, it's time to come back home. And that's just always stuck with me. And when I got a little bit older, I knew it was always a part of me. I always went to the gym myself. Never really knew I could make a full career out of it. Uh, about 2008 after I finished school for tourism right away, I knew it wasn't for me and I had to do something about it. So I jumped into getting certified as a personal trainer. Went ahead and got a job at the local rec center, uh, about five years of learning there and I decided to open up my own place. Ryan Kononoff: And so let's pivot and let's talk about coronavirus. What were your immediate thoughts, Vic, when you started to see coronavirus and Kovac 19 plastered over the headlines on the news. Vik Gill: It was one of those things that just completely took over like a storm. The second it started kind of making its way into Canada, like, I sensed it was going to be a problem, but I had no idea how big of a problem it could become, and then as stuff getting more and more serious, we started upping our cleaning measures, just trying to keep everyone a little bit more comfortable, but we started noticing a drop off right away of people. And sooner or later, I think it was just the week of the 15th is when they called off all personal services. So that's when it got real. Within. The five day period from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. Ryan Kononoff: Right. And so just stepping back, prior to this hitting the headlines, what was the biggest challenge that you faced at that time as a business, and how has that shifted. As we come into the new world or the new reality that we're all facing as entrepreneurs. Vik Gill: I'd say the biggest thing that was holding us back before this is just in the gym world. I mean like January is the best time to kind of get into it. So for this to happen, right in March was just one of those things that completely killed our momentum coming out of our slow season. So it was just like, I know the timing's never good for something like this, but for it to kind of like occur right in March as we're coming out of a slow season. The slow season was definitely always the thing that slows us down the most. Ryan Kononoff: Right. So you talked a little bit about this, but what was the financial impact that you started to see as the restrictions were put on and things were becoming a little bit more real around some of the limitations, social limitations around coronavirus and how did you pivot or adjust the work that you were doing to adapt and how did you innovate. Vik Gill: Initially, as we were starting to see, like some of our personal training clients cancel and people are just letting us know like, Hey, we're, we're falling into age demographic where we don't really feel comfortable coming there. It's totally understandable. It's like can't even really force anyone to come in once that's going on. So I knew right away it's something had to change. And with that, one of the things that we always offered within our services was online training. The content was all there. Our platform was already set up, so it's just about pivoting to take it all online after that point. So one thing that we did right away is for all our members, I gave them pretty much anything they wanted out of the gym to take home, and we completely just turned all the classes online to start delivering home workouts. Ryan Kononoff: And so are you renting that equipment to them or did you just send people home with whatever equipment they needed in order to facilitate those, those workouts online? Vik Gill: Any of my memberships that I had at the time, I ended up just giving the weights to them and then where some of the nonmembers ended up renting out the weight. Ryan Kononoff: Okay. Let's talk about the online platform. What does that look like as far as the user experience? Is it a website? Is it an app on their phone? Is it catered to them individually or is it sort of set workouts? Can you talk a little bit about about what that experience is like? Vik Gill: Absolutely. Actually offer all three of those that you just mentioned, that the first way that we do is kind of like our four weeks subscription. Where everybody's on the same workout that hops into that group, and that group would just take on the normal programming that I would do at the gym. So three days of weights, two days of more of a HIIT style cardio routine. I also offer custom plans. So if you are lucky enough to have a home gym and you have more equipment than I can put together a plan that's more based just for your goals and deliver that to you. And lastly, I am starting next week, actually, I'm just going to start launching a virtual personal training program where you're actually able to have a more of a one on one experience with the trainer rather than, you know, you're just getting the workouts handed to you, or the trainer will actually spend a full hour with you Ryan Kononoff: and it's sort of alive or real time using zoom or FaceTime or something like that. Vik Gill: Exactly. Yeah. And then for any of our workouts, we deal with, uh, it's actually our own fitness lab app. Where once we add you into there, we provide you with the password. We provide you with your login credentials, and once you're in the program, you have a full portal to all the workouts. Every week they switch out to five new ones. Ryan Kononoff: And how much of that was in place before all of this happened and how much energy and adapting did you have to do to get things to the point where they are today? Vik Gill: I would say about 70% of the work was already done over the last year and a half, so we had a large chunk of the workouts already there. The pre-programming audio available. So once I knew it was going to turn towards that side a little bit more, I just got to making brand new workouts, getting some brand new programming laid out, and I would say I spent about a solid 40 hours on it the last two weeks to bring it up to where it is now. Ryan Kononoff: That's great. So you've been investing for. The last few years on getting ready. This was sort of just the last push that you needed to get over that last hurdle and get as many of your clients onto the system as you can. Vik Gill: Exactly, and that's what I think this whole thing is going to be about now is just, I mean, if this is the only way I can provide training, then that's the way I'm going to take it. Ryan Kononoff: So I don't know how much you can share or how much you're willing to share, but can you talk about the financial impact that this has had on your business, if any, from. You know that coming out of the busiest part of your year and having to pivot and switch as many of your clients online as you can. What does that actually look like from a revenue perspective? Vik Gill: It's very damaging. Uh, for the next, it looks like if we are unlocked down til like the end of June or July, speculation wise, that's going to be about three months of hemorrhaging our cash flow for sure. There is no way we're going to get above our costs that we have going on at the moment. coming out of that, we're going to go, what's usually our slowest season is summer. If this does turn into a six month thing until the fall, things don't pick up again. That's going to look a little bit more different Ryan Kononoff: as we pivot into summer and we don't, we don't exactly know what summer is going to look like. As you alluded to, what does this look like from your perspective as far as the opportunity right now. To use this to support your business moving forward. Vik Gill: Opportunity wise, like one of the biggest problems is normally knowing like what people are doing and what's going on at the time. Right now we know everyone's mostly just sitting at home and there's no gyms open. So if you're an active person, you need some kind of structure to be provided to you at home. At the same time, if you're any type of athlete, you're stuck at home also right now, and as soon as this whole thing's over, you know you're going to have tryouts coming up. And if you didn't keep fit on your own at home. Then you're gonna run into issues during your tryouts. So now I'm just trying to use all my time and energy to focus on all the different sports groups that are at home that need workouts, all the different adults that are at home that need workouts. And I'm just trying to provide as much content as possible, whether it be online, through Instagram, and just as many different media platforms as I can get to right now to kind of show people what we're doing, what we can offer. So when they realize that, Hey, the gym's not opening yet, maybe I should reach out to the fitness lab. Ryan Kononoff: So there's a lot of people out there giving away content right now for free on Instagram. And how do you compete with that when people are willing to give something away for free, and you're in a position where you're trying to maintain cashflow so you can continue to pay rent and pay your bills. What does that look like? How do you see that impacting your existing customers or your ability to attract new customers? At this time? Vik Gill: One of the biggest things that I believe that we offer is the structure of the workout. So you're not using too many of the same muscle groups in a row. You're giving the proper components a rest, and especially if you're kind of stuck with no equipment at home, it's what you can do with no equipment at home. What I try to provide is more structure over the entire week, whereas if somebody is just giving out workouts, they'll maybe just give you like a quick 20 minute workout and the next day it'd be something that's totally counterproductive to that workout. What we like to offer is more of a program at home. It'd be just like if you were coming to the gym five days a week is what I would deliver to you at your own house five days a week. Ryan Kononoff: Right. And how do you see this impacting your business if things continue on, if this becomes the new norm, at least for for the near future, or what do you see as your greatest challenge, Vick? Vik Gill: I think the greatest challenge is just going to be maintaining the online growth. Like when you've already been cut out of so many different areas that you just can't go to anymore. Like. Group fitness and personal training in house is definitely our number one seller. So with that taken away, just having to grow the online portion now and at the same time turn off our contact lifts, delivery for any of our supplements and trying to keep the nutrition aspect going as well. Ryan Kononoff: Have you, have you been able or successful to acquire any new clients at this time? Vik Gill: Yes, definitely. I would say about 10% of our clients that are on our online platform right now or a new users and with more sports groups and everything else signing up. Now we're seeing good increased. I mean, just the last three days alone week, you went out to a. Brand new hockey league out this way and they introduced us towards a whole new set of parents. So that's definitely picking up to now. Ryan Kononoff: So you're seeing a fair amount of opportunity to come through through all of this with brand new customers in addition to transitioning your as many as your, of your existing clients over as you've been able to Vik Gill: on 100% Ryan Kononoff: do you have any stats for what percentage of the existing memberships flipped into online memberships? Vik Gill: Yeah, I actually just did that this morning. I brought over. 36 members out of close to 60 members that are already converted onto our personal training. Ryan Kononoff: And do you see the remaining? Are they, is there still an opportunity there to convert them even partially over or something like that? Or are those just. Not a good fit or don't see themselves as a good fit for the platform at this time. Vik Gill: I think it's just about the timing right now, just getting back and settled with the kids now that they're kind of figuring out if this can be homeschooling or not. So I think just with everything going on with the leftovers right now, which is more of a time issue, like I've been spending a lot of my time just in customer relations, reaching out to. People making sure they're still doing okay. Just checking in and making sure workouts are still going good. It's one of those things, like some of these people I see five days a week, I'm, it's been like that for years, so not to see them anymore. It's like I actually just missed the people. Ryan Kononoff: Right. So let's talk about the people. How many staff do you have or trainers support staff? What is the makeup of your team Vik Gill: In total there's nine of us. Eight trainers and one office staff, so to say. Ryan Kononoff: And what's everyone keeping busy doing? What have, have you had to do layoffs? Are they involved in creating programs or supporting your customers? What's keeping you busy and what's keeping them busy? Vik Gill: Out of the eight trainers, I'd be one of them. I have my main guy, Jeremy, who is our, one of our employees who had to be laid off and everyone else is a subcontractor, so we just had to call it with them. The second that started happening because there was no more clients, then there'd be no more work for them. Uh, I do have Kirsten who's awesome with my books, and she's still, she's still on. Ryan Kononoff: Gotcha. So you mentioned that a lot of your time is being spent with customers. Is that most of your time or where are you spending your time right now? Vik Gill: I'd said spending majority of my time just creating content right now, getting the weeks laid out for the online program, getting new exercises and for exercise library. Cause in the end that's what's going to make me more efficient for the future week. Ryan Kononoff: Having that library to be able to pull things from and apply it to different workouts. So for those that are listening and maybe are struggling in their own businesses to figure out how they could pivot or shift or what kinds of innovations they can do, what kinds of resources or suggestions could you make to them. Vik Gill: I'd say when it comes down to it, I'm a big thinker, like one of the things that I love to do is just kind of sit down with a notepad and just start writing down every single idea that you have in your head at the moment. Once you finish writing down all those ideas, review them again. You'll notice that a lot of them just need to go right away, and the ones that are left, I just like stop, focus on them and see which ones I can make grow right away. So in my case, it was online training. If I can't personal training, that's right away. That's a big no on that one. . That's what I thought at first. And then I realized through zoom meetings, I can still personal training people, so that's coming back out to the next week. It's just breaking down the business right away. This is the stuff I can't do. This is the stuff I can do and just focusing on the stuff you can do instead of crying about the stuff you can't do. Ryan Kononoff: And Vik, do you see the online training side of things becoming. Well, let's say everything goes back to normal January or July 1st I should say, and it's life as we were used to it. Do you see this still becoming or maintaining a a big part of your, your business model in the future? Vik Gill: I think that the work that I'm going to put in now would definitely make for repeat customers later on, especially with all the youth that we do have that are all local here, like at the Abbotsford missionary, especially all the hockey players like for them to be pulled out of a season and now they have to stay fit even longer until their next set of tryouts. And then every year they're going to have that same issue again of needing a trainer and needing somewhere to train. So definitely a, right now I'm just looking to, for the exposure, just getting out there across everybody, every age group, showing them what we do and offer. Ryan Kononoff: Right. And do you see the online component being a key part of how you generate revenue? How you attract people in the future, or do you see that more as a stop gap right now just to get you through this time so that. You are financially able to sustain your business until this is all over and passed us. Vik Gill: I'd say it's definitely a stop gap for now, just to get us through to get back and opening up our doors again, but it will always be a part of our business in the aspect that we're always going to be looking for online clients. We're always going to be looking for teams and that there was always going to be people that do like going to the gym themselves. But they just don't know what to do. So just making plans for that demographic. Ryan Kononoff: Right. Vik, thanks for being on the show. What's the best way for people to reach out to you if they want to connect? Vik Gill: Uh, the best way would be definitely email Vik V I K at the fitness lab. Dot. CA. Or you can reach us on Instagram and Facebook. Ryan Kononoff: Great. Thanks so much. Vik Gill: Thanks for having me, Ryan. --- Thanks for listening to the Entrepreneurs vs. Coronavirus Podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff. For complete show notes and additional information, visit clearbridge.ca/podcast. Ryan is the founder of Clearbridge Business Solutions. To find out how investing in technology can help your business, especially during uncertain economic times, visit lifewithclearbridge.ca. Connect with Ryan on Linkedin or on Twitter at RyanKononoff, that’s r-y-a-n-k-o-n-o-n-o-f-f. Thanks for listening!