Episode #583: Building Gold's Gym Success-Bryce Berry's Journey from Dairy Queen to Fitness Club Leader

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This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure

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of bringing a New York native by way of Salt Lake

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City, a legacy phenom in the

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Gold's Gym network coming to you live on location

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65 miles an hour. Bryce Berry, welcome to the show.

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Thank you. I Hope I'm going 65. I know I'm not driving.

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That's good. That's good. The Halo

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sector is about safety first, fun second, impact third. So

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here we are talking about Gold's Gym. And Bryce,

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why don't you give the audience here your personal

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background, given you're originally from the Westchester

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county part of the world and then how you made your way to

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the Salt Lake area and why you stayed. When I

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in grade school and high school, Westchester county, grew up in Yorktown

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Heights, enjoyed the area. I

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went to college at Brigham Young University

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and fell in love with the mountains. And I just have never left.

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Even though I work in other states all the time.

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I like. I mean, I'm miles away from

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ski resorts. Miles, you know, eight miles, six miles in some cases.

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But. And so I just, I love the area, but.

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And I worked there in other businesses prior to

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the Gold's Gym industry. Management of other companies,

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production companies, things like that. 20 years ago is when I signed my

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first franchise agreement with Gold's Gym.

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And we started in Colorado. There wasn't any at the time, there wasn't anything available

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in Utah. That's where Vasa started, was Utah.

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And hence prior to them being Vasa, they were Gold and they

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had the entire state locked up. So I had to go to Colorado.

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And Colorado's been a great experience. We,

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you know, just. We've had upwards of nine gyms there. I've

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sold a couple that we had

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de branded. And then now, now we're to six

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Gold's Gyms in Colorado and one in Cheyenne. Now, I'd be

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remiss if we didn't start back and talk about your

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operational experience and attention to detail at

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the beloved Dairy Queen. So please, without

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leaving out any detail, because we need to know who the person you are

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in order to work in the health club industry. You know, some of the best

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operators were running shoe stores back in the day. And really attention to

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detail and behavior. There were people that came from the

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hospitality industry, people that were personal trainers. You

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came from a unique perspective of putting the blizzards together. So please give

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us that background so we have that on record for the rest of the

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life of the Internet. Well, this

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operation that Pete and I are discussing, we call it Operation

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Blizzard. I introduced Pete to blizzards. I

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was just in Dairy Queen for a short period of time. I bought,

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I started with one and eventually had five Dairy Queens that

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I purchased in the Utah area, in my area. But

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I, I have to say I didn't really enjoy it. It's really long hours,

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hard, hard work. But it was

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okay. But I mean, but Dairy Queen had good food and

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good product and I enjoyed that part. But yeah, it is. I mean, I used

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to go into stores that I didn't own and everybody's heard of a peanut butter

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parfait. And I would go up to the counter and I'd tell the cashier,

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hey, if I can make a peanut butter parfait myself, and

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I know that it's supposed to weigh 11 and a half ounces, if I can

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do that, can I get it for free? You know, just joking around and every

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once in a while somebody would say, can you do that, boss? And they said,

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sure, come back. I had made thousands

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of them, so I mean, I could just make it, put it on the scale

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11 and a half ounces and take very much. I will tell

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you with the new OSHA laws and not let people behind the register.

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I said, those days have passed with those type of

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customer challenges. But you know, as you looked

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at the Gold's Gyms and you know, Scott Felstead and crew and I

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toured all their locations and it's a pretty big Gold's Gym

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boxes. You know, as you were getting into the health club industry

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at the time, you know, Gold's Gym, you know, people probably

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snicker, don't understand this, but like, Gold's Gym was the coveted

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franchise brand to get your hands on back in the day.

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So talk about what your affinity to that was. And then, you know, why you

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thought, you know, bringing it to Colorado and, and how you thought about site

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selection, you know, even 20 years ago when it wasn't,

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you know, you can go to a database and say, okay, look, what's the best

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site for me? I mean, you kind of canvas those markets. Yeah, well,

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I just, I actually, knowing that I couldn't be Utah, I drew, I

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drew a 300 mile radius around my house and said, that's how far I'll

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go to put in a gym. And so I, I had two options. I had,

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I had Idaho Falls, which I knew very well, and,

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and then Grand Junction, Colorado, which I knew very well because, okay, after Dairy

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Queen, I had a, I had a book bindery. In fact, it was the largest

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book bindery in the Western states and had customers.

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My customers were printers and I. So I called on printers all

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over the western states. I knew Colorado like the back of my hand. And so

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when I saw that, that Grand Junction was in that three

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mile, 300 mile radius, said, oh that's, that's where we got to go.

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And here I am driving in this car with my partner Cole. He was

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the GM of that first gym.

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56,000ft. And people in the gym industry, what in

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the world are you building a 56,000 square foot gym for? We had pool,

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basketball, four racquetball courts, a huge

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5,000 square foot aerobics room, awesome

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weightlifting. We had, I think we had 130 pieces of cardio.

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When you take the Cardio cinema into a place and then all the open area.

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But. Well, it's because I copied Scott

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out of his Gold Sims in Utah. We're like that and he was

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killing it. And so we, we kind of

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copied that model here in Grand Junction. We put two gyms

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in Grand Junction and we had a lot of success. I mean

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that first Grand Junction gym was what an attorney would call a

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rainmaker. You know, when your first year,

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I don't know if this is inappropriate, I guess you can void it out, but

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I mean when your first year you net and distribute

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1.4 million, I'd say that's a rainmaker.

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That's a big win for sure. And

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everybody that ever came in contact with this is, that'll never happen again.

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It has happened again, but it's just been recently. But

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that model does work and it has worked for us.

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So we started there in Grand Junction, in Clifton. I put my third

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one was Montrose, which was an experiment, a smaller gym,

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30,000 square feet in a small community.

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Yeah. And that was a little tougher thing. And then we, then we went up

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to the Front Range and put a gym in

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Cheyenne which was exactly like Grand Junction and ran just like Grand Junction.

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Great gym. It's the king of the community up there now.

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Great facility, 45,000 square feet. Has all the amenities.

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We have a gym in Longmont. We have, we bought a

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canceled or a closed 24 Hour Fitness in Greeley.

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We're able to get a good deal because that we did that in covet 2020.

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Been a very successful gym there, Gold's Gym. And

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then we put one in.

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I missed some after Greeley we went to Thornton, Colorado that it's one

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year anniversary, December 27th. It's coming up. Congrats.

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I said that. They said we were Never gonna have another rainmaker. Well, Thornton

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was a rainmaker. You got another club.

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Right now In Arvada? Yeah. 10 miles away

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from from Thornton in Arvada. Great facility,

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and we're excited to get. We'll be open probably May or June.

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This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's

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this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards

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from retailers that allow you to incentivize your

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members without having to do zero down and one month free

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or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you want to

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do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people

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value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services.

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So here's the deal. There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards

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Vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile.

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They are going to answer questions. You are going to get those answers. You're going

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to be able to target. Those members, and you're going to reward them inside your

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club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside

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of the spa to get them to. Become loyal, to get them to

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pay. Their monthly dues and to be rewarded properly

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for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't

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be. Promotion Vaults. Your answer, Trust me, this is real.

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You know, I talked to a number of private equity firms, and sometimes they'll call

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and they'll say, hey, I want to buy a cluster of clubs. You know, I

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mentioned I've been. I've been working in the Gold Gym industry, you know, category

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and network for 25 years. And they. They usually

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abruptly, like, stop me and say, well, I don't. I wouldn't want to buy a

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Gold Gym. I want to buy an eos. I want to buy a Vasa. I

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want to buy a Fitness Connection. I want to buy something like One Life. I

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want to buy something like the Fitness Edge. And I'm like, hey, news flash. Those

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are all Gold Gyms with different brands. They are

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the. On. On the storefront, right? So, you know, if you think

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back to. To the play that you're running right now, the unit

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economics that you're getting under Gold, you

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know, you're kind of punching at the same weight and the same kind of performance

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indicators as those other clubs that have rebranded. How do you

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think about that? As does the Gold Gym brand, you know,

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hurt you? Does it help you? As more people are doing strength training,

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it almost like, is the pendulum almost swings back to Gold's Gym.

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Well, I can tell you I'll just give you an example of Colorado.

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If you're walking down the street in Colorado and you stop

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10 people on the street and you say,

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okay, so I think Vasa has. There's. I think there's eight

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VASA's within an hour of Denver, an

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hour of the Denver market. They're as far north as me and

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Greeley, and then they're as far south as Colorado Springs.

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So like an hour, they. They have about eight EOs

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is not there. Oh, but there's Chews. Another similar market. Now,

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Cheese choose started out on their own. There's eight of those, nine of

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those. If you were to ask anyone on the street, hey,

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where's. Where. Where's the local? Where's the closest choose at? Or where's the

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closest Vasa? They'd give you this weird look like, what are you

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talking about? Right? What's that? But if you say,

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hey, where's the closest Gold Gym?

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Oh, I know there. I know there's some in Colorado. I could tell you exactly

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where they're at, but they're gonna know. Gold's Gym.

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The retail sales of what

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does the name and the name brand, it creates excitement.

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It's. It's just different. And I, I personally

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have never been big on the. The high

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volume, they call it now. They call it high volume.

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High, high volume, high amenity. But it's

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low price. It's low price, high volume. You know, I,

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I'm. If that's what they want to charge for their great amenities, great,

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go for it. We don't. We don't do that. And

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so our, our success, we've been able to

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succeed without giving it away. And

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to me, $10 a month, $15 a month is

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giving it away. I told somebody the other day when they

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were asking me about the pricing market in New York metro area.

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I said, you could basically pay more to take an Uber to a

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crunch, then it'll cost you for the crunch membership. From where I was

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standing at the time, which I thought was pretty pathetic

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from a pricing standpoint. You know, when you look at the markets that you're in

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and you're in kind of the mid-40s price point, you know, some people would say,

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hey, Bryce, you're kind of like caught in the middle. And

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your response might be, well, 80% of the middle is the market,

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right? So if you think that I'm priced in the middle because you

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want to take your business school matrix and, like, put it in front of me,

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yeah, I'm in the middle, but I'm appropriately in the middle because that's

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where people are willing to spend and that's the price to value.

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So what do you say to those people that, that say to you, hey, price,

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you should really go lower cost to get more volume or you should go to

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$99 and you know, skim the market. You know, I

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assume I know the answer to that. Yeah, I know. We

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just haven't, that is not, that's just not been our, our

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answer. We have had, we've had gyms,

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you know, and I haven't, I haven't mentioned the two that we run in,

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in this conversation. I've mentioned the two that we run up in Tri Cities up

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in Washington. But that's really where the gyms we really need to be talking about

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right now because they're just great examples of what we're

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talking of. Mid range pricing,

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great clientele, a growing community.

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And, and we, and we do well up there. Yeah.

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So look, I don't know how many people, Yes. I don't know how many people

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know of, of the Tri Cities, but Pasco,

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Washington and Kennewick and Richland.

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Yeah, I think a lot of people have heard of them, but I don't

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know. I mean that's where they're at. We call the Tri City area. The

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airport is in Pasco. It's really easy to get there.

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And in Richland and Kennewick we have two. You take a look

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at that market and when you and I were talking about touring

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the clubs, I was shocked at one that the 34

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age median of the market there. You know, you're a couple

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hours south of Tacoma, probably three and a half hours

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east of Portland and maybe the same amount of time to go,

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you know, northwest up to Seattle.

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But that market seems to be growing. I think you got a new power plant

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coming out there as well and.

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Well, yeah, they have a nuclear power plant there and they have, they,

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they're housing, they're growing. They're building thousands of homes every

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year. So, so as you look at that market, you know, talk about

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how you got up there, you know, with, with Cherokee and Walker as a,

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as a business partner and, and how that, that evolved those

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gyms. Yeah, Cherokee Walker is one of the,

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the firms that owns that. And there's, there's one other large firm

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that partners with them on that

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and they actually were very aware. They, they watched our success

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at Grand Junction and Clifton and

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so they immediately wanted to copy it and they, and they found that that area

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up there fit the exact model in Fact,

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the Richland gym, they used

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the plans that we used for Grand Junction. It's the exact same

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model we just caught. We, we made them so that they were legal

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for the city and, and put the plans together

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and presented the exact same gym and put it in there in

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Richland. Kennewick actually happens to be the same size

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as my, our gym in Clifton.

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40, you know, 42,000. About 42,000ft.

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And in a, in a community that's very

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mostly Hispanic and that's the same as Clifton.

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Just, it's just so the similarities are

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so weird. You know, we found something that was, we could

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copy there and that's kind of what we've done. And you

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know, Cherokee Walker, they're private equity fund slash

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holding company based in Salt Lake. And what got

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them involved in backing you or partnering with you and

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you managing those clubs? They, they, they were partners in

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my. When I, when you first start with a gym and you haven't

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done a gym before, you can't just go to a landlord

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and say, hey, I want to put in a gym. I said, oh, nice, you

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know, so instead I went to a bank and said, I want to put in

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a gym. And they said, okay. And so you have to buy, you have to

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own the land and building, which for me,

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20 years ago, it was a little more than

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I wanted to do. So I went out and got, you know, between eight

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and 12 partners depending upon the project, and they would all invest

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minimum 100,000. We had investors that would invest as much as 300,000,

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400,000 in the land and then I would be

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the tenant and they would get, we would set up their return via the

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lease. Gotcha. And those things are. All

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those projects are all expired. We've sold the land and building

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back to another, to a reit, the ones in Colorado.

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And I'm not, I'm not partners with them directly

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now, other than. Other than what I do in Tri Cities

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running those facilities.

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This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.

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We are partnered up with a company called higher dose

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higherdose.com they are the leader in

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00:17:59,070 --> 00:18:01,960
workout recovery products, infrared technology,

285
00:18:02,680 --> 00:18:06,200
LED light masks, neck enhancers, and

286
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:10,120
other products such as PEMF mats and sauna

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00:18:10,120 --> 00:18:13,400
blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout

288
00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:16,760
recovery train yet, your time and your stop

289
00:18:16,999 --> 00:18:20,520
is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout

290
00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:24,360
recovery and spas end up saturating your market. Having

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00:18:24,360 --> 00:18:27,910
your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for

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00:18:27,910 --> 00:18:31,550
200 bucks per month where they're paying 39 to you.

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00:18:31,950 --> 00:18:35,590
Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we are already

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00:18:35,590 --> 00:18:39,350
an authority in. Workouts, higher dose, check it

295
00:18:39,350 --> 00:18:42,830
out. There's a wholesale code. And we look forward

296
00:18:43,070 --> 00:18:46,870
to helping you augment your products and services to meet the

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00:18:46,870 --> 00:18:50,590
demands of your members. And hey, let's get people happy,

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00:18:50,750 --> 00:18:54,510
healthy and sweating. And the recovery should be just as. Good as

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the workout.

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So when you look at the two clubs that you have, and obviously they're under

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the gold Shim brand up in Kennewick and Richland, and

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you look at that footprint of 56,000 and 43,000,

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respectively, the other players in the space that have come

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in there are either hvlp, you know, smaller

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boxes or some of the rec centers and sports complexes.

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So what are these two clubs serve the community

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from a standpoint of almost, you know, an urban

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country club or suburban country club. And you have all these different

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amenities in there. I know you got basketball. I know you got some pickleball.

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Talk about like four racquetball courts.

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Yeah, and we have pickleball. Not. We have pickleball

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nights. We have volleyball nights. Basketball is

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very popular there, especially in Kennewick. And we have basketball courts in

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both locations. And it's a big community thing for them to be able to

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participate in those sports. But we

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have by far and away the best weightlifting and cardio

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areas probably in the state,

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you know, because we just overloaded it. We overloaded it with

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cardio, we overloaded it with weights and cardio. And we just.

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In the last couple of years, we've. We've remodeled the

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space, how the format of how we had

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our weights and cardio, and also how,

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you know, the interior design. So it's just very appealing.

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And one other thing that's kind of unique to what you're running up there

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and run by a woman with the same name as the woman that runs Fidelity,

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Abigail Johnson. So I always remember her name. You've

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got. You've got a. You've got a tanning and,

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you know, red light concept that's,

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you know, at the front of the location that's

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unique and very profitable and seems like has a lot of demand in town.

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Talk about that for a minute. Well,

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it's really, when you talk about tanning, you say, well, it's

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not. We're talking red light tanning,

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blue light therapy, red light therapy. We have all sorts of

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esthetician services, skin services. And I'll be

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honest, I don't understand everything we do there. But they're awesome

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and they're busy and we sell quite a bit of retail in terms

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of people

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that want purses and shirts and stuff like that related

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to that market. Tanning or gym or gym

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workout or whatever like that. But

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they're not your typical. It's not your typical tanning salon.

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We have the sun angel that

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it can't burn, it read your skin and that's such a tan. Or we

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have a mixture you can shut off UV

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and just run red light or blue light which

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has been proven to heal your skin and

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help with. What is that the

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stuff when you, when your skin shows fat.

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Cellulite. Thank you. When the skin goes cellulite, this red

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light therapy. Yeah. So

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just the last, last thing. Yeah, it's been a great enterprise. Yeah. And then the

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last thing just to kind of get your crystal ball for 20, 26. I know

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your clubs in Thornton and the new one that you've got coming up

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in Oveda, very heavy on the strength equipment side.

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What are you seeing kind of the new wave of 20 year

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olds that are coming into your clubs. Where are they gravitating towards?

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What are some of the things you're doubling down on?

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Our newer facilities here it's weights and

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cardio, one of the few. We have the amenity.

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We put in oversized dry saunas in the men's and

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women's oversized dry sauna rooms. We're putting

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in recovery rooms, recovery areas I guess to

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work afterwards. And then we offer quite a bit of

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supplement and recovery drinks, things like that. I

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mean that, that. But, but the gym is, is the best.

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The gyms are the, we have the best equipment money can buy. Weights.

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I, not. I think most anybody in the gym industry

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is familiar with the Woodway treadmill, the slats,

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the sprockets and there. And then about five years

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ago their patent expired

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and so there's three or four manufacturing

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equipment companies that have copied that. Woodway. I didn't know that

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00:23:43,110 --> 00:23:46,470
treadmill. We happen to like. Yeah, we happen to like the

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Matrix Treadmill that copies that Woodway

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and you know, it's just, it's, it's triple the price

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of your typical belt treadmill. But that's all I put in in all my

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00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:01,280
gyms now I'm replacing all my treadmills with this, the

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Matrix Treadmill that it's, it's run

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00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:08,520
on sprockets and slats. You can run in bare feet.

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You can be £300. And it's. And it's awesome. Yeah,

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00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:16,400
it's just the, it's the best equipment, best cardio

383
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money can buy. And then our weight equipment is from all over the world.

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If somebody like we. And sometimes it takes

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a long time to get those pieces and so we'll open up. Like for instance,

386
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we opened up in December in Thornton

387
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:35,120
last year and we didn't actually have all our equipment in

388
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that we had ordered until like maybe, but there

389
00:24:39,730 --> 00:24:42,690
were people that were waiting for some certain pieces. As soon as those pieces came

390
00:24:42,690 --> 00:24:46,210
in, they said, okay, I'm on my way, I'm canceling, I'm going to be there

391
00:24:46,210 --> 00:24:49,290
at yours. But I mean, regardless,

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00:24:50,730 --> 00:24:54,530
that market of going after the 18 to 40 year

393
00:24:54,530 --> 00:24:58,250
olds, it's made our world. Well, shout out to

394
00:24:58,250 --> 00:25:02,090
your daughter Jackie, who's been integral into the business and the

395
00:25:02,090 --> 00:25:05,690
rest of your team that I met with. Congrats on what you built.

396
00:25:05,970 --> 00:25:09,650
Cole, thanks for driving on this podcast. We appreciate that. So we didn't have Bryce

397
00:25:09,650 --> 00:25:13,250
on any kind of, you know, prohibited, you know,

398
00:25:13,250 --> 00:25:17,010
driving and that that model somehow, you know, got us in trouble from a safety

399
00:25:17,010 --> 00:25:20,810
standpoint. And Bryce, look forward to seeing you in person. Thanks

400
00:25:20,810 --> 00:25:24,610
for your contributions to the Halo sector at large and for what you're

401
00:25:24,610 --> 00:25:27,930
giving out to these communities, you know, and always thinking about the quality of the

402
00:25:27,930 --> 00:25:31,490
workout, the member and what it brings back to helping people

403
00:25:32,130 --> 00:25:35,770
live a better lifestyle. So have a safe trip and happy

404
00:25:35,770 --> 00:25:38,930
holidays and from all of us here, appreciate you.

405
00:25:40,050 --> 00:25:43,010
Thanks, Pete. It's been great. All right, take care. Thank you.

406
00:25:55,090 --> 00:25:58,850
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain speaking. I am

407
00:25:58,850 --> 00:26:02,450
the founder and managing partner at Integrity Square. We've been around

408
00:26:02,450 --> 00:26:06,250
now for 15 and 1/2 years. We have been helping

409
00:26:06,250 --> 00:26:09,730
people like yourselves get capital, do mergers and

410
00:26:09,730 --> 00:26:13,290
acquisitions, consulting, strategic advice in the health,

411
00:26:13,369 --> 00:26:17,210
active lifestyle and outdoor halo sector, trying to help

412
00:26:17,210 --> 00:26:20,410
as many entrepreneurs as possible get to the next level,

413
00:26:20,890 --> 00:26:24,420
take that inflection point and be the force behind your growth.

414
00:26:24,980 --> 00:26:28,540
We are helping companies that have at least $3 million of

415
00:26:28,540 --> 00:26:32,100
EBITDA, around $10 million of revenue and

416
00:26:32,100 --> 00:26:35,540
we are positioned to help you get institutional growth capital

417
00:26:36,180 --> 00:26:39,980
or to negotiate deals with strategic partners. If

418
00:26:39,980 --> 00:26:43,780
you go to integritysq.com isq

419
00:26:43,780 --> 00:26:47,380
you can see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation at any

420
00:26:47,380 --> 00:26:50,890
time that is free of charge and we look forward to

421
00:26:50,890 --> 00:26:54,610
helping solve obesity, loneliness and diabetes.

422
00:26:54,610 --> 00:26:55,730
And go Halo.

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00:27:15,180 --> 00:27:25,740
Sam.