Caleb Blankenship is the owner of Body Shop Gym & Personal Training. There, he’s focused on improving customer service interactions to set his business apart from the competition — finding that balance between tough love, compassion and knowledge. There’s a lot entrepreneurs can learn from his approach! In today’s small business marketing tip, is video part of your next strategic plan?
Transcript:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast.
I’m Jeff Randolph.
This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing.
We’re gonna talk about marketing.
We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs.
We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward.
This week, we’re talking with Caleb Blankenship.
He’s the owner of Body Shop Gym and Personal Training.
But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
In today’s tip, let’s talk video.
Is video a component of your next strategic plan?
Let’s run through some of the numbers and see if we can’t paint a picture.
% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
That’s from a Wise Owl study.
They also say that % of marketers say video helped them increase their understanding of
a new product or service.
Animoto says that video ads were the number one way consumers discovered a brand that
they later purchased.
Google will tell you that % of people say they discover new brands or products on YouTube.
Those are strong numbers that paint the power of visuals and motion to communicate, to tell
us more about a product, or to introduce new products and new brands, and to stand out
among your competition.
For most of us, the practical upshot is that we should invest more in video for our brand.
So is it part of your next strategic plan?
Probably should be.
So please listen to this very audio-only tip about the importance of video, and just know
that we’ve probably reused this content with video somewhere else.
We’re in our featured section of the show, and I’m here with Caleb Blankenship.
He’s the owner of Body Shop Gym and Personal Training.
Caleb, welcome to the show.
Oh, thanks for having me, man.
Glad I could make it out here.
Yeah, thanks for, like, you know, I’m sure you’ve probably been up for hours now training
people.
It’s the AM crowd, and then you taper off from there, I’m sure.
No, is this your first stop?
I’m past that.
Yeah, this is my first stop.
So I don’t really have morning clients anymore.
That’s good.
If you can work yourself out of those, that’s a good way to think about it.
Yes, I do a lot of online stuff, but I’ve been helping my wife get the kids ready.
And typically, I’m the one taking my son to school, but my wife had to this morning.
So just trying to help them get done.
I did get my cardio in.
Right, good.
Important.
But that is about all I’ve done.
Check mark.
Yeah.
Check mark for the day.
My day gets started after this.
OK.
All right.
So why don’t you jump in and tell us about the company.
Tell us about Body Shop Gym and Personal Training.
Yeah.
You know, Body Shop started in December of
We opened right in the heat of COVID.
Wow, yes.
I had a personal training business that I loved, but if I’m being honest, when I’m
I don’t want to wake up at AM and train clients like we just talked about.
So it’s like, where can we take this?
So we started buying equipment.
My wife let me start buying equipment.
I think I bought five pieces in the first week.
And then we found a space.
We just kind of fell into it that worked within our budget, opened it up, and we just based
it around customer service, how many people we can help, and providing a really good atmosphere
and service to the community, if that makes sense.
Absolutely.
You know, we work with a lot of entrepreneurs in our business as an agency.
And there is a special brain that comes with being an entrepreneur.
And you’re staring at a pandemic, and you’re saying, you know what I ought to do?
Let’s start a business right now.
Let’s do this.
Let’s make this happen.
Yeah.
I mean, tell me about that.
The mindset you go into and saying, yeah, this is the time.
I’m one of those people that I will bet on myself all day, every day.
And my wife is a huge supporter and backbone of that.
My wife always says, you could scoop up elephant poop if you’re happy and our family’s OK,
then we’re good.
Yeah.
Good support system.
Good support structure.
It’s amazing.
And my family makes fun of me because I play Monopoly like the game of life.
There’s no plan B.
It’s like, I’m all in.
There’s not a chance it’s going to fail.
I can’t even think about that.
And we just go.
And yeah, I just saw, I wanted a -hour facility.
I saw a time when everything was getting shut down.
Gyms were taking the -hour thing away.
People missed it.
And I wanted a place to train my clients.
And if I could start selling memberships, I mean, man, that’d be great and start just
paying the bills off of that.
And it just slowly started.
I think we opened the doors with like members.
And within a year, it just exploded.
We had to expand.
Wow.
But yeah, it’s, I don’t know.
I have a weird brain.
As soon as I start to get somewhere, it’s like, hey, let’s save money to go buy a house.
And it’s like, we could open another business.
You know what I mean?
Why don’t we do that?
So I have a weird brain.
But I love business.
I love entrepreneurship.
I love the stress that comes with it.
I’m also kind of a workaholic.
And I just like doing it for myself.
It’s comforting knowing I’m not doing it for anyone else.
Yeah.
You know, I noticed during the pandemic, like I think most people did, that you go, oh,
man, the bank isn’t open except on like Tuesday from to
And that’s it.
Or the grocery store stopped being open overnight.
And I know there’s a lot of labor stuff that goes into that.
But to be able to look at the market and go, hey, you know something?
There’s a need here.
And we’re going to be on.
We’re going to double down on everything and just go straight in.
Well, yeah.
And we truly believe in health and fitness, right?
I think fitness is the true fountain of youth.
So we look at a time where we’re having these shutdowns and it’s about our health.
But we shut down the one thing that keeps us healthy.
Yeah.
And so it’s like, why do we take away the one thing that keeps us healthy, but we keep
liquor stores open and things like that.
And you know, I just wanted to be able to serve the community better and start to help
people.
And I think fitness is one of those things that you can truly change someone’s life.
And so if we can touch more people and get it out there, it’s like we’re truly making
the world a better place.
Man, spectacular.
Well, tell me about as we dive into the business a little bit more, customer service, having
a great culture is something that is really important to you and your business.
Tell me more about that and just, you know, as a service based business, the customer
service and culture.
Yeah, I think customer service is everything, right?
And every business, whether they want to or not, they have a culture.
I think that’s kind of like a hot topic right now.
Whether it’s intentional or not.
Whether it’s intentional or not.
And you’re either in charge of it or you’re just letting it happen.
And if you’re not in charge of it, it’s going to get real toxic real quick.
So it’s like you have to get ahead of that.
But we live in a world now where we probably have less, I would say less physical contact
with the outside world than we ever have, you know, through our phones and social media.
And we’re also in a world where it’s like we’re probably more depressed as a society
than we’ve ever been as a result of not having human contact.
And even though there’s these online businesses and things like that, which I operate one
myself, but people crave that human contact.
People crave a place of belonging, a place where they come in and they’re greeted by
their name.
They get a smile.
You know, I’m sure you’ve been to restaurants and it’s like your whole tone is based off
of it.
The host smiles and says hi.
Right, right.
You know, that’s kind of the same with our front desk.
It’s like it’s so important if you do anything else today, sit there, say hello, smile and
say goodbye and say, I hope you have a good day.
How are you doing today?
And it’s like, if we can come in and we can truly say, Hey, how’s your day going?
And it’s like, it’s not just bull crap.
Right, right.
You can tell that there’s genuine, it just changes people’s lives.
And like we’ve seen that and we’ve heard about, you know, the one thing that we stand out
with is our community and the sense of like belonging and like the feeling of love and
support that comes with it.
Um, and I know that sounds real lovey dovey, but it’s like, it’s all that matters to me.
And, you know, I think within the gym community, you could have the best equipment ever made.
Yeah.
And if your culture and community sucks, it’s like, what’s the point?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Being very intentional about how we do that.
So you’re training staff members.
It’s a, an ongoing topic of conversation in the back office kind of thing.
Yeah.
It’s always an ongoing topic.
I mean, we’re not huge right now, so we don’t have a ton of, um, employees, right?
But we’re always doing one-on-one coaching.
You know, my managers, we do a book club, you know what I mean?
It’s, um, it’s so important that we keep evolving as leaders and like, I, I hate reading,
honestly.
I hated it my entire life.
I just got into it probably a year and a half ago, cause I knew if I wanted to start leading
people, I had to become a better leader.
And it’s like, how do I learn that?
And it’s through reading.
Um, so if we can do that with our, the people that we employ and help them become better
people, um, and you know, care about the employee on, on a deeper level than just like, Hey,
go make me money.
It’s Hey, how’s your life going?
How are you doing today?
Do you need help with something?
And if we can serve our employees, our employees are better there to serve the community, which
then the community serves us.
And it’s just like one big circle.
You know, it’s, it’s you’re in good company.
We’ve talked about entrepreneur brain and, and how that is different.
Um, we, I had the same conversation back and forth about book club with Chad Offerdahl
at the big biscuit who’s in charge of the big biscuit franchise.
It’s actually is one of my best friends.
It’s actually, that’s where I go.
Yeah.
How do I, that’s where I, yeah.
Let me tell you about all the research I’ve done on this podcast.
Yeah.
Well, spectacular.
Well, that’s, that is, you know, you can, you can see where that translates down into
good leadership and great customer service.
And you know, those are secrets that transfer industry to industry to industry.
So it’s everywhere.
You know, it’s, I think it’s too many people in customer service.
They get caught on, uh, you know, let’s say it’s a $transaction and they don’t care
about the $transaction.
Well, that one $transaction can make you more money long-term than a $transaction
one time, because if that person has a great experience, they’re going to tell all their
friends all their family, they’re going to come back.
Maybe they did that $transaction every week, but it’s for years.
You know, it adds up that versus the one person who spends one time and has a bad experience
and goes nowhere.
And with a small business, I always say that we have to work a hundred times harder because
I’m drinking a Starbucks, right?
Sure.
If this is my drink up, I’m probably going to go back to another one.
And then I’ll probably go back to another one, then probably another one.
But if that’s a small business, most people, if they mess up, it’s a bad review.
And then it’s like, Oh, we’ll go somewhere else.
And it’s like, so I feel, I feel like we just have to kind of stick together and work harder
and go above and beyond a little more.
Yeah.
If you don’t have that protection of that brand umbrella where they kind of give you
some, they cut you some slack and go, well, it was probably just a bad day for that one
or whatever.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
%.
%.
And you have grown to two locations in just under three years.
Talk about, talk about how you market that business and how to, how to continue to grow.
Yeah.
So honestly, I’m still learning, right?
I have a lot to learn.
I’m brand new.
Our first location was literally just off word of mouth.
We expanded and doubled in size a year later, just off word of mouth.
That grew and then we opened a lease summit and that started growing off word of mouth.
So we’re actually just now getting into the marketing side.
So we’re working on that.
We’re doing some Instagram ads, some Facebook advertising, some things that are a little
bit more demographic.
But honestly, relying on the small things like getting our website a lot better, getting
it rebuilt with backend SEO, getting footage of the facilities up on the website so people
can see, yeah, here’s what I’m walking into.
Here’s what you’re walking into.
My wife takes care of our social media and like making the social media aspect better.
It’s like little things that I’m just not good at.
I like to just talk to people.
Having to find those outside sources to help improve it and market and make things better.
Yeah.
So we’re still learning with that for sure.
But having the presence of mind and understanding yourself to know that, hey, maybe this isn’t
my strong suit.
I need someone to do that for me.
%.
Yeah.
I’m not great at paperwork.
I’d rather pay someone to do that or, hey, babe, how do I do this?
You know what I mean?
Ask the question of the people who know, especially if you happen to live with them.
I am not afraid to ask.
But yeah, that’s my passion is just talking to people.
You know what I mean?
And getting to know people.
But you have that back office stuff that you can’t forget about.
It’s just as important as the front.
Tell me about the future of the brand.
Where do you go from here?
Do you have a roadmap of here’s where I’d like to be?
Because you also have the personal training side that is a growth path as well.
Yeah.
So I do operate an online training platform called Blank Slate Fitness.
That’s where the gym started.
That’s like % online.
I work with people all over the country with physique enhancement, digestive problems,
blood work fixes, diabetics, different things like that.
But as far as the gyms go, and I have a map in my office that I have stars on cities that
I’d like to hit.
I’d really like to become a well-known Kansas City brand.
So in the next five years, how does Body Shop become omnipresent within the fitness community
of Kansas City, right?
So it’s like I need a gym.
Oh, it’s Body Shop.
I need a coach.
Okay, well, it’s Blank Slate Fitness.
It’s like how do those two brands kind of grow together?
Right now, my goal is to be able to open a third, probably Liberty or Lawrence by the
end of
And you can vote online.
And we know.
Yeah.
Yeah, let us know.
And then grow from there.
So it’s like I’d like to be able to open one every other year and keep growing it and become
like a really big Kansas City brand.
And then eventually, I want to take one of my longest tenured employees who I feel like
just lives, breathes, understands everything and help finance another facility for them
and kind of let them branch off on their own as like a franchise and move to another market,
maybe like in Oklahoma or Omaha or something, Wichita, something like that.
And continue to build the brand and hopefully maybe one of my kids wants it one day.
Yeah.
Maybe I’ll have to sell it and cry.
Who knows?
But I think there’s a point where you stop crying after you sell it and you’re like,
yeah, I mean, I guess you’re right.
But I mean, yeah, we would love to grow and have as many locations as we can handle.
But as long as the vision stays there of taking care of the community and helping people,
we’ll take it as far as we can go, but we have to keep our basis, which is just like,
how do we serve people and help people?
Right.
So stay focused on that core mission of the personal connection and the customer service
and being there.
%.
Yeah, because if we had locations but we lose that connection, right?
Yeah.
Then how are you different than anyone else in the world?
We’re not.
Yeah.
And in the gym community, I always say like you’ve been to one gym, you’ve been to every
gym.
How do we stand out?
What makes us different?
And some is our equipment, but some is also like our community and our customer service
and like the way we care about the person that comes in.
They can spend their money anywhere.
We have to let them know, hey, thank you so much.
And we’re so appreciative that you choose to spend it with us because you could go anywhere.
Yeah.
If more entrepreneurs would keep that in mind and just ask, how are we different?
How are we setting ourselves apart from the competition?
Have you read?
I’m reading Seth Godin’s book right now called Purple Cow.
Oh, the Purple Cow?
Yeah, absolutely.
I’m a slow reader.
So it’s taking me a while.
That’s all right.
It’s fun.
It has the picture of a purple cow.
Right.
But it’s good times.
It’s how do you stand out?
You know what I mean?
How do you become a purple cow in a world with industry leaders who just don’t evolve
and then eventually other people evolve and come out and stand out?
Like if you want to go into a saturated market, you have to be the purple cow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, spectacular.
I think that’s a good transition into the lightning round.
So Caleb, are you ready for the lightning round?
I’m ready.
Let’s do this.
You have no way to know what I might ask in the lightning round.
And I’m going to start with motivation and when life gets in the way.
Because something like % of people fail in their fitness goals.
What do you say to somebody who may be staring backwards at their past efforts and wondering,
you know, should I even keep going?
Yeah.
I mean, to me, I think motivation is kind of boring.
I think we need to build dedication.
So it’s about building small habits.
So when I work with people like that, you can’t look at like the next year.
Okay.
You have to look at your next meal and your next day.
So if you’re quitting smoking, you’re not thinking, I’m not going to smoke for a month.
You’re like, man, I’m just going to try and make it through the next hour without a cigarette.
That’s the same thing with fitness, right?
Can we make it to our next meal without falling off?
Can we make it to our next workout without missing?
Can we get up and get our step count in?
You know, are we getting our steps in every day?
Those are so important to building small habits and they snowball over time.
And if you can do a week of that and not cheat on your diet, I think it’s so powerful in
not feeling victim to the food.
You know what I mean?
Like once you have the power of controlling what goes into your mouth and what you do
with your body, it’s you can do anything and you have more energy, you feel better, your
confidence builds and there’s nothing better.
So I think we just have to look at its baby steps.
We can’t look at a year.
We have to look at next hour, tomorrow.
The next hour and then the next day and then you can start to slowly get that broader horizon.
And build it little by little, whether that’s you’re working with a more negative person.
Sometimes I even have to go, give me five positives from your week.
I don’t care about anything else.
I just want to see the positive things from your week.
And then once you can build those positive looks into the program, then everything else
kind of starts to flow with it, right?
Because if we just have a negative mindset about everything, everything is going to follow
negativity.
And I’m going to jump into the next question with tough love because in looking at reviews,
Body Shop trainers have been described as, and I’m quoting here, a perfect mix of tough
love, compassion and knowledge.
Now I don’t know that I would ask for a better review than that, right?
That’s spectacular.
Tell me about that mix though in finding out the right level of tough love because you’re
there to help push people beyond what they may be comfortable with or that obstacle,
that mindset that keeps them from moving forward.
But you’re also there for customer service, right?
There’s a delicate balance there.
There is and I think you have to have some, I don’t want to say emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the right word.
I think for some tough love, you have to be able to build that relationship, right?
You have to have that connection first.
But there are clients who like you do need to hold their hand a little bit and there
are clients who they can’t stand that and they need the tough love.
And there are some clients who like you need to hold their hand and there are certain times
where you need to like shut up, just do it.
And then they’ll do it.
And it’s like, wow, yeah.
Hey, I did it.
Shocker.
I could do it.
You know what I mean?
It’s like, okay, now I see it.
And they kind of need that tough love to push them into having confidence for themselves.
I think it’s just right about knowing when to use it and when to not do it.
Yeah.
If you’re constantly tearing them down or doing the tough love, it can kind of just
turn into negativity.
But if you can build them up and then jab it in there when you need to, I think it works
really well.
So I think it’s about just having the emotional intelligence.
And that comes with I try to meet with my trainers once a week over Zoom for like
minutes and help them with that, whether it be a client problem or anything else.
But it’s knowing when to inject it and when not to inject it.
If someone’s having a rough day and they’re on the verge of tears, you probably shouldn’t
tell them to shut up and get over it.
You know what I’m saying?
But it’s like they’re just being a baby about something.
You know they can do it and then push them to that.
Yeah.
I’d say emotional intelligence is exactly the way to describe that.
And let’s broaden this out that your trainers are also managers and your clients are potential
customers.
Like you are employees, right?
You’re motivating them and you’re managing them in a way that gets them to do something
that may be a challenge.
%.
And as a trainer, you’re only a trainer like % of the time.
You’re probably a therapist % of the other time.
So you have to kind of understand if you’re not a people person, you can’t be a trainer.
It’s impossible.
And I just talked to one of my clients about this last night.
You can literally change someone’s life being a trainer.
Is it going to be for the good or for the bad?
It’s kind of up to you.
You know what I mean?
You have a lot of power and you can help people.
But it’s like you’re basically a therapist.
Man.
There’s a challenge there.
You are rising to meet that.
Let me continue on with the lightning round and talk about food.
You’ve had a food podcast in the past.
I want to talk about like a cheat meal that is like your go to cheat meal.
Oh God.
I have so many.
So I’m a fatty heart, right?
I have been chunky my whole life.
I still fight it.
It’s probably pizza.
I am obsessed with it.
I love everything about it except Little Caesar’s.
Little Caesar’s is awful.
Well, there’s a time and a place.
Yeah.
I’m obsessed with pizza.
It’s probably sushi.
Oh, wow.
That’s a diverse crowd.
Yeah.
Very diverse.
I love fine food as well as I love just crap.
Just absolute garbage.
My wife and I talked about if we were on death row was our final meal and I think mine was
pizza, chocolate chip pancakes and like beef Wellington.
It’s all great.
There’s a chef in the prison going, all right, man, I can do this.
Yeah.
With a chocolate chip cookie.
With a chocolate chip cookie.
You got to balance it.
Yeah, that’s good.
Would that be like the desert island meal as well?
You can eat pizza every day if you were stranded there.
I think I could.
Yeah.
I don’t think I could ever get tired of it.
I’m in the same boat.
Pizza and probably steak.
I don’t think I could get tired of either of those.
Okay.
It’d be pizza and tacos for me.
I would be going both of those ways.
But is it like regular tacos or like authentic tacos?
It’s going to be a combination of both.
That’s the tricky part because there is a place in my heart for an old school ground
beef taco on a hard crispy shell with lettuce and cheese.
There is something about just like the crappiness of it.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I have a weakness for it.
They’re good.
Yeah.
My wife and I, we… Taco Bell is like our concert thing because it’s the only thing
open and we’ll eat on our bed.
It’s like once every six months.
You know what I mean?
But it’s glorious when you get there.
It is wonderful.
But my wife is also Hispanic, so it’s like the legit tacos is just you can’t beat.
You can’t beat that.
No, %.
%.
So talk about business advice and some of the best business advice you’ve gotten.
Is there somebody who stands out and says, yeah, I’m taking that piece with me?
Yeah.
There’s a couple.
I’m really close with the owners of Supplement Superstore, Jeff and Kyle.
They really brought to me the caring and the aspect and the knowledge.
It’s like having the emotional intelligence.
You know what I mean?
That’s something I didn’t have when I started training was how to carry yourself, how to
talk about other people, how to not talk about other people.
These are things you never say.
These are things you can say.
Those are really big aspects.
They probably taught me the most how to talk to people.
You know what I mean?
And how to carry yourself better.
Not that I’m perfect.
I’m far from it.
But I think that went a long way.
Another one would be chat.
You know what I mean?
From Big Biscuit.
It’s how to help become a better leader, how to help lead a team, how to the book club.
If I have a business problem, I’m going to text one of those three.
That’s what it comes down to.
I actually watched the podcast you did with Chad and watched all of that hour of great
content and picked up a ton of things just in the conversation you two had.
So spectacular.
Yeah, I mess with him about that because we had just started becoming friends because
I was just his trainer at that time and I still train him.
We’re actually training partners.
I mess with him that I was like, hey Chad, you don’t have to be so Chad right now.
You can come out.
Yeah.
You can take it down a little bit.
Yeah.
You got to have fun with it.
Nice.
You got to have fun in life.
Did you play sports back in the day?
Oh, always.
Yeah, I’m obsessed with football.
So it was a football career for you?
Yeah, that was a dream.
I just wasn’t good enough.
Well, I mean, we’ll put that aside for a minute.
Can we talk about coaches for a second?
Coaches teachers, they tend to give us a different set of advice than the business advice, but
that advice they give sticks with us in a lot of different ways.
So was there a coach that gave you some advice or had some kind of lesson that has stuck
with you for all these years?
Yeah, I don’t know if it was a single piece of advice, but I had my offensive line coach
and weightlifting coach in high school, Coach Thomas, and I think he just really instilled
like work ethic and how to work hard on something.
My dad also did that, but that was more manual labor versus this was like working hard for
a goal you want to achieve and how to push through things and like, so what?
You didn’t win, like quit crying, like do it again.
Keep going until you win.
Winner, now that I think about it, I almost just said it, but my wrestling coach in middle
school, winner gets to do another.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Winner gets to keep going.
And so it’s like, those are probably two of the biggest things.
And then Nick Saban, I’m going to butcher it right now, but what did he say?
Something about, I cannot remember off the top of my head.
Mediocre people hate excellence and excellent people can’t stand mediocrity, mediocre people.
And it’s like, they just never mesh.
So it’s like, the people who are really trying to excel, they can’t stand the people who
don’t want to do anything.
They can’t stand the people who want to go above and beyond.
It’s like oil and water.
Fascinating.
Yeah, great.
I mean, great topics.
Caleb Blankenship, I am taking you out of the lightning round.
Well done.
Nicely done.
You survived.
I was scared.
Nothing to it.
You weren’t scared.
There was no fear on your face in any way.
Tell people where they can find you if they want more information about the Body Shop
Gym and personal training and the personal training side.
Where can they find you?
Yeah, for sure.
My personal is just blankslatefitness.com on Instagram or just my website is blankslatefitness.com.
For the gyms, it’s going to be bodyshop-kc.com is our website.
You can find out all the information.
You can see videos of the gyms.
If you want to talk to us a little more on Instagram, we’re bodyshopgym.kc.
Those are the two main places that you’re going to be able to find us.
And yeah, I think come on out, try us.
We have one location in Lee’s Summit, one in Overland Park.
I think it’ll change your life.
And Liberty and Lawrence, you know, start casting your votes now.
Cast your votes.
Let us know where you want us to go.
All right.
Caleb Blankenship, owner of Body Shop Gym and personal training.
Thanks for being with us today.
Yeah, thank you so much.
I enjoyed it.
And that is our show.
Thanks to our guest, Caleb Blankenship.
And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast.
Remember to subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and review.
Drop us a line on the website at EAGADV.com.
And we’ll see you next time.
Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.