880 Morgan Kline:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Morgan Kline:

I am such a doer, and I am someone who thinks I need to fix every problem, or I need to wear every hat. But as bigger goals are sitting on my shoulders, it’s like, okay, I really can’t do that. So, it’s just really about trust, trusting the right people, building an infrastructure, and getting the right people in the right seats. It’s about saying, what do I care about? What do I want ultimate approval over? What do I need to know before it goes live and building those processes and then being able to effectively communicate with those people when you’re happy and when there’s room for improvement for the next time that they do it. creating that culture of just constant feedback is what’s helped me a lot. So, I don’t come off as a female that’s maybe abrasive or start never happy or kind of the common roles that women sometimes get in a leadership position.

Melinda Wittstock:

Morgan Kline started her entrepreneurial journey with her husband in a parking lot back in 2012 with fitness classes that have now evolved into more than 400 Burn Boot Camp gyms in 41 states. Bootstrapping the business, Morgan learned over time that the business could only grow to what it is today by learning to get out of her own way, and like many women in business, learn how to build teams, delegate, be clear on expectations, and provide constructive feedback. Today she shares how she overcame the “do it all” to “have it all” mindset that keeps so many female founders from scalable success.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock, welcome everybody. This is Wings of Inspired Business, the place where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, (Start to fade music GRADUALLY under my voice – here) epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur and, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Melinda Wittstock:

So happy you’re here today, taking flight in your business and life, with yet another inspiring story of entrepreneurial success. Today we’re talking to Morgan Kline, the co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp – a fitness brand that goes beyond the gym with its vibrant and supportive community of empowerment and personal growth.

Like all entrepreneurial endeavors, hers is a story of resilience and constant learning as she built the fast-growing franchise business organically with a “people first” mission. Whether incorporating free childcare or never charging fees to people who miss classes, Morgan shares how creating a welcoming and supportive environment, especially for women, has been the unique differentiator for Burn Boot Camp in a crowded market.  We get into everything from how to hire the right people and ensure accountability to what it means to operationalize your values in business – and much more.

Morgan will be here in a moment, and first,

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Melinda Wittstock:

One of the most powerful ways to grow a business is by building a community of loyal members who become your best salespeople and viral ambassadors. When you understand and put the needs of your customers first, encourage authentic connection and belonging among them, and act authentically in alignment with your brand values, magic happens. What started in a parking lot in 2012 has now grown organically to 400 locations in 41 states plus a fast-growing app.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we learn what it took to build Burn Boot Camp with its co-founder and CEO Morgan Kline. Morgan is on a mission to enable women to feel confident, empowered, motivated and stronger than ever.

Growing up in Battle Creek, MI, Morgan started climbing the corporate ladder at the Kellogg Company right out of college before taking the entrepreneurial leap, all while balancing it as we do with motherhood.

So, let’s get into it – because you’ll be learning the importance of walking your talk on values in your hiring process, how to get out of your own way by learning to set clear goals, delegate and hold your team accountable, how to put your customers first, and the mindset you need to dream big no matter your current circumstances.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Morgan Kline and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Morgan, Welcome to Wings.

Morgan Kline:

Thanks for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, there you were in a parking lot with your husband doing like, you know, a Burn Boot Camp. And did you ever imagine in that parking lot that your business was going to become as big as it has so far?

Morgan Kline:

No, definitely not. So, in 2012, when we started in a parking lot, we really had aspirations to grow the greater Charlotte area. We went from one gym in a parking lot, sort of sublease scenario, because we were young, and nobody would give us a lease. We didn’t have the financial backing. And so, yeah, we got resourceful, and we went to five different sub locations, whether that was a dance studio, a rec center, an older gym, an old movie theater, believe it or not. And we started building these communities out, really from the ground up. And we didn’t have anything fancy. We just had a really great workout and a really great community.

Morgan Kline:

And so those five turned into, hey, someone was coming to us almost every week and saying, listen, this place has changed my life. I want to do it somewhere else. I want to grow burn boot camp. I want to open my own. That’s when we started to explore franchising, and that’s when we started to really open up our dreams and our mind to what’s possible for us. And here we are 10, 11 years later. We’ve opened almost 400 gyms. We’re in 41 states, and now the sky is the limit. There’s really nothing we don’t believe we can do as long as we put our mind to it.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s such an inspiring story for everybody just to take that in, right? I mean, you literally are standing in the parking lot and kind of, you’re co creating with your customers, you’re working it out, you’re delighting your customers, and this thing grows beyond what you could imagine. And so, for anybody at any stage of entrepreneurship, it can always be bigger.

Morgan Kline:

Yes, absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because I think a lot of us, and especially women, sometimes accidentally, I don’t think it’s on purpose, but sort of accidentally limit our dreams and put an artificial ceiling on them. As you were growing, did you ever have those kind of growing pains, like, oh, my God, can I do this right?

Morgan Kline:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think this is where I really do like to give my husband credit. He is the visionary of our company. That, of course, is his title now, eleven years later, but he was the one that really founded it. I was there with him, but I was working a completely different career at the time that he wanted to start burn bootcamp. I was working at Kellogg’s. I thought my dream was to be in corporate life, work eight to five and climb this corporate.

Morgan Kline:

So, you know, he kind of showed me what else was possible from a dreaming perspective. And I would say now as the visionary, he’s the one that’s kind of always pushed us. But I have absolutely been the one that’s like, whoa, pump the brakes. I don’t know if we can do all that because we’ve also grown a family in the last seven years. I have three children at home and so I think when you talk about women and we kind of accidentally put this cap to our dreams, I think it’s that fear of like what do I have to give up? What’s going to sacrifice? And that’s the constant question I get is how do you do it all? How do you balance it all? But there’s certainly times that I look at the trajectory of the company and the dreams and the goals financially and the impact we want to have, and I do get scared, and I think that that’s good and you always want that. And that’s what makes a really good combination with my husband, and I is because he’s very much a visionary. I’m more like practical, like, okay, well then let me take that, digest it and spit out some actual goals that we can achieve.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so interesting because men just sort of naturally dream bigger. I think we always need to be masterminding both with, to encourage women to dream bigger but also just get some of that energy from men while still maintaining the feminine. Something that you said that was so interesting to me as well is this whole idea that you can’t have it all because, and the bracket and the unspoken thing is, oh my God, I have to do it all to have it all. But that’s not necessarily true. So, let’s get into how you balance all these things because it is possible, maybe not all at once, but it’s also possible through thinking more like an owner rather than a doer.

Melinda Wittstock:

Share how you do actually manage and juggle everything.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, where we’re at today didn’t come overnight. It’s the making of 11, 12, almost twelve years now of building and scaling and bringing people on and constantly refining. What do you do as the owner and what do you delegate and how do you bring this team around you to be able to reach pretty audacious goals but without feeling like you have to do it all. And so again, I just want to reiterate, if you’re listening to this, this does not happen overnight. It does have to happen intentionally and over time. And you have to constantly be thinking, okay, what’s my ten year plan, my five year plan, my three year plan, and then you live in the one year game plan, but you’ve got to think through that because that’s going to help you make decisions on, if I make this decision, how is it going to impact me in three years, five years, ten years? And so for me, the tips are really just find people that can help you build this dream and this business and then trust them, and then only do the things that you can do. Right. I constantly have to take an audit on what are the meetings I’m in? What are the things I’m saying yes to do? I need to be saying yes to that.

Morgan Kline:

Or can somebody else take the lead in that meeting and just give me the cliff notes? I have to protect my time. We all only get 24 hours in a day. And so, I have to manage that 24 hours between being a mom of three kids, the CEO, taking care of myself, being a friend, being a wife. And so, if I am constantly doing things that don’t really align to what I need to do to move the needle the most in all of those categories, then now I need to just be disciplined to start saying no to things or find other people in my life that can go do that on my behalf.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I think this is very important, very important advice, because what you’re really saying is find the areas where you have the most leverage. I like to think, if I’m doing one thing today, what’s one thing that has a multiplicity of outcomes? I may just be setting other people up for success business, or articulating the vision, or I may be cultivating relationships that are a game changer for the business that suddenly create multimillion dollar revenue line or something like that. That’s where I’m going to be most valuable. Not in fixing links in a website.

Morgan Kline:

Yes, exactly. And that’s tough. I can at least admit, for me, that’s been a challenge over the last several years because I am such a doer, and I am someone who thinks I need to fix every problem, or I need to wear every hat. But again, as more and more hats come on my plate and bigger goals are sitting on my shoulders, it’s like, okay, I really can’t do that. And that’s not fun for me. That’s not going to yield the best business outcomes either. So, it’s just really about trust, trusting the right people, which goes into a whole other segment of just building an infrastructure and getting the right people in the right seats.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, we’ll talk about the team building in a moment because that’s a really critical component. I want to get into the mindset, though, that allows you to get into that mode of trust and being able to kind of let go of things. Because women, just over the millennia, right, I mean, we’ve been the ones that are the doers that do everything way back. Caveman times, right? All the guy had to do was go and sit by a rock for a really long time and wait for the bison and then aim correctly.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, this is in our DNA, it’s in our epigenetics, you know what I mean? So, it does take something to shift that way of being, and I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a block to so many, because we fall back in our subconscious patterns.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, I agree. I think something that’s helped me with the mindset is really self-reflection of what am I best at? And be vulnerable to say, hey, this is not where I should be spending my time. And then it’s about, how do you communicate with other people on what your expectations are? Because I believe that is one of the bigger blocks, that women just. They’re either afraid to hurt somebody’s feelings or they’re afraid that they’re going to be offensive if they give feedback or if they don’t like something that they’ve asked somebody to do. So, we just kind of put up with it. If someone cleans your house and you don’t like the way they cleaned it, you’re kind of like, well, I don’t want to say anything, but it’s like, wait, you paid them to do a job. If you don’t like it, how do we just communicate effectively that, hey, I’d rather you do it like this next time? I’ve had to learn over time just what those communication strategies need to look like and what a process needs to look like, so that I still have my thumbprint on a lot of things in my business, but that doesn’t mean I need to own it end to end. It’s about intention.

Morgan Kline:

It’s about saying, what do I care about? What do I want ultimate approval over? What do I need to know before it goes live and building those processes and then being able to effectively communicate with those people when you’re happy and when there’s room for improvement for the next time that they do it. And I think it was just creating that culture of just constant feedback is what’s helped me a lot. So, I don’t come off as a female that’s maybe abrasive or never happy or kind of the common roles that women sometimes get in a leadership position.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of fear there because we’re sort of acculturated to make everybody happy. Like we were sort of walking around in stilettoes balancing a drink tray or something. There’s a lot of fear and there’s a lot of desire to be liked. And so, I think that can really hold us back. So is it really about as you start to in your business, whatever stage you’re at and you’re starting to build your team and hiring really the onus is on the executive leadership team, on the CEO, on the founders or whatever, to set clear expectations from the get-go. Like our values.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like accountability is one of them. We believe in collaboration, constructive feedback. I’m just sort of giving an example. So please expect that you’ll get feedback on your work. This is all to help you. I don’t know, whatever you’re going to do. So, you set those expectations at the very beginning.

Melinda Wittstock:

Describe your kind of hiring and recruitment and onboarding process, how you actually lay the groundwork to enable yourself to succeed at that.

Morgan Kline:

We have really evolved a lot, I’ll be honest, even in just the last three, four years. So really Covid allowed me and Devin and some of our leadership team to kind of get down under the hood. How are we doing? How are we doing with processes? How are we doing with people? How are we doing with culture and expectations? And so, what we have really leaned into is the EOS system. If you’re not familiar with that, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and it has helped us a ton. We follow the accountability charts and the seat measurables. So, when you come on at Burn Boot Camp headquarters, you have this seat that obviously you have a job description, but then you also have a seat. And that seat comes with three to five main accountability items and then it also comes with measurables.

Morgan Kline:

How is your leader or how is the business going to measure success in that seat? Then you have your one-on-one meetings with your manager, you have your quarterly reviews, your annual reviews, and it’s all geared towards do you get it, do you want it, do you have the capacity? And do you match the core values? And then also, what are your measurables, what are your seat measurables that I’ve asked you to do, and how well are you performing? So that’s helped us a lot. Put just framework around how to measure seats if the seat is effective or not. And really that’s what, when you mentioned it’s really up to the executive team, the CEO, the founders, it’s my responsibility to get that seat right and to make sure that it has clear expectations of what success looks like in that seat. And that’s not even talking about the person in the seat. So, you really got to build this infrastructure that’s seat based, and then you have to overlay it with the people, and you have to make sure you’re getting the right people in that seat that can do it and that want it and that have the capacity to do it based on what you said is successful. So that for us, has been helpful. We still have a long way to go.

Morgan Kline:

I think it’s an evolving, constant refinement of that process of just how you retain great talent. How do you attract good talent? How do you get the most out of your employees? How do you make sure that you have effective communications with leadership and employees on where we’re going and how we’re going to get there and how they contribute to that big goal. So always tying really the company goals down to their individual seat and how they play an impact, because here at headquarters, we’ve got our finance team, we’ve got our culture team, our HR, we’ve got tech. Those are kind of our support arms. So, they don’t necessarily get to live day to day in the business of how we’re impacting our franchise system. And so then over there, you have your operations, you have your marketing, you have our retail component of it. So, the people that are working directly with our customers, they get to see the impact that they have every day in their job. And sometimes support doesn’t get to see that real time impact. And so always making sure that everybody in the organization knows how their day-to-day tasks roll up to the big picture of the company.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, this is so important. So how long? I mean, you mentioned it’s an iterative system. It’s always, you know, go back to the early days and how you started to set this.

Morgan Kline:

Well, you know, to be honest, Devin and I, like I said, we started in a parking lot. So, the first couple of years, we were just doing everything. I think when we started the franchise, we had only had less than ten employees at that point, kind of wearing a lot of hats. And I would say it was until 2018 that we heavily invested in our payroll and started to bring on more of that director level, and then that moved into a VP level. And we’ve just now recently started to add to our C-suite. It is a constant evolution based on where you’re at in the business and then also as entrepreneurs, what role you play. Right. Because Devin and I are still very much in the business as founders, and I’m here every single day.

Morgan Kline:

It all depends on what your goals are as an entrepreneur and how you want to play a part, and then you build that team around you. But for me, it’s constantly taking a look at where are we going in the next one to three years based on the past growth and what we know we have on the books to grow for in the next year. And that’s how I’m able to kind of build that infrastructure and scale either the seat or scale the people.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100% when you’re hiring. What are the questions that you ask that make sure that somebody is a good fit in terms of kind of character mindset and such, that they’re likely to be the type of person that’s going to show initiative or contribute or drive results.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, I always ask people what their core values are because I think it’s important to hear if they don’t even have core values. I think that’s kind of a red flag. Red flag for me, conscious, like they’re not even there. And listen, I say that now because typically the only people that I’m interviewing are people that are going to sit on my leadership team. So, at that point in their career, I would hope that they’ve really thought about that. But we also have newer employees, and that’s fair that they maybe haven’t thought through that yet. And my goal is to show them what that looks like and encourage them to set some personal core values. But for me, yes, I’m going to look at a resume.

Morgan Kline:

I’m going to ask you about your work experience. But ultimately, the questions that I’m asking is, why do you want to be at Burn Boot Camp? What motivates you? What is your ultimate outcome in life? What really drives you? Because through those answers, I can typically tell if this is just going to be a job or if this is going to be a career. Bootcamp is very mission driven. We talk a lot about impact, and yes, the numbers are great, and yes, we’re growing, but ultimately, Devin and I are doing this for impact. So, we want to make sure we’re surrounding ourselves with people that also are driven by that core value of impact. And so, I’m typically asking a lot of questions around that. I ask them what they do for personal development.

Morgan Kline:

If they don’t do much for personal development, that’s another big red flag for me, because I want growth mindset. I want someone who’s hungry to learn more, to do more for themselves, to achieve more. It’s the same thing that I’m driving in my gyms, I want to bring somebody into my gym, and I want them to have a mindset and then I want to give them the confidence that, hey, what you thought you can do, you can do more than that and you need to be open to it. Right? And so, there’s a lot of parallels of how we build our culture in the gym and what I want to see on a professional level at the HQ, because we are the nucleus. So how we act and behave is going to trickle all the way down into my gyms.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets. Join me together with Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – as we explore the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m business, and a $50mm even $500 mm business. That’s Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets, produced by Podopolo Brand Studio at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts.

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Morgan Kline, CEO and co-founder of Burn Boot Camp.

[INTEVIEW CONTINUES]

Melinda Wittstock:

What is the impact that you want to have in the world?

Morgan Kline:

The first thing that comes to my mind is just impacting generational, like, generational impact is what I want to have. I don’t want to just have a successful brand while I’m alive. I want what burn boot camp did to people’s lives impact all the way down generations. Right? And so that means a lot of things, but I want somebody to walk into our gym or interact with our brand in some way and feel energy and feel more confident and feel hope and feel seen and feel valued for exactly who they are, but then excited about who they can be. So, it’s more than just a gym for us. It’s about painting a picture of, hey, what you do here in these four walls can transcend outside and it can transcend fitness. It gives you the confidence to maybe go for the promotion at your work.

Morgan Kline:

It gives you the confidence to maybe leave an abusive relationship because it’s just these little things that someone in an environment has taught you over time that, hey, you can want more for yourself and we’re here to support you to do it. I don’t say these things out of just theory. These are transformations that I’m hearing out in our communities is you’ve changed the trajectory of my life and that’s going to impact how I mother my three boys. And so, I’ve heard these things and that for me now is, okay, how do I get this to more and more people so we can be a source of hope for people that need it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. So, before we get more into Burn Boot Camps, I have a lot of questions about your process and how it works. I want to talk about the franchising piece because we were talking about team earlier. But obviously when you’re in a franchise, know there’s a lot of people that approach franchises almost in an OCD way. But I’d say that in a good way, right. The systems have to be the same. Like, you look at the trajectory of McDonald’s and how they perfected this system. So, like, every McDonald’s that you would go into is exactly the same. Or even Orange Theory Fitness Is that something that’s very top of mind for you? How do you operate the franchise piece and select the franchise owners, but also make sure that they’re actually following with the brand and the experience you want to give your customers and such?

Morgan Kline:

That is the risk of business from a franchising perspective. Well, for one, you run the good risk of people replicating your brand and it’s amazing. And then obviously you have the other side of it where they aren’t representing the brand well. And so, it is up to us to vet the right people out from the beginning.  It starts for us in the sales process of really understanding somebody’s motivation to come in and be a burn boot camp franchisee. It’s going to be much different than somebody that wants to be a, you know, McDonald’s franchisees are likely looking at their business model and it’s a profitable one and so is ours. But there’s more.

Morgan Kline:

Like I said, we are a mission driven company. We are here for impact and positive impact and health and wellness. So, I need to hear that out of you. Right? If you are just somebody that wants to run a business, this is not the franchise for you. There are franchises out there, absolutely. But not burn boot camp. I think it’s for us, it’s just getting really clear on who our ideal franchise partner is and then making sure that we stay disciplined to only say yes and award franchises to those that we feel understand our mission, share our core values, and are really more interested in making an impact on their community, both from a financial perspective, but also just from an impact. So that’s the number one.

Morgan Kline:

And if you get the wrong people in, then it doesn’t matter what systems and processes that you have in place, you are likely going to not get the end result that you need, which is the blue carpet experience. That’s the process that we call for. We want everybody to experience the blue carpet experience when they walk into our gyms or again, interact with our brand in some way. So that’s a huge process that we’ve put in place where we have a checklist. So as an employee or as a franchise partner, you know what the expectation is from the top down. When somebody walks in, you are standing up in front of the desk, you are giving them a high five. What does the workout look like when it starts? What does it look like? Five minutes in. What does it look like 20 minutes in.

Morgan Kline:

What does the finisher look like? What does the cooldown look like? And then what is that post camp experience that we want them to have? We also have an experience for anyone that utilizes our complimentary child watch, which is very unique in the fitness industry or in the boutique industry, I guess I should say. So, what do we want that mom’s experience to be when she drops her children off? We’ve taken a lot of time to perfect kind of what that perfect, ideal experience is and then what our standard needs to look like. So then now, obviously, it’s up to us to teach that and to implement it in our system, but then also to audit it. So, we have a secret shopper program. We also have our franchise business coaches go out in the field. Myself and Devin are still out in the field. Every time we go somewhere, we’re finding a Burn Boot Camp, we’re going to it. And we’re not trying to get people in trouble.

Morgan Kline:

We’re just trying to obviously be there to hear from the members and hear from the franchise partners. But we always have our eyes out for, hey, what are opportunities that we see that maybe we need to give that feedback to the franchise partner? So, I think that answered your question, but it’s all about who you connect yourself with same with employees, same thing that I talked about when we’re recruiting for headquarters. If they don’t share the mission and they don’t share the core values and they don’t really understand the why behind burn, then it’s not going to be a good fit in the long run. So same thing with franchise partners. And then when you select the right person, you’ve got to give them the tools to then select the right people underneath their gyms because the trainer can make or break some of our gyms.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Morgan Kline:

They’re the ones that are delivering that product, that blue carpet experience. And so, you got to make sure that the franchise partners also have the right employees because it is such a high touch, person to person brand. It’s not like a McDonald’s where you go there. You don’t need to know somebody’s name, right, that took your order. But at Boot Camp, it’s like, it’s a relationship business. So hiring is very important in our business. And then making sure that they are constantly getting educated from us on how to refine their processes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. That makes a lot of sense. And I can imagine a lot of refinements and learnings over time. I mean, have you ever hired kind of the wrong. Have you ever brought in the wrong franchisee? Has that ever happened to you?

Morgan Kline:

It has a couple of times. And it’s one of those things where you have to obviously navigate a legal document, our franchise agreements, our FTDs, because we go into a five-year term with all of our franchise partners. So, we got to really start documenting things. We got to have good reason to either get them out of the system and take over their gyms. And so, yeah, it’s happened, and it probably will continue to happen. And I think for a couple of reasons. Number one, sometimes people don’t show you their true colors when you’re in that sales process. Everything’s hunky dory and they’re saying all the right things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Morgan Kline:

Same with an interview process. I’m sure anyone that’s listening to this, you’ve had an experience where someone was great in the interview process, but then the first 30 days, you were like, wait, that’s not the same person.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness. Sadly, I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me, even when you were really diligent with the questions. Because some people are just really good at that interview. Yeah, but actually, they’re not the right person. They don’t have the right mindset. They say they’re into personal development. So, you really need to have that period of evaluation to correct your mistake because you’re going to make them, right.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s where I really encourage firing fast. I know that sounds extreme, but when you find that red flag, you really got to act on it.

Melinda Wittstock:

You got to act on it fast, and you got to…

Morgan Kline:

And then that’s probably one of my biggest mistakes in the past, is I would give everybody the benefit of the doubt, and I would give them very too many chances. And I took it personal. I was the one that hired them, and I would take it personal. And I would try, try, right. To bring this person up to the standard. And I’ve just learned that that does nobody good. Right. It doesn’t even do the person good when they’re not a fit.

Morgan Kline:

They got to go. They’ll go find something and they’ll land on their feet. That’s great for them. And then you’ll kind of be set free and be able to bring somebody on that can help move the needle. And so, there’s so much impact when you bring the wrong people into your organization, whether that’s an employee or a franchisee, and it’s just all about quickly exiting them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s true. And again, just going back to earlier in our conversation, just overcoming that fear of not being nice to everybody. I mean, I’ve made those same mistakes. Five businesses now, you know what I mean?

Morgan Kline:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I now have this intention around it. Right. Like you mentioned, creating your business intentionally. I think the power of intention and just clarity in terms of knowing really what you want is vital in this case as well. So, let’s get into Burn Boot Camp. And what makes it different, better, et cetera, than all the other things out there. So many different alternatives for how to go exercise your body.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, I definitely am someone who doesn’t really like to compare us to an Orange Theory or an F45. Certainly, that would be our competition in the boutique fitness space. But I believe there’s room for everybody to be successful. And I think getting people moving and off the couch is a success in its own. And so, whether they come to Burn Boot Camp, Orange Theory, or another gym is a great thing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Morgan Kline:

And so, I believe that burn boot camp has been successful, number one, because of our fitness product. It’s a 45-minute workout. We never do the same workout twice. It’s a combination of strength and cardio with a heavy emphasis in strength because that’s very important. But in a different format every day, right. So, you’re just constantly switching it up. We don’t use any screens. We really lean into personal trainers in a group setting.

Morgan Kline:

You feel like you’re getting that personal training, but you’re obviously surrounded by some amazing women and men and that’s that extra motivation on top. So, number one is our fitness product, number two is the community. I can’t say this enough and I feel so confident saying this because I’ve heard it directly from our members mouths because I’m out in the field a lot, but people’s lives change because of the brand and it’s not just because of the workout, it’s because of the people that they’ve met when they’re there. So, for us, it’s about cultivating this positive community that doesn’t have competition in it, that doesn’t have negativity in it, that doesn’t have self-doubt or self-limiting beliefs. So, it’s just about creating an environment within the four walls and then the people that it attracts. And then when they’re all together, people are able to accomplish so much more when they can surround themselves with like-minded, like hearted people. I think Burn Boot Camp does that really well, is cultivate that community. And I think our superpower was the fact that we didn’t have fancy things when we started this brand.

Morgan Kline:

We were in a parking lot with $600 of equipment and my husband’s speaker system out of his car. We weren’t flashy and new. If you stacked us up back then to competition, somebody would have put us in last all day long. But yet we built this community of people that kept coming, wanting to come back. It’s sometimes the first workout people could actually stick to. And it’s not necessarily the workout, it’s the people. So that would be my second thing. Number three is our child watch.

Morgan Kline:

I mentioned it earlier, some other boutique brands do this, but I don’t think at scale a mother that’s coming into boutique fitness. And when I say boutique fitness, that’s when you’re paying anywhere from one hundred dollars to one hundred dollars a month for classes or camps. You’re not just going into a big box gym and doing your own workout. The biggest barrier is their kids. And as a mom, they feel guilty that either I have to find somebody for my kids or I’m sacrificing something. Well, hey, we’re going to remove that barrier and you get free child watch. You get to bring your kid in with you when you come to camp, and we don’t charge fees. We don’t punish you for not showing up.

Morgan Kline:

We don’t punish you for being late. We truly meet you where you’re at. And it’s like, hey, come here. Drop your kid off. They’re safe now. You get 45 minutes to just be you. Take off the mom hat, take off the CEO hat. Just get to be Morgan.

Morgan Kline:

Someone’s going to tell you what to do. You’re going to get a kick butt workout. You’re going to be high. Know your friends that you’ve met here and that want to see you win. And in the female population, that’s very hard to come by. So, when you find that community, you hold on to them tight. And organic referrals have been our bread and butter. And I think that just speaks to how the brand has made people feel.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s so inspiring.  Hats off to you for not the late fee and the punishment and that kind of stuff.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah. Listen, I’ve shared this. I’m a mom of three. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on my way to camp and my son has a blowout or it takes me longer to get out. And I can’t imagine a mom being in the car and being like, I’m going to be five minutes late and it’s like they’re going to turn them away at the door and then they’re going to charge them. I don’t know, it just seems conflicting to me. If you really care about impacting somebody and listen, our revenue is taken a huge hit on that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Morgan Kline:

We could easily have done that and make a lot more money, but that’s not our people first core value alignment. So, we’re proud to not charge fees.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. You’re operating in alignment with your values in this case. It may take you longer, but it builds ultimately a more sustainable business because you’re growing by referral. So, you might be making maybe a little bit less money, but on the other hand, the lifetime value of your customer is probably greater.

Morgan Kline:

Yeah, we have a longer lifetime. And granted, I don’t know, I don’t always stack my stats up to competition, but I think what you said is exactly right. We typically see people that only use burn as their membership. Right. So that means they’re also staying here, they’re frequenting more often, they’re spending money when they’re in the gym. We have our activewear line, we have a supplement line. So, they’ve just learned to trust us a lot more. We’re also able to offer them different products and services because of that.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, you’re in 41 states, you’re growing. Talk to me a little bit about the vision in terms of what’s next. Like, how does this brand grow even bigger? I mean, where are you going to be five years from now, ten years from now?

Morgan Kline:

We definitely still have a lot of opportunity in the US. So, we’ve awarded just over 500 territories. So, the delta there is just people that are in development right now. And we’ve done our mapping software is yielding us about 1100 burn boot camps here in the US. So that’s our number one focus, is just kind of building out us. But we’re also looking to go global. We’re looking to go to the UAE, possibly to Canada.

Morgan Kline:

We’re very open to scaling our brand into other countries through master franchising. But again, I’ve kind of remained focused on how we build the systems here in the US. Again, that’s the number one priority. And then the other thing that we developed over the last two years was a digital platform. We have our own Burn Boot Camp app now. And that has live camps Monday through Friday. It has 11 or 12 other categories that our members can utilize. There are form videos of how to do a proper squat, how to do a proper push up, all of that. There’s foam rolling, there’s recovery, there’s kickboxing, there’s kids camp that I actually lead with my children. So again, like bringing our families into it. And so that app is now live and that’s just another way for us to reach communities that maybe wouldn’t get a burn boot camp because of their demographics or their medium income. The economic brick and mortar model wouldn’t work in their communities. But how can we still serve them in that white space and get them connected to the brand and feel that community that I talked about? And so that’s a huge opportunity for us. Like I said, it just launched at the end of last year and that’s also a feeder program into our gyms. Right? So, if we’re in an area that doesn’t have a burn, but we have a lot of our digital members, it’s then inviting them into the brick and mortar.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m curious how much of this is a real estate business in a way. Like, do you own your own property or you.

Morgan Kline:

We personally do not own any of our franchisee’s property. I think that’s more of a long-term goal for us. But one thing I didn’t mention here is we are 100% owners of the company, so we’ve never taken on private capital. We have no debt on the company. So, there’s a little bit of growth that we’ve had limited towards us because we haven’t brought on partners, which most of my competitors have brought on PE backing, or they’ve taken debt on the company, and they’ve just got a little bit more to fuel them to get in other areas of the business. We personally own our buildings that we occupy, and some of our franchisees own their buildings.

Melinda Wittstock:

There are so many different directions you could, you know. Morgan, this is very inspiring story. Congratulations on all your success.

Morgan Kline:

Thank you so much.

Melinda Wittstock:

I really want to thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Morgan Kline:

Thank you.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Morgan Kline is the co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp. She also hosts the podcast The Burn Boot Camp, so check that out on Podopolo where you can create and share your favorite moments of this or any podcast with our viral episode clip feature, and join us in the episode comments section so we can all take the conversation further with your questions and comments.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode…Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.