Burn Boot Camp Founder Devan Kline on What Being an Entrepreneur Really Means

Audio Transcription

During today’s interview with Devan Kline, I made the promise that I would throw down a rap, that I would record a rap song for him just for him, it customized rap song that would fit him like a glove to show him some of that thrive time show burn boot camp love. I tell I tell you what, Devan, Devan client is a phenomenal entrepreneur and he has great hair. Andrew, have you seen his hair? I have seen his hair. It’s great hits. Incredible. His wife, Morgan Kline, great entrepreneur. Their brand is explosive. You gotta check it out. Very few people open up a franchise ever. Very few people can franchise their system, let alone open up hundreds of locations in just four years. Burn boot camp is a phenomenon and it deserves

a custom wrap knowledge.

Okay, sir, Ma’am asked to be interviewed, the founders, both Devan, it’s the beginning and how are we going to this content? And again, how did cut Benjamin, this is the business powered by self discipline and just getting it, but it’s convert what? We’re 300 plus boot camps with the burn. Some of the best people that I’ve ever had on the show. You have a client, we’ll get client here we go there, the parents up next well and Timarron when they go out. Stay like that. Half that Mexican, the fitness business and Nocardia SCM and Devan has great hair. Now three two one camp is the with the burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn. Just keep this tip with the burn pit.

On today’s show we are joined with the founder of burn boot camp, Devan Kline number 65,000 worldwide clients with over 194 open franchise locations and just four short years of franchising. Devan Kline and good people at burn boot camp must be doing something right and on today’s show he shares with us about the mindset of successful entrepreneurs, what being an entrepreneur really means, how to scale a business and much, much more.

Sam shows don’t need a celebrity in a writer to introduce the show. This show dies to math eight kids, Koch created by two different women, 13 mode time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time. To what? Yes, yes, yes and yes doctor. See, I am fired up. Today’s guest humped up

guys. Guy, he’s a go. Give me Jack z this, this guest. We had them on a while back and the listeners just loved this guy. He actually is a former professional baseball player, turned founder of a franchise that is growing all over the country. It’s, he does his franchise has caught fire. It’s burn boot camp. We have the founder, the cofounder burn boot camp, Devan Kline, Morgan Klein, Devan and Morgan. Welcome onto the show.

Hey, welcome guys. Welcome. What’s going on? I am so excited to be here. I really am. Okay. And this is great for the second time for me coming on and I have to tell you that, um, my kids just had an emergency call and literally five minutes before this, uh, Morgan had to go take care of my six son. So I apologize it today, she’s not here, but um, you know, she is, she’s way cooler than I am. So maybe you don’t want me to

with want to have me on anymore. I don’t know. Captain Morgan, hello from us here and, uh, DoctorZ and I, we have, we have four tough questions for you today because, uh, we’re on your website right now and we’re noticing every time I go to your websites, even since I’ve interviewed you inner, even since I’ve interviewed you do last time, you’ve added a lot of new franchisees. Tell me how many units do you have open now and how many territories are reserved?

Yeah, man, it’s crazy. So thanks for asking. So we actually, this last month had one of our biggest month ever in this next month we’ll have an even bigger month. We opened our 194th unit. Yes,

sure.

Oh, excited about. It’s been crazy growth. And by the end of May, we project have over 215 so it’s going to be a, we planned to have like nine locations open in one weekend over the next six weeks in one of the next six weeks. So that’s a big win for us.

194 you said

194 today? Yup. Just open one 94.

Yeah.

Ah, the hundred 94th, uh, location opened in home in Wisconsin,

Wisconsin. Wow. Cheese when you joined

it was constant is asleep or state breath. I had no idea that it would be like, it would be just a state that we call it bleed blue. The state just bleeds blue. Sorry. Badger fans. I know y’all are red, but we have over 15 locations there and every one of them is thriving. And the, we have two powerhouse sisters, um, that are that own pretty much the entire state and they just absolutely kill it.

Well, Devan, I want to, I want to ask you this, if you’re, you’re aware, I, have you been to Wisconsin? If you spend a lot of time in Wisconsin?

I went to the Lacrosse Wisconsin opening. Uh, I’ve been to about, let’s see, I’ve been to Kenosha, Milwaukee. Yeah, I’ve been pretty much everywhere. Madison, all of them.

Okay. Well you know this to be true then cause I’m from, I’m from Minnesota, which is the next door neighbor of Wisconsin of kid brother. There is an insane number of bars in Wisconsin. So I think you’d have a lot of fertile ground there for the fitness industry. A lot of people that need it. Have you seen how many bars there are?

It’s cheese curds. It’s football and it’s bars. It’s beer. That’s it. I mean that’s the three pass times in Wisconsin for sure.

Now, how many in burn boot camp now? That’s right. That’s right. It’s an, it’s a B. So now you have 194 that are open. You’re planning on having toured and 15 units here by the end of May. How many are reserved? I mean, do you have more than our reserve? They haven’t opened yet that aren’t going to open before me.

Yeah, so there’s 372 as we sit today, we’re doing about 10 to 15 each month. So the remainder of those, that one 94 to three 72 they’re getting leases. They’re recruiting the best trainers in the country. They’re taking their time on that. Super important to our brand, and they’re scoping out their real estate, getting ready to impact the communities we go into.

We have a lot of people that listen to this show z who want to buy businesses. They say, I get it. I have one business, I want to buy another one. Can you give us the quick pitch? I’ll sayZ and I went to burn boot camp and we say, you know what number? But we’re interested in buying a fitness business. Give us, give us the, the, the, the pitch, the overview of why people are wanting to buy these burn boot camps.

Well, burn boot camps just much more than a gym. You know, we have a, we have a belief and, and when you have a belief in you have a community, a culture that stands for something, then people become attracted to that belief. Like, and so burn boot camp just had this vision of this world where people can be empowered to love themselves for who they are today. Because so many people are on this like emotional recession and, and, and when you’re, when you’re happy with yourself today and you’re excited and you accept yourself for who you are, then you have greater prospects of the future. And so we’ve just really taking it up a step or two or three further past the physical nature of it. Fitness is just a gateway for us to become a, you know, emotionally healthy and get mental clarity and have that vitality and the energy that, you know, we can, we can give to the other areas of our lives.

And I think largely it’s the community in most, most companies that, you know, we are, you know, quote unquote competitors with, um, yeah, they, they have workouts that are amazing and they have technology that’s amazing, but communities and afterthought and when we started in a parking lot, all I had was myself and 21 women here in Huntersville, North Carolina that had each other and the hot Carolina Sun. And then we figured out how to make a workout on top of that. So I think that’s the main difference. Then, you know, if somebody wanted to invest in us, they be investing in to their community. A burn is definitely a staple of every community we’re in. Because when you’re there, you know, everyone’s there for the same reason. You can be a nurse, a doctor, a firefighter, it doesn’t matter. You’re not Jenny’s mom. When you’re there, you’re Sarah, you know, or you’re not someone’s dad, your clay. Uh, and it gives you a chance to be yourself for a moment.

Now the average location z, the average gross revenue of a burn boot camp is $460,000. I believe. And you guys have been doing this for for four years. What kind of investment, if z wanted to open up andZ , you might want to have to hear about this if you, cause he wanted to open up a series of these. I know you can’t make statements of a claims about the profitability because it’s a franchise and it’s regulated by the federal government and such. We can talk about that gross revenue, but how much money are we talking about if we wanted to get involved in owning one.

So anywhere from about a buck 50 to three 50, somewhere in there. Investment range depending on the market that you go into. And it’s cool that you mentioned that for 60 number cause it is the gross average unit sales per year last year, but this year we just got our STD n which is our franchise disclosure document and we went from four 60 to 571 at the needy and then come back.

Oh Wow.

Yes. And we are uh, well, I mean do you have to think about it? We just started four years ago. So when you look at even the numbers for 62 five 71 those are, those units are still two years old, a year old and it hadn’t hit maturity yet. So I’m really excited about the next few years and how that number’s going to grow. But single units, one 53 50

and I know in the franchise disclosure document for the thrivers out there, there aren’t aware of this. You can’t really disclose how much profit you would make because everyone’s going to run their own business differently. Some will be owner operators. Do you have to operate the business on a daily basis to own burn boot camp or getting kicked me something that you buy and then have somebody else run it for you.

You can add, you can buy it, have somebody else run it for you. But what we really like to see is that you, you, you, you’re there stashing behind buying it. That it’s not just a passive investment. So if like you’re a purebred entrepreneur and you’re just trying to allocate it and asset portfolio and you know, diversify your income and that’s your goal, then it’s probably not going to work out for you. Cause like I said, we’re built on that community. We really want people who, you know, want to change lives. Our best franchisees are people who just seek that, um, a deeper purpose and a deeper meeting with the work that they do every day. And this is just such a great opportunity to do so.

Well tell us about a Franchisee of the week. That’s really, I mean, you have to, you have so many great people in your system and then nothing’s going to work unless your people do, you know? So tell us about maybe a franchisee you can think about today or you can think of today that’s really just getting it done.

So I want to, I want to make that conversation can grow in and go with my Wisconsin Gals, Tina shoemaker and Sanja panel. But I can’t today because they get so much props in our organization and they just do so well. So I’m gonna have to take it out to the west coast.

Got It.

Because we, we started in Charlotte, right. And we, you, you can’t even buy a burn boot camp in North Carolina and South Carolina. But out in California, we’re kind of a new brand. We only have four locations open out there and be Costa Mesa, California location, Shannon Boyer and Kelly Hall. I was just out there, uh, before my seven day trip to Costa Rica. And those gals pioneered the brand on the west coast. They are killing it. Uh, it goes to Mesa, Newport beach. They have over 350 members at their gym and they are just, they’re just doing such a great job in a tough environment out there in California and I cannot wait for us to as a headquarter team to come up behind them and support them even more than we already have. You know, cause they just worked so hard. So we’re looking to expand in California and they will leave in us since day one and and shout out to their husbands as well who just who bleed blue so

that they’re the people. Give us an update I want to use, I would love for you to share what makes California kind of a tougher environment to open up a franchise in. But before you, you answered that question about what makes California tougher environment to be in business in a Z. I want to queue up some west coast music here, kind of we’ll pull play this underneath the track here. So Devan you can talk over the track. Let me get this right here for you. Let me just get the west coast music going here. Here we go. Let me know.

Let me get, okay, there we go. Leave with, pull it down a little bit here. There we go. Okay. I get what makes it tough to do business over there on the west coast. Hold on, let me feel that beat. Hold on. Here we go guys. Come on now. You know what makes will make the difference is a lot of times the landlords are going to be looking for uh, some, there’s some serious parking issues first and foremost out in those markets, like Los Angeles, Orange County, and you know, you’re close to the beach or in, you know, La County. There’s some parking permit issues that go on, but nothing we can’t get by. The income tax was obviously a, a hurdle for any business in California. But at the end of the Emmy, we all know that, but hey, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the sunshine, it’s the Gold Coast, right? Golden coast. We want to, we want to make sure that we’re represented out there and those are little hurdles that we can get over. You know, it’s competitive there, but it’s competitive everywhere. And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize is that it is competitive all over the country, not just in California, but people got to look good your round.

Right. So there’s always bikini season in southern California. So if I were to ask you, what is your opinion on how many you can, let’s say the United States is full up with burn boot camps, how, what would that number look like? 1,500 what’s your, what do you think your, your saturation rate is?

So we do really good in like tertiary markets where, you know, other, other fitness franchises might not go because they might not have the, you know, the top tier demos. So we can, we can, we can fit into more communities because we’re willing to go in those markets. We actually do really, really well in those markets because of the community culture and element. Uh, so we predict that we have 1,250 territories across. Right. Wow. We can, Yep. And so we’re now, we just as of like two months ago, we’re getting ready to expand into Canada. We’re fully legal. We’re going to direct franchise in Canada as well. Oh, don’t say we should end up happening little under 2000 gyms between

the United States and Canada. It’s, I can just use some advice. I’d recommend you stay the heck out of Quita.

It’s our, it’s our neighbor or city and I know you are. You’re a good guy. You’re not going to say that on this show. You’re, you’re not going to say we’re not gonna open one in Coweta but z, could you explain him? Why could we does maybe not a market he would want to look into yet? To me it’s developing, but why right now? I don’t know cause that, what’d he say when we say tertiary? What size is that when you, when you go down to us, but how many people at ten thousand fifteen thousand forty 50,000 what? How big is that? How many teeth per head do you need to have to have a franchise and that city?

Oh, an average of 14. That’s an arbitrary number. I have no idea. Um, we need, we need to have 50,000 people because we need to,

there you go.

The income can fluctuate.

Okay. Um, that’s pretty cool. So if somebody’s out there since of themselves, uh, Kinda thinking about getting into your franchise. Yeah. What do they do? What do they do? I mean, what did they just get a homing pigeon and crank up some snoop Dogg and you just kind of jam out while you marinate on this podcast and then what happens? And then what happened?

And then they send their message on their horse across the land.

Oh, Nice Pony Express. I like that

judge. That burn boot camp.com is a great place to go. I’m on Instagram and you can direct message me on Instagram. I answer all my dms. Uh, so Devan. Klein on Instagram and you know, we just really social, we’d go to our Facebook page. Anywhere you can find us online or you’ve got to do is message us. We have a great team of engagement, people that are on it all the time ready to ready to speak with people and we’re getting anywhere from 400 to 500 leads a month at this point. And so, uh, we, we try to take care of each and every one of them.

So if I got an Instagram and DMG and asked you a question like what hair products are you using cause your hair is bought this plot on, I mean it’s pretty, pretty incredible hair. Really spot on. It’s nice, it’s well, well done. So obviously some heavy product load right there. What, what, what, how would you answer that or would you just say, okay, there’s one I’m really not going to answer

four step process. First you gotta have you gotta condition or you got to use conditioner, you got to get out, you’ve got a towel dry.

Oh Wow.

And then you got to put product, then you blow dry.

Ah,

then you’ve got to lock it in. You got to take that extra hold hairspray, just lock it right in.

That sounds like five steps. I mean, I think it was six page. I’m just throwing that out there like a happier Ivan Drago. I mean I haven’t had one that was going to be like, I just want to go to the Instagram to see his hair down. I want to tap into your brain because you are a fitness expert. Yes. But you also are business expert. So give us a, I give a quick tip to us for all the thrivers for all the thrivers out there who um, you know, are trying to get that traction and that momentum in their business because you had to build one successful burn boot camp before you could sell the plan to a bunch of people. I mean you had to make it work for yourself first. What is one quick tip for being more effective in your business that you could give all the thrivers today?

I think people underestimate how much work that it actually takes. Entrepreneurship is this buzzword that a lot of people who are interested in business called themselves an entrepreneur. But I just want people to really understand and know what an entrepreneur is and what the definition is and just see if you match up against that and it’s okay. I think people need to know it’s okay to not be an entrepreneur like it’s okay to be the fourth person or fifth person at a big company. But you need to know yourself. Self awareness is the most important element to understanding whether you’re a good entrepreneur or not or a fit for entrepreneurship. And it’s first and foremost, you gotta be, you gotta be risk adverse. You’ve gotta be willing to like, you know, like Elon Musk and he did a hundred and 16th something million exit and bought two companies, Tesla space x and had to pay his own rent with like is the bottle he took back to the store or something.

Yeah,

true story. I mean that wasn’t spot on. It wasn’t, but it was close enough and you know, it’s just that amount of risk. Adversion you need to believe in yourself so much that you’re willing to put every ounce of a resource in it, whether it be a blue resource in terms of like your time or are humans, uh, or, or green in terms of your money. And that’s, that’s number one. Number two is you’ve got it like the time. What are you sacrificing? Because I know a lot of people that DM me and they’re like, Hey Devan, I love what you’ve done with the business. Can you teach me how in the first thing I ask them is tell me how you spend all hundred 60 hours in a week. And when people are sleeping for 10 hours or there, you know, watching TV for two hours or they’re scrolling on Facebook for an hour and a half mindlessly. It’s like those are the times when everyone else who was an entrepreneur are actually working and you’re just not. And you’re saying that you want something so badly, but your behaviors don’t align with the words that you’re saying. So it’s spending every waking minute being obsessed with the craft and being obsessed with building. And then the last part of it is like, and I also learned this for baseball. It’s you can’t get too high. You can’t get too low. You’ve got to

in the middle. You know what I mean? So excited

when you have a great month and then go into, you know, manic depression when you know you’ve lost money or you were in the red for a month and it’s just understanding that the longterm is what you’re working for and you’ve got to pay your bills and you, you know, you got to make sure you get by. But it’s the long term that you’re working for. And that quote, quarter over quarter or month over month, success doesn’t really matter as long as you’re covering your foundation. So I would say that those three things, people need to look at those and say, what am I really, if I’m being honest with myself, am I really an entrepreneur or do I belong working for an entrepreneur?

Now this is something that, uh, um, I you didn’t, just to share, but I know it’s happening behind the scenes because you said you want to look at it. And make sure that you’re risk averse. Does he hear that part? The risk averse part? Oh yeah. It was beautiful as well set. But your wife, um, Morgan has been with you every step of the way, right? I mean Devan, she’s been with you. Right? So in your case, I think your wife has to be risk adverse to, I mean she has to be willing to support you and even though I couldn’t harass Morgan on today’s show is I plan to see, I will harass her soon. But I mean you haven’t talked about the, her role in the business cause I think that she, I mean I know a lot of guys, a lot of gals who are very entrepreneurial, but they’re married to somebody who will not tolerate, they can’t handle the risk. Can you talk about Morgan’s role with burn boot camp?

So Morgan is definitely less less of a risk taker than I am. But what we, what we made up a packed on when we first got like, cause we’d been, we’ve known each other our whole lives, but when we first decided to do this, well we made a pact on his was I was just like Morgan, look I, and like so ambitious and being an entrepreneur to me is like if you told me I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to breathe and you would literally suffocate my life. And I need you to know that if we’re going to step forward into, in, into this, that the expectation that you have to have of me is that I’m going to be crazy. I’m going to take risks, I’m probably going to lose money here and there, but I promise you over the long run that I will do whatever it takes to make this thing work for us.

And then she shared her expectations. Right. And we just knew each other from the get like it was, there was after that you have that conversation, you just know each other from the get. And I think a lot of times, um, I think just being honest, up front with your spouse and just sharing your feelings as hard as it is for us guys to do that. Just sharing your feelings and letting your wife or if you’re a wife, letting your husband, if you’re of a partner, just letting them know how much it means to you and how it’s connected to you emotionally and to your own happiness. Because at the end of the day, all that person wants for you and them is to be happy together. And if that means poured it in 18 hours a day, sleep and six and not, you know, taking vacations, then that’s the extra expectations that you have to set up front. Uh, so I would say share your expectations with each other, but don’t have expectations of one another. And that’s the key.

What time did you wake up today?

Uh, for, I did a five k this morning. I woke up at three 50 and got on. I got on the treadmill this morning about four 10 and did a five k. So I was, uh, I decided to challenge myself physically because I haven’t had a physical challenge since training for baseball. And then a couple of bodybuilding shows that’s not my environment. And then I haven’t had anything for a couple of years to like motivate me. So I just, I woke up and I’m like, well, I’m going to start training for five ks. And then I announced on my Instagram, I’m like, road to the races, everybody tells me all the five ks that are around you and now I’ll train board and we’ll come, we’ll do it together. And so I just started training for that morning

cause he didn’t even wake up today at three 45, a six K I woke up at three 45. I mean, it’s not sure what, what’d you say again?

It’s not my nature. I want to preface this with like, it’s nothing against bodybuilders y’all, but like in order to be the best in the world or be, which I don’t get involved in anything, I don’t have at least have the opportunity to be the best. Not Saying I would. Uh, but you have to, you have to, you have to do drugs. And I’m not into that and nothing, not taking away anything from the people that are in that sport. They all openly do it. You still have to work really, really, really hard to do what they do. I’m just not into it. Um, so that turned me off and then I just, I I, it’s such a selfish move. Uh, when you have a large business and family, it’s a very selfish thing to do because everything is revolved around your diet and your exercise and your, you know, semi pissed off all the time.

So I did it twice and I stopped doing it because I didn’t like the person I was becoming. Well, okay. Now my final question for you is a quick fitness tip would just say that the listeners out there, the average listener is an entrepreneur. They are working there on average. These guys are getting up at 5:00 AM Devan and average entrepreneur’s probably working until 5:00 PM not taking lunch breaks. You know, what are a couple things they should take out of their diet that will help them to lose weight, healthily,

take out of their diet? Let’s see. I would say that a lot of people tried to do these crazy diets like Keto or intermittent fasting or carb cycling or Paleo, and they’ve never actually eaten an appropriate amount of calories with clean foods first. Like you know, you’re trying to, like, you’re trying to like run the Boston marathon and you’ve never ran in your life before. You know, that’s the first thing you’re trying to go do. There’s nothing against all of those diets. Look, at the end of the day, all they are is just different ways for people to stay in a calorie deficit. That’s it. Because you could eat 5,500 calories of chicken and Broccoli if you’re 170 pound person and you’re going to gain weight because you’re just giving your body too much of that energy and it has to go store somewhere. So I would say when you’re looking to get healthy, like just start with eating vegetables and fruits and lean meats and nuts and, and, and really understanding how many calories that your body needs of those things. First, not worrying about the sugars that are in the fruit or like you know, going levels into detail on like mangoes versus bananas. Just eat healthy foods in a, in a, in a calorie allotment that you feel good, that you feel vital and then once you can master that, that’s like step one. Then once you need a, you can go do carb cycling or intermittent fasting or these other things. So oftentimes it’s, it’s people know exactly what to eat. They just don’t execute on it. Right.

Hmm.

How, but they don’t have the purpose behind it.

Devan Kline, I appreciate your time more than you know what, if you’re out there and you’re in the Tulsa area, there’s a burn boot camp located z right next to us at the riverwalk. Yeah, there is one, there is somebody out there. I’m sure you guys have different specials and promotions from time to time, but if somebody does go on a Google search, Tulsa Burn boot camp, uh, Devan, how much does it cost for the first month to try out burn boot camp?

It’s actually the best promotion we’ve ever done in burn. We’re testing it out just to see if it works. We don’t know if it’s gonna work or not, but we’re doing $59 for four weeks at all of our gyms. Wow. And right now the genx vocation is right there, right next to you guys, right?

Yes. Yes. Well, I’ll tell you what, Devan

and Norman’s coming soon too. Bye Norman.

Really boomer sooner. Unbelievable. Well, we might get did we got to get Devan out to one of our conferences? We’ve got a high pressure and passing. Get aggressively overtime. Just passively aggressive and will say stuff like, we’ll see you soon. We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see. And here and don’t forget

going to after, after I come, I still get to be on the show. Is that a deal?

Yeah. Yes. Then. And then we just need the big, the big cardboard cutout of you cause that’s all I’m looking for. Just a big cause. It do we need that kind of beauty in our office. What we do, we can, we can put it open where’s faces and we have his hair on there that when people can go walk up, put their face and it’s a great idea. Picture with his hair and then they’ll feel better about it. That’s a great idea. We’ll talk more about it next week. Devan Kline, thank you for joining us, my friend. Hope you have a great day.

You guys are so awesome. Always a pleasure. Love listening to the show. Everybody needs to listen to the thrive time on podcasts. I’m an Itunes Guy, I’m always there. Thanks for entertaining and also informing your the best stuff.