EliteFTS Spotlight is a new weekly feature here on EliteFTS.com where
Q&A member The Angry Coach interviews athletes and strength and sport coaches
from various disciplines in order to find out more about what they do, how they
train and how they do business.
This week’s subject is strength coach Elliott Hulse of St. Petersburg,
Florida. Check out his website at
www.hulsestrength.com.
Talk a little bit about who you are. What’s your history? How did you get
started in the training business?
I grew up on Long Island, and my uncle, my brother’s mother, came and lived
with us when I was about four years old. At the time, he was in martial arts,
and he ran marathons, and he became a bodybuilder. He also did gymnastics. He
was just an all-around ridiculous athlete – super strong, super fast, and being
four years old and having this guy living in my house when I was a kid was
ridiculous, because here I am, watching Superman and all these other superheroes
on TV doing all this stuff like jumping off things and breaking bricks with
their hands, and here’s my uncle doing the exact same things in my home. He’s
breaking bricks with his hands, he’s doing standing backflips, he walks on his
hands. It was literally like having a superhero live with me.
So, that had a huge impact on me, aside from the fact that I inherited a lot
of his genetics. I was a lot stronger and faster than a lot of the kids who were
in elementary school. I mean, he had me doing pushups, and chin-ups, and
climbing ropes, and teaching me how to do all the things that he was doing. That
just put me miles ahead athletically. As time went on, he started bodybuilding,
and I was getting older and playing football, and he started teaching me how to
powerlift and how to get bigger using weights in the same basement where he was
teaching me how to do pushups and martial arts when I was a kid.
My parents bought my brother and I a power rack, and he started teaching us
how to do deadlifts, squats, bench press, and I took a huge love to the idea of
getting stronger and faster on my own. For the very first time, as a sixteen
year old, I could actually see a return on investment in something. I sucked at
school, but when I weight trained, I looked in the mirror the next day and I was
bigger, and I gained ten pounds over the course of a month, I was pressing more
weight. I was hitting kids harder and becoming a better athlete, little by
little. I just became addicted to it.
I got so good at weight training that I started teaching the other kids on my
high school team how to lift. My house was right across the street from my high
school, so they would come over to my house and I’d teach kids how to squat,
bench and deadlift – the shit that most people don’t know how to do even today,
and I was teaching them when I was like sixteen or seventeen years old. My
parents’ basement was small and stuffy, but we’d have like eight or nine kids
down there, all lifting and getting stronger, and I was basically coaching them
all at the same time. That carried through to college at St. John’s. A lot of
the kids over the summer would come to my house, and we’d train in my basement.
That’s my real foundation as far as developing my abilities as a strength coach.
Then I went to grad school and started studying the science behind it, much
of which contradicted the barebones, basic stuff my uncle taught me when I was a
kid that worked really well. I was getting discouraged. I was getting good
grades, but I was wondering why the stuff I was learning in the textbooks was
not getting the results I got when I did the meathead stuff – the stuff that
didn’t take too much thinking, and didn’t have too much scientific terminology
behind it, but got results. I spent a lot of money studying with a lot of
strength and conditioning gurus, and guys that are supposedly at the top of our
industry, just so I could be the best. I continued to search and search and
search for what would make me the best strength coach out there, and I literally
flipped my lid one day after searching and searching, and even posturing – I was
positioning myself as someone I really wasn’t because I thought I had to do what
all these textbooks and these gurus and my professors were saying. One day I
just lost my mind and said, “F--k this.” I got introduced to strongman training
and saw guys pushing cars and flipping tires and lifting stones, and I was like,
“That’s training.” All that other stuff that I spent thousands and thousands of
dollars on went out the window, and I just went straight, hardcore strongman
meathead, and that’s how I get bigger, and that’s how I train my athletes.
Do you think strongman training is in keeping with the principles your
uncle taught you that first helped you out in your football career?
It’s sort of the icing on the cake. The foundation is exactly what it started
out as. It’s deadlift. It’s squat. It’s powerlifting. The foundation of my
program is powerlifting. I teach kids how to powerlift. My uncle taught me how
to powerlift, and when I was introduced to strongman training, I just fell in
love with the sport, and I decided that we’re gonna use this, number one as a
way of positioning myself in the industry, but number two, as a way to have a
hell of a lot of time, and still get kids super strong and fast doing things
that are enjoyable. The truth of the matter is, still, that the foundation of
the program is what it’s always been. It’s squats, it’s bench it’s deadlifting.
How did you end up starting a business and opening up your gym?
When I was on Long Island, I started working for a guy who was – he was a
really good strength coach, but I started to not agree with a lot of the things
he was teaching me because it was a lot of this alternative stuff that I
discovered doesn’t work. Anyway, I worked for him for a little while, but it was
like, “I want to continue being a strength coach, but I can’t do this,” but I
had a bit of a loyalty to him. I didn’t want to continue doing what I was doing,
but I didn’t want to compete with him. My parents decided to move down to
Florida, and – I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to do. My wife had just had a
baby, and I was not gonna have any type of career in the strength and
conditioning field where I was on Long Island at that time. I was like, “Screw
it, I’m gonna go down to Florida with my parents and start all over again.”
I went down there, and worked at the fluffiest, shiniest, chrome-iest garbage
place that I just totally despised. I started out there and was just personal
training. I sucked it up, I put on the grin, and I did what everybody else was
doing to sell personal training memberships and things of that nature, and I was
really good at it. I was good at selling personal training. So I basically put
my pride aside and sucked it up and did what they expected me to do for about
six months, knowing in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t be doing it forever.
I saved up enough money to put a down payment on a house, and, you know, it’s
funny...
I worked there, and I bought a house, and then I quit my job and decided to
start my own business. I had a house, a baby, my wife...and no job and I decided
to start my own business. I bounced around from gym to gym, offering my
services, and basically it was the same old boring bullshit until I had one
client who came to me one day and was like, “Elliott, you have a big background
in athletics. I know you want to train athletes, because this is what you’ve
always done.” At this point, I was down here for about two years, and I hadn’t
trained any athletes. I was basically just a personal training whore, you know?
He was like, “Why don’t you meet me and some of my friends down at the park and
take us through some speed and agility training down at the park and do some
more athletic stuff with us?”
I thought this was a great idea, so that Saturday, I filled up my van – I
went online and I started reading websites about training people with barebones
stuff, so I made some sandbags, and drove around going to junkyards. I got tires
and made tire sleds and slowly started accumulating trash, basically, and I’d
fill up my van with it and meet these guys at the park once a week and I trained
them with trash, basically – just tires and sandbags. They loved it, and I
started calling it “Strength Camp.” You know, there are a lot of “boot camps”
out there, but they’re all cardio camps with people jogging around in circles
and doing pushups. I had these guys dragging 80-90 pounds on a sled, and they
were loving it.
I created a website and started promoting it, and over the course of a few
months, it went from three or four buddies to like fifteen guys at any
particular time that would come out there and train. From there, I decided to
take it one step further, because I got tired of lugging all this stuff around –
there was literally a thousand pounds worth of stuff in my van that I’d drive
across the city every week. I started doing it three times a week, and just got
sick and tired of it, so I found a warehouse – it’s basically just a freakin’
garage – and I dumped all my stuff in there. We have an entire dead end, and a
field out back, and we started training here.
What kind of equipment purchases have you made since then?
Now, we’ve got two power racks and a ton of plates and stuff, but not much
more than that. I’ve got a bunch of flipping tires – the heaviest one’s about
650 – and dumbbells...every once in a while I’ll get a new toy, like we got some
kettlebells recently and some power wheels and a tornado ball, but really that’s
it. Sandbags...really the same trash we were using down at the park is what
we’ve got here. I mean, I don’t get too many other things. I replace things
every once in a while, because we beat the shit out of stuff. I’m kind of weird,
like, I don’t care for things like I should. You should see my car. I’m a slob.
So gym equipment’s the same thing. I let people drop stuff and throw stuff, so I
need to replace stuff all the time. Like, my kegs are all dented up, and I’m
gonna have to make a new set eventually. Oh, I’ve got stones, too. Mostly
strongman equipment. I’ve got a log. Stuff like that.
How do you market yourself?
One of the things I’ve discovered with marketing is to know exactly who
you’re talking to and tailor your message to them. It’s a unique breed of men
that’ll come and do this type of program. We’ve even got some women, but it’s
not for everyone. There was a time where I was giving people a two week free
trial, just so they could see, “Look, this is what it is. This is what you can
look for.” You’re gonna be sore, you’re gonna sweat, you’re gonna get dirty.
It’s just raw dog and rugged, so I make that very clear in my marketing. I put
pictures of the things we do, I put videos of the things we do, and I make it
very clear that this is not for people who enjoy listening to elevator music as
they walk on the treadmill at their local gym, and I sort of poke fun at that.
Also, know who your nemesis is. I speak of that type of stuff with disdain,
so when you read my website, you know it’s either for you or it’s not.
What’s worked best for you in terms of marketing for your local clients?
The two things that have given my biggest return on investment have been the
website, obviously, but also street signs. I’ve paid for real advertising, but
it was a total waste of time. This little street signs, like the ones you see
when you’re getting off the parkway. I throw those up in the city every once in
a while. They take them down, but I get more leads from that than from anything.
It’s funny, because if you capture people’s information that they’re even
slightly interested...I’ve had guys that are reading my emails that are
literally two blocks away from my gym, and they’ve been reading my emails for a
year before they get the balls to say, “Okay, I’m gonna come try this out.” At
that point, it’s an easy sell because they feel like they know you. They walk in
and they’re like, “Hey Elliott! Weren’t you talking to me earlier today?” And
I’m like, “No, man. That was my video.” It’s about building a rapport and
building that type of relationship with people even though they don’t know you.
What’s the deal with the street signs?
I have little systems for everything, so if someone sees my sign, my phone
number is the first thing on there. If they see my phone number, they’re
generally gonna get my voicemail. My voicemail tells them that if you’re calling
about our men’s fitness boot camp, leave your phone number and blah, blah, blah.
I’m prepared, so I call them back and say, “This is the program. Why don’t I
send you out some more information. Take a look over it. Then they go to my
website, and when they sign up to get their two free weeks, I have all their
information.”
I don’t like selling. Not because I’m not good at it – when I worked at the
other gym, I was selling off the hook. I don’t like selling because I don’t want
to have to convince anybody of my service. It’s almost like an artist with his
piece of art, and having people look at it and give their critique. I don’t want
you to critique. I don’t want to sell this to you. I want you to come, I want
you to sweat, and when your two weeks is up, if you don’t want to do it, you
need to come to me to say, “I don’t want to join,” because I already have all
your information. And for you to come to me and say, “Hey, I don’t want to join”
is probably not going to happen after you realize what you get. The only reason
you wouldn’t want to do this is if you’ve lost your mind. Once you realize that
hard work is going to get you the results you’ve been looking for, and you’ve
done this for two weeks, there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason why you wouldn’t
join.
Can you touch on what you do online? How has your online business worked
out for you?
First, anyone who tells you that you can get rich quickly online is feeding
you a load of crap. It doesn’t happen like that. Maybe there are guys who are
doing that. I don’t know. But for me and any of the guys I’m talking to, that
are grinding it the way we’re grinding it, we’re not making millions of dollars
right away online. Everything I do is online-based, so I probably spend maybe
50-70% of my time doing stuff online.
The quicker you can get people off-line, the better relationship you can get
with the people who subscribe to your emails or buy your stuff. What I mean by
that is how quickly I can make this person feel like a real person. So, for
example, if you buy my football strength training program, or you get my free
DVD or something like that, I’ll call you on the phone. I want to get you
off-line quickly so we can develop a relationship, and that way, that person
will continue to buy my products or stay in my program. Call people, answer
people’s emails, invite people to come over. I started doing clinics and stuff
like that, and it’s great to actually meet the people who’ve been buying your
stuff and watching and reading your emails and things like that for months or
years.
You have to make a lot of different offers for different people. You have to
offer clinics. You have to offer membership programs. You have to offer big
packages and little teaser products. You have to offer a whole slew of different
price points in order to bring different people into your funnel in different
ways.
What services do you offer at your gym?
The truth is, I want to do as little service as possible right now. I have a
6 AM men’s group in the morning, and I do a 6 PM group for men in the evening,
and those are the only two classes I offer for fitness. The athletes are hit or
miss, because they’re either in-season or out of season. They’ve got so many
other obligations, so I stick them in when their time allows. Right now I’ve got
a bunch of football players in at 7. At 5, I’m training a bunch of baseball
players, but in another month or two, they’re gone.
As far as fitness is concerned, it’s straight-up classes. I don’t like taking
more than 6-10 guys in a class, so I try to limit that to around two hours a
day. That way, I can use the rest of my time marketing. The majority of my
workday is spent writing, making videos, making DVD’s, and providing information
to increase my perceived value.
Let’s say you have some guy come in from some random sport that you don’t
really have a class for? Like, maybe, an MMA fighter or something like that?
I had a guy like that come in today! It depends on his needs. Like, this guy
in particular is deconditioned and he’s weak. Let me tell you right now, the
fitness camps I do for the men are NOT a joke. They’re not bullshit. I mean, if
we adjust the intensities right, you can come in and you’d have a hard time. If
I do them, I hurt. So the workouts are serious, they’re well structured, and
they’re intense. For a guy like that, who’s technically sound but needs to get
stronger, I’m just gonna stick him in with the guys in my fitness class, believe
it or not, until he needs something more specific. This guy in particular is
really digging what we’re doing. I’m the only guy in the city that does anything
of this nature, so my suggestion to him was to join the fitness class for the
men. Once he saw what the workout was about today, he realized that he needed
it.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I’ll give you a general idea of what my model looks like. The name Strength
Camp is gonna get a lot bigger. I just started a DVD of the month program, and
I’m really taking the idea of Strength Camp and Real Fitness For Men to the next
level. I really want to make it a movement. I want it to be almost like a
culture, and I’m in the middle of writing a manifesto about it right now.
There really is too much bullshit out there when it comes to fitness for
guys. Men want to feel like real men when they train, and there are not too many
guys – generally speaking, they’re either ex-military or ex-athletes or current
athletes...entrepreneurs, CEO’s, and guys like that who are usually high
achievers that come here and realize, “Oh my God, what have I been missing out
on?” They can’t believe that what they’ve been doing for the past three years
has even been termed “fitness,” when they can go to the gym and not even sweat.
I really want to take this idea of men working hard for fitness – really getting
their hands dirty again and feeling like real men – to, like a tribe, you know?
Just people who are really dedicated to this idea who do this worldwide.
I’d like to see men get a little tougher. I think there’s way too much
pussification going on, and fitness is just the tip of the iceberg. I want to
talk about other things, including personal responsibility, relationships and
family. I even want to talk about business. Challenges. Things that have been
watered down and feminized. You know, most men are just really limp-wristed and
unhappy.
As far as training athletes is concerned, I’ll continue doing that, and
they’ll continue to be attracted to this type of training, so I’ll always be
here. I’ve positioned myself as the guy to go to to get bigger and stronger, and
help football players, and also with strongman. You know, I continue to compete,
and when the kids see you can flip tires here, it’s visually appealing and it’s
a lot of fun.
We’re in the entertainment business. You might call yourself a strength and
conditioning coach or a fitness expert, but you’re really in the entertainment
business. Your job is to entertain people. It’s to make them enjoy themselves,
be happy when they’re there, and happy enough to talk about you when they leave.
So when they come to my gym, I’m basically putting on a show. And people like to
do things like flipping tires and dragging sleds and pushing trucks. It’s
obviously going to get them in shape, but a big part of it is that appeal. It’s
entertaining.
