Ed Haynes is the founder of Coastal Fitness Performance Training in Hong Kong. He is a former Hong Kong international rugby player who is the Founder and Head of Health and Performance at Coastal Fitness Performance Training. He is also a Crossfit athlete and has competed in international competition.
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Ed: I think the whole concept of community is creating something more than just the training itself. I think the training itself, and I guess that means the level of the coaching, the facility and the programming I guess. If you can kind of call that to training. That is still 100% one of the most important thing when it comes to setting up a gym. For anyone to really commit to something long term, for the general population, there needs to be something more than that because everyone wavers between high motivation and low motivation. I guess in times of low motivation that they need that something extra that pulls them back to the gym every time and that’s where we see the importance of community.
Kevin: How is it going everyone? Welcome to the Fitness Founders podcast. I’m Kevin Mannion, VP Marketing here at Glofox. This week I chatted to Ed Haynes, the founder of Coastal Fitness Performance Training in Hong Kong. In this episode, we talk about the challenges of setting up a studio on a major city, tailoring group trained in different types of members and building a business around human relationships. Let’s get started.
Ed Haynes, welcome to the show.
Ed: Good to be here, Kev.
Kevin: Great to have you, Ed. So let’s get started. You got a fitness business in Hong Kong now. Prior to that you had a career as a rugby professional. Do you want to maybe tell me about that career first and what led you into the fitness business?
Ed: Yes, certainly. I guess growing up in Hong Kong as kids who play rugby we idolize the Hong Kong Sevens which a lot of people know of around the world. Really big. One of the biggest in the Seven circuits, and that was kind of the catalyst for me as a kid playing a lot of sports. You know, that was my dream, to represent the Hong Kong national team and play in front of the stadium in front of 40,000 people. I kind of had that as a bit of a drive from the back burner, play rugby through school, got asked to join the national team. As a 17 year old, very not ready for that whatsoever, but it was a great experience and nice to know I was kind of given a taste of, you can potentially get this goal that you’ve been working for all these years. And then went to university in UK and came back to Hong Kong fully committed to pursuing the career a rugby player. And the contracts at that time in Hong Kong were actually offering full time contracts so kind of I had timing on my side, plus graduated in uni, perfect time, and having all these drive and ambition. So yeah, played and signed on the national team as part of sports institute for a good part of 3-4 years.
We were talking before about what kind of got me into S and C and strength conditioning is that I was just a really broken athlete. Made a lot of poor choices in my early days strength conditioning. I think it is hard to blame on a certain coach, I just didn’t have probably the guidance that was necessary for a 16-17 year old walk into the gym for the first time. Ended with 4 or 5 years of really bad luck and some pretty major [unclear – 03:10] on the body. And I think every time rehabilitation coming back from that, you know, I was spending more and more time in the gym working with physios and our strength coach more so than actually I was spending in the field and I just got really interested in that whole process, the whole journey of rehabilitation and strengthening and becoming physically and mentally more able. I think very slowly but surely that started to take over as my passion. I also had a bit of a stall to what stage to would be if this professional career didn’t work out, or at the end of the day what would I then want to pursue next. I’ve always had a passion for coaching, I’ve always had a passion for strength conditioning and working with people so just kind of made sense to pursue this industry. And so actually, almost at the same time starting as a professional rugby player I actually set up Coastal Fitness. It was kind of like a passion project that was on the side to actually being a professional rugby player. And then those first two years as a player I realized that actually this was my passion. I was spending more and more time working with clients and building the business, and enjoying the rugby side of things less and less. And then I got to 25, 26 years old and made a decision to stop rugby all together and go full time to Coastal Fitness.
Kevin: Okay, so you had Coastal Fitness running on the side while you are playing rugby, so you’re maybe able to educate yourself along the way and even to becoming a business owner while you continue to play and went through those struggles?
Ed: Absolutely, yeah. I think those are the struggles that many business owners go through now I just happen to have. Yeah, it was rugby out of business but, you know, rugby was also very demanding on the body. It was always really early morning training session in the gym and then in the afternoon training session that might be skill, speed based, and then night time training session that usually finishes around 9:30-10:00 o’clock. And so, squeezing in running a business and training clients between all those hours. You know, I made the classic business owner mistake who just burning the candle on both ends. And one year in that journey I was just a zombie. I didn’t have any energy or motivation to push rugby anymore, just get into trainings and not wanting to be there. Similarly I have all these drive and passion to run this business but I just had nothing left, you know, sleep quality was awful. I was getting sick every week and more and more injuries are actually starting to sprout up. Yeah, it was just happen to be rugby that was this thing that’s taking me over the edge.
Kevin: Was it difficult? I know there were injuries involve but was it still a difficult decision to go full time into business where there are certain fears you had before you made that leap?
Ed: You know, not really. I think I fought the temptation to stop playing rugby for about a year. Kind of my last year playing I already checked out mentally, but I was convince by the coaching team to sign for another year. I reluctantly said yes and regret that decision the entire season. So by the end of that last season I was very much come to terms with the fact that I was done with it. Yeah, there was certain elements I knew I’d miss like I played team sports my entire life, having the boys with you all the time, and having that friendship, and everything else in life. That was definitely something that I’m going to miss but the whole competitive side of rugby I was actually able to replace with cross fit. I transitioned pretty much within the same year into competitive cross fit which in rugby had given me the pre-requisite to be a cross fitter. So I was quite fortunate in that regard on basic move from one sport to another, and was able to feel that competitive void pretty much straight away.
Kevin: Got it. And what stage was the business at when you quit the rugby career and focus down, at what stage was that compared to where it is today?
Ed: We are going to have our 10th year anniversary this year. We’ve had a physical facility for this is now our 6th year, so with the first four years of business was essentially a freelance business. You know, myself and by this point transitioning out rugby I had a team of three other coaches. We’d essentially dry run our cars to outdoor spaces, studios, people’s houses, all over Hong Kong all day, every day, working all the schools, going to businesses and offices. And essentially that was a cool business for four years. It was actually great business model because overheads were low. We don’t have to worry about rent or any of the things that we have to worry about now. And it was really driven by passion more than anything else. You know, we had a team of four people who love what they were doing, who love working with people, and three of those four are still there today. Yeah, that is kind of where we’re at. I guess one of the goal when retiring for rugby was to then be able to put my resources towards opening up our first facility, and that then happened in the next 12 months after stopping.
Kevin: Initially, those customers you had, where they people you had through sports or they say more, or new people beginners, or what was the initial customer base?
Ed: We were really fortunate and I think this is why we were able to be quite successful from the start with no fairly shorty business practices because at that time in that first four years we were doing a lot primarily personal training, one on one coaching. We’re doing some remote coaching so we’re basically doing online programming to people mainly around Hong Kong but a few overseas as well. We basically started group training primarily outdoors. And the group training sessions that we run, we are running these every day, sometimes twice a day. And by that point, the point before moving to our first facility we had almost 300 clients training with Coastal Fitness on a weekly basis. So whilst we didn’t have a physical headquarters we did have 300 people that week in, week out working with us. So when we opened up the gym we’re able to transition right away.
Kevin: And for those who don’t know, what would you say is, obviously cost are high for rent and that but what else is unique about the Hong Kong fitness market in general?
Ed: The first thing you said that I like is without a doubt the most challenging thing when it comes to running a business. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the world and speak to other business owners. It is always just curiosity. I have to ask what they are paying for their rental space. And when you compare what we pay here it is just incomparable. We have such a huge dent in your bottom-line every month just for rental and management fees. It really makes it a challenging business model because you will press to make money from day one, and you have this huge burden of this crazy cost. I really can’t emphasize the importance of understanding how this country, this landscape, Hong Kong, and other big cities like this around the world just makes this business really, really challenging.
Kevin: Is it harder to make money out of personal training or group training?
Ed: Our return on investment is much better from group training.
Kevin: Really?
Ed: Yeah. Again, it is all relative I think. The prices that we charge for personal training and group coaching and group membership here relatively speaking to the rest of the world in our comparative industry is pretty high. But earning here are for most individuals who train with us are so high compared to most of the world as well. But I think going back to that whole statement about making money and what people learned is that comparatively because living expenses are so high here. We need to pay our trainers fairly generously as well. They actually make a living from this space. The actual return on investment per hour for personal training isn’t that great. If you go to a typical model of like a 60-40, or 50-50 split based on what the personal trainer takes on their hour and what the company takes, you actually earn a lot more from a group program.
Kevin: You do group, you do personal training, I think a lot of these is like strength training and in general I think fitness is becoming more and more for everybody and the ordinary person, but at the same time strength training is getting bigger and bigger as well. How do you make it less intimidating for somebody to get into strength training?
Ed: Yeah. I think a bit of a background kind of what we offer in terms of our service offering, so with regards to personal training, individualized coaching is 100% catered to the individual. So you may have a powerlifter come who wants to pursue the sport of powerlifter or weightlifting, but the majority of our clients who are doing individual coaching with us are kind of just like you every day Mr. and Mrs. Jones who are looking to look good naked, be fitter next year, play with their grandkids in the future. That really is the core business of most of our individual clients. And I guess sprinkled in there you have a lot of people who are very competitive in their sports, be some athlete who are at the real top of their game in that respect to sports as well.
When we talk about the group program, so our group program we actually call it our strength conditioning program. We are a cross fit affiliated gym and we have representation on big cross fit competitions around the world, and certainly within Asia we have reputation of a probably a business who is turning out good athletes and has a solid program for group and individual clients to follow. We’ve actually broke that fitness probably a whole [unclear – 12:46] we broke away from calling ourselves certainly a cross fit gym, so we do associate more strength conditioning. So our group class is called our strength conditioning program. And 100% I’m going to completely agree with you that it is very intimidating probably for most people strolling into the gym the first time perhaps without knowing really what they goals are but just wanting to be fitter, healthier and stronger. So one of the things that we’ve done in our group having just one group program for everyone to follow which is a very typical group training model. You know, you set out one workout for the day and people either scale up or scale down appropriate for their levels. So we actually kind of broken away from that model and rather than scaling up, scaling down, we’ve actually created three different programs within our group program. So you kind of think like three different tracks. Track 1 we call it Fitness Program, Track 2 we call it Performance Program, and track three we call it the Competitive Program.
The Performance and Competitive Program are really for people who are actually 100% invested in the sport of cross fit. So their goals are just like someone would play American football. They have their own pads and helmets, and they are crushing the pads every day, and they are accepting the risk of the training of the sport because they want to be better at the sport. So really our Performance and Competitive program is exactly that, so people who have an interest in local and regional competitions. Maybe the Cross Fit Open has become the new sport that has replaces what they did before which was perhaps rugby, [unclear – 14:18] marathon, that kind of stuff.
So then our Fitness Program which is actually our biggest group in terms of participation. The goals of the fitness group actually have nothing to do with cross fit. They are just general strength conditioning. We are looking to improve people’s body composition. We want people to move better and be in less pain, and there is an emphasis on longevity. We want them to be doing this forever and ever and ever.
I think immediately having that break down in terms of classification of the three groups, it is a little bit less intimidating primarily because you know that the stimulus of the training that you’re going to be doing that day is actually geared towards you. So for most people who are beginners who perhaps, the people who do get intimidated, they don’t have to worry about scaling down or workout or not be in good, or whatever the reason is because they know that the training is actually catered towards the abilities of the group.
I think the kind of stage before that is we have a pretty thorough, we call it Fundamentals Program. The Fundamentals Program is basically if someone has an interest in joining the group program then we start first and foremost with an assessment, and the assessment is done one on one. And so we’re really just basically having a look at that individual, seeing if they have the prerequisite base level strength and really mobility just to make sure they didn’t have any red flags there to actually be able to do our group program first and foremost. And if they passed that assessment then we actually do six sessions one on one with that client to bring them up to speed on everything we think is the minimum amount of awareness or knowledge that someone must have before answering the group classes. And similarly if someone wants to join the Performance Program or the Competitive Program there is a set number of pre-requisites they must be able to meet before they can actually move into that program.
So really what it means is that, yes there is a big financial commitment they have to commit towards on Day 1. There is a time commitment as in they have to commit to. There are 7 hours of one on one coaching before they join the group program. But what it means is that when they do enter the group program, they are really knowledgeable, they are really confident, and they come for what lies ahead. That we kind of don’t have any of those issues anymore of the intimidation and they’re scared and they kind of worrying about the unknown that I think a lot of group training programs do have. So that I guess is kind of very long answer to a really simple question.
Kevin: Yeah, no. You know, it is a good answer. My follow up then is would you say those six or seven hours assessment and introduction helped reduce churn and helped keep people in the group training once they join? Is that what it’s designed for?
Ed: Yeah, 100%. I think it is design for first and foremost kind of what we just talked about. But I think it has a lot [unclear – 17:02] first and foremost you know that the people graduating from your Fundamentals Program, people who have already made a fairly large commitment to be there and they obviously agreed with our training cost to be able to what we want to provide for them. So yeah, typically they are really clients that you want because they are really who we are looking for. And so yeah, the turnover of those people is way, way less compared back in the day when we used to do a 1-hour on ramp and come on in to the group class and see if you enjoy it. We probably have something like a 50% turnover for people dropping out and some stay. So I think that’s a huge benefit, for sure you get the right type of people who actually want to be there.
I think secondly is that in terms of the level of coaching that we were then able to offer on the training floor it is way higher. You’re not having to hand hold newbies coming into the class. Not having to worry about the safety of people doing a barbell movement. You have full confidence as a coach that everyone on that training floor knows exactly why they are there, what they are doing and why they are doing it. When you have that clarity of understanding it really allows you as a coach to blossom in that environment and provide a level of service that is of a much higher standard. I still remember back in the day stepping into the coaching floor and having seven people never seen train before. And then you have this one [unclear – 18:27] in the corner who has been there for three years who wants to get great training session in, but you just can’t give them that level of quality because you have the other 10 people holding the back. And it is them; it is not the 9 or 10 people. It is actually our fault for allowing them just to walk into the class like that.
Kevin: Yeah. And is that hard sell, that six hours, or do you have any other trial or way for people to figure out if they want to take part or what does the sales process look like?
Ed: We crystal clear from step one. So the moment we have that initial contact with the client we are very honest about our systems and our processes. But we also make sure that we’re explaining why. And we really try to have that to be a face to face or phone conversation so we are starting that human personal relationship straight away rather than just kind of sending of a template email. Yeah, for a lot of people who kind of not sure what they are looking for they perhaps just reaching out to us and wanting to understand what options we have to them. It is a 100% hard things suddenly go from, if I was to put myself into the client’s shoes, “Hey, I would like to find out about what you guys can do to help me,” and suddenly they got response with, “Hey, you have to commit to 7 hours of one on one before you can even start with the group program.” Honestly, it is going to cost you a lot of money and it is going to take you some time to get you there. What we kind of setup is like an intermediary for a lot of people. We have like a 30-minute, I hate the word high intensity or like a HIIT class, but essentially it is not like, it is a very simplified, less complex of our S and C Program. So it doesn’t have any pre-requisites. We are not doing things like barbell movement. There is no high skill gymnastics and still periodize from like a strength conditioning standpoint so we have like more aerobic conditioning base days and we have more strength base days, but it is 30 minutes work. Kind of tag line for that is “it is efficient fitness”. We are also crystal clear that it is not the best thing for you long term but it can satisfy the needs of busy individuals who are probably sitting their ass in the office or at home, not in anything. What we kind of offer to those who are kind of sitting and what they want to do, we kind of do this opportunity to experience one of our Coastal 30 Classes, and that kind of gets them in the gym if they can see what it is about. The cool thing as well is the Coastal 30 Classes always followed immediately by the S and C Program. So a lot of our Coastal 30 folks are going to hand around, And it is funny because we kind of initially set up the Coastal 30 Program to expect like a higher churn and higher turnover, but Coastal 30 has actually end up kind of created its own kind of tiny community. And you know, you speak to people and they’re like, “I’m the busy guy or a busy gal. I’m not really ever going to have the time to commit an hour and a half at my lunch time, or mornings, or evenings”, which is lots are required for an hour session. And like, “This perfectly fits for me.” Actually they have no aspirations for moving to the S and C Program, and the Coastal 30 Program is kind of like exactly what they want. We do have a lot of people who’ve kind of over time has taken Coastal 30 for 6 months, 9 months, 2 years. You then start to then, “Well, what next if I want to take my fitness, my health and my strength to the next level now, like what you guys offer?” And that’s where we kind of then talk about S and C Program.
Kevin: Got it. Now, you mentioned the word there, community. I think it is a pretty popular word in fitness, but what does it mean for you and how do you go about creating a community?
Ed: I think the whole concept of community is creating something more than just a training itself. I think the training itself, and I guess that means the level of the coaching, the facility and the programming I guess. If you can kind of call that for training. That is still 100% one of the most important thing when it comes to setting up a gym. For anyone to really commit to something long term, for the general population, that needs to be something more than that because everyone wavers between high motivation and low motivation. I guess in times of low motivation that they need something extra that pulls them back to the gym every time and that’s where we see the importance of community. And so the whole community aspect for us is how we cultivated that is I guess, number one, is just 100% transparency with everything. We don’t want the formation of clicks or special groups, or people who have special privileges. It is a level playing field regardless of what your job is, how much money you earn, what sport you play, how good you are at exercising it is a level playing field. And we want to communicate that with everyone. I guess the next thing is, obviously setting up a friendly environment in-house where people can interact and socialize so we kind of have like, we call it our community area which is kind of a big seated sofa picnic table area where people come before class, and they hang out after class, and we have free coffee for anybody who wants it, and people kind of just kick back and hang out and bond and form relationships there. We’re quite active in terms of setting up events. So we try to commit one social activity every month at the very least. And that might be like a friendly in-house fitness competition, getting together for a dinner, or meeting at a bar and have a few drinks at night time. It is really important to us that we do have those things on our calendar and that we communicate as effectively as possible. Those are really the biggest things in terms of what we’ve tried to do to strengthen our community. I think it really, probably the most important thing there is that driving a community has to come from the business owner and the coaches who work there. I think a lot of gyms don’t think that that’s an important thing and they expect the community to form just from the clients. But I think it is the coaches and people leading the organization aren’t as actively seeing to be taking part and wanting to be a part or believing it, then it just wouldn’t work. I can say this from experience because we’ve been through times where we did [unclear – 24:28] elite athletes. We didn’t believe in social events ourselves as a coaching team. And you know, we saw all sorts of problems stem from that behaviour. Yeah, I’m very much for transparency and I really believe in the importance of [unclear – 24:45]
Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s good because a lot of people might have overlooked that. I supposed you as the owner, as the main coach, being involved and being part yourselves really helps to make it a bit stickier.
Ed: Absolutely.
Kevin: Social media wise, very interested, I see on your Facebook page there’s tons of videos. Maybe tell me why you do them and how you do them and what sort of value they’ve delivered?
Ed: I actually come to moved away from Facebook. I’m putting more love and thought on this Instagram thing.
Kevin: Yeah, like everyone here.
Ed: [unclear – 25:27] Definitely wouldn’t consider myself an influencer or anything like that. I guess I’ve taken the handle ed_haynes_coach which is a statement from the start because I wanted to be really about my professional career as a coach and everything I’m passionate about in this space. You’re not going to find anything about my personal life anyway, not that much can anyway. But it has really to do with the business that I run, and the programming, and I guess the trials and tribulations of coaches and business owners go through. Really go there is to try and impact as many people as I can. I guess the content that I put up there is really targeted towards I guess the people in the fitness space in general. And that’s just like your every day consumers who are wanting to be stronger, fitter, healthier, learn a little bit about the why and the what behind what they probably see in their gyms, in their training environments.
The next is targeting probably also the business owners in the gym space as well which is much demographic but to kind of show you what we can do to improve our businesses. And probably the last one is the other coaches around the world, around the region, perhaps the more nearly scientific side of programming and coaching and queuing and that kind of stuff so. So really that profile is the chance for me to share the knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years. But also I love the idea of having a platform to put my ideas out there and have them to be criticized, challenged, celebrated and shared, like I’m down for all that kind of stuff. So I think that’s such an important part of growth for any profession to not be afraid to actually put your things out there, which is why I always say yes to public speaking opportunities. I think it is a great challenge and it is something that I want to be better at. And I also like the idea, you know, I have respect to anyone in any industry who can stand up whether it is on a stage or it is on Instagram, and you know, wholeheartedly put their ideas out there to be challenged. Yeah, well, my Instagram I guess has evolved.
Kevin: Okay, sounds like maybe a way to express yourself, express what you’re doing and maybe get the feedback to learn from others and similar businesses. What would you say you’re doing to say get people into the gym? Is that word of mouth or is there a strong social media aspect to that as well?
Ed: Word of mouth is definitely primarily been how we’ve grown our business, so I say it’s been fairly organic. We’ve kind of in the last year hit this crossroad I think between probably the last two years I’d say between being a big small business and transitioning into being a small big business. So we are professionalizing our systems bringing in like we got a really solid management and operations team now that has taken a lot of things that I am not as good at perhaps to do for many years like admin side and accounting side of things, and the business operations and all that kind of stuff. We have an awesome team now who does all that. But I think we’ve grown organically and we got to the point now where we just hit our very first membership cap within our gym. So we’ve had to create a waitlist for our group classes which is a good and a bad problem obviously to have. So now, really kind of in the last six months is where we really put a lot more thoughts towards, a little bit more targeted and specific with our marketing. But now a point where we don’t really need to push our group program anymore because we are at capacity. Actually, next Monday we will be opening up our brand new personal training space in junction to our space so that will be great because it will create more space, recruit classes and have training as well. Yeah, really just as of now we are starting to really put some resources towards like a thorough online marketing strategy, online marketing plan. And what we primarily going through this with Facebook and Instagram, what we really target is the type of consumers we want now. We’re kind of at a point now where we can be a little bit more picky and selective as to who we want. So for example, we have those mid morning classes in the day which probably don’t fill up as much as your peak hour classes early morning, lunch and evening. So we can be smart and strategic with targeting that type of consumer which in Hong Kong is kind of stay at home dads or moms who are looking after the kids. So you’ll be definitely targeting those guys because we have a new personal training that will be opening up. We’ll definitely be targeting potential folks who are interested in personal training. But yeah, really, we haven’t done of that much. I guess it is just word of mouth which is I guess is the best form of referral.
Kevin: Yeah. Well, it is nice to be at a stage where you really going to need to invest in more profitable clients say filling empty spaces or finding people that are potentially going to stay with you for longer. It is a nice position to be in.
Ed: I think just on that as well it is definitely worth mentioning that the industry in Hong Kong, and I know it has around the world, certainly to all the places I’ve visited with regards to fitness is definitely evolving and changing. I think when we first come into the kind of cross fit strength conditioning space six years ago, there was only one gym to start, and then that kind of grew to 9 or 10 gyms. So our direct competition was actually those kind of 9 or 10 gyms. Where that’s gone now is like that you have all your big fitness chains, your Fitness First, your Pure Fitness, California, all those big chains are not catering to functional fitness crowd. They all have Olympic lifting platforms. They’ve got pull up rigs and gymnastic areas. So technically now they are coming into our space and people are kind of floating over towards them. You then kind of have F45 now into the market who are offering low barriers to entry, slightly cheaper but it still kind of pretty efficient training that’s going to get you results perhaps more so than your global gyms. And then you got like your Barry’s Bootcamp, your high intensity classes so suddenly in this training space in Hong Kong like our competitors has just multiplied tenfold. And so yeah, 100% we need to now step up our game to kind of make a bit more of a solid pre-education and awareness to what we are doing and why we are different.
Kevin: How do you carve out something that is unique and made all of that?
Ed: I think the biggest thing for us is when we look at what we do compared to all these new players in the market is that our business and our service is still 100% done around human relationships. So we don’t have television screens to educate you on how to lift weights or there is a clock on a screen that you follow and then you move to the next station. You know, I kind of really like, I kind of continue what we do very old school in our approach to this relationship that’s built whether it is a group community or it is individually with your client, and that’s like a lasting long term relationship and you have a coach watching you do it everything all the time. And I think all these other things which you are utilizing, they’re very smart in how they’ve utilized technology and they can actually probably scale that business in a much more effective way than we can because we still need good coaches. I think it is funny because I’ve seen certainly in the last two years with the emergence of these new guys in the market who are perhaps less personal, less human touch on fitness. That’s kind of become a dropout market now where people have invested in that last year or two. They’ve gone through the progressions and everything they can with classes and they kind of come out and be like, “Well, I got a lot of success and I’m really happy in what I achieve but I want more.” They kind of fall in back into the old school method of actually investing in a human coach who can then actually work with you and tailor, and tinker and form relationship. I think that’s kind of where we sit. So really emphasizing the importance of this human element when it comes to coaching, and knowing that that will be our core product, probably forever and ever. It is something we are targeting, yeah.
Kevin: I guess, the main takeaway is whatever your angle is whether it is technology based, or whether it is human based, it is probably to have one angle that you can talk about so that you can answer questions like this and people can I suppose decide whether that is exactly what they want and that is kind of what you need to fend off the competition, stand out for one thing.
Ed: On a degree we are honing on what the essentials are on your business and what you are pretty good at and just making that your thing. You know, we’ve gone through periods of time where we’ve just over diversified and often too much trying to compete with everyone in the market, and it just didn’t really serve us. Now, I’m really honing in on what we really believe in and making that our core products and if someone doesn’t want it, we are really happy to recommend them down the road to somebody can.
Kevin: Okay. I think that’s nearly all my questions. This has been a great chat. I think I’ve got a lot of really interesting takeaways from it. Maybe for a finish, what is next for you and what is next for Coastal Fitness?
Ed: Coastal Fitness, you know obviously we’re expanding our facilities. Currently we are on the brink of actually having a second facility in Hong Kong right now which is kind of in negotiations at the moment. That will be kind of be at the other side of Hong Kong, almost far enough away to be in another country which is awesome. But really, yeah, it’s kind of continue to spread the word around Southeast Asia and kind of really making a name in Asia specifically, and with that is coming coaching seminars. We are going to work with other business owners and coaches around the region. Continue to travel around with our athlete camps which are basically catered to those who wanted to be competitive within a specific sport and providing education material there. And then I guess continue to build our platforms online and offering more information and more opportunities to be a part of the Coastal Fitness family I guess without necessarily having to be in Hong Kong.
Kevin: Nice, nice. Okay, and then last question. For the people in Hong Kong or farther field, how can they get in touch with you?
Ed: Probably the best way is, well personally, my Instagram account which I put a lot of content out is ed_haynes_coach. Our Instagram handle for Coastal Fitness is Coastal Fitness HK, or you can just Google search Coastal Fitness Hong Kong and the information will be there.
Kevin: Okay, Ed, this has been a great conversation. I’ve learned a lot so thank you very much for being on the show.
Ed: Thanks, Kevin, absolutely a pleasure.
Kevin: Yeah, all the best.
Ed: Thanks buddy.
Kevin: Thanks.
