Kyle Wood: Hello, and welcome back to Everything Bootcamp. Today’s guest. Very excited. She was able to, during the pandemic take her bootcamp and turn it into a place where people could connect and feel supported and support each other through, you know, as we know what was a very difficult period of time.

So I wanted to have her on the show to hear about how she did this. What was her approach? And, yeah, without further ado, I’ll jump into the episode.

 Hello, and welcome to Everything Bootcamp today’s guest. So we’re just talking about, she’s been following Bootcamp Ideas for 10 years, which is how old the site is. So that’s very cool. And her name is Donna Houlihan. She runs Hudson valley boot camp in orange county, New York, which is in the She’s been running her boot camp for nearly 11 years and has been a trainer in the fitness industry for 27 years.

She offers indoor and outdoor bootcamps plus spinning classes, plus a run group for a total of 10 classes per week. Welcome Donna.

Donna Houlihan: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, firstly, I just want to say thank you so much for being such a wonderful member of my various communities, Facebook groups, you know, back when I was just email and commenting on the blog.

And and now like with BootCraft, like thank you. I need to give you a little bonus.

Donna Houlihan: Thank you. It’s been, it’s gotten me through a lot of difficult times through the. Yeah, my business though, I’ve come to BCI. Even now I go to the Facebook group, even though it’s archived, sometimes I’ll go there. It was a workout in there.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. I actually refer to it too.

So the question I’m starting off the podcast episodes with. So we’d like you to cast your mind back and tell me about the first fitness class you attended as a participant.

Donna Houlihan: First one, I attended. Okay, well, I’m old, I’m 55 and one of my real first organized fitness classes was in my sister-in-law got me to join this women’s gym and it was high impact aerobics.

And I got shin splints. That was my very first. And then from there. It wasn’t long after that, actually that I got certified as a trainer. I was probably 23 when I took my first actual fitness class. And then I think I got certified, you know, it’s 28 or something. I’m not exactly sure.

Kyle Wood: Okay. And were you doing, was it like, was group fitness, the thing that you wanted to do as a trainer, or were you more interested in like PT or athletics or

Donna Houlihan: Well, to, to be a hundred percent honest, I had had my first child.

I have four boys now, my first is now 20 going to be 28 years old, but I had my first shop and I wanted to do, and I had joined the. It’s a funny story. I joined the gym and my membership was up and I’m going to pay the membership. And I wanted to be able to do something where I could bring my child with me.

Cause I was always looking at the, some of the instructors would bring their children with them. I’m like, that’s so cool. You could do that. And I could be doing fitness. So on my son’s right around his first year birthday, I got certified in Washington, DCS, a group fitness. And that’s how it will happen.

So then I stopped working and started bringing all my kids to the gym. So it started out as group fitness and then eventually did some personal training. And then I took over the business, my business almost 11 years ago for bootcamp.

Kyle Wood: I love that. Yeah. I love that. Waking Fitnesses, such a. Family friendly thing and you getting to be role models for your kids too, you know, they grow up with just with the fact that you exercise, just being a normal part of life.

Donna Houlihan: Yeah. 100%. And they know how important it is. You know, I do race, my boys are older now, so doing, just doing races with them and being able to, to keep up and join them in all of that, or them joined me, I should say. It’s great. So, um, yeah. Physical fitness. Most important thing to me, really keeping fit and healthy and strong and being able to keep up with everybody and staying healthy.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. Let’s talk a bit about your business. So. Well actually no before we jumped into that. So w w cause it segues better from what we were just talking about. So back in those days, and now it’s been, you know, 25 plus years since then, which, by the way, that’s a quarter century. That’s amazing. What a career.

Donna Houlihan: Yeah.

Sometimes, you know, in the, in the fitness industry, sometimes like out in the different fields and Facebook and everything be like, oh, I’m been doing it as longer than I’ve been alive.

Yeah, I know this is something to be proud of. I’m still here doing it and it’s been my life. So it’s been great. Anyway. Sorry.

Kyle Wood: Have you seen it change or evolve like the fitness industry in that time?

Donna Houlihan: Well, you know, obviously high impact aerobics. We did all of that, which eventually turned, moved into like sports conditions.

And, you know, I think group fitness will let’s say pre COVID was still pretty, pretty, um, like power, like, uh, still going on, but was definitely fading out into more boutique outdoors. CrossFit. So like your actual gym where you would go and tons of people in the classes like that type of thing in orange county, anyway, it was feeding out and becoming more small little, um, cross states or Pilates or yoga.

So things were definitely starting to change. As far as that big group fitness come in and have 30 people in your class. That was definitely changing. And when I took over my business, Um, I had taken it over from somebody and like, I’m like, okay, it’s all outdoors. I’m like, I’m not going to be in the gym anymore.

I’ve been in the gym for 15 years and my how’s this going to be, you know, my group fitness and I left and never looked back. It’s been, it’s been great. So things have definitely evolved into more of the boutique or niche kind of, um, uh, fitness centers. There’s not even fitness centers really anymore, especially now.

Most of the data, a lot of the big ones are gone for us or in little ones, sadly, but, um, you know, going away from your high impact and crazy cardio to more sports conditioning, to more sports specific, um, heavy lifting, running, like it’s definitely been more kind of sports specific instead of just like, let’s go out, let’s just go and like be cardio for an hour.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. Okay. Yep. So instead of saying the little, yeah, the little niches pop up here and there of, yeah. People. Which is good. Cause I guess, uh, it offers more variety to people. I think so.

Donna Houlihan: And it’s definitely more personal, more personal and you know, you have competition, but everybody offers something a little different, cause we’re all so different.

So like it’s competition, but you, she just not, it’s not me and I’m not her. So if it doesn’t work, you don’t, I don’t work for you. She will kind of thing. And also it’s. That’s a good thing. Yeah. That makes sense. Unfortunately, everybody doesn’t love me. That’s okay. They can go and find another place that they,

Kyle Wood: Yeah, it’s such a good analogy. I was writing one of Seth Godin’s blog posts this morning and he was like, if you have a million Twitter followers, you still that means like 99.9% of Twitter users. Following you on aware if you if you ran that down, it really means you have like 0% of Twitter photos.

Cause if you like 0.1 and he talks, so he talks about like that you don’t, you don’t need to have everyone. Be a part of your bootcamp or like your, you know, like your bootcamp, you know, it doesn’t, that doesn’t matter. It’s just because it’s so there’s so many people, right.

Donna Houlihan: And if you try to have everyone, you’ll never be happy because you can’t, you know, not everybody’s gonna like you, but you know, if you can get your core group to really understand what you’re about and how you work, they’ll stay and refer and build your business in that.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, that’s good. Cause I saw it on your website that you started with, like, which I think a lot of us can resonate with this first session, four people per session.

Donna Houlihan: When I pick up the business, all those people just like disappeared. Oh, you know, I guess, whatever, you know, it wasn’t the only, so then I was like, all right, we’ll just build back. Let’s just build and build. And you know, it was, uh, it was hard, but, um, here we are 10 years later. Um, I haven’t grown a hugely, but we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’re, we’re managing, we’re still, I’m still in business.

That’s the thing. What is most so important to me is that I have people with me for 10 years, eight years, seven years. And it’s such a tough. Community. And especially when you fall into something like. It was an amazing thing to have and to stay together. And then when you reunited and like it, you really can’t even explain it.

And we were just talking about this because we were on our way home from a awake of, one of our members, son passed away and we were on the way home from the wave. And we were just saying, somebody was saying to me, not to bring down the house, but somebody was saying like, you can’t really understand unless you’re.

What a strong community, this is and what you felt. And they were saying that to me, and I’m not tooting my own horn, but that was kind of what they were saying. Like you, you know, you created something really special and that was what I’m most proud of. You know, the workouts are amazing. We’re having great results.

We’ve run races. If you do things, you have a blast. But at the end of the day created such a tight community where the people know that we’re there for them. Not only me, but everybody we’re there for them and we have their back and that in our 8:00 AM, because most of the women are, people are in my age group, say 40 to 65 even.

And you know, there’s, there’s college, there’s high school graduation, college graduation, there’s parents, sick parents. There’s that. So there’s so much more than when you’re in the younger ages and we’re all kind of going through it together. And like somebody just got married. Somebody just became a grandmother or some, you know, some somebody passed away.

So like it’s such a tight knit community beyond. Our bootcamp and our classes, which is really special for me to be able to be a part of the, a part of that their lives in that way. You know, it’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty, pretty great. I met some amazing people.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. That’s such a good, you know, I often think about like, you know, what’s, what’s success mean to me?

Donna Houlihan: Like the grow or die. You remember that question? Right? Right. Always about that. You know, sometimes the success is really being there. You know, when nobody else is for somebody or just, you know, offering something or make letting them know that they can do something that they didn’t think they can, and that can portrays other go also foreign to other areas of their lives.

Yeah. That’s success

Kyle Wood: to me. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So during the last 18 months, when we have, you know, classes, opening and shutting, how were you keeping. That community and that connection happening. Were you doing anything actively or did it just kind of happen?

Donna Houlihan: No, I, well, I was like from the moment, like we were in the March 16th, they gave us the notice we were shut down.

So I said, and I was kind of preparing for it. I said, all right, people, this is common five through my first 5:30 AM class, the next day. I was St. Patrick’s day. I was in a green Tutu and Shamrock socks, and I was on zoom. I had no idea what I was doing and what was going to happen. I’m like 5:30 AM we’re there.

And then from then on, it was almost like, Nobody had a chance to be like, nah, I’m not going to do no. I was like, this is what we’re doing. Be there. And it was like the next day, it was like a party from, from my 6:00 AM to my 9:00 AM to my 6:30. Of course it died down a little bit, but like, it was like, we’re doing this.

And I was like, God, no idea. I’m like my computer was on like a little fitball chair and I had no idea, but we went, we just, I think me being. Absolutely on the minute, not to be anybody in opportunity that right, we’re doing this, we’re doing this. And most people, unless you didn’t, they didn’t have the ability to be on zoom.

Most people did it and we were 85 days on zoom and I would go into my studio. I didn’t do it from my studio. As professional as I could. And, you know, we had phone, we did scavenger, Hans and bingo. And like, I dressed up like a bunny on Easter, you know, like you had, and then they would be coming into zoom.

Like, what’s the, how am I going to be wearing what you’re going to be doing? So, you know, we really tried to make it fun. So. And then we were able to get outside to the park. And then when we got to the park, it was like this huge reunion. Everybody was so excited to see each other from, from 10 feet, but we were able to back in the park.

So, yeah. And then going back inside to the studio, that was hard because we had to wear a mask and, you know, there was such much protocol and things we had to do, but I went over and above and did videos and I did constant updates every week. It was just more. Information information, information, letting everybody know what I’m doing, what’s happening.

Why are we doing this? Because every week it was changing as you guys all know, I’m sure like, you know, everything that we had to do. And I just, I had a video of how we were going to when we’re coming in the studio and how it’s going to work. So it was just constant information. Every week I started an update update of the week, which I never did, like the next week.

And I’m still doing it today. Every day, every week I do an update. Whether, you know, it doesn’t have to be anything important, but just like what’s going on, what’s happening. Shout out to this person. This class is going to be changed every week. I did an update and back in, back in, in COVID you needed that because people were just like what’s happening.

So, um, you know, keeping them updated on the CDC, keeping them updated on what the health department says to me. It was information. Yeah. Overload that worked, that worked really doing surveys. What people thought on, how they, how were they thinking about coming in? How are they comfortable? And, you know, they were giving me their feedback and that really, it was a lot of work, but that’s what I had to do.

So, you know, we came out of it pretty hung on to pretty much everybody. I think that was, um, the part of it before. And some people say they don’t know what they would have done if we didn’t keep this us together at that time. Like it was something to look forward to kind of like a normalcy. Yeah, yeah.

Something that, you know, all right, well, Donna show up at nine. So I’m going to be there. Who knows what else is going to happen throughout the day? We know we’re going to get our bootcamp. And also everybody communicated on zoom, everybody communicated. So you could see each other and laugh and, you know, afterwards I’d hold it open so that people could kind of catch.

If they needed to. So it was, you know, we did happy hour zooms. We met at the park and, you know, socially distance at the park. So I just was just all about just keeping everybody together and community and, um, you know, we were able to get through it.

Kyle Wood: So the going back to the update that you shared, what it was that an email then?

 That was a weekly email?

Donna Houlihan: Yeah. It was just like a weekly email with anything that I needed to tell them, because that was the only way to get. Cause some people are on Facebook, some people aren’t sometimes I see people zoom. So that was the one way I’m like, gosh, Your emails, that’s where all your information is going to be.

And that I don’t even know how that even came about, but that was really one of the most important things that I did throughout those, those, however long we were shut down, keeping

Kyle Wood: that communication going. Yeah.

Donna Houlihan: Information,

Kyle Wood: information.

It’s a, you said you you’ve kept that up. So what do you include in those wouldn’t you include now? Yeah. So

Donna Houlihan: now it’s like, if, if, um, somebody ran a race and it was, if it was our first race or they placed, or somebody did something super special during class. So it was like, you know, a couple of shout outs, something that we go in and I’ll get that we have going on for the week, or if I’m going to be away, who’s covering anything.

Really. Like if we have a race, I’m updating information on things that are coming up, or like, I, sometimes we do a group hike, you know, anything that’s. Like what you think what’s right now stop. Or it could be just a few little things, that’s it for this, you know, it doesn’t have to be full of information.

It’s just, whatever’s coming up information that they need to know. And like, and they’ll be like, what? Like, did you check your update for the week? Make sure you read your update. It’s all in there. So that’s, that to me was the easiest way to get all the information to.

Kyle Wood: That’s so good. And I love that you include an updates on what clients are up to as well, because that create, yeah.

That creates. The feeling of just knowing each other better,

Donna Houlihan: especially because having some, I don’t have that many new people, but having new people, it’s a great way to kind of let them feel like, oh wow. She gave me a shout out them. You know, if my first staff K I’m part of the community, you know, man, I made it.

It’s totally genuine. Like it’s totally not, it’s not, it’s just something that I do. It’s totally genuine. Cause I am proud of them, but it’s also helps them also feel like a part of.

Kyle Wood: So, do you put aside some time, each week to do, to put that together? Or is it just sort of when you can get it?

Donna Houlihan: Well, I try to do by, I try to do it by Tuesday, the latest, um, you know, I ultimately want it to be Monday, but I try to do it by Tuesday so that whatever’s coming up, you know?

So it’s a wrap up maybe from the week, the weekend or. Um, what’s coming up, so I try not to wait past Tuesday.

Kyle Wood: Yep. And so do you have a bit of a system that you follow for getting them out or no.

Donna Houlihan: We talked about if we planned our workouts, right. My future self would be so proud of me, but do I have. No. I just think about what’s coming up and sometimes I’ll leave what was in the week before, you know, to reiterate. And so I just, by Monday or Tuesday, I do an update. There’s no real system to it.

Kyle Wood: That’s all, I’m being honest. I’ve been doing it

Donna Houlihan: since March, 2019. And I think I missed one week that I didn’t do a, I didn’t do an update. So.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’ve, you’ve SKUs, like for some evil, evil mastermind, but yeah, you’ve, you’ve in a way, conditioned them to check for that email. And that’s such a powerful thing because attention is so.

Rare these days, like having people’s attention, say Brianna, create ways to keep people’s attention is, is yeah.

Donna Houlihan: Awesome. Yeah. And if they ask me a question that was in the email, I’m like, you didn’t read your email, did you,

so they’ll never forget to read their email again.

Kyle Wood: So you going back to. The, when you took over the bootcamp 11 years ago, you had, you know, just a few people in the class have any clients per week, sort of, even the pivot you to say once a week, how many clients a week do you think you’d see now with

Donna Houlihan: I have now I have about 50 active.

Yeah. So in, you know, I have whether they come once or twice or unlimited there’s about right now, which is a little bit lower than normal, but I’ve never really been more than 60 I’ve. I’ve never really broken that. Yeah. But, um, you know, the leaky cup darn leaky cup, but so I’m right now we’re having a solid 60.

Yeah. And that’s where we’ve, we’re anywhere between 50 and 60.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. So to explain the Lakey cup, to people who are listening, who haven’t heard of that.

Yeah. Yeah. You could explain it to see what, yeah.

Donna Houlihan: I have a cup and people, you know, you’re pouring into your cup and those are your members. And you’re trying to retain as many of the camps that, that cup leaks and some of those will sneak out. So as you’re gaining, you’re also losing. And that was the thing through COVID.

You absolutely lost a few. I did gain a few, but it’s just your kind of. You constantly in and out really. I mean, we retain those 50 of those people. I’m going to say the majority have been with me at least three years and above. Yeah. So that’s a pretty solid community. And it’s funny because you know, sometimes I don’t want to grow it I’m like through, through COVID it was like, do we want it, do we, how I would, this is one thing I would ask them, which they appreciate it.

How comfortable are you bringing it with me bringing in new people? Because it was such a, such a tough. Situation. So for a while, I didn’t want any new people, cause everybody just wanted to be with, you know, they don’t want outsiders in a way. Sounds, sounds weird. But in school, that, that was what they were comfortable with.

And then as things change and I’m like, all right, are we ready? We’re ready. Bring your friends. But, um, you know, we’ve kind of just hovered around 50 to 60 over the years.

Kyle Wood: That makes sense, because you you’d created this safe space. And as you said before, it was people talk. Usually your clients talked about how, you know, it helped them get through such a difficult period.

So I think that absolutely makes sense that you would be where you’re bringing in extra people to that.

Donna Houlihan: Yeah, I had, you had to be really mindful of how people felt. Cause it was, you know, we’re in New York, it was crazy here. So I had to be very careful and. You know, but now, now anybody who wants to come, they can come for business.

Kyle Wood: Good. I’m very excited. And I’m excited for that to Australia, not to be too far away for the trainers over here.

Donna Houlihan: Um, yeah. Well, right now I’m right outside of New York. So I’m, we’re a little bit more in a better position than New York city, but still, you know, pretty shut down.

Kyle Wood: Alright. Are you ready for our rapid fire questions? Awesome. Thank you. Okay. So, and we might’ve covered part of it as well, and I’ve got your answers here. And so if you forget, just let me know and I’ll tell you what you saw. So, first question was, what are the top three things you do each week that you found help your business grow?

Donna Houlihan: Well, like we were saying, it’s more about making sure each one of my clients have a great experience. I mean, you’re not going to blow their doors away every single class, but everybody has a good experience. A great experience knows that they matter touch base with everybody. Um, shout outs, whatever, just make sure that my people know that they’re number one, their first that’s my main thing, because they’re going to post, they’re going to tag.

They’re going to refer from that. You know, if we’re running in the circle, I’ll always going to be running from person, checking in, running from person to person, just checking in. If somebody is not showing up, making sure that they know that they’re, they’re my priority. That’s my number one thing. Um, number two, I do email my, my, um, My email group, at least once or twice a week, like with, with what I hope is helpful content and, um, interesting things and throwing out call to actions or things to, you know, free trials or whatever, or maybe a five day challenge or something.

And I do that as well in my, I have a, um, community Facebook, uh, OCNY fitness community, which is just. Facebook group. I have a separate one for my private members, but a free space group where I try to have an interest and information and, you know, recipes, workouts, funny videos or whatever. So those, those are the three things that I do mostly to try to market and create.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, yeah.

Donna Houlihan: I’m not very good at it.

Kyle Wood: But that is the right, the right thing. I’ll share with you, I was listening to another podcast the other day with an author, John Jantsch and he writes a lot about word of mouth and like referral marketing. And he’s got a book, I think it’s called something like the referral in.

And he was talking about a lot of his one and two star reviews on Amazon will be people who are like, I read, you know, I read half this book and he hasn’t mentioned anything. Referrals yet, because the first half of the book is all about creating an awesome product, like create something that people want to share.

So I think if you’re investing time in community in making sure your, your workouts have things that people want to talk about, that they look forward to. Like they have FOMO

fear of missing out. Oh, we missed the pumpkin’s day. October. We do pumpkin workouts, pumping people like, oh, I missed the pumpkin to like, having them want to come.

And they’re like, who? I want to never thought I would miss working out. Like, you know, I’ve always wanted to get away from it now. I’m like, sorry I missed it. So that’s kind of.

Yep. I tried a pumpkin workout in October here, which is not the season for pumpkin’s cause our seasons are opposite. And yeah, someone did manage to bring one, but otherwise we would just use medicine balls and pretend.

Donna Houlihan: And I brought a scale out and everybody had a waiter pumpkin and market. So we know how much. It’s like a tradition now for so many maybe things

Kyle Wood: like bringing a scale. Yeah. That’s a good,

Donna Houlihan: yeah. And it’s, we’ve been doing it for so many years. It’s kind of like, if you didn’t do the pumpkin’s, it would be weird.

Kyle Wood: So next question is a bit about you. So when you work out yourself, what is your favorite song or band to work out to?

Donna Houlihan: I don’t use music when I work out.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, yeah, me neither..

Donna Houlihan: I’m like, take it out. Cause when you’re doing classes, you’ve got to worry about people. You’ve got to worry about music. Nope. I work out. I just silence.

Weirdly enough.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’d be what, but then we could spin classes. You mentioned.

Donna Houlihan: Well, because it’s so music driven, we’re all about like Lady Gaga and Queen and Pink and you know, all that, all that cool stuff.

And that is really, you have to have your music has to be good in order to have a good spin class. You can’t, you can’t have some shitty music and turn it into a good spin class. So we liked. Um, I mean, I actually, anything Flogging Molly, we liked these Irish music. I mean, pretty much anything. I don’t have a specific kind of music, but they, their favorite playlist is Lady Gaga versus Queen and that’s one of my favorite playlist to ride to.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, yes. Put together.

Donna Houlihan: Yeah. So we do, I would do like mashups, like Elton John and ACDC are like ones that you wouldn’t think would go. So this became Lady Gaga and Queen, and then it became a hit and everybody’s like, oh, can we do it? Cause we did it on Zoom.

Um, I’ve video recorded during Zoom or my spin classes. Cause it was too hard to figure out the music. So that was the most and we do it in-person now too. So it was, they would watch me and do it alone. Now we do it in person.

Kyle Wood: That’s awesome.

Donna Houlihan: So that’s the kind of music they love.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. But yeah, I like that.

It seems like something new and something old. Yeah. Okay. The third question is where would you like to head next with your business or in your career? What’s on the horizon for you?

Donna Houlihan: Somewhere tropical. Yeah, like I said, I’m like. I’m doing this for so long. And, and it’s kinda like, I don’t see myself really doing much different, except like I just got recently certified as a running coach, a long-term uh, long distance running coach.

So I started a running running group became once COVID, cause we couldn’t meet forest in classes. So like let’s start a morning group and they haven’t, we haven’t stopped it for winter everything. So, um, I’ve decided to get certified in that. And I enjoy that and I enjoy watching people like really. Get better and stronger, and it’s a different, it’s totally different from bootcamp.

And so, uh, you know, I’m a long, long distance certified long distance coach running coach. So I would like to start training people to run marathons. Their first one. It would be so exciting myself. I haven’t done a marathon. I’ve done a lot of things that I haven’t done. So that’s probably where it’s going to start moving towards more of the coaching, the running coach.

Kyle Wood: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So this new found hobby through COVID.

Donna Houlihan: Cause I run a lot, so I enjoy that. And our running group has come very successful. Weirdly enough. We just don’t mean like, let’s just do instead of spinning, since we can’t spin we don’t even spin on Sundays. We used to spin on Saturday. We don’t even do it. We just run.

Kyle Wood: That’s cool. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah, first marathon. So like New York marathon, that would be one you’d have to qualify for I’m guessing.

Donna Houlihan: Yes. Or raise money or get in the lottery. There’s plenty of other marathons you could do, but then, I mean, you’re going to be exciting.

Kyle Wood: Yeah. It’d be pretty, pretty unique. I can imagine. Yeah. Awesome. All right, Donna. Thank you so much for coming on.

Donna Houlihan: Oh, it went so fast.

Kyle Wood: I know It’s telling you at the start. Like we could do three hours. Absolutely. I’m thinking about doing so the extra ones for like a bit of a behind scenes type podcasts or something like that, but yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see how we go.

Yeah. Thank you very much. You’re welcome.