Latest / Gym Business Coach Podcast / The January Gold Rush

Transcript

The January Gold Rush · Gym Business Coach Podcast

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to the built-to-grow podcast delivering the knowledge in all things, fitness, business.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: We help jimrollers win, hear your hosts, ten lions, and Randy Axton.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, welcome back to the Bill's Grow podcast and we're host Tim at Lions and the old studio joined by Zach Columbia.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's up, buddy?
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're here.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do it.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we are here and it's going down.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got another studio there.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're changing names.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're at the end of the year.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we got a great topic for you guys today.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when I first opened the gym, I remember specifically, could it not be able to wait till January came?
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because January means more business.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: January is going to be New Year's resolutions.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's going to be a line of wrapped around the building.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: People are just going to be like, you know, on New Year's morning, trying to get in this gym to sign up, right?
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: and over the years it was funny because I believe 16 years ago I felt some of that and it's probably because I didn't hadn't gone through all the seasons yet and as the years went on it was like not so much early January's late January then it was really February and then it was really like mid February now it's like really March.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there is no like rush of people.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some, there's a lot of change going on, but there's this, there's this dirty little secret in the fitness industry that nobody talks about.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody, what we, we are, we're gonna talk about today.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the secret is is that you have a mass exodus of memberships and cancellations and people leaving your gym in January when you're all, everybody's focused on
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: there is as many or almost as many people leaving the gym and nobody even talks about that and if you're in business longer than five years at this point you're probably shaking your head yeah you know what we do there's a lot of people and I'm not even paying attention because I'm so excited about the new people that you forget to look at the numbers and we just went over the numbers before this call of this past January and it was excruciating
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We probably would feel it a lot more.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we would be reassessing some things.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's get into that for a second.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in January, people are starting to reevaluate a lot of things.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Finances, goals and dreams and aspirations for the next year.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: what worked, what did it work last year?
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I using the things, and it's really comes down to a lot to budgeting, that budgeting in change, right?
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nunes, change, new years, new me, new you.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they start to look at, did I get results with this place that I've been training at for the last year?
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is this what I want to continue for another year?
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a big decision for them.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they start to look at, you know,
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times, health and fitness, your gym is the first one that they cut.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so let's talk about that.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: just add that there's so many layers to this.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: But just as a industry as a whole, we really have like this fronted and forgotten type of mindset.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we go really heavy on the front end, right?
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we're trying to put our best foot forward, we're marketing heavily.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we go through these processes of onboarding somebody, getting them in the gym.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, signed on the dotted line.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're good next next and then we forget this there's this whole, you know, client journey and we got to follow up and stay, you know, on top of our members and and so we focus so much on the front end that then people start to
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are frequency starts to fall off or, you know, just decrease and then, you know, before you know it, there's Thanksgiving and you haven't seen that person in a couple of weeks and, you know, maybe you reached out to him and then they came in for one or two workouts, but it's not enough to really create this perception of value and,
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you get to January and either that like you said, that person's looking at their finances.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're going, hey, is this really worth it?
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Should I be spending $5,000 a year on on this?
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: They, there's probably some chatter that's going on between them and their group of friends and their friends are like, Oh, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to this.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to try Pilates or, you know, I'm doing 75 hard or this new gym.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: popped up down the street where you wear EMS suits and you work out and like the results are crazy.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sweating so much and all that sounds amazing.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go with, I did a free class and like cancel my membership over here because I'm going over here and there's all this movement that takes place and it's just like there's multiple.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: different reasons why this happens.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And other solutions are heavy, heavily marketing, just like you are.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in your clients that are in your gym that you believe are safe, they're getting bombarded with New Year's new you, new diet plans, new shots that you can put in your stomach, right?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to get the results, you know, like at home workout, all the
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and while yes you are bringing in a lot of people because we did we probably brought in the most people in January we also lost the most in January yeah so the delta the net positive was very little in fact one of our lowest months but we had our highest signups but we all set our highest.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: exits.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so something that we were talking about, what do you do to fix it?
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if there is a way to fix it to be honest with you because you have a million different things.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, going back to your front end focus business for a second.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's two major things here.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the person or the team that signs up the clients,
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it usually the same team and shouldn't be the same team that delivers the product?
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: In a lot of times that hand-off is where we focus, right?
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We focus on making sure the clients in good hands, they know that they're being passed down to the...
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: the training team and all that stuff is that if you're doing a good job which you might even be focused on that you know right skip over that and that that that that they're in lies the problem because if it's the same person that's responsible for delivering the product the the training as this person signing them up like in a lot of gyms like the the trainers will sign up the the clients and then they go train them
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's probably the worst thing that can happen is because there's no split responsibility where you're only in charge of delivering and you guys over here are only charging signing people up.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're trying to do both, well then yeah, you're always going to be trying to sign up the next person because
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the exciting part if we're being honest.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's like exciting, new money, new clients.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dopamine versus this, this, you know, slog of training and client for 10 years, right?
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's two major problems there.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one is, do you, are you the same person that signing people up and then going in training and a lot of gyms it is?
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're a soul per newer, you're gonna have these vicious cycles in your business where,
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're super busy, you're selling, and you're getting, you know, you're, you don't have very many clients.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So all of your attention is on signing people up and doing consultations, but then you get too busy because you're delivering the product and you can't sell, and then you're going to lose people.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now you have open time slots that you are going to reallocate to getting more people to sign up.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're just going to go through this process over and over and over again, because no matter how good we are,
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: we're we're up against psychology and people are going to start and they're going to stop and they're going to fall off and they're going to cancel and they're going to move and things are going to happen and so it's like yeah that's a major problem in somebody's business if you're a one man show and you're trying to do it all.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was talking to Jim owner yesterday, and she's training, she's in charge of sales, but she's also training five, six, seven hours a day.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just told her, you know, she said she has a weight list for her classes and none of the other coaches do, it's because I said, well, it's because you're probably the best and you're the owner and everybody wants to train with you and all these things.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I said, the best you see your time is to business growth.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: business development.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the best use your time.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The worst use of your time is going and training the clients that you signed up.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's very hard for a train or brain to think that because that's what they enjoy.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what they're started.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So why they started?
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why they started their gym.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the the harsh reality is they've got to be the one that's growing their business or else nobody does.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's been stuck at the same number for years because
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, she's focused on selling.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: She gets all these people in.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's too busy to sell anymore.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she's trained on these clients, but there's natural nutrition.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden, she's got open times.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she got to go flip back and forth.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she just needs two people.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just, you can't do it all yourself, unfortunately.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to grow, where she's at right now, she could stay right there forever.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But she's obviously on the phone with us because she's unhappy with her business.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I noticed that right away.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was the first thing I noticed.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's, yeah, and I think, I mean, this is a little off topic, but in that situation and for for anybody that's a trainer that they hear that you have to stop training, we say, hey, you have to stop training, that's a, that's a major turn off to them.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're like, man, so I got into it, love that part of the job and, you know, I don't love the other, you know, if I don't love selling, I don't love marketing.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't love running a business.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, well,
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can have both, but you have to take a step back from the training floor temporarily.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're treating this as an investment to get the systems in place, to build the business.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then once the business, the system start running the business, then you get to be the guy or girl that...
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: jumps out on the training floor.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're not tied to it, but you get to jump out on the training floor in dive in and have a great session with some of your members and then you go back to, you know, working on the business, but you're not tethered to it.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: you're not tethered to the choice is a choice and that's really what we try to help Jim owners have is the choice and the freedom to do that but when you're stuck in the grind that's what's brutal so you gotta take that step back away so that then you get to do the fun part at some point in time you know.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and January is interesting because it's not necessarily you against them.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's as far as like competing for keeping your clients.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not you against the client's budget.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not you against the clients' results from last year.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not you against the client's motivation.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even though it is, it's also
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: against the guy down the street, not doing anything in all, doing running, intermittent fast things, also a competitor for you, GOP ones, all these peptides in the wild west of what's going on in that.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everything else under the sun is also a competition for you.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the question becomes, how do we, what are the things we can do in front of January
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And really it comes down to I think you and you and Randy talked about it on a couple episodes ago is keeping your clients engaged and motivated through the holidays.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just what it is because if they're not, it's a lot easier for them to not show back up in January with all these other options out there because they just look at the last six to eight weeks of usage.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not the two years prior where they had such great results, it's the last two months, and you let them fall off or they fell off on their own and you're up against, again, every other marketing tactic trick, unique mechanism, hook, offer trial, challenge, whatever.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to change the client's mindset.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: from the beginning, from from your marketing messaging through their entire journey, the focus has to shift from being results driven to being lifestyle journey.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the only solution.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: because if they're looking at the result, whether we talk about all the time, the law of diminishing value, whether they get the result or don't get the result, it doesn't matter if they're looking for a specific result, they're constantly weighing that against the sacrifices that they're making, so whether it be financial or time or pain or pain, right?
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're constantly reassessing is this worth it, is the problem that I'm trying to solve,
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: worth those things to accomplish it.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at some point, they're going to say like, no, I'm good, right?
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: The only way that you counter that is through this transformation, not of body composition, but this transformation of, I'm the type of person that works out.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: this gym that I go to, this training facility, is where my community is.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's where my people are.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's part of my day.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I don't go there, I don't feel good.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't feel like the day was complete.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you're just creating this, this,
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: intrinsic feeling that somebody has of like, and belief of like, well, that's my home.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where I goes, where my people are, that's where I work out, and it's not this constant analysis in their mind of like, is the money I'm spending worth the return?
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, that's the answer, right there.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: The answer to all of it, retention in general,
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: and what they want.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Their goals are, there are no goal.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Laying for being honest, the goal is just to go workout.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just part of their day.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's who they are.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, we know this, but we never really say it.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We actually did a podcast with a gym.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is zero point in starting a fitness program if you don't plan on doing it for the rest of your life.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: You could work out for three years.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: be super consistent five days a week.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the moment that you stop, it's gone in starts to date.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It starts to diminish, at 14 days, and within six months, it's all gone.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, what was the point of that last three years?
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the question is, like, what are you doing to get your clients to understand that and to shift their focus away from like, hey, I gotta get this result to, nope, this is just part of my lifestyle.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a dangerous path that you're going to or it's a dangerous choice to bring that up in the consultation.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've done this exact thing in the consultation and it's worked to my benefit actually.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've even said things like this.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, they're giving you excuses.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You say something along the lines of, is this even a good time to start a fitness program?
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They sell you it on S it is, then we recap all the things that they did and failed and then I say this.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Mrs. Johnson, this is the next step of the rest of your life, right?
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is going to be this never ends after today.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know that, right?
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they've already bought in and they understand, and they agree to it.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do they know what they're really saying?
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Probably not.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is the truth.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wouldn't be doing my job, Mrs. Johnson, if I didn't tell you the truth that this never ends.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't a one month, one week, five session, 10 session, one year deal.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the next step of the rest of your life.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you willing to take that step today?
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, they're like, bought in and they say yes.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you could also say that to somebody and they could be like, yeah, you know what, I'm not ready for that.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: That isn't what I want and you could lose them.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So be careful, you have to know when to insert that.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's the truth because it's never stopped.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't stopped working out at least.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't, since I started working at one of 13 years old, there was probably 20 years that I had missed two weeks straight.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like unless I was sick or on vacation or injured, but there was like a nine year or 10 year period in there that was like one week or less.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't take off the gym of one week where I didn't get into the gym and get some workouts.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now,
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: obviously with covid and things like there's been some more gaps but there's been no one year off ever since I was 13 years old.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's never been one month off.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just what it is, it's just the part of the life and, you know, and so it's very, it's not difficult for, like, somebody that hasn't been in sports or didn't grow up this way to understand that, but that's the truth.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Without going to the gym, I feel miserable.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I, I can't imagine what it would be like to not go to the gym for a year or even a month.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: but yet this is the norm.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we can't really relate to folks a lot of times, but like you could tell somebody, this is the rest of your life, and they're not gonna comprehend what I'm really trying to tell you.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the rest of your life.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And some advice that I would have to reduce the amount of turn that you have, maybe not this January, but next January is when you do have the members coming in and signing up, whether it's in January or whenever,
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: future, pace it, think like, well, what is the messaging that I'm at intense, very high?
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in January, February, it's easy to sell memberships because everybody's coming in.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just ready to get started.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're basically sold before they show up.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, don't just go for yes and get them to sign up, it's like you need to take the power and the authority and position this as what you're starting now is for the rest of your life.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are different.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We operate differently here.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You go to the gym down the street, they're just going to sign you up, take your money.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: What we're going to do is we're going to invest in you for the rest of your life, essentially.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you need to have that game plan and that journey to take that client from like high intent of like, yeah, it's the new year.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got to do something to hey, no, this is actually something that I have to stick with.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: This will be about the best time of your year to do it because they intend so high.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not like you're going to turn somebody off.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you are, you're taking that power back.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we don't really need you to sign up here.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need us, the end of the day.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a whole selling out of desperation.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a whole another show or podcast topic.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, use this, use this particular time of year as the opportunity to get the buy-in of this is not a transformation.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a lifestyle.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you could do that,
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: this year, this will save your butt for the rest of time, if we're being honest.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if we can do this every single month, not just in January, but practice at this January, you'll get by and people will be in to that, especially now because they're so motivated, right?
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the dirty little secret is listen guys you're up against the wall you're going to get signups you're going to get a lot of cancelation so do not take your eye off those cancelations do everything you can and we've we've given you a bunch of little tips and tricks they try to reduce that this year but that that is the secret that is the dirty little secret that nobody talks about you're going to have nearly hopefully not as many but nearly as many losses as you do signups this year and last year if you go back and look you'll probably be surprised
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: so don't let it take you by surprise just know that's the way it is and here's the reasons why and here's the things to do about it guys so hopefully that helps you until next episode keep changing lies we will see you on the next show bye
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, thanks for listening to another episode of the built-grilled podcast.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want more help growing your business, join our free Facebook group, Profit Accelerator, helping training Jim's grow to $30,000 a month and beyond.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to see you there, go check out the show notes for the link, and keep building something great, and we'll see you in the next episode.