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The Truth About Free Trials in Gym Pt 2 · Gym Business Coach Podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, welcome back to another episode of the gym business coach podcast.
0:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be your host today, Randy angst and joined with Zach Lembial.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we doing?
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Living the dream man.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, baby.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go all it.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So what did they say?
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it your dream or something else?
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in it.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still I'm still in it.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, much for yours.
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright guys, on the last episode we talked about how giving away your services for free could be impacting your team morale, could be probably changing the structure of how long people say in your business, there's a number of negatives.
0:36
[SPEAKER_00]: side effects, essentially, that we're probably not recognized beforehand.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably missed you know, or overlooked some of those things.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we want to talk about how it's not only impacting your team, but it's impacting the health of the business as a whole.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Your self included as the owner and the benefits that you receive as the owner.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Lay the foundation for us, Zach.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously free offers are synonymous with this industry.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a way many gym owners feel they need to create or need to offer in order to get somebody in the room and have the opportunity to convert them to a long-term member.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's just kind of paint the foundation.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is that?
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: How is that negatively impacting the business as a whole?
1:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody hears the term tire kickers.
1:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they had the tracks tire kickers.
1:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I would just say that there's no faster way to devalue and commoditize what it is that you deliver than to put free on it.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
1:49
[SPEAKER_01]: position it.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: When you use free, it's psychologically in the in the prospect's mind, just saying like, again, it's it's a commodity like I can get this anywhere and now it's it now your business is looked at through this lens of not.
2:16
[SPEAKER_01]: premium, not the highest possible quality and we all know this, right?
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We all know this like if you go in and you're shopping for products, let's just say like, you know, wine, here's shopping for wine.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we all know there's bottom shelf and there's middle shelf and there's top shelf.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And you immediately believe that the top shelf is going to be the highest quality because it's the highest price tag.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's what do we say?
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no strategic advantage to being the second most expensive.
2:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And there, you know, there is a strategic advantage to being the most expensive.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a strategic advantage to being the least expensive.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have to know what it is that you're doing and who it is that you're attracting when you put those offers out there and I hear it all the time like when it comes to free it's like, well, it's
3:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not really free, they have to earn it, or it's like lipstick on a pig, right?
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: There's different ways of positioning it.
3:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the six-week challenge.
3:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The rise in the fall of the six-week challenge, but it's like, hey, it's a free six-week challenge.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They come in, they have to pay five of their bucks, but they can get the money back, and it's like, okay, there's a lot of psychology to unpack around that, but at the same time,
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We flash forward, you know, what, eight years, nine years after that kind of like was a huge thing.
4:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I think some gyms are still going to it, right?
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But all those people are gone.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It like all those customers that you brought into the business, 90% of them every single challenge disappeared at the end of the challenge.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So then is that the type of person that we want to attract into our business, or is it not?
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote before you jump in here, but I remember what we, you know, we're not above this.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, hey, this seems to be working.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They're getting hundreds of clients like let's try this and we ran a couple of them in our facility and all of the sudden it's like,
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: the people that were coming in did not look like our clients, like our customers.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And they came and they went, and the people that looked like our customers were still here after the challenge.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you have to think about the ramifications of that in your business.
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess we have to go back to,
5:12
[SPEAKER_01]: what, who are you?
5:15
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your identity as a business?
5:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to start there?
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And then who do we want to attract?
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't believe that any gym out there is
5:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like starting, I don't believe any owner is starting their business saying I want to track to like the cheapest possible customer ever that just wants to come in and get a few workouts in and then leave.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's what they're offering.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not about that.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Why why Jim's use free.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know how they don't know another way.
5:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
5:53
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't school for marketing.
5:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't study it.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not their fault.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a great question.
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, that's why is because they're, they're gym owners, they got into a probably from a trainer, they're a trainer and that's what they learn and they're like, man, I deliver great training, but then the reality of being a gym owner hits them and they're like, wow, there's a lot to this and the learning curve is pretty steep and you can fall off a cliff because if you don't learn it, you got a business real quick.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what they did is they, you know, okay, well, what's everybody else doing?
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, free is getting people in the door.
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I need somebody to just run ads for me and offer something for free.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And look where that's gotten us, right?
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's a very short.
6:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a band aid that gets, you know, that's not going to solve the problem.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think you nailed it too, right?
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you get into this industry because you want to help people.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that the results we provide are not, you know, it's not flashing the pan.
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not overnight.
6:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for the lack of better term, you know, delayed gratification and hard work.
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you need somebody coming multiple times a week for periods of time to get the results that they're typically looking for.
7:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing, too.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we have to remember, we provide a solution to a problem.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the frame that many Jim owners using free are putting themselves into.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: They're positioning themselves as now I sell workouts.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't sell a solution to a problem.
7:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know how to articulate that to the marketplace and that's why the position is off.
7:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they're gravitating towards the easiest route I would say to get somebody's attention.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to just getting their attention, not necessarily acquiring a new long-term client.
7:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we were to look at free in and off or free is risk removal.
7:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
7:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
7:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's that's one of the things I wanted to explain or paint the picture of here, there's a number of different ways to
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Our expectation is that you're going to sign an annual membership.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And in those first 14 days before day 15, you have the choice of ripping up and shredding that that agreement or moving forward and being part of the annual.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a different form of risk reversal, right?
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got another episode we've done.
8:23
[SPEAKER_00]: talks about the five trial styles.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: If you if you're curious of what else you could do, go listen to that episode.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We break it down in depth.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's the first thing.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jim owners, you have other options.
8:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Either are other ways of getting risk reversal into your offer that isn't giving it away.
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of first and foremost.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we don't have to do it.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But the impact that it has on your business, I think, is clear when you have run challenges or you are doing free, your business shifts from focusing on the client and delivering a superior program and results for your clients to this marketing and sales cycle, where, you know, you've got all of this front end.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: attention going to all these newbies that are that have no skin in the game.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not committed right sometimes even hard just getting them in for workouts because there's no sting for them.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so can we even get show the value of what they could get as a member if they're not barely even attending their trial that's free and then.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But down the road, we know that they're only committed to X number, you know, whatever that initial off front end offer is what's the number one problem in our industry that if we could solve that it were golden.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: retention retention retention retention yeah retention starts with your marketing 100% and so we get mad and frustrated and and jaded in a as a as a gym owner when it's like man like you know i'm just losing members and let's be real guys like there's nobody in that's listening to this that isn't losing members or he's like i've got the best written
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you don't.
10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you don't.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you would be at capacity and you wouldn't be trying to market and bring people into your business.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd be rolling up every day to your gym, high five and people sitting in your office desk and feet up on the desk like.
10:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody has retention issues.
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody can improve upon their retention.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's the reality of our history.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to have zero.
10:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to have zero.
10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: People move people pass away.
10:37
[SPEAKER_00]: People die.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a really good night.
10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're it's never going to be zero.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're also going to have people that just give up right or they quit.
10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But.
10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: The goal is like, hey, let's bring that to the absolute minimum that it can be, and if you're bringing people in on a free chat, like you said, delayed gratification, right?
11:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes a long time to get results and fitness never ends.
11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
11:04
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no finish line.
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Nike said it best.
11:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no finish line when it comes to fitness, like you can't stop working out.
11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you start, okay, there's no point in stopping here.
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations, you did it.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It just moved back.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, wouldn't that be nice.
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't.
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't begin.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a never-ending thing.
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So, why are we, why are we getting mad at this problem that essentially were creating?
11:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We're bringing somebody in and saying like,
11:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of out of the gate when somebody first makes contact with us would seize our marketing, we go through this nurture process from the beginning of their whole relationship with us, we're instilling in them and their identity that hate this is for life.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not something that you do for a couple of months and then leave, right or quit.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that you are going to need to do from now until the end of time.
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean with our business, but you can never stop.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to make sure that when you start this process, you have all of the tools and resources and support to continue this lifestyle forever.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And that cannot be communicated when you're
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're saying, hey, Ms. Johnson, like, come in and we're going to do a consultation, like a fitness consultation, and that's going to include a free workout.
13:10
[SPEAKER_01]: you've never met Miss Johnson before, you know zero about her, and you're going to take her through a work out before you ever sit down and have a conversation with her.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that tell Miss Johnson?
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that
13:28
[SPEAKER_01]: the value that you provide.
13:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a light, very light.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes nothing to get something to do.
13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, we do work out here.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Not hey, Miss Johnson, we're going to come in.
13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to go through a consultation and an assessment.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And we take everybody through you, you mentioned the two weeks.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's our body mapping phase.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to take you through this two-week assessment process.
13:54
[SPEAKER_01]: so that we understand your strengths, your weaknesses, your contraindications, your goals, and we know exactly how to train you.
14:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That's gonna take us two weeks just to figure out a starting point with you, which one has more value in the client's mind?
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
14:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll pay for the two weeks, the workout, it's like,
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: They, I just came in and took a free class or did a free workout.
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I got sweaty.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll all the value that you provide now is that workout.
14:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Work out.
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
14:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And nothing more.
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, it's a commodity.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, it's something that you can give away for free.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And the client now and their mind is price shopping.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And they will go to the next.
14:41
[SPEAKER_01]: least expensive, less expensive, or more convenient location, versus saying, I'm going to stick with you long term because you have something that nobody else has.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You made the investment of mapping my body and designing my program and doing all of these things to take care of me as an individual, not just have me show up and work up.
15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you can't get there somewhere else, right?
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You, they can't just move on and just go join the next gym and assume that, oh, yeah, that gym knows everything about me.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This gym is going to going to be the same or have that same information.
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that because if you believe that in order for your client to understand the value that you're providing, they have to experience it.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning they have to come in and do a workout if that's how you communicate the the value of your program.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That right there is the problem that right there is telling me that that you don't understand.
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: marketing and psychology and the sales component of this industry and what's required to to create that perceived value in life-long journey.
16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: The retention piece, you don't understand how to create that and you are going to have a high-turn rate.
16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: with those people, right?
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're like, hey, you have to come in and do a free week.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Just know what it is that you're getting, would then you don't know what you really do other than provide workouts.
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have to, this is one of the things like with with our coaching clients and they come in, we're like, tell us everything that you do and what makes you special and like most of the
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And they don't even know how special it is.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And you and I are looking at this and we're pulling out these nuggets and we're like, that right there.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You can leverage that and lean into it and communicate that to the marketplace.
16:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're gonna eat that up because that's solving this massive problem.
17:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's doing it in a unique way that that prospect has never heard before because they'd been going to the gym that's offering a free week or whatever and delivering just workouts.
17:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not getting the results.
17:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't see the value of that.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they read or see your video
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: your, you know, unique way of doing this and why it works and how you deliver the training and they're going, whoa, like, I'm not getting results here because they don't have that.
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to go over here and guess what, I'll pay for that.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I just said, I just had a conversation this past weekend with a a crazy speed school and I was speaking on the unique mechanisms in the exciting proposition.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was interesting just watching the whole room kind of light up, like,
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, you know, what I'm doing.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is no knock to those gym owners, but I was telling them it's kind of like taking what they're doing and then like adding that special sauce that unique identifier, right, removing them from the the sea of many and putting them over here in the sea of one.
18:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see it all of the time with with Jim's websites, right?
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: What is every gym offer?
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: fitness, nutrition, and accountability, right?
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's where the, that's the problem.
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the solution.
18:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And when, again, we're not knocking you guys for not having the knowledge.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to seek the knowledge and stand it.
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you, there is a better way, right?
18:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that we coach our clients on all the time.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And but when we gravitate towards the workout being the piece of value that, you know, they need to experience that one
18:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's red flag.
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's red flag.
18:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and that, yeah, this, like you said, this isn't a knock on anybody.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that you, your expertise has been, is, is around the fitness.
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what you've poured your heart and soul into is learning that and becoming the expert there.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but even even one thing that's really common in like in the medical industry like with like family practitioners and stuff.
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: My sister was a medical coder and she got hired by a doctor and this doctor, you know, he had been going to school for like eight years and he finally graduates and he's going to open his practice and has zero patients.
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, how are we going to get patients?
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he just spent all of his time in energy and education learning how to help people.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Questionable, but whatever, you can tell.
19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to, we're literally like doctors.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love it.
19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, but he has no idea how to now get go out and get patients, right?
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And the same thing applies to gym owners.
20:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, man, you know how to help people and train them.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you don't know how to communicate that and how to take what you do and know in your special methodology and all that, and turn it into something that appeals to the marketplace,
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: then you're going, how am I going to get members?
20:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have any other way.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to throw a act up to say like, free month, free week, you know, whatever it is.
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And hope that I'm going to get, you know, 20 people that I have to come in
20:39
[SPEAKER_01]: service for X amount of time.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And then maybe like five of them will stick or something.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the only way I know to get clients.
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of funny, too.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: When we talk about it, mentioned a little bit in the last episode, but we talk about it all time.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like with the only industry that this has become a norm.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another industry where you walk in, you get service for free for typically a number of sessions or visits, you know, like two weeks, we in that person could be with you six eight times before you ever see.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: a pay, you know, be paid for any of that service.
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do it at a restaurant.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get to do it with your car wash. You don't do, you know, like there's not a single industry in the world that gives away what we give away in this industry.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And then at the same time, we want to be respected like everybody else.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to be seen as the
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: experts for health and fitness and do there's miss congruence there you know we can't we can't give away our services and then expect you know somebody to pay good money for the services that we bring to the table when we just showed them hey I could train you for two weeks for free yeah you know and then the other half of the the coin is jim owners
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: are always resistant of increasing rate or the cost of their services.
21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And we internally feel like we bring more value to what we do than what we're able to charge.
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: you're you're thinking you're struggling to raise your rates, but if you're giving your services away, you're always going to struggle to convert people to a higher price program.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Always, you know, who in the right mind is going to go receive something for free for two weeks and turn around pay five hundred dollars a month.
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: for that same service and expect it to be the same level of what it could be when you just got it for free.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's they're not going to grasp the value simply because you put them through a handful of workouts.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so one of our best producing marketing things that we do is a banner.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we put it on our building.
22:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got you know quite a bit of traffic that drives by
22:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Our members, existing members, their membership is $109 a week.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's our annual contract.
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: when we put the banner up, you know what the banner says?
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't exactly what it says, yeah, $100 a week.
23:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm limited trading $109 a week.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same exact thing that we are clients get.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we believe that we provide so much value,
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: that that is a steal for our members.
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but like, where was it going at this?
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the point that I was going to make here is like, you want to raise rates on your existing members, but your existing members are seeing the ads that you're running for free to weeks or week or what of month or whatever.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, well, you're given that away for free.
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: to people that aren't in no relationship with you yet.
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like why don't you do that for me.
23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been a member for like a year and you're giving them a discount or you're giving it to them for half off or or whatever.
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't think that your members aren't seeing this is they are and then you're going to try to raise their rates and they're like, no, you're willing to take a new person for nothing and now you're trying to charge me more.
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like guys, yeah, I'm just bringing up these things that happen in our industry.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So regularly, and it's considered like the norm.
24:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There are better ways, and what when was it?
24:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it last week we did the podcast when we were talking about, or maybe a couple of weeks ago, where we were talking about like one of the benefits of hiring a coach is they can look at your business from the outside like objectively and to your business when you're in it, you don't see a lot of these things.
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the things that, you know, we provide a gym business coaches, we'll look at somebody's business and we're like, well, no wonder you can't raise rates.
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Or no wonder you have a churn problem because here's here's how you solve this problem, you don't even realize that it's not about that you're not delivering a great service for your clients.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: you're not attracting the right person.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how we adjust your messaging on the front end to get the right person that's actually going to be a long-term client.
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you flash forward, you know, six months down the road.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, wow, these people are actually staying and they're paying more and they're great clients.
25:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What was I doing wrong the whole time?
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you were focusing all of your attention on
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: the delivery or something that wasn't even broken, right?
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You were already great there, but you couldn't get ahead because you were losing these people.
25:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It actually was a marketing problem in a membership pricing intro offer or whatever.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can keep spinning your wheels and run it on the hamster wheel, you know, or you solved that problem once and it's like, oh, I didn't even know that that was the solution because it's so far over here and you were working on the wrong thing.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's why Jim owners say stop.
26:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've talked about that a lot.
26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, talking about, you know, attracting that lifestyle client versus the transformation client, right?
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, right out of the gate, the psychology of those two individuals is different.
26:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Lifestyle client understands, like you are articulated, right?
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a, this is something I'm going to be doing from this point beyond continually.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no end goal.
26:36
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, I did it.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I achieved fitness.
26:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I don't have to go to the gym anymore.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of their life.
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: They've integrated it.
26:44
[SPEAKER_00]: multiple times a week and it's just the norm, right?
26:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the client we're trying to bring in the door and then we're running ads for somebody lose 30 pounds in six weeks or your money back that those that's not the same person.
26:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So like you said quite often your turn problem is a marketing problem.
27:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a delivery problem.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it starts there and you can not everybody's going to start as a transformation client, but you can, I'm sorry, a lifestyle client, they might, but you can attract somebody that has a transformation mindset.
27:22
[SPEAKER_01]: an immediately start changing and shifting their perspective and their identity to a lifestyle client and you can do that in your messaging and your copy and the nurture process and the consultation so that when they decide, oh, I'm signing up.
27:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Now they're not signing up for that challenge.
27:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They're signing up and they're going, okay, like the reason I've been unsuccessful before is because I kept going after these quick fixes in these challenges, this is different this time here's why.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
27:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And now all of a sudden we've taken somebody that was having a tendency to be attracted to that transformation to somebody that's like, oh, this is a long term thing, this is a new lifestyle for me.
28:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I would agree, and I think.
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The homework for you is looking at you're taking a step back from your business right great analogy you can't you don't repair car while driving it so if you're in the business you know if you're on the training floor is an owner if you're you know training 40 50 60 hours a week it's really hard to see these things.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But the homework I would give you would be to step back look at look at all of the areas of your business look at you know your retention see not just the delivery of it but what else could be impacting.
28:38
[SPEAKER_00]: somebody's decision to leave, you know, is it the way that they came into your business?
28:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the way that you from your first, you know, the first visit, the marketing message, everything that you're putting out there, that's where the relationship built, you know, is established.
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And so take that step back, look at your business objectively with the best, you know, of your ability.
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you need help, that's what we're here for.
29:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously there's links in the show notes to get in touch with us.
29:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We do have our growth summit coming up.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to be, you know, in a room with high-level gym owners thinking about,
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: not only thinking about, but that have solved a lot of these issues for themselves.
29:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the room fit pro growths on your.com.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get you your ticket there.
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's all we have for today's episode.
29:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we painted a pretty good picture.
29:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We've given you a little bit of homework to go look at your business.
29:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Start to identify these areas that you can change to have a different outcome.
29:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's the biggest thing is just because you've identified it doesn't mean that it's going to make the change.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to actually
29:37
[SPEAKER_00]: test and try different offers, different marketing positions, a lot of these things that, you know, that we help with.
29:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's all we have for this episode, until next episode, keep changing lives.