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Channel Conflict: Who "Owns" A Client?

January 11, 2018 Member Retention
I have a dentist. She’s been my dentist for a decade.   In those ten years, she’s moved her practice three times. And every time she moves, I follow, because my relationship is with her, not her office.   Obviously, this is great for her. She’ll be my dentist for life. But it’s NOT great for the dental offices she leaves.   I have a financial advisor. He has a “book of business” with my name in it.   If he moves his practice to another brand, I’ll go with him. He knows that I prefer Index Funds over RSPs, and real estate over any paper investment.   Obviously, this is great for him. But it’s NOT great for his office: if he leaves, so do his clients.   In most professions, shifting between dealerships or franchises happens only once or twice in a career. But in the fitness industry, it happens around every three years. Especially with CrossFit, where the barrier to ownership is SO low, trainers move in and out of gyms pretty often. And if you don’t want your clients to follow them down the street, you have to take a different approach.   Your clients need to have a relationship with your BRAND that overrides their relationship with any SPECIFIC coach.   Here are some tips to keep your brand in the forefront of your clients’ mind: Change your lexicon. Avoid using phrases like “coach for life”. Instead, refer to “the excellent coaches at Catalyst” and use “we” in your correspondence. Regularly switch coaches around in group class times. Sub out coaches for personal training clients occasionally. It’s fun for coaches to work with new clients, and better for the clients. Put the best person in each role. If you say “client retention is the coach’s job” then that coach will manage the entire client relationship. If they’re bad at sending birthday cards or congratulating clients, the ...
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Individual Design at Catalyst

January 9, 2018 Personal Development
Most readers of this blog will know that I own Catalyst Fitness (CrossFit Catalyst) and have since 2005.   We started as a Personal Training studio before we found CrossFit. And before opening Catalyst, I was doing 1:1 training as my full-time career since 2002 (and part-time since 1996.)   That’s a lot of 1:1 time.   The way I sell Personal Training (PT) sessions has changed over time. At first, I simply billed clients at the end of the month. I was doing some in-home PT, and collecting was a nightmare (yeah, I can SEE YOU IN THERE!)   Then I relied on the owner of our local PT studio to collect for me. That worked most of the time, but when it didn’t, I was out the money.   When I opened Catalyst, I started selling packages–10 visits and 20 visits. And now I’m moving on to a subscription model, which we call our ID program.   You can see the client-facing landing page here: www.catalystgym.com/id   There are two ways to sell a subscription-based PT model. The first is to simply charge a recurring rate every month, like $199 for four 30-minute sessions per month. That’s what we do. The second way is to sell 150 sessions at a large discount, and then finance the purchase for your client. For example, let’s say I charge $80 per hour, but a client can get a 25% discount for purchasing 100 sessions upfront. Then I offer to finance the purchase for them at 15% interest, and they pay monthly. I could actually make back a lot of the discount on the compounding interest. And the client is committed to 100 sessions in advance–or else your collections agency will get them. Boom, retention!   If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a day, you’ll know the second paragraph is NOT what I recommend. But it’s done every day ...
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Episode 103: Q+A With Coop

January 8, 2018 Gym Operations Podcast
 
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Why We're A Mentorship Practice

January 7, 2018 Gym Operations
I found my first mentor in 2009. I had struggled for YEARS to “figure it out on my own”. I thought real entrepreneurs cut their own path. I was wrong.   I was invited to mentor another gym owner in 2012. I’d already been writing for years. I already had my first book, Two-Brain Business; it had sold a few hundred copies.   A website company decided to help gym owners with education. They invited me to fill that role. At the time, I understood “mentorship” to mean “tell them what to do.” I quickly learned that “mentor” and “teacher” were overlapping roles, but they weren’t the same thing.   Later, we decided to augment the mentoring calls with an online video library. I’d been selling an online course for years through the IgniteGym platform, so I knew the process. I also knew its value. I spent a Christmas season alone in my basement, filming against a black backdrop, and then editing while my kids went to visit their grandparents.   We sold the course. We made a bunch of money. But I soon realized it wasn’t working. Gyms weren’t having dramatic turnarounds, like they were with mentorship.   It took me awhile–and a tough conversation with my friends, Jay Rhodes–but I realized that in-person mentorship was critical to success in any business. After all, it had been in mine: I was reading books, listening to others, absorbing more education than anyone else–and STILL failing until I found a mentor.   As soon as I realized that selling video modules wasn’t saving gyms, I wanted to stop. The website company wanted to continue. It took a few months to untangle things, but when I launched TwoBrainBusiness.com in 2016, I had a clear vision: we are a mentorship practice.   Your gym is not Catalyst. My staff handbook can form the base template for yours, and save you hours of work, ...
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"I'd Farm 'Til It's Gone"

January 3, 2018 Gym Marketing
I spent New Year’s Eve with a friend named Matt. Matt’s a farmer.   We sat at his handmade kitchen table drinking Mad Jack, both of us stifling yawns: I’d been up since 4am. Matt had been up all night, fixing power lines in -30 weather for his “real job”. Matt works for the power company, but he’s still a farmer.   Our wives were talking about a mutual friend who’d won the lottery in 2017. Half a million isn’t enough to retire on, but it pays a lot of bills, and I asked Matt what he’d do with it.   “I’d farm until it was gone,” he said.   Most farms lose money. If you calculated the value of a farmer’s time, each hour worked would be worth pennies or less. And yet Matt wears a shirt with a tractor on it. His kids’ toys are all tractors. Look out any window in his two-story house, and you’ll see farm.   Matt doesn’t farm to make money. Matt makes money so he can be a farmer.   I know a lot of coaches like Matt: if they won the lottery today, they’d still show up to coach the 6am class tomorrow. In fact, it’s one of the questions on our Gym Checkup, and almost everyone gives the same answer.   All of us receive something greater than money from coaching. And many of us take “day jobs” to support our coaching habit. But that’s where the similarities end.   We NEED our businesses to thrive. Our clients depend on our ability to make the business work. Our coaches deserve success. Our kids deserve to see us at bedtime.   We need to balance our “right brain” (emotion and care) with our “left brain” (systems and processes) to provide the best gym. Being excellent doesn’t mean “just caring more”–it means being excellent at business, and providing an excellent service. It ...
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Episode 102: How To Change Your Clients' Behavior

January 2, 2018 Member Retention Podcast
 
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