Ever wondered how a fitness business stays on its toes when the punches of reality hit hard? This episode pulls no punches as we navigate the twists and turns of our fitness empire's journey, from launching a fresh referral challenge to reshuffling our staff deck. We're putting our adaptability to the test, bidding adieu to a sales follow-up agency that couldn't keep pace, and celebrating an internal champion's rise to sales manager. The spotlight shines on the gritty details of our new member challenge, how we're managing the ripple effects of staffing changes, and the importance of staying laser-focused on our goals—no matter how the tides turn.
Strap in as we tackle the highs and lows of our challenge's outcome, where the thrill of enrolling new members is met with the sobering reality of missed expectations. It's a candid look at how we're recalibrating our approach to retention and satisfaction, doubling down on our commitment to an in-house sales force that aligns with our vision of excellence. We share our playbook for ensuring the business runs smoothly during management absences, revealing our philosophy on controlling what we can and rolling with the punches for what we can't. Join me as I reveal how we're playing the cards we're dealt, always ready to shuffle the deck and deal the next hand in our fitness business journey. Business Buyers Club Enter 070499 at checkout.
Network and connect with other Acquisition Experts!
Learn DIY Due Diligence Get training from an Acquisitions Attorney to become a DIY Due Diligence buyer!
Ever wondered how a fitness business stays on its toes when the punches of reality hit hard? This episode pulls no punches as we navigate the twists and turns of our fitness empire's journey, from launching a fresh referral challenge to reshuffling our staff deck. We're putting our adaptability to the test, bidding adieu to a sales follow-up agency that couldn't keep pace, and celebrating an internal champion's rise to sales manager. The spotlight shines on the gritty details of our new member challenge, how we're managing the ripple effects of staffing changes, and the importance of staying laser-focused on our goals—no matter how the tides turn.
Strap in as we tackle the highs and lows of our challenge's outcome, where the thrill of enrolling new members is met with the sobering reality of missed expectations. It's a candid look at how we're recalibrating our approach to retention and satisfaction, doubling down on our commitment to an in-house sales force that aligns with our vision of excellence. We share our playbook for ensuring the business runs smoothly during management absences, revealing our philosophy on controlling what we can and rolling with the punches for what we can't. Join me as I reveal how we're playing the cards we're dealt, always ready to shuffle the deck and deal the next hand in our fitness business journey. Business Buyers Club Enter 070499 at checkout.
Network and connect with other Acquisition Experts!
Learn DIY Due Diligence Get training from an Acquisitions Attorney to become a DIY Due Diligence buyer!
Alright, good morning. I don't have my microphone today, so the audio is not my favorite. Most likely coming through so it's going to be decent audio. But, alright, we're starting a new week. We have like three weeks until the next challenge starts. So what we're doing is we like to do like a current members challenge, so all the members that are currently members they get to invite a member, like a friend or a family member, for free to come to kickboxing and strength training for the next couple of weeks, completely free, and so it's a promotional referral. Come in, check it out, try it out. Folks that are already at the studio get bringing in friends and family so they can get a taste of what you're enjoying as well.
Speaker 1:
We don't do a huge emphasis on referrals. Industry go-to and standard is that, yes, you need to do it. However, I don't trust my current sales follow-up agency to do that. They've really struggled with figuring out our classes, our schedules, how our calendar works and even hand-holding and telling them like here's how it works, here's what we need to do. They still are forgetting, like when our class schedules are and it's just, it's not working. So I'm canceling out that vendor. Even when we've had like weekly check-ins and meetings they will forget to like. Here's an example Like they'll schedule a time with me on Friday at 2 pm to do a catch-up and then they'll schedule a brand new calendar appointment with me at 4 pm and they'll just go to the 2 pm time frame and then at 4.05, they'll say hey, nathan, are we still catching up at four o'clock? And I'll say, yep, I'm sitting here in the Zoom room, and then they'll show up at like 4.08 and be like OK, nathan, I just want to make sure we're still on for today. But guys up to your own appointment. If this is how we're doing things, then this is not how we should do things. This is not work. So, for better or worse, I'm going to be wrapping up with that vendor, giving them 30 days notice and one pivot. We're making two hard pivots right now, after the party is over. One hard pivot is I'm telling the vendor like hey, you've been my follow-up system. You're supposed to be scheduling meetings with my leads. If you can't show up to appointments with me, I don't. This is not gonna work. So I'm gonna be having you do. You're my sales assistant, you're not my sales lead, you're not my sales team anymore. You're not gonna be my sales assistant.
Speaker 1:
I'm promoting someone in studio who is proactively doing membership engagement stuff. He wants more time. He is proactively doing membership engagement stuff. He wants more time. He wants more hours. He wants to make some extra money, make a better life for his family.
Speaker 1:
So I'm promoting someone internally to be my program director, aka my sales manager and vendor. That's supposed to be my sales manager. You are now the assistant. So whatever my in-house sales person needs, please follow what he needs, whether that's cold calling, dropping voicemails, following up with old leads. Like, do whatever my in-house salesperson needs. If that means he has nothing for you to do today, I'm just going to pay you to do nothing because my sales manager knows what's going on, he knows our schedule, he knows our bottlenecks, he knows stuff that's going on and I'm wrapping up with the vendor.
Speaker 1:
It was a three-month minimum commitment and the minimum time length is what we're doing. I've been hand-holding them. It's not working. Second hard pivot. So that's our new switch someone who is feet on the ground and the studio. He's now this the program director. That's a hard pivot. Going back to that older style things, it's not the same OG guy that I've had for a while, but he's been pretty darn close to that because he's even like in text conversation, showing up to the sessions. He knows how it all works.
Speaker 1:
Second hard pivot is we're going to be letting one of our long-term instructors go. She is not with the program, she's not doing her requirements as an employee. She says she wants to improve, she says she wants to do get to speed. But we've told her, I've told her what needs to happen, not doing it. So we're we're parting ways, and my reason for it is the company is moving in a different direction than where her tenure has been. We're going in a different direction. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1:
Last day is going to be this. So we're letting go of someone. That's new territory, it's uncomfortable, but if it's dragging down the management team, dragging down the other instructors, dragging down the members, there is no value gained by keeping this particular person on hand. So we're wrapping up the ways with someone who's been around quite a while and sorry to see them go, but that's the direction the company needs to go. So we're making a hard pivot. We're not executing that next step until one of my frontline managers is back from vacation and I need all management on deck so that if there are any follow-up ripple effects or consequences from letting someone go, everyone else is here to handle all of the drama that may ensue from that.
Speaker 1:
Another learning, and then we'll call it good for the day. Another learning I have is we had like 71, 72 people partake in the challenge. That's awesome. In my head I was calculating like all right, that means that we have like 70-ish people that will be up for conversion. From all of this and something that I needed to get better clarification on what the breakdown is, I thought that means today we're going to have like 70 or so people. We knew 11 people were canceling. They're all done, they want to wrap things up. So 71, we lose 11. I thought we were going to have 60 people today starting their monthly membership. Moving forward, I didn't realize a lot of people signed up for the challenge as a monthly membership starting position and so in my head I thought, okay, we're gonna have 60 brand new monthlies hit the, not the payroll, hit the monthly dues on what is it? Today is the 25th.
Speaker 1:
I didn't realize a lot like half of those people started the challenge as a monthly member, so I was excessively optimistic and caught up with my manager that's telling all the parts of this, and only about half actually started that way. So half started as a one-time lump payment of, we'll just say, like $400, $500. And then they were going to start the monthly membership. Afterward Turns out like half of going to start the monthly membership. Afterward Turns out like half of people started as a monthly membership already. We've already been getting paid on them and the remaining half, which actually turns out to be like 27 or so, had that story, and so I thought it was all one way or the other and I should have gotten more clarification on how they were doing so. Today we have 27 people starting their monthly membership slide app, and I thought I was going to be 60.
Speaker 1:
And so in the moment when I heard that news, I thought, ok. Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, maybe I'm misreading how the report is coming in, but about half of all the challenge participants started the challenge as a monthly membership. The other half started as a one-time charge with then the auto-enrollment at the end, and so I thought our monthly. I thought we were going to have a big pop today, and the big pop is about half the size of the big pop. And so, at first blush, part of me is like all right, that's not good, that's not what I thought we were going to get. That's sort of what the expectation I thought we were going to get Anxiousness not the reaction I want to have. And so my reaction I'm going to react the way that I want to react and I want to react as a very calm, engaged this is fine, we're doing the best we can mentality, and that's not my default reaction, but that's the reaction I want to have. So, before I start reacting, once I heard the news, I'm like, okay, this is short of the expectation they had. I was expecting something different. We've already been getting paid on these memberships. That's great. So I'm going to slow down, I'm going to breathe, I mean. No, it just isn't what I was looking for. But what we are getting today is we're getting 27 people who are now part of the program. That's great. So I still want to track our conversion rate, because to me that's an important factor Of the total people that signed up for the challenge, how many people of that squad stayed on as a monthly member the first, second and third month after their challenge cycle concluded?
Speaker 1:
Historically, it's about 50%, and I just want to get clarification. I'm not going to cast blame, I'm not going to be crabby, I'm not going to throw a fit, because we had a lot of people sign up for the challenge and how they just came in it's still a little murky. So, at the end of the day, I'm who I want to be known as and how I want to live my life is someone that is doing the best we can. We're putting in the work, we're spending the time where it needs to be, we're training on the things that matter. We have a high success rate on the things that matter, like a customer satisfaction score, on a retention rate, on a new batch of members that are signing up, on a solid ROI, on the investment we're making into our marketing dollars, that we have a strong sales funnel so that when we spend a thousand dollars on ads, we know exactly how many members we're going to get from that and what our return investment is from that hard work. And when something's not going very well, then we either scale it back and do less of that thing, or we improve how we do it so that it still is a meaningful thing to be doing. And so all that to say, when I heard the news, that wasn't quite what I was anticipating. Just pause, just take a breath and give myself about three to five seconds to process that information. Then that acknowledged that disappointment. I realized, okay, did we spend the marketing dollars we need to spend? Yeah, did we have a good cost per lease? Yep, did we convert those?
Speaker 1:
In this last challenge group, when we had a lot of leads and a lot of appointments and a lot of challenge signups, did we have the right number of people? Yeah, well, did we have great returns great returns on our ad spend, return on our investment? Like, yeah, have great returns, great returns on our ad spend return on our investment. Like, yeah, we actually had very good returns on those. All right, good, did we? Do we keep a high percentage of those people? Absolutely, we did Okay.
Speaker 1:
So what's wrong? We did everything along the way. What is wrong? At the end of the day? It's nothing is wrong. We ran the playbookbook, we did the right things, maybe just not enough volume. Maybe that was the thing. All the steps of the people that stayed each step of the way, the retention, the next phase like, we had a very efficient, effective model, a sales funnel, a, a retention program, an engagement rate, everything worked. The only thing just wasn't right was enough people to join the program. So, okay, that is the hiccup to improving the business model, and to be known as someone that can breathe and instill confidence, to pinpoint hey, here's where we were hoping for, here's where we ended up, here's what we need to be doing to get things up to the expectation I was hoping for. And so, at the end of the day, do I have realistic expectations? Am I instilling confidence in my team? Are we doing the right things? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
This current challenge coming up is looking much leaner and much smaller. I was hoping for about 15 to 20 sales. Last week we had two, and so, a year from now, I would be thrilled not doing the sales team that we had last week, and that's mainly the vendor, the agency that I was working with. And so I was tempted to just stay in the course train improve. We're on a crash time, we don't have time to, there is a ticking time clock and I can't continue on. So I'm pivoting hardcore. I'm going to double up on my cost of my sales team by paying a vendor, as well as paying someone in-house to rise to my program director sales manager In the moment. It bites, it hurts, it's expensive. I don't know if we're going to have a solid cohort for this next challenge, but I know we're going to have a smoother process by working with someone in-house. That's where we're at, man, that's where we're going. The goal to be profitable for the end of the year that's looking a lot tighter now. I don't know if we're going to hit it, but I was thinking this morning. Final thing, and then we'll call it good.
Speaker 1:
When you're a pro athlete, your job is to train your body, train your mind, train for the Super Bowl, train for the playoffs, train for the regular season, train for the preseason, train for the offseason. You don't stress about the second half of the Super Bowl when it's preseason. You stress about making it to the next phase. And then from there you will stress about making it to the next phase and then from there you will stress about being into the next phase. I pull the future into the present way too much. My job is to make it to the next step and right now our next step is not profitable for the end of the year. That is too far into the future. There's way too many things to worry about year. That is too far into the future. There's way too many things to worry about.
Speaker 1:
My job as a pro business owner is to work out today to eat right, to have a solid Monday meeting with the team to prepare them for when my manager's on vacation she's going on vacation for a week. Are we set up for success there? Are we set up for a sales manager for success? That is the win, that is the focus. That is the focus. That is what we're training for. It's not, not, not, not for other things. I need to shrink my vision, put on blinders and acknowledge what the focus is for today, right now, and that is my job. And to work the day job that's the 90% of my energy and effort is to focus on that day job and then on the day job. That's the 90% of my energy and effort is to focus on that day job and then on the business as well, and that's what the team needs to focus on. And that is where we are at.
Speaker 1:
We're going to do what we can. The things that are within our control is what the focus is on. Things that are outside of our control, we're not going to focus on. We're going to acknowledge them, see them. We're not going to stress about them or panic or celebrate things that are outside of our control.
Speaker 1:
So that's where we're at, that's where we're going and we're going to allow room for God to work in the business plan. We're going to allow room for things to be outside of our control and we're going to work the plan. Then we're going to allow the cards to flap as they do when you play poker, everyone gets two cards and then the other five cards are out of your control. So, acknowledge your two cards, realize it's a good, bad, or it's an awesome or not so great starting hand and then, when the cards flop, you'll find out if you had a killer hand or a rough hand. But either way, you work with the two cards you got. That's all you can do. Let the other five run. That's where we're at, that's where we're going. That's rock and roll.
