Kyle McGlynn, owner of Experience Fitness has been in the Fitness Industry for sixteen years by pulling up his bootstraps and designing his life, and business around fulfilling dreams. He started out in a position that some might find a lot of their members in today: He was overweight.
But he wasn’t lost; he wasn’t without hope. He worked hard, trained for months and eventually his resiliency paid off. He ended up being able to shed the weight and was left feeling revitalized. “…I just really improved my quality of life…” says Kyle “…after I lost all this weight I was like, oh my gosh, I can run again. I can tie my shoes. I can live.”
He not only fell in love with being fit and healthy: He fell in love with the overall process of working out and living a healthy lifestyle. He wanted to understand the science behind it all. The ‘why’ of working out. The more he thought about it he came to a fundamental realization that has propelled him to success ever since: If he could get just one person to experience what he went through “that’d be pretty cool.”
So, he got certified as a personal trainer and began helping people with their fitness goals one after the other. Fast forward sixteen years and he’s the proud owner of Experience Fitness in Plains, Pennsylvania.
So why are we talking about Kyle McGlynn today? Well, first because he’s awesome. But second, because at one point in time his business had a big problem: They were leaking oil when it came to their member communications and he needed a way to clean it up. “We had MyZone. We had InBody, we had MindBody” Says Kyle “… they all did their separate parts; nothing really tied them all together.”
Before Kyle ran his client communications through Naamly the process they used was successful to a fault but ultimately was the equivalent of reaching around your back to scratch your elbow. Possible, but not really worth the effort. They had an iPhone that was plugged in and always on at the front desk. He made it a mandate that if a text came through, you answered it. What inevitably would happen? Kyle would start to respond or one of the members of his staff and then they get sidetracked. Called away to help a member on a machine because of their recent shoulder injury or someone comes in the front door wanting to sign up. Then they’re helping the customer in front of them and hours turned into days and the customer that texted never got a response back. With Naamly, Kyle found “the communication capabilities [that Naamly have] are awesome because I can answer a message, the escalation process too. If I don’t [answer] another one of our staff members can. And so there’s no client that’s ever getting neglected or un-responded to.”
When the Covid-19 Pandemic ravaged the nation (and in some cases, it still is) gyms across the country had to adapt to the way they interacted with their members. Some were forced to close their doors entirely, others transitioned to an outdoor workout space or digital workout plans. Kyle was happy to have Naamly on his side when the pandemic reared its ugly head. By utilizing Naamly’s smart messaging technology like the feature that alerts you on your untouched clients Kyle was able to stay ahead of the curve: “…Everybody’s working from home. I’m still in the gym, but no clients… Tons of messages are coming in. And honestly, if it was just depending on one cell phone sitting at the front desk of the gym with one person responsible for all these messages we wouldn’t have been able to provide such a fast and clean response to everything that we’re doing for our members moving forward … If we didn’t have Naamly when Covid hit our client communication would have been a nightmare and it just made it super easy at a difficult time of being a club owner … Client communication is the number one thing that Naamly has solved for us. Everybody gets answered. I love the seven day check-in. I love the notes you can put for each client … even just putting different categories of our clients together for texting options. It’s super easy. It’s clean and it’s honestly, just an awesome process…”
Naamly turned Kyle’s communication with his members around. He found that it was easier to set new goals for his members and keep on top of all of their data seamlessly. Once he got used to the system, and his staff was on board, not just their communication increased but so did their overall retention of members. “…if you clean up communication, you clean up client retention, you clean up nutrition goals where you can set reminders for your clients on things that we’re working on outside of just the workout, it’s a clean system that keeps everything just neat and tidy.”
That point could not be more true. Cleaning up communication is a vital way to improve your overall retention rate. Reason being that everyone loves to be heard. But not just heard: listened to. Retention when it comes to your members is of paramount importance. Consider this: Say each member pays you $300/month for their membership. One member, on average, will stay on board for about two years. That alone is worth $7,200. On top of their membership they’re likely to refer at least 2 more members to your gym during that time. Those members also stay for another two years. Now, when that’s all said and done: that original member is worth $21,600. Sounds pretty great, right? The catch? They won’t stay and they won’t pay if you don’t communicate with them. Naamly helps you achieve this with all of your members effortlessly.
Another benefit of Naamly that Kyle was grateful for was its ease of use: “I’ve never seen something so clean and easy to navigate. I’m not a technology guy. I’m a personal trainer…” Says Kyle, “…so to have a piece of software that I know how to use and explain how to use it to the rest of my team, for me, it’s just a no-brainer.” One shared inbox that the entire team, not just the gym owner can look into and use from their own devices makes keeping up with member communication stress free. By implementing the escalation feature that Naamly provides, Kyle was able to tag employees on certain messages, or vice versa. Meaning the moment he couldn’t respond to something, a member of his staff was empowered to pick up the reigns, keeping the line of communication between the gym and the member alive. The shared inbox as well as the escalation feature helps ensure that no members’ voice is ever left unheard.
By getting his staff onboard with Naamly and hooked just as much as he is, it’s helped in providing a better overall customer experience for his members. Now they’re able to keep better track of their members’ individual goals, keeping everything from nutritional data to weekly weigh-ins in line and organized.
With Naamly, Kyle and his team are able to seamlessly help their members reach the goalposts they’ve set for themselves. Not to say he wasn’t able to help people reach their goals before Naamly. He’s been in the business of changing lives for years. Now, it’s something that doesn’t even take a second thought. “It’s so much cleaner to look at all the conversations we’ve had with this client to have an extra set of eyes besides just my own, but other staff members viewing that we’re able to set up strategy sessions and we’re able to reach out and help these members that are struggling…” Says Kyle “… that sometimes can just kind of sneak through the cracks without anybody knowing [and] we’re able to reach out to them and have a fresh starting point session with them, set some new goals and get them back into the club, achieving what they originally signed up to achieve.”