“… at the end of the day you aren’t just a fitness coach, you’re a therapist [to your members]…”
– Brynn Esbenshade
Brynn & Daniel Esbenshade opened their studio 2014 in Fort Worth, Washington. They started Temple Fitness with a somewhat simple idea in mind: They wanted to help their community improve their quality of life by improving the quality of their spirit.
“Looking back on the decisions we made when we made them, everything on paper said ‘No! You should not do this right now!’” Says Brynn Esbenshade. “And we started without a lot of mentors to help, just going with the flow. My husband says a lot that there’s never really failure. You can learn from it. Even during this season, there has been a lot of ‘oh no, what’s going to happen?’ but there isn’t that fear because we have learned a lot and know we can reset because of what we’ve learned.” From the day they opened their doors their attitude has been the same. Despite any hardships they’ve never lost sight of their true north. They stayed committed to helping people live longer, healthier and happier lives.
After about a year and a half of working full-time at a logistics center and helping out when she could with the gym, Brynn quit her job and dove into the trenches with her husband.
Now was the time to grind.
In only a few short months they needed to hit a certain point in the gym’s growth in order to be able to sustain the both of them as well as the overhead that the gym required.
“Everything that has happened in our business, and Naamly comes up in this story too, have been connections at the perfect time.”
– Brynn Esbenshade
They ended up attending a few networking events where they were able to gain insights into marketing that proved to be invaluable for their business. They were sustained and the train was now steadily moving down the track.
A few years down the line, they attended Rachel & Alan Cosgrove’s Results Fitness Seminar. They joined the mentorship program and a few mastermind sessions later they came across Naamly. “There’s been a lot of different programs that we have been led to through these connections and the timing of them have been perfect to give us what we needed to get to the next season. Naamly came at the perfect time.” Says Brynn.
Honestly that might be an understatement: They signed up just four days before the shutdown order came down in their state in March of 2020.
“[before Naamly we were] utilizing emailing and phone calls … So just to be able to have the ability to text and track attendance, and how are members are interacting with our trainers is really helpful. It’s another way to send a quick hello and it doesn’t have to be as formal as an email. The fact that all of our staff can go in and see the history of conversations and use that to their advantage is just really awesome.” Says Brynn
Since before the pandemic began Brynn and her husband have been working on transitioning their trainers into being dedicated to a set number of members that they check in with on a regular basis. “Being able to say make sure you’re not only checking the chat logs but you’re also looking at their nutrition and attendance is very helpful.” This way Brynn does’t have to worry about explaining the individual issues of each member to all of her trainers: It is all right there in Naamly, for them to digest when the they need to get the lowdown of a certain member.
“The staff that we have using it right now are in everyday.”
– Brynn Esbenshade
Brynn finds that she doesn’t need to use Naamly very often herself because whenever something needs her attention one of the trainers will alert her. “We are all in there and just really rely on one another as a team. It’s definitely been pretty easy to get in there and use.”
Open now for a total of seven years, Temple Fitness has gone through their fair share of members. One average the ones that go leave after about 2 years meaning just one member is worth upwards of $8,000. Of course they care about the monetary side of things but Brynn stresses the importance of having something else that will motivate you: “Our gym has become a community. It’s an extension of our family because we see them all the time. If you make someone a cup of coffee, you might speak to them, but your total interaction time is maybe five minutes. In our industry we are interacting with the same people for an hour, sometimes more, 2 maybe even 5 times a week … You get to know so much about your members, some more some less depending on their comfort level but we have developed a family here that we are attached to. The monetary value is what keeps the business going, so of course we work on that. But the real value comes from why we continue to do this work. Because in any season, but especially this season, being a trainer and a coach is really hard. It can be completely draining. Because at the end of the day you aren’t just a fitness coach, you’re a therapist. We aren’t trained to be therapists but we are. If you are not an extroverted person or you need quiet time it can be very draining. And sometimes you even end up carrying some of the burdens of your members. So it’s important to have something aside from the monetary value that is driving you. The members that have stayed with us the longest are the ones that are part of that community and family. There’s others that have moved on because maybe this wasn’t the right gym for them. And that’s okay: That’s why there are so many different types of gyms out there so each person can find the right fit for what they’re looking for.”
We aren’t trained to be therapists but we often end up being one when training. Think about that for a second. How many times have you been in a predicament where a member you’ve been training lets you in on what’s really going on in their lives? Sometimes the gym is the only place they feel like they have a moment of their day that’s truly about them and they want to capitalize on that oppurtunity. It is paramount that you are in tune to your members and not only listen to their needs but understand them. Make your team aware of them and implement them into how you interact with those members.
“One of the pieces that it [naamly] is very helpful with is being able to share communication across the team. It doesn’t make sense to CC everyone on staff for every email … Just to have the text chain where all of our staff has a home where they can go to to see that so we can be on the same page if needed. Like, “I’m coaching this one person on a specific topic for awhile but I need another coach to step in because they are coming in at a time I’m not available …. It’s not just an additional thing for each staff member to organize in their email but they can go in and see that [conversation history] … It’s a simple system to use. Anyone’s team can use it. We use Naamly to provide the full profile for our clients that is easy for our trainers to see and process.” Says Brynn.
“Our mission when we started our business seven years ago was to fight for better health. Fight against heart disease, high cholesterol and diabetes. Things that kill a lot of people every year but people don’t talk about it because it takes a personal effort to fix it. Nobody can do it for you. We fought for those things the moment we opened and we continue to fight for them today.”
– Brynn Esbenshade