With over 350 clients and an average revenue approaching a million dollars a year, Doug Spurling is no stranger to client onboarding.
Over the last 10 years, Doug and his team have worked hard to perfect an onboarding process that builds loyalty and improves your customer lifetime value.
This week Doug teaches you how to use this same onboarding process for your fitness business.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The importance of finding the balance between personalized touch points and automation for a seamless onboarding experience.
- How to build anticipation and excitement into your onboarding that helps ease your clients into your community.
- Why consistency is critical to optimize your onboarding process.
And so much more!
This episode is perfect for the fit pro looking to adopt a tried and tested onboarding process for their gym.
Did you know that Doug Spurling uses Naamly as a secret weapon for his gym’s onboarding process? With simple but impactful features like unread message notifications, push of a button broadcast messaging, and personalized follow-ups… Naamly is the perfect digital solution for your administrative and operational responsibilities. Get started with a FREE trial today!
Watch The Full Episode
Sumit: Well, welcome to another episode of just one thing. We’re training gym owners get actionable insights. Build your dream business. So in today’s episode, I actually sought out Doug Sperling from sprawling fitness in Kennebunk, Maine to fill in for Tom who’s out for a couple of weeks. And, uh, today’s topic.
I think Doug, you’re the master at it. Right? I’ve seen you at it. It’s about onboarding without holding people back. Like what is he doing to be talking about it’s onboarding and I know you’re. You’re the man to talk about it because you have built your business from a single person to now 11 team members strong.
And the last time we connected, you were at 350 odd clients and you were inching up to. Reaching that covetedd number of $83,333 a month, which kind of makes you in that elite club of being a million dollar gin. So fill us in, are you there now? Are you, are you just there not there just because that’s been a few months since I last spoke to you.
Doug Spurling: Well, first, first of all, thanks for, uh, thanks for having me on. I feel like I have big feet, but I got really big shoes to fill in for Tom here. Um, but, uh, but anyways, yeah, we are, we’re getting close. We’re still trying to rebuild. Uh, as many of them are from, uh, From the COVID from the COVID numbers, but yeah, we’re, we’re, we peaked, uh, we peaked around 360 clients.
Um, if you include, uh, our suspended clients, we, we, we do have quite a few, uh, in many of the, uh, the markets that might be familiar with this, the big seasonalities we have a big summer drop-off and things like that. So if you include. Our suspended clients. We actually manage a well over 400 clients. Um, but still, uh, still, still striving for that, uh, for that magic, uh, 83 3 we’ve had months of 80, 83 plus 90,000 plus, but, uh, not stringing 12 of them together.
That’s a that’s that’s the challenge, right?
Sumit: Right. That is the challenge, but you’re on the run rate. Right? You’ll get to the run rate once that happens a few months then, and before you know it, then it’s the reality. Yeah.
Doug Spurling: It’s not all, it’s not all about the money, right? I mean, it’s good, but it’s a, it’s a good milestone.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good milestone. But, uh, you know, we want to try to have fun doing it and good team, uh, to support it and all that stuff.
Sumit: Yup. And I think one thing that people miss out and I wanted to make sure my viewers know this is, you’re also one of the few gym owners that I know of personally, who are genuinely working on your business.
And you’ve been able to use the business as a cash flow to fund your lifestyle and other ventures and other businesses that you have, like you have. Uh, sprawling real estate, uh, venture, right? Like you have multiple Airbnb properties. And from what I know, like that’s all possible only when you build in some great system and we could spend like, Some go through every single one of them, but just honing in on onboard, like, uh, because I think that the experience starts from there.
Right. So filming it, like, what is onboarding for you? Break it up for us. Like, are there phases, are there stages? Is it, what does it encompass? And we’ll jump right in.
Doug Spurling: Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I do think, uh, onboarding is by far the most important aspect of the client experience only because that’s, that’s what kicks things off.
Um, and I’ll never forget we had a client. I still remember her name, Brenda. She was a sweetheart. Uh, she was with us probably five years ago and, uh, On her way out. She, she canceled her membership and I, I did an exit interview with her and her biggest piece of feedback was that she felt, she felt like she didn’t get onboarded properly.
And that I’d never gotten that feedback before from a client. Right. Because, um, you know, it’s not their job to understand what onboarding, like what is onboarding the client just shows up to work out and have fun. They don’t even think about that. But, um, ultimately when I think about onboarding the way we think about it here at Sparrow, Um, the, the ability to reduce as much overwhelm as.
Right. So specifically I’m, uh, I’m more gearing, probably this to gym owners who work with the general population. Uh, you know, middle-aged people who don’t love going to the gym. And more of, I know, you know, both of our mutual, um, kind of, uh, gym owners are training gym owners, right? Generally speaking, attract people, not saying you don’t need onboarding for other markets, but generally speaking, the, uh, the intimidated person who is not used to the gym, they really, really need a strong onboarding program.
Um, so that, that experience from Brenda’s feedback years ago was kind of the catalyst for me to say, Listen, we, we, we had some, at that point we had some, some content that got sent out in like an autoresponder or things like that. Um, but it wasn’t a true what I would call onboarding experience. And that’s the way I try to think about our onboarding is how can we, um, choreograph in experience for the clients.
30 60, 90 days and choreograph being the key word there. Uh, so that happens with everybody and, uh, that’s, that’s huge, right? It has to happen consistently and it’s choreographed, it’s mapped out. It’s not just random that, that it happens.
And then realizing that onboarding, can’t just be a bunch of automated emails that go out
Sumit: to people, but perfect. I love that definition. I love both angles of it. Like reducing overwhelm choreographed experience, right? I mean, those are the three things that stand up for me, timeline you. So there’s some there’s, I’m going to hit this from a different places.
You spoke about it. Timelines 30, 60, 90 days. At what point in time does onboarding really. And in your viewpoint, and I’m assuming, of course the first few days are extremely important, but do you do something called pre-onboarding? Like, what are you doing before the customer joins in? So can we break that up from a timeline perspective, um, and, and tell us what you’re doing.
Doug Spurling: Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, uh, it starts, uh, our onboarding starts really when the initial lead inquires to our facility. Right? So whether that be through your, whatever marketing you’re doing, you know, website referrals, Facebook ads, whatever it is, uh, you are most likely getting a. Uh, some type of notification that, you know, Susie Smith wants to join your facility
So a couple of quick little nuggets that I can give for that value. Uh, we do a, a, a welcome video to every lead. Uh, it’s about a two to three minute long video. And, um, it’s just basically a, Hey, thanks for inquiring. Um, you know, here’s a, here’s a quick little, two to three minute video.
And, uh, for many years it was from me. Uh, but since I’m not as involved in the day-to-day operations anymore, our manager does the video. Um, but it’s a video overview of what to expect on your first day. And when I say your first day, I don’t mean for, for many of the training gyms. Our first day is your, uh, assessment or your consultation, your success session, whatever term you want to call that.
But basically understanding that onboarding actually starts with getting people to feel, uh, going back to that overwhelm emotion, not feeling overwhelmed, to get them to walk in the door and show up for that initial. Uh, we call it a success session. Some people call it consultation, assessment, whatever.
Um, but that welcome video eases the mind quite a bit. And so at that point, uh, you’re going to have to have the art of lead follow-up to get them to actually book. That initial success session. Uh, but let’s, let’s move along and say they book the success session. Uh, another key thing we’ll do is, uh, 24 hours before the appointments, we will not only call to confirm the appointments, uh, but we will send a separate video that goes out to them.
That explains what the hour with us is going to look like. Where you’re going to walk in. Uh, we show the parking lot. Where are you going to park, where you’re going to walk in, uh, where you’re going to sit, what we’re going to talk about. Really just trying to paint the picture as clear as possible, because again, for most of our clients, they’re scared, they’re nervous and they’re, they’re, they’re they really want to know what to expect so that not only helps them get onboarded, even though they haven’t been signed up for anything yet.
Um, but also eases the anxiety and, uh, increase the show. Increase the show rate for sure. Um, so as we move along, the, uh, the appointment happens the, uh, at point of sale. So when the, when the client is still in your facility, you’ve gotten them to, uh, sign up for a membership. We are big fans of a couple of things right away.
Number one. Um, we do a welcome bag.
Uh, but in that bag, more importantly to keep it focused on onboarding is, um, Some of the, basically a kind of a summary postcard of the big things we need you to know about in your first 30 days. So for example, it has, uh, some instructions on how to get into our members. Only Facebook group. It has some instructions on how to use our scheduling app, all that stuff.
That, again, we’re telling them that on day one, but they’re so overwhelmed and they’re kind of like drinking from a fire hose. Um, So that goes out to them. Um, and then the, uh, immediately that afternoon, uh, we send them a welcome email, thanking them for joining, uh, gives them a link to join the Facebook group.
Uh, but here’s another little nugget that we just started doing probably a year ago. It’s been a good game changer for onboarding is we have, uh, a, uh, in the template welcome email that goes out when a client. The link to join the Facebook group a little bit, you know, uh, uh, welcome, uh, kind of broad, but then at the bottom is a video from the coach that they’re going to be working with on day one.
Um, and that’s been a game changer because again, it’s like, especially if you have a team and especially if who they met with on day one is going to be different than who they’re working with for their first work. We do that video. It’s prerecorded it’s broad. It doesn’t say their specific names. So all we did was have every staff member film a one minute video that just says, Hey, look, we’re working with you on your first workouts makes you show up a couple minutes early and I’m excited to work with you.
Like super short. Just really trying to show the face. Um, and it, so it doesn’t use their name. So we literally have a link for every coach and we just paste it in. Um, so I know that’s a lot, but that’s really gets them to their first workout. Um, That for me, kind of sets the tone to prevent, uh, day one overwhelm, to prevent a buyer’s remorse, to prevent a lot of those things.
So, uh, from there, I, I wanna kinda isolate or what we isolate, uh, and it stretches out, uh, I’ll stretch it out pretty quickly here, but before stretching out further, like 30, 60 days, I want to isolate the first two days. Uh, we, we really isolate the first two days of a client’s, uh, experience with us after that initial sales consult day.
I just talked about, um, one, one mistake that I think we’ve made, and I know a lot of gym owners make, um, it’s not a mistake. It sometimes it’s a mistake. It’s sometimes a, um, you know, staffing or operational limit is we just try to onboard people. Content. Right. So maybe somebody signs up, we do all that stuff.
And then we give them like a, an email autoresponder that educates them on all this different. So don’t get me wrong. We still do that. We have a, I believe it’s six weeks, uh, an email series and it is a drip over their first six weeks. It outlines, you know, uh, maybe some nutrition tips, maybe some, uh, we use by zone for heart rate monitoring.
So maybe there’s a day about my zone. Um, that is that content is automated. Um, but. As you probably know the consumption of that is very low. Right? Right. So what we try to really focus on is putting a human behind their onboarding. So on day one and on day two, workout one workout. We schedule an appointment for them to come in 15 minutes before the workout.
So it doesn’t take a huge time commitment. It’s not like it’s another hour long consultation. Um, but there’s a couple of keys there. One it’s an appointment. So they treat it as an appointment. They show up like it’s an appointment and your staff treats it like an appointment and it’s booked. So if they’re working out at four o’clock.
This appointment is going to be booked for 3 45. Um, a lot of benefits just even in that system, because the coach now is more alert that there’s going to be a new person in their session. Um, the staff, as a whole knows that there’s an appointment at 3 45, the client. Now it shows up, we kind of right off the bat, train them to show up early.
Um, and we do that on day one and on day two, these 15 minute early appointments and really all they are are just kind of, uh, Uh, checking in. How are you feeling? Any questions? I know we’ve covered a lot so far. Uh, are you feeling overwhelmed or are you good with how to schedule your sessions? Um, depending upon what kind of model you run, you might use that time to help them with the warmup?
We’ve noticed a large improvement on those two days when we put a human behind the onboarding and not just kind of put all that in an email. It
Sumit: makes perfect sense. I have a lot of questions, right. There were just swimming in my head. Sorry, I’m going to pause. Take a pause there really quick. When you say on day one, day two, just for clarification perspective.
It’s day one of the customer coming in, right? The client coming in. So if I were to come in for my next session, four days later, because I signed up for two times a week, then day two for you is the second, the four days later, it’s not calendar days.
Doug Spurling: Correct. So it would be, uh, let’s role-play today’s Thursday.
You had your success session, your sales consult today. That is what we talked about. First one. And then you schedule next week’s workouts for Tuesday and Friday. Your day one is Tuesday. Your day two is free.
Sumit: Perfect. Awesome. Next thing I love how you’ve been also able to, I just have to say this because I looked at my notes about how you came up with the tote idea.
Like you’re sprinkling marketing in as well. And onboarding in customer experience. And I don’t know many people who do that, but I think you’re wired that way. So that’s, that’s a great little nugget out there as well for people who did not catch that, that you’re always thinking about marketing. What was thinking about spreading the name?
So how do these ideas come to you, doc? I’m just, just a quick five minute segue and then I’ll bring it back in. I promise. But where does these ideas come from? That I, maybe I should do this or maybe I should do that. And that. Help the customer not get overwhelmed, but it also helps to build the professionalized reputation of the company.
Tell me that.
Doug Spurling: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot there. One, I would say overall, it’s a mindset that I always think there’s a better way to do something.
So our onboarding is, I would say very, very strong. Um, we it’s been years since we have gotten any type of negative feedback from our onboard. Uh, but I still constantly, I mean, I have, you know, Brian on my team, Brian is doing an onboarding audit this quarter.
That’s one of his projects go through every single piece of our onboarding. Look at how it can be better.
Um, and then, you know, there’s there’s you said it in the beginning, there’s something to be said for, this is the kind of work that you do when you’re working on the business rather than in the business.
And I’m fortunate yet worked hard to get to a point. I 100% of my time and working on the business, I don’t really work in the business anymore. Um, so I think I have a little bit more, um, you know, I don’t have to worry about the nine o’clock session because I don’t have to coach it. So I have a little bit more of a bird’s eye view.
To look at. Okay. Uh, choreograph is a big word. We have a lot of people on our team that are into, you know, um, the arts and the theater. Um, I know you’re, you’re, uh, you know, connected with Mark Fisher like that, that kind of theatrical choreographed. I think Disney is another good company to look at. Right.
All of that is choreographed. It’s planned out. So I’m always looking at how can we. Because it has to be choreographed. We say systematized, but even that word can feel dry because we’re client facing business. We’re not producing widgets. Right. So if it feels too systematized, then you just feel like you’re a.
Right, right. Versus choreographed. It’s more about making sure. I think one of the most important things, clients value is a consistent experience. Right? We use, I know all the time we use the analogy of a, of a, of a franchise like Starbucks, where, you know, you’re in Arizona, I’m in Maine. We both walk into Starbucks and order the same drink, and it’s going to look the exact same, whether you liked Starbucks or not.
What you can appreciate is that the experience is consistent. And so I think sometimes we, and we deal with this with staffing, right? The 9:00 AM session with Suzy is so much better than the 3:00 PM session with Mike. Well, why is that? They should be the exact same. Right? So looking at your processes, looking at your, uh, deliverables and, um, trying to make it as consistent as possible.
I mean, tying back the welcome back idea. That was an idea that came from everybody in my town. Not I’m not bashing my town. I love it. I live in it. I raised my family here, but they were all bashing about using plastic bags. So I was like, okay, well, I’ll be one of the first to not use plastic bags. And it costs 98 cents to have my logo on a, on a reusable tote, um, you know, ideas like that, uh, where.
Uh, you know, you’re, you’re, open-minded you observe it? I do think you have to be in a space to kind of be in that, working on the business versus in the business to, uh, observe some of that stuff, to realize that how we do things today does not have to be how we do them tomorrow. They can, they can change, they can evolve.
Um, and then finally, I would say, I, I do think there’s, um, a healthy balance. Of listening to your team and your clients, and also being innovative, right? Like, uh, I know Steve jobs was always famous for. What the iPhone, everybody told them it was ridiculous or the iPad was like, why do you need this big thing?
Um, you know, and obviously his, his whole thing was the consumer doesn’t know what they want until it’s actually there. Right. And so I do think in, in innovation and then in strategy and all that stuff in our business, there is a P there’s always going to be a piece of like, um, your clients don’t know a hundred percent what they want.
But I also, like we have a monthly client advisory board. There’s seven clients. We meet on zoom once a month. We talk about how the month went. We talk about what they’re liking, what they’re not liking. So I’m not going to like run my business based upon what those seven people say. But I’m going to take it into consideration.
Just like, um, you know, getting feedback from the team members. They, none of them want to work at seven o’clock at night. That doesn’t mean I’m going to close my gym at three o’clock in the afternoon. I’m going to listen to their feedback about, you know, programming or service offerings or anything
Sumit: like that.
No, thank you. That’s that’s a great response. Thank you. And thank you for going into the details about it. You talked about coming back to the onboarding, you talked about how, when the client comes, then you bring them in as an appointment, 15 minutes before the session. Right. And you’re doing that only two times.
They one day too. Are you taking that time to also, um, educate them on certain movement patterns? Tell them here’s the equipment. This is, this is what a kettlebell is, but do you do all of that? This session could only just become about that 15 minutes, but really just nuggets there. What exactly are you trying to accomplish in that?
Or what do you accomplish in those 15 minutes?
Doug Spurling: Sure. So, I mean, I would probably take it still back to overwhelm, right? Less about education and more about overwhelmed. So even think about things like, um, where do I put my keys?
Where do I find the towels? Um, I need to exchange a weight. And they’re not going to, they’re going to call them kettle balls.
So they are simply coming in.
They’re making sure they know where to put their stuff. They’re making sure they know where the bathrooms are. They’re making sure they know. Uh, okay, you’re good with scheduling. Like, you know how to schedule, you know, how to schedule your sessions, you know, our waitlist policy.
We run, uh, a small group, personal training model. And so what it really allows us to do is if a coach is running a session and they have six people in the session and they’re helping those six people and Susie is the sixth one, and Susie’s new, it allows that handoff. To be just that a handoff, rather than Susie walking in and not knowing where to go.
And then the coach has to devote all their attention to Susie. And now these other five people are mad. We can have a staff member that walks them to where they need to go. Answer some of their basic questions, uh, introduces them. Hey, remember, you got that video from coach Chris. This is coach Chris. He’s going to be working with you today.
Um, so it’s more so than like training logistics and just very much. Yeah. An emotional overwhelmed, and that is mostly geared towards understanding your target market. And for me, our target market are people who don’t like the typical gym. They’re usually 50 plus they are just here to feel better. They don’t care.
They don’t want to have to think they don’t really care that they need to bench press 300 pounds. So yeah, the coaches are going to get into making sure, you know, you do things safely and appropriately, and that’s the actual coaching of the session. But for onboarding specifically, it’s, it’s more just trying to eliminate the, um, you know, this is, this is behavior change for people.
So if the behavior change seems to. And it, and we can’t break it down, like atomic habits, tiny habits, that whole small habit kind of approach. If we can’t break it down and say, listen, like today, you crushed it. Like you showed up. You’re good. We’ll take care of the rest. Right. Um, we, we have a thing here, uh, to give credit.
We got from alloy, uh, the frequent sweaters board, which I know a lot of gyms have adopted. Uh, the 10 workouts get, get in here 10 times a month. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s not overwhelming to the general pop. And so they can really focus on that small milestone because if, if, if your onboarding is focused on learning all this technique or crushing five workouts a week or some crazy big thing, uh they’re, they’re probably just going to shut down and, and realize that it’s too big of a change.
And then, you know, throw it, throw the towel.
Sumit: That’s beautiful. so day one’s done day two’s done.
And those are the two biggest, like you said, if nothing else onboarding is all about getting those pieces, right.
Doug Spurling: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think those, those, if you’d had, if you were starting fresh, like I would get those in and then I’m not discrediting. Like I mentioned earlier, we have a, uh, six weeks. Email series autoresponder that goes out.
I believe they get three emails a week for their first six weeks. And it’s, you know, there might be one on, like I said, there might be one on, um, my zone cause we use my zone, heart rate monitoring. There might be one on. Uh, what to do when you’re feeling sore there. So think of it, like your question on education.
We will, we will automate some of that education my big three, like nail day one that the pre-stuff right now that set the expectation day one, day two, and then some type of, you know, four to six weeks. I personally don’t think it needs to be longer than that.
We used to have a hundred day one, and the consumption just dropped way, way down. Um, you know, a month, four to six weeks, I feel like is enough. Um, plus. You’re lucky if a third of your clients are going to open those emails anyways and read them. So we really try to use the human, the human aspect of our business to help people get on board.
Sumit: Okay. Fair enough. I think we should probably wrap this small piece in, because that’s the, like I said, that’s one aspect of onboarding day one day, two day three, hit those milestones. And then I’m going to probably talk about in another episode with you. On the rest of the milestone. Right? The next thing.
So let’s do that. If that works for you. Sweet. All right.