In fitness business circles, change can be a pretty interesting topic.
More often than not, business owners approach change with a great deal of resistance.
Honestly, we get it.
It can be scary to disrupt the way you’ve always done things but it can be just as dangerous not to change.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why you should embrace change in your business & how it can lead to massive wins in your future.
- A simple trick you can implement to seamlessly introduce change that your clients will love!
- How not embracing change can negatively impact the quality of your members’ experience.
And much, much more!
If you feel like your gym is stuck in the same old place, this episode is for you!
One of the easiest changes you can make in your business is getting the right tools in place to really set yourself apart from the competition. Let’s face it, the gym down the street probably isn’t communicating with their entire clientele weekly, or effortlessly systemizing their operations for maximum efficiency… But you can! Best of all, it’s easier than ever to get started with Naamly. Sign up for your FREE trial today!
Watch The Full Episode
Sumit: So welcome to another episode of just one thing where training gym owners get actionable insights to grow their business. So welcome, Tom, and,
Thomas Plummer: uh, yeah. Good, good to be back. We’re doing a lot of these these days. So
Sumit: we are today. Where are we? Where are we going for this one today? Yeah, in each episode I get more questions and I get more questions and insight, more questions.
You know, picking up on the theme about reinventing oneself. We spoke about firing members that you don’t like in the last episode, but what about you liking members and you’re enjoying them and, but you decided to totally shut out. That team training or that, that aspect of your business. And you decided to move forward to open up more space in your small gym, which is only going to be providing small group training now, and now you have to let go of these members to make that space because you have limited space, you have limited capacity.
How do you let go of members in that scenario? What are you saying to them? Because they’ve not done anything wrong. They’ve they’ve supported you. They’ve helped you to come back. Place now, now, what
Thomas Plummer: do you do? There’s. It’s a very good question. There’s a lot of good angles on that. You’re not the one I think comes to mind.
First is repetition fatigue. We’ve talked about this in a couple of other episodes, but the repetition fatigue is really where sometimes the it’s the same old, same old just words. Um, I just read that article in the wall street journal, how badly Peloton is doing now, they’re discounting their bikes.
They’re trying to dump their monthly service. You, you buy a bike, I’ll give you three months free. And all this w people found that we were laughing about. We were talking about, I think we’ve even talked about one of the earlier episodes is, you know, they, you know, you’re sitting there on your bike, in your bedroom, by yourself.
And you’ve been doing that, the entire virus, you know, your kids screaming and you know, your spouse is trying to get you off the bike. So he or she can get on the bike. And all of a sudden, you just, you just like, oh my God, I just, I just, I can’t do this anymore. There’s, there’s a lot of businesses where repetition fatigue is really.
A undiscovered part of the business plan. So if I have a circuit type business, um, and I have 1800 feet and I have 30 people crammed shoulder to shoulder, going from treadmills to some kind of fixed equipment, and then they’re doing the whole circuit through the room. You know, you, the view never changes you.
You do that every single day. You’re just at some point in here, it just, it just wears out and you just can’t do it anymore. So what happens in. The gym and there’s, there’s few people that love that, but you have to look at the bigger pictures. You need to reinvent your business every couple of years, just to prevent that from your own business, you just, you know, you, your members, the bulk of the members need to see that change in that growth.
The problem is there are those members that just like, don’t change a thing. Don’t change the paint. Don’t, don’t move the equipment. Don’t fire that staff I’d love that person. Just don’t change. So there’s a point where when you try to reinvent your business and that you have to look around and going, okay.
I, we were really good at team training, but that’s, that’s done team training, meaning a large group of people doing some kind of stuff. Thing be it old style CrossFit to, um, circuit trading like F 45 on the corner, 30, all those types of things. They’re all very variations of circuit training where I command.
I just worked through a process and we, um, that was dying before the virus. So how do I take, if I’m a heavy, heavy team guy, how do I reinvent myself? Well, I can do it several different ways. One is. I can keep what I’m doing down here, but maybe add some different layers on top to start to dilute that membership.
So the first real business hat is, can I dilute what I have without destroying it first? So that’s one of the things, uh, they’re very successful guy in the Pittsburgh area. Um, He has about 11,000 foot. Uh, Josh and Tammy are the owners of this gym, Pittsburgh north, actually, it’s a very, very exceptional gym.
Um, and it is they, or had team training, pre virus and the team people because of the rate they were charging actually turned out to be the biggest problem people in. They’re the ones that canceled the most or they’re the ones that were arguing about money because they were that 26 or 24 to 36 year old group.
But they’re the ones that just weren’t that far down the path yet financially. So they’d get in go four or five months and then blow apart change jobs or something. He said, I’d love the concept. So, what he did was just raised the price did away with that concept kept all the members that wanted to stay, did not raise the rates, but then made the cheapest entry into the gym at 2 29.
So instead of having a team rate, which was the problem, he honored the members had kept them, but diluted it by going more into small group training, because everybody that wanted to do team here, then you get into one-on-one training. And he also diluted the team training by adding boxing and adding restoration, natural movement and a few other levels there.
So he kept the members, but diluted it. But now he’s making sure that no, it’s very hard for new people to come in because everybody joins it. You have now. At least gets training. So he kind of killed that category without killing the members. So dilution is one way to kind of make that change as you go through where yes, I’m not, I’m honoring your price.
I’m honoring you and I’m keeping most of the services, but, and you’re going to have access to whatever changes I make as part of me that. We’re not going forward with that membership or that price. So the safest way is dilution where you start to expand the different offerings within the distance. It’s seldom that you have to kill team to move into small group, but you can take team and reinvent it.
So if I’ve got five guys in my market doing circuit and they’re all 1 49. I can take my circuit ad boxing, big boxing program. I can add restoration movement. I can do my own cardio circuit. Uh, I can get into guided meditation. I might have five or six offerings for the same price point that everybody else has.
You know, you go around the circuit that breaks down the repetition fatigue, which we started this segment with, but I’m also diluting that. So over time that becomes a less important part of my business and it ends up supporting other parts of the business. So I, I think the simplest and safest way is a dilution process where you, okay, I’m going to hang on to you.
What you hear is just, it’s not quite going to be the same. And then if you lose a few members in that transition, you did the right thing. You at least tried to honor the members that were with you in the early part. Fair
Sumit: enough. Okay. So I like that dilution without destroying. I like that concept
Thomas Plummer: and delusion without destruction.
Sumit: Distraction. Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you. So, thanks again, Tom. It’s always a pleasure to have you. And on that note, we’ll end this episode of just one thing.
Thomas Plummer: Yeah, the short, but sweet on this one. Good question, man. Thank you.