Fitness Business School – Dr. Janine Stichter and Scott Schutte

Hey, Pat Rigsby be here and in today’s episode of the podcast, I have two special guests, Dr. Janine Stichter and Scott Schutte. Now they have this awesome new certification based on behavior change. And we’re going to talk about how you can integrate behavior, change programming in, into your business to generate more profits and to create better results for your clients. So let’s get started.

Welcome to The Fitness Business School podcast – the show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen til the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

All right. I’m here today with Scott and Dr. Janine and welcome guys. Thanks. Well, so, so let’s go ahead and let the, the listeners get to know you a little bit and just share a little bit of your backstory. Which one do you guys like to go first? I’ll let Dr. Jay go first. All right. Yeah, I have I’m a behaviorist by trade, so I have my doctorate in behavior now. And all that means is that I’m pretty invested in human behavior and helping people reach their goals and and modify things that aren’t working for. ’em. And so I’m real passionate about that. I’ve been an educator researcher practitioner hot at the university. And and I’m really passionate about the fitness industry, because I feel like so much of the overall fitness journey encapsulates goals that people have about having amazing relationships with others and connecting with friends and family and just having day to day lives that, and that they enjoy and that that they’re passionate about. And so and again, for me personally I’m very invested in, in the fitness world.

And so I really enjoy playing in this space. Dr. Jay definitely has the more interesting background of the two us, two of us. I am a personal trainer. I am a gym Mo I’ve been in this space for over 18 years. I’ve owned a gym for the past 12 years in recently combined with Dr. Jay in, in, in helping other fitness professionals learn about behavior change and how that works in your facility, or just overall in your practice. So excited to be on here today to, to, to share some of the things I, that we’ve put together, Man, Dr. Jay I’m, I’m going with that. I like the, I, I like the, the shortened version of that. It brings me back basketball in my childhood. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so behavior change, you know, I think that’s kind of the, the may, maybe the, the gap that the fitness industry is probably if, if, if not missed, maybe just under underrepresented in the way that they design programs, the way they serve clients. So that that’s really cool. So let’s talk, let’s talk about that for a, for a moment. So you guys have the weight loss, behavior coaching, but I, I know you’ve been putting it in practice in your facility, Scott, what, what does behavior change look like in your facility on a daily basis? Just to give some people that are listening in some context as to how this looks in a real practical sense. Yeah. And, and just to start off with a little bit of back story on this, if, you know, in my own facility for the last 12 years, like I, I go and learn from anybody and everybody, like, I want to have the best facility, the best results, the best place that I can. And with, with all my education. And I’ve learned a lot of great things out there really no was touching on the behavior side. And, and Dr. Jay actually became a client of mine that I was training. And we started talking about this behavior change and what she did and what she taught. And I was like, why, why doesn’t anybody teach any of this? And so I started using a little bit of it in my practice.

And then I started teaching my, my, my team, how to do this. And we found that it worked really well for our clients, just compliance and overall happiness. And so basically how that works is we have a couple different models that we use. The first model is everybody that comes in and does training at our facility. They get one of these per month and it’s just a built in extra cost. And with that, we have an additional time that we sit down and go over all of these things that they’re doing outside the gym, because all of us know that our coaches listening to this exercise is gonna only take people so far. Given nutrition is only gonna take people so far. We need to really dive deep into like, what is holding people back really clarifying goals, getting into this, this, this root cause, this, this fruit learning of psychology and root cause behavior to actually make changes for people. The other model that we use is now that we offer this service, we have people that train at other facilities or people that are not really ready to start working out that will come and just start working with this on this, this, this particular service of when we call it weight loss, behavior, come coaching, but it’s really behavior coaching to reach any goal that you have, whether it’s people coming in and people like use tone or be healthy or lose weight, or put on muscle, it’s really figuring out for this individual person of what’s holding them back. And how can we help them with the steps to actually reach their goals? That’s, that’s wonderful. I mean, I, I think that we’ve talked a lot internally in our coaching programs and I’ve even partnered with my, my friend, Doug Spurling to do workshops on what we call the other one sixty five, you know, the things happening outside the gym. And, you know, I, I, I think that that’s where a big gap is here, right?

Like the, they, the access to information when it comes to exercise or nutrition, I, I mean, it’s more than ever before. People can go to, to gym after gym and get access to equipment. They can, you know, there’s plenty of stuff that, that can be done at home. They have direct access to even free stuff on YouTube. Man, there there’s just no shortage of opportunity to, to, you know, learn what it takes to, to exercise effectively, to, to eat supportively. But you know, what, what really, but a actually gets in people’s way, at least from, from my perspective is not being able to adopt new behaviors, not be able to create, create habits to fall off track. You know, as soon as something, you know, an obstacle arises. So Dr. Jay, can you speak to, to any of that and how you guys have been able to, to maybe bridge this gap from the, the exercise technician side of fitness to actual, you know, behavior change. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you bring up such good points is that we, people do have plenty of access to information. And as somebody who’s spent a long time educating people, I really define education is not just giving content, but helping to make sure that people and use that content in a way that meets their individualized needs and they can execute it, whether that’s our clients or whether that’s our coaches and gym owners that are wanting to provide the service and the support for their clients is how do you do that?

And that’s something that Scott and I have spent a lot of time developing and looking at. And one of the challenge challenges in the fitness industry, and a lot of it’s just marketing. It’s not necessarily that we don’t know this, but for some reason it keeps being perpetuated is these terms about like willpower and motivation and 30 day challenges and things like that. And there’s a place for momentary challenges. But what that really is, is that it’s a set amount of time where you’ve to your behavior. And most of us can do something for a, a short period of time. It’s that long term application that doesn’t work out. And so, you know, one of the things that I talk to, to, to coaches trainers and, and gym learners about is this notion that on the floor, when you’re looking at the progressions and regressions and, and the way that people are programming, there’s a lot of behavior change principles in that, in the sense that we’re not starting somebody going from zero to 60, we’re building on their strength and their flexibility and their confide over time towards some of those physical goals. And we just need to apply the same processes for those things that happen outside the gym, as opposed to just constantly talking about like, well, did you drink your water now?

Okay. Try again. And those types of things, but figuring out what is holding people back, what’s either holding them back from a mindset standpoint. Like I can’t do that, or I don’t know how to figure that out, or I’ve got littles at home, or my job is so stressful. I can’t add anything new figuring out either what some of those mindset thoughts are and, or even just lifestyle what’s their schedule like, and how can we build in really good strategies. And so again, a lot of the conversation is always out compliance, but a lack of compliance is, is typically, and, and by the way, there’s, you know, over a hundred years of research and, and science behind this that we use in everything from how speeding tickets are set up and how we get paid and all of those things. So these principles are a lot in our lives. And, but this notion that compliance is just, you know, I can’t get clients compliance or not motivated. Whatever a lack of compliance is really typically about a lack of good match between the strategies and the efforts and the lifestyle and the person’s personality. And so what we’ve worked really hard to do is take those principles and really create a system that coaches trainers, gym owners can actually use with their clients to get towards that.

Just like if you’re writing good programming week over week, over week with your clients and doing that in a systematic way that people can execute it. And, you know, Scott talked earlier about that service. It’s a 15 minute session, at least at Scott’s gym. And some of the other ones we’ve worked with, it’s not a long thing. It’s not a therapy session. It’s none of those types of things. It’s just helping people understand. What’s important to them. And what are the, the barriers and what are things that excite them and make them happy in integrating that into the strategies? Oh, I, I love this so so much it’s you know, dating back to my time is even a college baseball coach. I think I learned very early on that, you know, it was kind of like beating your head against a wall. You just, you, you give somebody a drill or you give them a few cues and you say, well, do this. And you just keep repeating the same thing. And you wonder why there’s not some, some sort of compliance or some sort of improvement where they’re adapting to what you’re saying. When in all honesty, you know, our role as a coach is to elicit the outcome we won. If we’ve got to kind of put on the hat of being a problem solver, which is probably a, a really simplistic way of viewing some of what you just said, that, I mean, that just opens up, you know, just such a, a, a plethora of opportunities for us as, as coaches, as business owners, because let’s face it. Most of the people that I work with are independently owned businesses. They’re not franchises. So, so they have some autonomy to come in and set themselves apart and, you know, franchises in general, try to be very systematic and very equipment or program focused rather than coach focused. You know, and that’s a generalization, but in, in large part, it’s true. And so what I think is so, so neat about this is, you know, not only can you deliver better results for a client, but this is a, a, a pretty dramatic differentiator. And it’s something that can be used, whether you are, you know, a, a facility owner, whether you are you know, a, a, a solo printer, that’s renting space from a, whether you are an online trainer, the, the stuff that you’re talking about man, it, it could be applied in, in almost any business format. I, is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. And, and we like to say is like the, the, the greater impact you make, the, the more income you will make. And so it, you know, it always starts from the beginning of like, how do I get clients in the door? Or why would they wanna work with me?

Well, when you can say that you’re working on their complete fitness journey, you’re not just giving, ’em a good workout. One that makes you stand out from the get, go, at least get ’em in the door. And then two, when you’re sitting down for that initial sales, you know, if they’re just comparing the, the different places to work based off of price and just availability for classes, then you’re just competing on that first. Like we could offer something that’s completely different than all the competitors around us. So they can’t really price match on that. So if they want the best and they want someone that’s looking that coaching the whole complete fitness journey, we’re really the only option around and then compliance. I mean, not compliance, but retention is, is also much higher there too. Because when I, when I’m first describing this to, to, to new coaches, the, the most simple way I can put it, it’s like doing an initial consult on a monthly basis, but the only change is we’re, we’re, we’re putting in some of the behavior science to make people stick with some of the changes more often, because that initial consult you’re, you’re going over kind of, what are the goals what’s holding you back in, in a plan moving forward? The beauty of doing this on a monthly basis is a lot of times our clients will change based on what’s going on in their life, what their priorities at that time.

So if we can have this monthly check-in and we can kind of figure out, you know, what’s holding them back, we can get into the details. We can use the, the, the behavior strategies that, that, that Janine has really taught me. And that we’re teaching other people, then the, the retention is much better. So as a holistic approach on the business side, this like this works incredibly as well. Yeah. This is you know, such a, I, I think a progressive and exciting opportunity for, you know, trainers, coaches, business owners to, to win by providing a better solution. Right? I mean, ultimately when people come into a facility, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re not saying, Hey, I, I, I just want you to give me an exercise program. They, they want a desired outcome. They want a result. And this idea that there’s a one fits all recipe that, that works for everybody that walks through the door is pretty shortsighted. And it, you know, and virtually every case, just, it, it, it’s not gonna work out is hope, but this kind of bridges that gap and allows, allows you to, to custom eyes and address each person’s individual circumstances, their individual needs.

But like you said, I mean, they’re 15 minute sessions, so it, it’s not having to completely, re-engineer the way you structure your time and everything so much that, that you kinda have to blow up the business as it currently stands. I is that I, is that accurate? Yeah. And the other thing too, is like, I like doing these in person, but they don’t have to be sometimes based on people’s schedules or sometimes some of the, the facilities we talk to, they might not have the best set up to like, have a place to do this because you don’t wanna do this out on the gym floor. They just set up phone calls to go over all these same things, which is nice. Especially as we saw, like things got shut down for COVID and, you know, just people’s busy schedules. It’s nice to have that option of, of, of doing it virtually. So, so you can still get those check-in points. Also, you know, we know that there tends to be for clients that will wanna train in the morning before work, right. Or at lunch, or then after work, we know when the busy times in most facilities are, and then you’ve got those kind of hours where there tends to be more gaps. And whereas somebody might not be able to get to the gym and work out for 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever it is around one or two in the afternoon. A lot of times they can take a 15 minute break and get on the phone with you or pop over for something shorter too. So it’s not a bad way to fill some of those interesting gaps. And the other thing I wanted to point out and Scott mentioned it briefly is you don’t wanna do this on the floor.

One of the things that sometimes coaches or trainers will indicate is like, well, you know, I give them suggestions while we’re training and things like that. And I overhear that a lot, but what we also know is that while people are trying to breathe, they’re trying to get their motor coordination and all of those types of things, it’s really hard to actually retain information. And so when coaches feel this, and I think pat, you referenced it earlier, just even with your your, your baseball players, if they’re in the middle of this high intensity MOIC activity and those types of things, they literally may not be retaining what you’re asking them to do. They may be nodding, they’re saying sure, but at least for the general population that are at our facilities and they go home, they, they’re not, it wasn’t stored in long term memory. There’s a cognitive and, and MOIC bandwidth there. And so even just by having that 15 minutes set aside at a different time to really do that, they’re able to remember things better. They’re able to give you better inform. And then they’re also able to walk away with a plan that they can retain and execute. I’ll tell you one of the other things I really love about what, what you’re discussing here is it’s all just really practical, so much in the, the certification in landscape. And I, and I’ve been around that, that side of things for really, almost as long as I’ve been a, a business owner. So much of it is, you know, very dry textbook stuff that isn’t all always clear how you’re going to apply it. And what you just shared is very much application based. In fact I mean, it kind of, it, I’m not a hundred percent sure the, the, the order of events here, but it kind of seems like a lot of this stuff was tested, proven in a practical setting. And then that yielded the, the IP for a certification. I, is that how things laid out or do I have this out of order? Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And that’s what makes us have this very unique partnership is because everything that we’ve talked about, like I wanna see in use because I, I do sometimes you do hear these courses or, or people talk about different things with behavior and, you know, motivational interviewing and positive psychology and all these things, which is all good stuff, but it’s like, okay, how do I use this? So my, my, all my coaches can understand it and be able to implement it. How do I have this? So the gym can make money on this and how do I get it? So it’s, it’s just easily consumable for the clients. And so take out all the stuff that, that, that Dr. Jay has, has learned and taught for the last two decades in really us being able to implement inner facility in other facilities that we’ve, we’ve, we’ve talked to of like, you know, how do we get better results? How do we teach all different levels of coaches? Because one thing she actually corrected me a on, I, I originally thought, well, this has to be for a very mature trainer, but really what you pointed out, it’s really more of just giving the, giving all these, these trainers, the, the, the confidence ha make sure that they have just a little bit of the EQ. And then teaching them just a little bit of empathy with this, and then it’s executable amongst all different people. So thi this is the type of thing that, yeah, I mean, you could develop a, an entire staff to, to add this to their kind of suite of skills and services. But, but also just, I mean, I know we’ve touched on your preference to do these things in person, but if, if you are an online coach, if you’re somebody, I mean, you guys mentioned that, Hey, you have people that go to other facilities and actually train there, but they come to you for the, the behavior change side of things. You know, I mean, this, this is something that could, could allow somebody to differentiate their online services. They could add. I mean, we see all these people that have this, you know, a robust list of leads or prospects that don’t come into the gym.

Now they’ve got something else they could offer them. They they’ve got something that they can continue to offer people that, that might move away. You know, this, this is maybe, maybe the corny analogy that comes to mind for me is this has some Swiss army knife, like applications. Yeah. I like to say this, this is a course that will enhance all your other courses, because sometimes you, you, you, you learn new things. You’re like, oh, this, this actually goes against this other thing. So I gotta pick which route I want to go. But if you, if you’ve taken nutrition courses, or if you’ve taken different exercise, program design, all these different things still know the, the basics of psychology and behavior change has to happen because you can have the best workout plan. You can have the best meal plan, but if you can’t get someone to follow it, then it’s ultimately not the best plan. So this is more of the basis of to get people to, to do all the great things that you have learned. Very cool. Very cool. So I, is there anything else you guys can share and I’ll even be more specific Dr. Jay, anything else that, that you could share with a, you know, a, a small fitness business owner, how this would be useful for them kind of in summary or anything?

Maybe I wasn’t skillful enough in asking about Well, you asked great questions, but I think I would, I would add that there’s a lot of interesting terms. And some of the, the facilities we’ve talked to, they’re saying, well, I’ve tried, we had a health coaching model, or we had this, or, and there’s wellness, and there’s lots of different terms for it. And I wanna stress that this isn’t complicated. It is systematized. And not just, we’ve taken again, lots of research, but lots of application in many other industries, and we’ve just fine tuned it for the fitness industry and facilities. And so this truly is a system that is even from like, here’s your day one, here’s your day two with your client? Here’s your day three, as far as, you know, meeting times. And here’s what you’re asking. And a lot of the clients will give you the answers. They know the answers, they’ve just not been asked it in the ways that we are posing it. So we’re really giving those fitness facilities, questions, and systems to use with clients. And so again, it’s easily implemented and the retention and the results speak for themselves, and then that word of mouth and all those types of things increase client wise. But I just always wanna stress. It’s not a therapy session. It’s not super ambiguous. And that I have to listen to people cry all day long or any of those type of things. So sometimes people will have tears, but they also have tears on the floor. So know, but it it’s really just some really basic ways to get your clients to think about their behaviors and what they want in a different way so that they can move forward. And we’re doing things in small systematic steps. And so I just don’t want people to be intimidated by this or think like, oh, I took a psychology class on holy Cru. That was a lot there. And I don’t know if I wanna dive into that. So again, it’s a system and it’s much like doing good programming.

We’re just looking at what’s going on off the floor. Very cool. Scott, anything you wanna add? Yeah, just to kind of build on that. We’re, we’re trying to make this. So at every coach at every level will be able to do this. So I’ve been in this industry long enough that I have some other friends that have also been doing it for 15 plus years. And they’ve kind of figured out a way to have, you know, this kind of direction of conversations, but it took, you know, 15, 20 years to get there what we want. And this is a big thing because I have a team of, of trainers. If, if someone comes in and they just have a level one training certification, can they go in the next 30 days, learn how to have these conversations with our clients? Because our clientele is mainly over the age of 40. So sometimes it’s intimidating by a 20 year old to be like, well, you know, I’m giving this advice to people that have lived a lot longer than me, but again, we’re just trying to teach them to be the guides. It’s not for them to have the answer for everything. It’s just teaching them to, to ask the right questions. And then on the, the business side of it. And we talked a about this earlier, I’m, I’m always trying to find a way to stand out for my facility, trying to find a way to add on more services, that’s gonna bring in more money and this really hits on both of those Well, I’m I’m a fan. I think that, that a as I’ve kind of alluded to throughout our, our, our chat here you know, the, the model of simply renting people access to training sessions or group classes or equipment is a commodity that the average independent bus business owner is gonna see diminishing returns with.

I mean, at some level we have to be more focused, far more on, you know, delivering results, creating a really positive experience and not trying to compete with big boxes or franchises that you know, directly, it needs to be apples to oranges. And this seems like about as valuable a tool in the toolbox as somebody could probably have based on what we’ve talked about. So with that being said, you know, I know we’ve got a couple links here in, in the show notes, but is the best place for people to find out more about the certification and what you guys are doing healthybehaviorinstitute.com. Yes. You can check that out. Or the doc and I have a YouTube and podcast, which is titled the doc and the doc that we go into a lot of these specific client examples, or just scenarios that we see in the industry to kind of break those down. Very cool. Well, a as a, as mentioned, I’ve yeah, I, I, I’ve definitely become a, a real advocate for this. I think this is awesome. And you know, the other kind of cool thing that I know you guys have gone to the trouble of getting approved for CEUs was like NASA and ACE and maybe a couple others. And so, you know, somebody could add this to their, their kind of coaching skill set, but then to also meet some of those requirements that it seems like we all have to, to meet every year or two. So thank you guys for coming on and sharing and offering up what I think can be a potential game changer for the, the listeners. So thank you guys. And this was pat Dr. Jay and Scott on another episode of the ideal business show.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the fitness business school. Before you go, I have a quick announcement: When I first connect with a fitness business owner, they almost always ask me how they can grow, how they can accelerate their progress. Well, I have an exclusive offer for you, and it’s gonna help you do just that – to accelerate you building the business that you want to own, getting more clients, generating more revenue, increasing your income, improving your lifestyle. And as a listener of this show, you can test drive our ideal business accelerator coaching program for FREE.

IBA is a one-of-a-kind program where you’re gonna get everything from done-for-you marketing tools and a level of coaching that’s unmatched in our industry to getting actual direction on how to build the business that you want – a blueprint from where you are to where you want to be. So you’re gonna be able to attract those clients that you want work with. You’re gonna be able to increase your income. You’re gonna be able to improve your lifestyle. And all of that is going to be more readily accessible to you than you ever thought possible, because we’re gonna give you every tool template, ad script, everything that you need. Plus over 10 weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your ads, to mastering your mindset.

All of this is stuff that you get when you join the Ideal Business Accelerator and to help you succeed, I’m going to do something that really is kind of unmatched our industry. I’m gonna let you test drive IBA at zero cost. If it delivers for you in the way that I know that it will, it’s gonna more than pay for itself, and you’re probably gonna wanna stay. But if not, no sweat, you’re out nothing. And you have a library of proven tools and resources to keep and help you going forward to take advantage of this special offer. Just email me at [email protected] and put test drive in the subject line, and I’ll get you all the details.