Fitness Business School – Improve Your On-Boarding

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and I’m on to part two of a six part series about what we’re doing in our business to grow and improve that I think can be implemented in your businesses. Well, today we’re going to talk about improved on boarding. So I’ve got a few things that we’re doing that I think can be helpful to you.

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.

I think most of us as business owners understand that onboarding really plays a meaningful role in a client experience and their ultimate success. But I will be the first to admit that it has been something that I probably didn’t give nearly enough attention to consistently through my 15, 16 years doing business coaching. And, you know, I guess at this point, almost 20 years as a business owner you know, I I’ve usually done what a lot of people do when they’re, when there was a challenge, when it was clear, there was a bottleneck, I would try to tighten things up. I would try to improve them based on that need. And, and, you know, I’ve created onboarding for franchise programs for in-person training facilities. And now we’re, we’re really kind of trying to optimize our own boarding for, for our business growth accelerator coaching program specifically right now, and the onboarding side of what we do. A few of the things that we’re doing that I think might be useful for you. The first thing is making sure that we’re clear on expectations upfront on both sides. We want people to know what they can expect from us. And we also want to know or want them to know what is expected of them to be successful. They’re coming into our program, looking for coaching, looking for support, looking for really improvement and without change. It’s really tough to see improvement. So there has to be this understanding, this acknowledgment that they’re going to have to probably do things a little bit differently than they’ve done them before. And so we want that to be a voiced expression of understanding, but then beyond that you know, we have a foundation that we’re, we’re really kind of built. We, we have people connect with the community. We have people in our program because it’s essentially pay for performance.

If we don’t deliver, then they don’t have to pay. So we need to be able to track their progress. So they have to log into our scoreboard attract progress. They need to go through some productivity and planning training, because obviously the way they’re investing their time now is really yielding the outcome they’re getting now. And they want a different and better outcome. So we have to get them to see how they can invest their time better. And then finally, we go through some foundational mindset training to help people really kind of get out of their own head if you will. Because a lot of people that come to us, obviously they’re not thrilled with the results they’re getting. And so maybe they’re in a bad head space, right? They’re, they’re overwhelmed. They, they don’t have confidence, they they’re stressed. And we want to kind of get them back to a solid, productive mindset so that we can implement new strategies, new tactics. We can coach them to optimize what they’re doing. So we go through that first and I think of this in kind of a very simplistic way. I want to show somebody what being successful looks like and help them understand that we’re setting them up for success rather than just throwing them to the wolves. Because a lot of people have access to all sorts of tactics and they buy courses that have all these proven strategies. And you wonder why most of that stuff doesn’t ever work. And we know that doesn’t work.

We’ve all bought courses that kind of collected the internet, internet version of dust. And it, you know, it, it, it didn’t work for us. And I don’t know that the intellectual property and the courses were bad, but people weren’t set up to succeed in using them in a lot of cases. And so we want to set people up to succeed from day one. Then we give them the system to execute. So we establish a solid foundation. We talk about what success looks like. And then, then we deploy that the tactical stuff, the strategic stuff. Now, in addition to that, we have two people on our team. Holly and Amy, that play a really significant role in that onboarding process too, to kind of welcome people to, to our kind of coaching family, to set them up, to succeed, to maybe narrow their focus, that they don’t think about all the things they could do. And they focus on the things that they should do. And this whole kind of compilation of things I think is really useful in helping our new people get started on the right foot. Now, I would be really remiss if I didn’t tell you that, Hey, it hasn’t always been that way. There’ve been times that we’ve kind of dropped people into programs and thrown them to the wolves.

There have been times that our on boarding certainly didn’t meet people where they were and addressed the, the reality of the fact that they were coming to us overwhelmed. And these are things that we’re consciously aware of. So the takeaway for you, I think is that, you know what people are coming into your program and they’re not coming into this program always in the best possible place, right there. In many cases, they’re starting from a deficit, they’re starting with negative previous experiences. They’re starting with a, maybe not the best support system at home. They’re starting with uncertainty, fear concern about embarrassment there. They’re starting with you know, a host of emotional and intangible type of issues, and then maybe some tangible and truly kind of tactical type of issues. Like not knowing what to eat or having a way of operating when it comes to meals for the family or whatever else that isn’t going to be supportive. You have to meet people where they are when you begin your onboarding and acknowledge that and understand that and start your onboarding with where they are, not where you want them to start. Because if you do that, you’re going to give them a much higher probability of success. Now I’ll tell you, most people don’t do this.

Most people kind of have their own boarding, like, Hey, here’s how to use our program, not being conscious of the fact that there’s a big gap to go from where they are to where your program begins for us. A lot of this comes with being kind of immersed in the community, understanding the productivity and time management and getting on a solid kind of, sort of footing for mindset. We try to do do that, to get people back to what we might consider neutral. And I would recommend that you do the same if you want your onboarding to be as specific as possible. And honestly of all of the onboarding courses I’ve ever been through all the trainings I’ve ever been through, I’ve never heard anybody talk about it in that way. I’ve always talked, heard people talked, you know, user experience of our, you know, our customer journey. This is where it begins. And, you know, it’s kind of like at the front door of their, their business in many ways, instead of at the front door of that person’s house, you know, I mean, thinking of it that way. So hopefully that helps you understand how we think about onboarding and some of the things that we’re continually trying to, to do and to improve. And it’s always a work in progress because you know what I’m telling you about it now, and I’m hoping that, you know, should you choose to join the program and two weeks it’ll be even better. And then two weeks after that, it’ll be even better because this is something that, that we know that if you set somebody up for success, you’re really changing their odds dramatically of not only achieving, but kind of maintaining that, change that goal. So hopefully that helps you. And if you’d like to get a peak behind the scenes of some of this and experience it for yourself firsthand be part of it, reap the rewards, not only in your business growth, but also kind of see how you can apply this to your own business. Shoot me an email [email protected] and we’ll connect. And I can tell you more about our 30 day test drive. Talk to you soon.

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