Fitness Business School – Making Convenience Part of Your Model

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here, and in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about making convenience.

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 to the end
of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

I’m certain that if you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed how convenience has become paramount in business over the last few years.

And it’s not that it’s not always been important. It’s just become more of a buying factor for people. And if you think back to the days of earlier days of Amazon, where it was just an online retailer and then two day shipping happened, then one day shipping happened, then same day shipping happened. People really kept making buying decisions in part by how quickly they could get the things that they wanted.

And if you look around you, you see it all the time with places like a CVS or a Walgreens or. Something like that where they can charge prices that are substantially higher than bigger grocery stores or other major retailers just because it’s convenient they’re closer to you, so it is More convenient for you to get the thing you want when you want it and you’re willing to pay a premium for it I think that DoorDash, Uber Eats, all those things play into that.

Online coaching apps. People want things now. They don’t want to wait for their favorite TV show to be on a major network. It’s some designate designated time each week. They want to have it on demand streaming when they want it on the device that they prefer. And, This whole convenience factor has made its way into the world of fitness time and time again.

And when I first got into the fitness industry on the commercial side of things, my, my first kind of foray into fitness, I got my first certification when I was 20, I worked at a university, was a college baseball coach, college strength coach, taught in the sports sciences department, all that stuff. But as far as like commercial side, not in the university setting, 24 hour health clubs were not really a thing that really picked up when anytime fitness and snap fitness came on.

Sure there was 24 hour fitness but that was not a nationwide thing that happened in every market. It was a very localized type of thing and it became paramount and now almost every big box health club has some sort of 24 hour access and I even see smaller franchises now that are oriented that are offering 24 hour access.

But I owned an anytime fitness was actually one of the first franchisees of any, anytime fitness. Way back when they had three employees at their corporate office, it was counting the two, two, the two active in business owners. So there were three owners. It was just a different era. And I think that they saw the convenience factor as being a huge selling point.

It was a savvy decision on their part, because again, most health clubs, if it were the gold’s gyms of the world or the ballies, the powerhouses, the local medically supported. wellness centers. They were not 24 hour fitness facilities they had really defined hours very much like most of our training businesses do today.

But now you see the planet fitness is the provide on demand access. And then even the people who have limited hours have access to on demand workouts. They have access to on demand resources when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to community support, asking questions in Facebook, that sort of thing.

And. I think that it’s an important observation, not necessarily to tell you exactly how to approach convenience, but more so to tell you that if you’re not considering, how do I make this more convenient for the person that I serve, you’re missing out on one of the key priorities that most consumers have.

If you’re not conveniently located, people are not going to be able to come to you with great frequency. Sure. Everybody’s had the outlier that they drove an hour each way to get to their facility. If you train athletes, you’ve probably had plenty of those people because there just aren’t as many people conveniently located.

In that market, if you’re in general adult fitness or anything associated with that. People need to be able to get to you the way they get to the grocery store. They need to be able to get to you with some sort of frequency if they want to get results. And beyond that, it probably means that they need to be able to Have convenient, safe parking.

They need to be able to have sessions that fit with their schedule. They need to likely be able to get some support for the things that they’re doing when they’re at home, because you’re making it convenient. You’re a one stop destination. For this person, instead of them having to go cobble together a bunch of different things.

If I go off on that tangent for a moment, we have automatic members are our marketing software for fitness businesses. And that’s really the whole premise is we want to make everything convenient. We want everything to be under this one umbrella where. If you need a website, if you need pages, if you need emails, if you need texting, if you need just normal client management stuff, we can keep it all under this one umbrella instead of duct taping together 10 different software solutions.

And you need to be thinking in that same way with your business, anything that makes it higher friction for the client to get the outcome they want. And the outcome isn’t just fat loss. It may be. Consistency, it may be feeling good on a regular basis because of a sense of accomplishment. Anything standing between them and those outcomes that they desire it’s a barrier between you and retaining that client or even getting them in the first place if they’re deciding.

So you need to be looking at ways to make the experience you want the clients to have, the experience that they want to have. More convenient for them needs to be easier for them to utilize the services you provide, attain the results that you want. I was just speaking with Eric Cressey on a recent podcast and we talked about his facility in Florida.

And how, as they’ve grown, they wanted to have everything under one roof. They wanted to have physical therapy under one roof. They wanted to have a field adjacent to the actual training facility. So people could get outside and do some of their on field work. There, there are things that, that work. So you’re not shuttling around going to 10 different locations.

You’re not having to piece together a bunch of different providers. If you want to have a better business, you have to weave convenience into the things you do. The last example I’ll give you because it was actually really recent in my mind. I was having a conversation with my dad this morning.

My dad has owned an auto repair business for 39 years. So you know, he’s, I’m sure in the top couple percent of small businesses when it comes to longevity. One of the things that really was a driver in his business in kind of the peak years would have been doing things like oil changes. People would come in, he’d have a customer base that do oil changes.

But in that era, doing an oil change, Was, Hey, come in. We’ll put your car on a lift, lift the car up, change the oil. You’ll just sit in the office and wait, and then you’ll be able to be on your way. Now there are all the varied instant oil change solutions out there that you just stay in your car.

You don’t even have to get out. You drive in, you, all the work is done underneath you. You sit in your car and scroll your phone or do whatever you do. What’s going on and it’s faster and it’s more convenient. And so it’s really eliminated the independently owned typical auto repair facility doing oil changes.

If people aren’t going to one of those, they’re going to a dealership. Where it’s tied to whatever kind of deal they got when they bought their car or something like that. Convenience is just part of society. It’s part of the way that humans operate. And so if you’re going to be successful we have to.

See who people really are and what’s really important to them. If you’re not thinking about it through that lens, if you’re not considering convenience as one of the key variables, when you’re making your client experience decisions, when you’re marketing your business and what you’re trying to showcase, you’re really missing a golden opportunity.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

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Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get
you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.