I want to a business lesson I learned from my 4-year-old twins.
Sounds weird? Well it will help you get more clients, keep them for longer and have them refer more clients to you.
So here’s what I learned…
Every Wednesday, I take my 4-year-old twins, Jax and Halle, for s swim. They LOVE it. And it totally wears them out.
Every time they attend a lesson, they have this little card that they wear around their neck on a lanyard. It gets ticked off every single lesson and they go up levels. Level one, level two, level three.
Swimming superstar, I think it’s called.
I thought you know what…?
a. It’s cheap. It’s a plastic card on a lanyard.
b. It’s really, really smart. Because it teaches the kids to come back and want to progress, and want to go up these levels. And it makes winning really easy for them.
So I thought you know what? How could we implement this in a fitness business? And it’s really quite simple.
Here are three ways you can do it.
#1 Make it super easy for them to win.
I’m talking, like, let’s say we gamify 5 to 10 things in your center, in your facility.
You want clients to get really, really good at it.
As an easy example, let’s say one of them is a hang. And one of them is a test in squat mobility.
For the hang, what’s the easiest level we could start a client on?
Well, it’s probably not an overhead hang, an overhead double with full body weight, because we’ve got a client who’s not in condition. It’s going to be quite tough.
Instead, we could do maybe on the TRX rings. We could do an inverted row, just hanging in that position to build that group strength.
That’s Level 1.
Maybe, let’s say they can get 10 seconds there. That’s Level 1.
Now obviously it’s very easy to win.
The advanced version might be a single arm hang for 30 seconds each arm.
To get them off the mark is very, very simple. For the squat, for the mobility, they might be allowed to have a couple of fingers on, on a soft box, also squat for 10 seconds.
See what I mean? So, tip number one, make it easy for them to win.
#2 Make it a simple progression system
So if you look at a dojo, a martial arts center, they come in at white belt and they progress over probably three to five years up to a black belt.
So, make the progression simple and black and white so everybody knows how to progress up for each individual test.
#3 Make the testing standard
So, whether you test them, or a team member tests them, or your gym manager tests them, it’s black and white.
It’s very simple to follow.
There’s no grayness on how to progress to the next level.
#4 Celebrate every single achievement
If you have a quarterly dinner, if you have some clients who have gone up across the board and you have some kind of mention of those, make it a celebration when they go up.
You could even have levels or have belts like a dojo would.
Make it fun, gamify and celebrate every single increase.
So, to wrap up those four tips.
- Number one, make it easy to get off the mark and make it easy to win.
- Number two, very clear on how to progress to the full levels.
- Number three, testing has to be uniform so you and your staff and all of your future clients know exactly what’s going on.
- And Tip number four is make it fun, gamify. Make it a celebration. Have prizes. Have announcements and watch your retention soar.
