Gym Drop Ins: Best Practices and Policies

people, gym, memberships, business, class, pay, drop, dropping, spot, coaches, mma gym, talking, week, members, charging, owners, non committal, town

Tyler 00:01

Welcome to this week's episode gym owners podcast ladies and gentlemen, this week we're going to talk about drop ins. What does it mean when someone comes in and wants to use your facility just for a day, a weekend a week? How should you structure those arrangements? How can you make it so that it's the best for them and the best for you and your business without causing you a bunch of headaches? What should it cost? How do you fulfill it? What opportunities are in those relationships for you as a business owner? And how do you make sure that doesn't take away from the product that you're actually putting out on the floor for the people that are paying you to actually deliver long term results so before we get started, make sure you guys go to join the Facebook group links in the description as the gym owners revolution, go to gym owners revolution.com If you want to get into all the other shit we got going on, we have the gear Academy there our coaching program for business owners, gym owners, MMA gyms, martial arts studios, group fitness stuff, personal trainers, we have all sorts of people from 24 hour facilities to CrossFit gyms to private boutique studios, so your your business will fit that model. If you're interested in working with us directly. That's the way to go. We do have some what's the word, some more intensive products if your pockets are deeper, but if you want to get started, that's the place where we recommend you get started. So go to gym owners revolution.com For that follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow me at Tyler effing stone that's Tyler eff ironstone and John how do they find you?



John Fairbanks 01:23

You can find me at Jay banks FL on Instagram



Tyler 01:27

guys drop ins, I had the very what's the word cynical and frustrated take on dropins when I had my first gym group fitness CrossFit affiliate droppings were a big pain in my ass. To be honest, because you get someone who comes in and especially in a CrossFit gym, somebody you get the type of guys that will come in and the first thing they're going to do is go up and while everybody else is warming up, they're gonna jump up on your rings and start ripping ring muscle ups just so they've asserted their dominance so that they know that hey 95% of your members here as far as skill level goes, and that way they gotta respect, just droppings are a pain in the ass. I don't think that's the case, as a whole, we have assessed this and we work with tons of gyms right now on how we build all the systems for all the products and drop in fees. And all this stuff is a factor that you have to measure in your business or else at convert, or you have to blend into your business or else it concludes everything else that you do. So one thing to really focus when we're talking drop ins, if you have a drop in rate of per class rate, you need to make sure that that is made sure that is there to serve people who are coming from out of town, someone who's a friend of a member of family or a member someone's come from out of town and there's no potential for them to become a longtime member, a longtime member or become joining a membership. That is something you need to address right away, you need to know that that's what this product is for. You will get if you're in business long enough, as you will get very non committal people who should just be members who have no reason to be to not be a member. Other than that they're trying to save money or stay on the periphery and not quite jump into your process to your system with both feet. And those people are a huge pain in your ass. So their pricing is a thing with this where I've seen so many gyms and we work with some directly where it's like you want your drop ins, your dropping rate to just be reasonable, like you'd love to have your dropping rate be like 10 bucks for people coming from out of town that are just stressed. And whatever, actually not trying to make money on it. I've seen models that have tons of tourists. And that's a different story. We'll get into that later. But like, that becomes a thing where you'll get people that are going to come in who go oh, I don't wanna start, let me just pay for one class and they'll pay for a class. And then they'll start doing this math and they'll go, well wait a minute, I'm only able to really come once or twice a week. If I'm only able to come once or twice a week, why don't I just spend 10 or $20 per week and then it saves me the money? And that is the biggest trap you can fall into. We'll get into why these out of town people are a pain in your ass for lots of other reasons and the opportunities and pitfalls that their situation presents to your business. But these motherfuckers who want to come in and pay a drop in fee just kind of come and go as they please. Your that is a sign that your pricing is broken because your pricing should make that never be an option for them for the dropping. Right. It should never be a thing where someone goes in and thinks that that's better, a better option for them.



John Fairbanks 04:35

Yeah, my brother works for a hotel. So he does and works for a large enough company where they have, you know, a conglomerate, right? They have high end hotels and they have cheap end hotels and it just depends on where you're at and what you fall into. And one thing that was interesting to talk to me about was pricing for how they price their cheaper hotels, because the one spot was like there's a hotel in town and it's not like it's not a dive. It's nice, but it's one of those Holiday Inn level types of spots. Yeah. And if you are from out of town, it's unreasonably affordable. It's like $9 a night or something. Like it was like for, for a place that's not fucking Motel Six, right? It's not a motel like it is in super hip and it's whatever, all the things and he goes, but doesn't ever stay. Like if you and your wife want to stay in town and maybe go to a nice spot or whatever, stay whatever staycation type thing. He's like, don't go. He goes, because once they realize that you're local, it's like 200 plus dollars a night. Yeah. And just because they don't want local Riff Raff fucking live in their party, and



Tyler 05:44

they're causing trouble. Anytime especially let's assume this isn't all just like, a married couple going to have a nice quiet evening, the correct evening might get a little frisky, it might get a little rambunctious anyways, that's probably problem number one they're trying to avoid in the hotel business. Problem number two is younger folks coming in and just partying and just crushing it in the place. Even worse as you go. There's some places that I've gone to where we've looked, depending on the level of place you're trying to live in. You can live in a goddamn Holiday Inn for a month a hell of a lot cheaper, you can then you can rent an apartment so you have to keep in mind that to maintain the actual overall product. Yeah, you can't be having that.



John Fairbanks 06:27

And that's where it's so again, just mentality wise, if hotels are playing this game, and are being very methodical and thoughtful about what they're pricing, for people that are out of town versus people that are in town. There's a lot of lessons to be learned there. Where's this idea? Where do you want, you know, again, it's, you are cutting the throat of the business. And we'll go into this because this idea of like what you're offering, what's available to your local people is just not the same. It's not the same product that you're going to offer to somebody that you're never going to see again. And I think it's also dangerous. If you have someone that's a fucking strangers now I'm going to come into your world, interact with your people who you don't know, you don't know what they're all about, and what you're going to expose them to this individual, someone who has not made a commitment to your gym, to your culture, fully accepted your rules is understanding that they need to assimilate here, they don't get to just bounce in and out. We've got



Tyler 07:27

I mean, I have a lot of examples of this type of stuff. But one of the things that we run into a lot with the MMA gym is, you know, fighting and training to fight is not necessarily for everyone, right? So I understand people coming in apprehensively, right? I don't know, maybe, you know, you get to do a trial class already. And from that on, if you want to attend, you can pay for a month, and fucking cancel after a month. We had initially set the prices so low for dropins. It was like 10 bucks. And it's like, well do the math. Like unless you're attending every class that you can say jujitsu like, well, let's you attend every class that's, it's in your best interest to just go drop in, right? Just pay dropins. And we kind of would allow that for people around here that have like a 20 minute commute 30 minutes out of town where it's like, it's a bit of a task. But every single one of those people would be better served, if they had to spend 100 bucks for the month, they would because they would actually come if they're going to pay 10 once they're very likely not just not to come the second time, if they pay 100 bucks, they're very likely to attend 56789 1015 classes in a month. Right? And that gives them you to understand the purpose of your business. You want people to attend so that they can get results. You want them to be incentivized to attend. You want them to be incentivized to invest. And very often people miss that. But you're going to hell, let's just I'll just come in and yeah, I'm only we've I've had this question and concern with the MMA potential clients. It's something we get almost every week until we correct the pricing. Yeah, we did up to 15 bucks. And then at 15 bucks, it's still like, we still would get some of those people that would just come in Okay, well, let me just try one oh, I'll come in and it's like you've already done your free trial. If you want to do more join commit to the crowd to the people to the times that we're having class commit to the process commit to whatever it is because otherwise these people will not get the results if it's fitness, they will not get it if that's their level of commitment is nickel and diming their way through when it's easy for him they have to shit or get off the pot and you need to put that fucking choice that fork in the road right in front of them as quickly as possible because we've I've seen we have we have a situation too that comes and goes sometimes you'll get somebody that'll come in and they'll I'll do a free trial class they'll maybe just pop up to like open Mat Time as though like open gym time is free to the public. And they'll want to do from an MMA standpoint they want to do like live sparring rounds in jujitsu are striking with people and you have to understand that your gym this what we talked about with this gym or your the services that you offer is not just your classes, the services that you offer is use of your facility, use of your mats of your training tools. And the big one here is anyone who's ever trained martial arts or even done things like powerlifting weightlifting is, is having people to train with having training partners that you can trust, super valuable. And then you get into the point where there's, you know, potential for violence in this. The last thing you can have is some motherfucker who has made zero commitment to your business to your people to your culture, coming in and just play in play violence with your people who's not committed to coming into class, they're not committed to learning, and they're not committed to the long haul that personnel is a constant fucking liability. And even if they're coming into these things for a 15 $50 drop in fee, my thing with some of these people we get to come in is unless you're paying and attending classes, you don't touch me. Well, what I do in our kind of open round when we're going through stuff and bouncing from partner to partner and training training is I've had a pretty serious injury a couple of months ago, and I'm back training at pretty much full speed. Some of these non committal bros that are just coming in hanging out doing some looky loo shit and maybe hoping they can get some rounds approve whatever they are like I flat out tell him. Yeah, you ain't touching me until you're paying? Yeah, and usually they're pretty happy for me not to touch them.



John Fairbanks 11:29

Yeah. But it was the same way. When I rolled it was when the new guy walked in. It was the most dangerous individual in the room. Yeah, because everybody has their we're all sweating on top of each fucking each other like every four days out of the week, and you're all everybody can trust that you're not going to just tear apart your shoulder. So it was always like because it was like the professor and then anybody that was ready to get their black belt like they were the only people that rolled with those folks, no matter what level they were



Tyler 11:55

just they're not they don't understand what's going on first off, and they don't they're not committed to any and you don't know and they're not committed to anything other than maybe literally winning a fucking silly sparring supposed to be an educational situation and those people are a big fucking problem for your gym,



John Fairbanks 12:13

to the risky, right? They are they themselves are prone to injury, they're prone to fuck up your people. Like I can't tell you it's less so transitioning from MMA. Like, whenever you had some new motherfucker that came into your gym, like we lift weights and shit was like, I don't want to be spotting you and I don't want you spotting me. I don't want you anywhere near me. I don't want you anywhere near me. Like there's a lot of trust that has to be built for like general safety. And then there's also



Tyler 12:40

no I had a kid the other day it was a while back now but asked me to spot him you know, high school aged kid and strong kid. And as a call me reps you go, you go in here. So on the bench and he goes, I'm going for three. Okay, first one gets to his chest, raises an inch, then drops it right back down to his chest. I grab it and pull it up. And he's still crying. He's like, I caught it. I caught it. I got it. Bro, you wanted three you got fuckin zero. And now you want to sass me because your ego hurts like fuck you. And if I was in a gym that I own, it's like Yeah, buddy. Next time you want to ask Get the fuck out here, this was a paying member. So that person has to look me in the eye and shake every time.



John Fairbanks 13:20

And so you have the injury piece and the safety piece, but they also just genuinely they're slowing your shit down. Yeah, when it comes to your classes, it's now all of a sudden, the dude that is paid. Sometimes a 10th of what you're paying members are paying, if not less, gets all of your undivided attention. And if it really is somebody from out of town, they're not going to be a fucking member. So it just needs to be that it is. So this is where again, as we start to get towards like what your rate should be, it should really start to inch towards it is cost prohibitive enough to where if I'm going to go to a gym and pay a premium price for a dropping because I am determined not to use the hotel weight room, and I want to go somewhere else. I know what the fuck I'm doing. And I'm willing to pay the money to go to a place that has the things I want and I know what I want and I know how to use it.



Tyler 14:18

Because if they're not committed to the other thing so you mentioned it slows down your classes completely if you're talking group classes. They're not safe. I would get droppings and it would come in and we do things differently, right? You know how hard it is to be teaching deadlifts in a group setting. And then you have some new guy who just wants to prove how much he can deadlift to a bunch of new chicks that are in your gym. Yeah, that's a huge fucking problem. And so like, then what I got to teach him how I mean, you've seen what we do when they call it like it's a lot and to try and do it from the ground up. It's like well, I got eight people here that are working on this exercise and have been working on it from week to week. We've been going through this and now I got some schmuck in here, who is, as far as I can see, I would vote most likely to get his back exploded today. What's my job? You know what I mean? The main thing is I don't want people getting hurt in my facility like that, that does matter to me, especially if you're tracking injury data, which you should, you know, but by the way, if you disregard dropping injury data, I'm with you, fuck, just fuck them. That's how I really felt about the whole thing. I didn't want drop-ins of almost any capacity to the point where I would let people bring in, I would let our members bring in like family and friends and stuff on a Saturday. But even then it starts to get out of hand, because you'd have all these people who train at another gym. And then they come into your spot, just every single Saturday and get to love your vibe and like one of your best big group classes, and they've paid nothing. And then they just go back to it and start to fill in that space. In hindsight, yeah, if you're from out of town, come on, in. If you live here, like you get one of those, and then you're gonna start paying, because it just is and I don't, and I'm not telling you what to do as a gym, you may be and I'm we're really open to this because our thing that what we do here is we want to come up with best practices. And there isn't going to be a one size fits all thing. But these are the risks that you need to be assessing pretty consistently, like, what can they do for your business? And we'll get into that in the future because there are benefits there. But what can they do to your business? It's rough, if you have three drop ins come in, if you have let's just pretend you had to drop in in each of your classes for that was like your average, right? And you're either not coaching those people, or you're dumbing down your programming completely to accommodate essentially and coaching on onboarded completely uninitiated. That's rough, you know, and all that does is take away from your pain members, from the people who are really here who really respect your coaching enough to be invested. And I'm not saying this is like an easy situation. But you, you got to address it in its entirety, there's risks, there's benefits, the benefits are low. These people I would describe their experience with you as generally low value, at best, you know, and that's it. So let's jump in John, what is what should the rate be? Well, this, the



John Fairbanks 17:19

The strategy behind this, in my opinion, really comes down to one particular thing that we haven't called out right yet. And this is where in my opinion, drop in conversations start to drift into a danger zone. And it's what I call are going to be those things that are going to be whether they are your punch passes, people can buy a bucket of sessions they can buy kind of this weird nebulous discounted, come whenever the fuck you feel like it kind of thing that's so non committal that you're now melding these two concepts that I just I'm not I have a hard time at this point, being totally behind, unless you have a very unique model, where your model is that larger 24 hour access type model, where it's not dependent upon people being coached by a premium.



Tyler 18:14

So I just think it's important to note, you know, how many truly unique models I've seen. Zero. So if you think your model is unique, and markets unique, just remember, get your head out of your fucking ass. It's not You're not just remembering. So just but there are comparables, it's you need to know what game you're playing, amongst others, but nobody's nothing is inherently unique in this business. There's like eight, you, there's like eight.



John Fairbanks 18:40

And so this is where then so this is where we're trying to walk back from this concept of this idea to where you're dropping in what your rate is. And it really starts where the first thing to do and this is just to start to get a feel for the landscape in your area. If you are a functional fitness gym, and you have competitors that are in your area that do the same thing as you do, whether they're CrossFit boxes or whether they are RM knows that 45 Like there's going to be there's going to be all sorts of examples, franchises that do something similar to you and don't be lame of being like, No, we're really unique. It's like no, you're really not. So it's just like it's your functional fitness style, do they? What do they offer? What are the rates that they're charging in that area? And for that particular service, that's step one. If you're gonna establish that now you have kind of a baseline to go off of, but it really needs to come down to what are you charging? So what are you charging? If you start to break down your existing offers and sessions, your membership options, your memberships? What is that if you start to break that down into a per session basis, this really needs to be What your North Star is?



Tyler 20:01

And I think because like you had mentioned, like, what are other people charging in our market for dropins? For one off dropins it's important to note that I'm trying to be market competitive only matters in a service in which you're trying to compete. Correct? Are you trying to get the most dropins pay attention to your market, it does matter. There's a gym I was at, I won't give away the name because I don't work with him directly. But at a very, very a, what's the word, like one of the most tourist cities in the world, families, theme parks all this stuff, right. And they're right near the on site toe, it's something that some of the bigger places like it's a big hub in there. And I think they probably average eight to 10 Drop ins per weekend class. And they're running, you know, ship pots or classes a day, like 810 classes a day. That is their bread and butter, frankly, is you'll have your base of people that live there that work in the area. And I would not be surprised if more than half of their yearly revenue is dropins. Now, if that's the business you want to have, great, and if that's your opportunity, seize it, I'm with it. That is the last thing that I would want to do as a coach as a business owner, because I'm just I don't, I don't want that I want to actually deliver was there's no way to deliver results to drop ins, that's that's just keep that very fucking clear that in the world of fitness, strength training, nutrition, diet, all this stuff, you can deliver a great experience, you cannot deliver actual life impacting results in the grand scheme of things because it takes consistency, wherever their training back home is gonna get credit for all the progress they make. And that's okay, you're gonna give them a good time. It's wonderful. But you have to understand that you cannot, if these people are your members, what are you going to do? How are you going to leverage that, to attract a long term actual business? If I'm sorry, if dropins are your primary clients, it's tough. And there's money to be made. If you're in a tourist area, and you get a lot of travelers through and you get and you have a spot that people want, I am totally worth it, capitalize on it, which also means do not make it cheap. Make it expensive, like John mentioned earlier, so that it is enough, in my opinion, when it comes to drop ins, because they're a drop in the bucket for what you want your business to be. I would want to be the most expensive, dropping rate in my town in my market, that's what that's what I would look at, when I look at what other people charge in our market, I want to be more than them. So the people that want to commit less, or just want the cheapest spot to go work out, they're not ending up in my spot jamming up my place with my high value clients, because you are in there, then I'm making a bunch of money on or I'm making the most that I potentially can.



John Fairbanks 22:50

And it needs to be absolutely the most expensive premium priced per session item, in my opinion. Within reason, you're not going to charge $100 Because like personal training, right? So like, very specific to the group fitness to the group concept. Exactly. Because if you're running a 24 hour model, right, if you're running a model where people can just drop in and you hit this is the challenge, right? This is something that as you start to look at different types of gyms and different models of gyms, and then also the mentality of the gym owner, is if you're somebody that's like CrossFit, premium coach, semi private personal training, like studio type spot where you really pride yourself at like a craft, and you're coaching and this is your livelihood in those pieces, you can really go hard at any any type of inkling or idea that all of a sudden, you're just another spot to work out. He's like no, we are more than this, we are not that. So you really push back against just being a place that someone can come in and work out. But you're not pricing your dropins accordingly. Or you're allowing offers or memberships that are treating you like you're trying to still participate in like what we call an everybody else race to the bottom. Competing with those 24 hour spots. They're not playing your game, that 24 hour spot. And we have a lot of folks that are in our network and in our world that run 24 hour spots that also have the right additional services. But the 24 hour model is literally we have a place to work out you're gonna choose somewhere to go work out. We have that spot so it ends up being a totally different conversation for those people. Yeah.



Tyler 24:40

And in regards to the 24 hour fitness model as well. You need to know still drop pins from out of town in my opinion probably better than droppings from in town still right as far as from a respecting your place because they could just not work out, you know? But again, they may fuck up your stuff. I mean trash your bathrooms they may And, you know, wear shoes into your sauna or whatever kind of nonsense stuff you guys, we wouldn't believe the things that you see in 24 hour places. And those are the people most likely to be doing such things. And there's just there's no recourse and you just get so little out of them for the risk. And again, you're exposing all you're paying members to some unvetted weirdo who probably never even had to have a conversation with you. And then what are we looking into like that, that starts to become a safety issue starts to become the reason people go to a place that has memberships and especially if you're, if your memberships are expensive, the doing it to be exclusive. So why are you cutting that out completely, you're cutting the exclusivity out, just letting any schmuck who's willing to throw a fucking dime piece your way, throw a dime your way it get into your, it's, it's, that's the last thing in the world you want to have as your gym as a gym owner is let your product be devalued. And some people the way they price it. Okay, punch cards are another thing. punch cards is a way we talked about how bad it is to be letting people do like a case by case class by class like, I'm just gonna come eight times total and let them just prepay for eight times and have it not be recurring and have it not the it's broken. It's bad business, it sucks for you. It sucks for them, it's hard for them to renew does do they auto renew, as soon as the last session is up, I might even consider going punch cards if the moment you get to punch card 10 to punch 10 on that thing. You get billed for your next 10 Maybe, sure, but I would rather have you do you know, a 10 class per a two class per week membership. You know what I mean? That you just do that automatically renews that works. But that, that, that concept, you have to stay tuned into this because in the grand scheme of things, if somebody will we have gyms that open up into you guys, if you guys have ever started your gym from scratch and didn't have like account management and like automatically renewing payments and shit like this where like, if you're still we have we've had some gym owners that it's it came to us when they started, they were just taking cash and Venmo and whatever. Like, what happens is those don't happen automatically. And we observe this very much. So in the MMA gym that we work with, before we got everything transitioned over to automatically renewing memberships, what happened was people that are still going to this gym to this day would go and they would pay for a membership, they would pay for this month's dues. And they would train like two or three times in the next two weeks. And then they would not come. Well guess what those dues are done, you know, after 30 days. And then they don't come because they're like, Well, I don't want to have to pay to go again. And I haven't paid the guy. So two weeks, three weeks, five weeks, six weeks, 10 weeks pass, and they've got no training, and they've kind of drifted from and then they don't know, do I gotta go? If I go back in, how do I go? I mean, do I have to pay for these back dues? Or do I just start, I gotta have this conversation. Money's gotta change hands right now. And what it does, it stops them from going back in. It stops them from actually reaping the benefits from your services, which is if they commit, the commitment is there, they're committed every four weeks to make this payment. And we've seen since we rolled over to the system, those people who you would get money from every other month. And they wouldn't train that much. And they wouldn't get much better. Those people even though maybe out of a year, there would be one or two of those times where they drift away. Because the payment comes out automatically. And they got to tell someone they got to they're gonna cancel versus telling someone they're coming back. Guess what they just show back up usually a day or two after that payment runs. All right, it reminds them to get back in the gym, it keeps money in your pocket and keeps that commitment fresh. And you're looking that up completely by commoditizing your services to a class by class punch card system. It's stupid, allowing your locals there by the way, allowing a punch card and system is just what dropins bought in bulk. Correct. Stock shit, I hate it. I hate it so much. And so it's there's no potential for upsell, there's no potential for long term commitment. There's zero potential to make any real progress in order for that client because you know what, it's going to take a few months for you to lose all the weight or the weight you want to be losing to get in good shape, but you're going to absolutely miss out on their best chance for success and your chances of actually keeping this client for the long term.



John Fairbanks 29:29

So what you have to decide is this: Is this something that is for you depending on your model, and depending on what you are doing and how you're wanting to portray and protect your members, how all the things we've talked about is then what do you do next? How do we move from Okay great. I hear you all. I want to do something about this. So now what do I do? And this is where now you just decide what direction you are going to go? Is if you have punch passes or essentially do you have dropins in bulk the people are buying Saying that ultimately if you step back and look at your revenue, because this is where what we have found 100% of the time, is that gym owners have been doing things for years, but you have not been assessing or reviewing what this thing has meant to your business. Now, if you're the folks that are the most on the ball can tell me how many people are on different types of memberships in their gym? That is not that number. But when you really step back and look at it, if you have people that are either habitual dropins, local dropins are people that are buying these single session one offs in bulk and non committal, when they are meant from a membership standpoint. What does that look like when it comes to revenue? How long does it take for those people to fulfill those things?



Tyler 30:51

How often do they? Do they upgrade into higher level services? Compared to people who are on monthly recurring memberships?



John Fairbanks 31:00

And what would it look like? If you got rid of it? Are they buying this shit in bulk? Because they really can only come once every three weeks? Or is it because you made it so accessible to them?



Tyler 31:18

Are you making it easy for them to come once every three weeks when they should be coming three times a week?



John Fairbanks 31:24

And so these are those questions that you want to start to grapple with and then make a decision on and if it's I need to be better, you I'm on notice you've put me on notice I feel like I need to take action is then then the process is now just a basic communication plan of saying we are raising our prices, we are moving this at the next renewal. We are moving this and now we build an offer. So we go right into now what the literal doing, which is have something that is comparable to whatever this style is, or the people that you want to hang on to that maybe they can only come once a week, maybe they only come four times a month, whatever it is, you can then create those memberships to be able to be something that exists. And the way we do it is having it be a proper stack that allows people to ascend and further invest in themselves, that goes beyond just making you a place to work out. Because that doesn't matter whether even if you are just a 24 hour facility, is it you're allowing yourself to be just totally two dimensional, where you don't it is a it is criminal if you have a 24 hour facility to only allow your place to be a place to work



Tyler 32:35

out. Yeah. Well, you're upside to be able to sell into some real big tickets, people want more. Not everybody, plenty of people want just the base, they just want to play sport, and that's great, but not everybody. And that 20% of your people that want a higher level of service will pay 10x what these other people are paying on a monthly basis for sure. Just look at the 24 hour gym that I work with directly here . It's like I've got Megan and I both. We have clients there that pay Jesus 2025 times what the base membership would be there in additional services and personal training, literally 25x. Why? Because they're getting offered new services. And if those people were just coming into this gym, like house, pay 10 bucks and go in and then I'm gonna fucking leave in that. Like if that was allowed to be the way they would never ever have got the opportunity to have one of us had this much of an impact on them. And have their fucking pocketbook have that big of an impact on the gym? As that's it's not you can't sleep on that for sure. Now. Go ahead, John.



John Fairbanks 33:43

Well, the other pieces, it's it is, it's ignorant to think that a $10 a month person stays a $10 a month person forever. Yeah, the fact is, I don't want to be bothered. When I went when I was at a 2024 hour facility that was just a place to be able to work out. I didn't want to be bothered that they had personal training available. They never even offered it. I didn't want to buy supplements from them. But it wasn't even an option. Like there was nothing presented. It just was making sure I was locked in for an eternal contract forever, for the next year to two years. And that it will be auto debited on the first of every month. And that was it. And as long as I had my key card, I could scan in and I could go do my thing. But it is a missed opportunity because you don't know. And I would really like to work on my deadlift. I didn't want to work on when I first joined but then I've gotten a little bit further and maybe I feel like I'm hitting a plateau and I want to do something or I have a goal or there is a wedding or there is something



Tyler 34:56

or if you have coaches there. What you're getting is exposed So these coaches, and you may go, you know, that guy is a schmuck, that lady doesn't seem like my type of coach, but that guy kind of think of you interesting to work with, correct like it starts to become when those things are actually presented to you as options. You're not just boxing people into a place that has very low likelihood of success.



John Fairbanks 35:18

Right? And so what you've done is you said, Oh, well, this is what we are. And then you just leave it and then it's dead in the water forever.



Tyler 35:27

So one of the things now is to talk about the auditors. First off, right now, there's two ways to approach this. I still think depending on your facility, depending on maybe the place these other people train, I am totally okay with waiving your drop in fee. For out of town, people, if you guys you know, you have like networks of gym owners or coaches that you're following on Instagram, Facebook, if I had anyone who came up from my friend Matt's place in Sioux Falls, they're not paying to train at my gym, to join a class not paying it, I don't mind at all. Because when I go to his place, I'm not. I don't want to pay to train either. If I have people that, frankly, if I follow a gym on Instagram, but my business follows and there's some back and forth, and I've had any professional courtesy go back and forth, and I have no problem someone messaged me as a drop and I want to know where they train. That's important. I guess first up, in acquiring information for drop ins you need to know where they train, if they don't train anywhere, it's a red flag, if they train at home, they want to join your group classes. Now if you're a 24 hour facility that's a little bit different. But you want to know fucking something about this person, right. And if it's somewhere I know that I'm maybe maybe I'm willing to waive it, maybe I'm not, maybe I got a bad fence, whatever. But, that is the main thing. So for us in the MMA gym, there's gyms where we do a lot of cross training. We do competitions sometimes with or for whatever and, and so we'll drive two and a half hours to train at a gym and they won't charge us anything. But if anyone for that gym comes up, we're not charging them anything either. It's just what it is. And but if there's people we don't really know very often they're just willing to pay either way, like not let me give you something, right. And that's great to people you don't know, people from places you don't have a personal relationship with charging, charging, charging, charging, because it's a filter. Price is a filter. And it's very important to filter out bullshit, filter out people that are just going to come in and mess up your stuff. So for dropins that's how I handle that. And you don't always have to militantly charge everybody because you know how it is there are relationships between gyms. But on the flip side, you need to get something out of this. Not whether it's money or otherwise, whether they paid or whether they did not pay one waivers sign up, they got to sign them longer, they got to sign fucka waivers. I hate being a stickler for that stuff, but they just got a promise. You're one of those fucking mistakes and lawyers getting a whiff of it away from having your shit just fucking fucked. Okay, so someone's coming to train in your facilities. I mean, especially in the martial arts, but they better be signed waivers because, you know, somebody puts their nose into the, you know, it gets their nose stuffed into their cheek and all of a sudden now like, they didn't sign a waiver, you got a big problem. And that's beyond like life impacting breaking a neck type shit, you know, but value for your gym that you need to get out of this. The money is one thing, one, in the grand scheme of things and money might not be that impactful if you don't have a ton of drop in traffic, thing to testimonials. Okay, there is a big value in having Google reviews. There's a big value in being able to leverage those reviews for your social media content. Because people want testimony. They want to know what the vibe is like, and they want to hear it in other people's words. John, we talk about testimonials in the gear Academy. One of the first things we do with gyms, we try to get their Google review numbers up so their business profile pops. Yep, I talked about this for 100 hours. Okay, but if there's five gyms in the area, the one that has 100 Goo five star Google reviews is going to crush the first impressions game, when all the other ones have 510 1520 or even 50. When it's 100 is perceived to be the real deal big boy in the business. Okay, that's the one who's in charge of the market. That's the one who's running shit. And so if you're getting a good drop in traffic, and maybe your membership numbers are low, you're new, it's whatever, always be hustling your members for Google reviews, always that should be a part of your system. We sell those. We have those systems satellites, we have those systems that we help gym owners implement with when they get in the gear Academy. But you need to then when you have droppings if you got 25 Drop ins over the course of a year. That's not that many. What does that happen every other week? That's a low number. If you got Google reviews from 100% of them, nobody has a really terrible experience after dropping like nobody eats, especially if you do this one thing here that will help okay? If someone's new and it's a group class, right, you need to go in and when you need to introduce them to the group, hey, we have some so it's a drop in from Timbuktu. If your gym's culture is welcoming then invite Adding, but introduce him, but introduce the person by name to your people. So they feel heard, they feel welcomed, they feel like they've been accepted. They're going to have a great time. That's all they need to do is feel welcomed. If someone comes in and doesn't feel welcome and feels, you're not going to get a probably a great review out of them. But if they feel welcomed into your community, and you hit them up after a great workout, they're going to be Oh, yes, I'd love to, I would love to. And if you want to make this even more successful, you can tell them hey, oh, you can waive that drop in fee. If you just leave us a five star guru. That's way more money, then you're dropping the fee. Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, let's just say you get 20 of those a year. That's plus 20 a year that has nothing to do with your members not doing long term results. But I came to a place that was welcoming. It was fun. The people. That's the first impression that your new people who want to be long term people are concerned about totally. So they're nice . Hey, I came in to drop in and the people were nice. It was so fun. We had a great workout. I can't wait to come back. Now that doesn't say I lost 25 pounds, and it changed my life. But that is still a very impactful testimonial. Okay, that's the most valuable thing I think that you can get from these droplets hands down.



John Fairbanks 41:14

And it's in the way you have framed this that is perfect. The idea that the price is premium, and potentially prohibitive. Restrictive exclusive. Yeah, like it definitely pushes that exclusivity, like look, I gotta get out of this place and spend 25 bucks like my God, but I'm there. The odds of me having a great time are now very high. It's much higher than it was about to be



Tyler 41:44

because you could have chose to do the $5 spot totally



John Fairbanks 41:48

focused at the hotel motel work there. And after that move , I really feel welcome. And if I'm at a gym, they're willing to charge me this much to come once. They obviously have your shit together. And then at the end, the owner says, You know what, let's, if you had a great time, give us a five star review. And what kind of words completely waive? You know what, we'll waive that the drop in fee, you'd be like, dude, these are the best fucking people on the planet like the what you have just primed the pump have like a homerun kick ass testimonial, like talking about where somebody wouldn't have probably left a review at all. Correct probably would have just went on their way and been like, Hey, that was that was really nice to where now they're going to fucking ooze



Tyler 42:40

about you. You're smiling all the things. And you can't just let that be a concept that you think of as the gym owner because you're not always coaching. Your coaches aren't always equipped. There's classes sometimes back to back. So no, this is the thing that's an opportunity we missed quite a bit in the MMA gym where we are now having to go back through and do a follow up VR backend system. Anyone who has signed up and attended to drop in, or shoot them a message and ask them for a testimonial. So know that what you should get is when someone registers as a guest, hopefully using your system leaves an email address, Signs Your waivers they signed your waivers. So send them the follow up saying Hey, bud, thanks a bunch. If again, we should be talking to them in class. Absolutely. But you're juggling a lot of things. To make sure this does not fall through the cracks you need to systemize this you need to make sure that if they have if they've been asked to leave a five star review and they did they're not going to be mad that they get an automated email later on that night asking them to leave five star review. I'm gonna give a shit. It's not pushy, it's not invasive. It's kind of the least they can do. I mean, I buy a shirt at every gym I've ever been to.



John Fairbanks 43:42

And I was gonna say the exact same thing where it's like even when you have a good diet or a good guy you get to go workout, a spot has stuff for people to buy because it is whenever I get a good guy discount on anything. I'm gonna go buy double or I'm gonna buy the thing or Yeah, I won't let me get one of those hats. Let me get one of those shirts. Let me get one of those things because I'm going to make sure you get the money. Yeah,



Tyler 44:06

Unless I go to CrossFit , the amount of traveling we've done for CrossFit gyms is like a lot of Hobbit stuff a lot of men wear and medium shirts. So yeah. Earlier Jimmy you didn't get a two XL. I just assumed this is some sort of child or women's facility. At your spa, you better have some two XL shit for sure. 2x no less.



John Fairbanks 44:31

Science is exactly what it is. So those are some really solid strategies and tactics that you can take. Now if you feel like when we're talking about reviews, we're talking about testimonials, and we're talking about how you can generate those we have framed this very specifically from the drop in perspective and how to be able to really capitalize upon new people that are coming into your spot. But from here it's if you need help with something that you know that strategy wise tactic wise you just If you're adrift, you're not sure exactly what to do or how to be able to start to execute this. This is another thing that we've opened up, we're doing a weekly workshop kind of one on one with you as the gym owner, your spot your Google My Business Profile, your Google My Business account, the Profile Manager, it's we will work with you say, Hey, this is will audit what we see and give you some really solid tactics and strategies to start to really weaponize and utilize that it's it's such a crucial piece, that right now everybody wants to talk about ads, but you forget about the power that everyone Google's fucking everything. And so the ability to pop higher on Google Maps to be able to hit higher when it comes to SEO, when someone searches for a gym near me. All these things that you can do to be able to optimize and streamline your Google accounts for your business will push you higher and higher. And we've talked about this so much before, but it's where you're located. It's so fucking important that if I search for gym, gym near me do this right now. Pause the episode go on your phone and fucking Google gym or gym near me. Where does your spot pop up? What list is it? Where's your Google reviews, in comparison to other competitors in this area, if there's somebody that list is got their spot, 20 minutes or more away, and they're fucking higher than you, you need, you need to get come to us and let's work with you. Because we will not work with you. You will, you cannot get access to our higher program for the gear Academy. You can't get access to that until we can help you do something for free.



Tyler 46:52

Yep, for sure. Now and as such, so that we can help you so that you can be helped. Because if you ain't I don't give a shit to work with you. So you come in as a way for us to come in, we can help you and get things moving. We've had really good results here. You know, the local MMA spot John, John and I have been working with now just in regards to the testimonial piece that John's talking about here. There's only two facilities of any kind. In this area in the fitness, fitness exercise group class martial arts that have more Google reviews than this business, this business has only been in for a year and a half. And it has fewer members than almost all of those. But we're about 15 to 20 reviews away from having more reviews than every single place that's been in town for 2030 years. Yeah. Your fucking money that's worth for SEO standpoint, a lot, a lot. And for new people acquiring new members, that's how you pass the smell test. Don't be that schmuck that's got four or five reviews. No, I'm not calling you a schmuck for having it. Now, I'm gonna tell you, you're a schmuck. If you don't have more than that, after you've heard me say this. So get on it, put in the effort. Do not accept that, that's a race that you can win. Really all you gotta do is hit the gas and that thing, put a little effort into it. So it will help you do it will help you do it will help you do that for free. What do we get? How do they set up that link in the description and go to our Instagram that's also in our profile link there is always constantly dropping in for updates in the Facebook group, the gym owners revolution, just the



John Fairbanks 48:28

Judas the DM and say, hey, I want help with my Google profile. I want to help with this. And we'll get you moving. Because we're gonna start to be able to grow these workshops that we can work one on one, because we are finding just as Tyler says, This is not because we just love doing things for free. This is because in order for us to be able to really hit the ground running and do things for you and your business that you have been struggling with stuck at the starting line with been wanting to make movement on, you haven't been making movement on because right now you are adverse to action you're adverse to doing and there's lots of, I guarantee you have wonderful reasons for why this is the case. But because you are stuck at the starting line, we have to start with action, we have to be able to start with you being able to put one foot in front of the other. And this is how we get started. We start where we can dive in and take a look at your Instagram accounts and audit those things out and leave you with a fucking page full of notes that you can immediately start taking action on because you will see results. We had somebody just yesterday to tell us that based off of the immediate feedback that we give he is to x He's doubled the amount of inquiries that he's gotten just organic people reaching out saying, hey, I'm interested, just in just a week from having talked to him about a specific thing that he needed to tweak that we saw and that simple change because it isn't because we're fucking geniuses it's because he put the time in to do the work. And anyone that's in this industry that tries to pretend like they're really fucking smart and they gatekeepers, a whole bunch of shit to try and act like they're the reasons why their clients businesses are successful, makes them fucking assholes, the you have to have clients that are willing to put in the work. And so this is why we are now adding another barrier to where it is. If you want to be able to work with us, you have to be willing to put in the work and start here are two really easy entry points. Whether again, it's your Instagram accounts wanting to be able to get firmed up and have a proper strategy or start to really weaponize and utilize your Google My Business accounts to be able to really start driving those same leads.



Tyler 50:32

And I would say that almost instantly. From this free audit from this free guidance that we're going to give you you will probably be making enough money to pay for extra money to pay to join the gear Academy anyways. So our thing with all this is we want to work with gym owners who are trying to turn their passion into a profession. This is how we do it. You're trying sometimes you got money some days you don't this is a way let's get you leveled up to the point where now you can start to fold this thing in so let's do it shoot us a message links and all this shit. Go to GMOs revolution.com Follow showjumpers podcast follow me at Tyler reference on Instagram and John



John Fairbanks 51:07

at J banks FL on Instagram.



Tyler 51:11

Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week.