How to Add At Least $6k in Revenue with Holiday Training

[00:00:00] Hey friends, Ben here with Business for Unicorns, and today I’ve got a special episode with Pete, where we’re talking about how to maximize The benefit to both you and your clients when it comes to holiday training for your athletes and for the non sports performance gym, like I own, there’s also some really good nuggets of wisdom in here for how to market, how to sell and how to set expectations.

So excited for you to dive in and know you’re going to love it.

Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice. expert insights and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.

Let’s begin.

Hey friends [00:01:00] ben here with business for unicorns and before we dive into today’s podcast Just wanted to ask or mention that like too many gym owners myself included for a long time really stumble when it comes to the New year how to grow their business, you know, there’s a important times of the year that we really want to capitalize.

We’re not really sure what to do. And if we do try to create it, it’s overcomplicated. The execution is inconsistent and offers our software, sometimes awkward and clunky to say the least. But what if you could take the guesswork out, or if there’s a done for you system that was simple and effective, and you know where this is going, one that you could swipe because Mark is doing an awesome 90 minute webinar.

That’s going to pull back the curtain on his exact plan for his gyms and coaching clients in 2025. So it’s completely free, and you’ll get a marketing plan that’s plug and play is done for you and make next year your best year yet. If you’re interested, click below for the video people. You see me pointing down.

Click below in the show notes and you get to register. No strings attached. Pete, how you doing today, my friend? Good. I was just listening to the pitch. I like it. , I, I endorse [00:02:00] this. Yeah. Are you interested in marketing? Yeah, but also not interested in marketing. Let’s let Mark do your marketing. Seriously, we talk at length with Unicorn Society members about like, we didn’t open gyms to become marketing experts.

You’re actually one of the few people I know that opened a gym without a training background. Like we got into this for other reasons than we’re like, Oh shit, we have to market. And I’ve been seeing behind the scenes with this webinar and like, I’m going to get my GM to go. It’s going to be great. Yeah.

My, my degree actually, my undergraduate degree was in business to business marketing. I had a bachelor of science in business management, whatever that means. But my kind of core focus was on B2B marketing, which in, at the moment that I got, it was like a throwaway term. It’s, I got to declare something that’s what I’ll do, but it’s funny just how wildly important it is with the business partnerships that we’ve had to build over time.

And this degree that I thought was just me, like throwing a dart ended up being something I use. So. I like the marketing piece. My line, as in the [00:03:00] same vein, I didn’t get into business to blank. I didn’t open a gym to blank was to be a HR department. My God, I didn’t ever think that I was going to deal with the emotional components of managing people.

And so I find myself saying that again and again. I did not get into this to be HR, but here we are. Here we are. For sure. You got to do the best you can with what you have at the time. Exactly. We want to talk. About a seasonal issue that I’m dealing with right now when our topic with us being on the cusp of what I call when I’m talking to you American Thanksgiving, but when I talk to everybody else, I just call it Thanksgiving understood.

I appreciate that Yeah, as we record this Canadian Thanksgiving is behind us and I don’t want to minimize its importance But it’s not something I think about in my calendar and honestly, this is a marketing calendar. We’re we’re talking about here specifically how I take Our athletes who disappear [00:04:00] for the first semester, our college athletes, and get them to come back and spend during their many holiday breaks.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve seen. Even since I was in college, what felt like a lot of time off back then just seems to get bigger and bigger. I feel like the more we pay for school, the less we go. And there’s a lot of time available for kids to get into the weight room here during their Thanksgiving and winter breaks.

And I am midstream on communicating those options to our community. And it seemed like something worth talking about today for our performance training facility owners or any gym that caters to youth athletes, because those youth athletes do go on to be college athletes. Yeah. You’d mentioned before this podcast, when we were just shooting the shit, that one of the biggest challenges of sports performance gym is that a significant portion of your population graduates every year.

Yeah, man, we didn’t think about that. When we started, I remember we had this athlete. His name was Alex Hill and Alex is still alive and well, he’s not [00:05:00] training with us anymore, but that’s because he is now in his late thirties and probably has a wife and kids for all I know, but at the time. He was just like the avatar.

He, he played a couple of sports in high school. He loved the weight room. He was a good culture guy. He just couldn’t get enough of what we were doing. And I remember he graduated and we even went to his graduation party and his, his family invited us and we were part of their tribe. And he came in and sat down with me in late June of that first year.

And he was like, Hey, I have terrible news. I’m like, Oh my God, what’s going on? Is he sick? My dad told me he won’t pay for this anymore since I’m not going to try and play college baseball. And at the time I was like, who is he to cut you off from this? Now, as a dad myself, I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to afford stuff like CSP and my kids not pursuing sports, but at the time I was like, [00:06:00] we got to find a way we got to find a way and our, our harsh reality was that we had a lot of seniors.

On that active client roster. And we had not put any thought into the fact that under 5 percent of the high school sports population goes on to play college sports. And we are a very expensive offering that has been positioned as a competitive advantage for baseball players. And the dads quite logically were like, you’re not a baseball player anymore.

So anyway, here’s the credit card for planet fitness. We’re not paying for that thing over there. And we had to pivot. We had to figure out that was when our, what we called at the time, our college rate was born. And that was where we sat with Alex and we were like, Hey man, If you were to go out and get a job, or I can’t even remember, maybe he had a job.

Maybe he was mowing lawns for all I know in his neighborhood. But I remember us saying, if you took a little of your own money, what could you afford per month? And I remember him saying, I think I could do a hundred or 125. [00:07:00] And then Eric looked at him and he’s like, Hey, go ask your dad if he’ll match that.

And if he will, I’ll let you train in an unlimited format for 250 a month. Which at the time was like 730. I remember we were charging 729 a month for unlimited training. So this was, it hurt for us to do that, but 250 was better than zero and a good gym culture guy is better than no gym culture guy. And that’s when our college rate was born.

Which obviously is not really the, the topic that we prefaced here that we were setting up. It was an inflection point in my operation. Cause it was the origin story where we started to realize we could offer an unlimited training rate and not be compromised by it because our hesitations were like, Oh, what if the gym gets overrun with bodies?

What if people take advantage of us? And we quickly learned that a lot of bodies who really know [00:08:00] the system and are very, they’re just, they’re veterans. A lot of people who aren’t resource intensive and pride themselves on being a little self sufficient in the weight room only serves to improve the training environment, not hurt it.

But we had to experience that in real time to learn that lesson. So, 18 years later, we’re still offering our own version of the college rate. It’s just our unlimited training rate that’s now available to everybody, not just college athletes. It’s funny you mentioned the unlimited thing. And again, I know that’s not the main topic, which we will get to.

I promise listeners, me and you recorded a podcast three months ago, maybe, where we talked about positioning unlimited, but still making it prescriptive. It’s not just come as much as you can want. Here’s your mind body log in since then, as of October 1st, I’ve been inspired and me and Leisha have offered an unlimited option at our gym, which listeners, we are the opposite of sports performance.

We are women who are 55 with two kids and a bad knee. And we’ve made it like, I can’t remember the exact numbers, I think it’s like 20, like 10 a week more money. Like it’s [00:09:00] really close, it’s twice a week and then we’re calling it three plus, it’s like marginally more expensive. Even if you come one extra time, one week in the month, it pays for itself is what we’re thinking.

And nobody is abusing it. Cause you’re right. It’s the people who want to one gen pop don’t usually want to go to the gym more than they have to. And that’s usually two, maybe three times a week. And two, they’re usually people who like love us and want to come more and they’re like, they’re happy to, they still get the same amount of coaching, but all of my fears turned out to not be true.

I’ve granted, we don’t have a ton of people on this cause it’s new and not everyone wants to buy it, but it’s been a pretty cool thing. Cause we had our three times a week set similarly. Like. It was pretty damn expensive. And by making it just a little bit more, we had the option, here, the math I was doing is, do we want to sell three really expensive memberships a year?

Or do we want to try to get like 50 percent of our people into a membership that costs 10 percent more? Sure. And the reality is similar to CFP, like we’ve got the space and we’ve got the capacity and we figure if it becomes a problem, we’ll deal with it later. But [00:10:00] so far it’s been amazing. Yeah, I have two thoughts on this and I know, again, I’m keeping us off topic, but I think this is good stuff.

First, our biggest fears were going to be overrun. People are going to show up too often. Ended up being the strengths in the package. Because what happened there. A lot of people did start showing up five and six days a week. More frequency equals better results equals training outcomes I can talk about and that additional frequency turns into athletes who are better equipped to tell our story and because they all become like extensions of our staff.

Kids who show up six days a week and spend two plus hours here for all intents and purposes are effectively interns as far as their competency goes. I could pull our best, like our highest attendance. Late high school, early college age athletes and be like, if I threw you 20 bucks an hour, could you help out on the training floor during this chaotic hour that we have coming up during our winter break?

And they’d be [00:11:00] like, hell yes, I do that for free every day. Let’s do this. And they’re very good. And so what I thought I was afraid of ended up being a strength and not a weakness. Um, so that’s one thing. The second thing is going to come back to me when that does, I’ll either blurt it out while we talk about how we’re trying to fill our weight room during Thanksgiving break, or we’ll come back to it on a future episode right now.

I want to come into the conversation about how we’re getting our college athletes to come back. Because, yeah, I’m really curious about this too, from a marketing perspective, because you’ve got what a week, maybe two that they’re back, how do you, so I’m curious about how you build that value to build that marketing things, even if you’re not sports performance, there’s the principles are going to carry forward.

Exactly. So let me give you some context from a pricing standpoint. So if you’re going to get a distance based, like a fully remote program from us, you’re paying the same as our once a week rate. And here at CSP Massachusetts, once a week is 2. 49 a month. There is an LBO, 99 initial evaluation, [00:12:00] which, honestly, I waive for returning clients almost 100 percent of the time.

If someone disappears for six months because they were playing in a season, they come back, I’ll say, Hey, we’re going to do a complimentary re screening. Let’s get you in here. And it’s less formal. We’re not sitting and reviewing an injury history. We’re not, asking questions about surgical interventions four years ago on your health history.

We’re just sitting and being like, Hey, how you feeling since we last saw you? Let’s do a quick movement screening. Let’s see if you have any issues that need to be addressed. Red flags. We know the direction we’re going to go, but we want to see what the current version of them looks like standing in front of us.

And we positioned that as a complimentary re screen, but the 249 price point. Is what you will pay if you want a fully individualized program that we’re going to send off to you to do elsewhere. So same as once a week with us, if we’re design programming, you’re doing offsite in any capacity, that’s your price.

Now, someone comes back during Thanksgiving break and they’re like, Hey, I’m only here for a week, but I really like a program that I can go back to school with. I could charge them two [00:13:00] 49 or what we do is we’ll say, Hey, are you going to be here during your Christmas break? Yeah. I’m going to be here all the time.

I’ll say, all right. What we do is we have a bundled offering. And you can be here unlimited during your Thanksgiving break and your Christmas break, and we’re going to get you two programs. And it’s 5. 99. So the other price point that you should know is 4. 29, which is our unlimited rate, which is really what applies during that Christmas break.

They’re going to be here for three to some as many as five weeks. They’re going to get here every single day that we’re open. So basically every day except for Christmas, and they’re going to use the hell out of it. That 4. 29 plus the second program. Is a lot of money that’s getting up in that 700 mid seven hundreds range.

So we do this bundled offering where we say, we’ll do a complimentary rescreen and we’ll get you two programs. If you come in during your Thanksgiving break and we designed the first program for you to do, Some portion of week one under our supervision, but the rest of [00:14:00] it’s designed to be executed when you go back on campus for exams and the balance of your first semester and we basically say we’re handling, we’re giving you a sprinting head start on this like home stretch to starting the spring sports season because baseball, as much as we think of it as a spring sport, as a college athlete, it is a January 3rd sport.

You return back to campus as early as you possibly can because the coaches want you on campus and that’s when they’re basically allowed to say there are no rules, you’re here every day. We are preparing for a season. In most cases they’re heading to a warm weather climate on the very early side to start competing.

And so, this isn’t like high school baseball where we’ve got till mid to late March to get these people ready. They need to be ready to be in spikes, on field, starting to compete. Like seven, eight weeks from now. And so, what we say is, there’s no time to waste. You’re home for Thanksgiving during the last ten days of November.

Get in here for the screening. Get in for as much training as you can. Even if it’s just one [00:15:00] day, you want to get that program because you’re going to go back to campus and you’re going to run with it. Almost everybody takes advantage of that. The only college athletes who don’t bite on that are the ones who are traveling to do Thanksgiving elsewhere.

If they’re not in town, they’re like, Hey, this just doesn’t make sense. In which case, some cases I’ll just say, Hey, same offer. Let’s get on a zoom call. We’re going to do a screening and we want them to get that kind of value if they’re open to it. And I’m talking about returning clients. These aren’t people who don’t understand how to interpret the training material.

They get that program and they know it. They understand what they’re looking forward, what they’re looking at. They understand how it’s structured, what the pacing should be, how we pair exercises. They could read it. So these are low maintenance clients in that sense. And so I just want them, like I said earlier, I want them to get as many reps as possible, either metaphorically under our supervision or literally under supervision, because I know [00:16:00] that.

I win if they show up best conditioned in January. Like we only stand to look good. If those guys show up throwing the hardest, hitting the hardest, and then do they stay healthy for that long run? And they’re more likely to do those things. If they did two programs with me in Q4, then they are, if they did one program with me in Q4.

So if I’ve got a knock as much as 50 percent off of that first, essentially remote program. To increase the likelihood that they get all those reps and I’m doing it every single time. When it sounds like not only is it a win that makes you guys look good and then you win, it also helps them win because they want to play at a high level.

But instead of 99, 99 assessment, plus two 49 for remote program. Plus, let’s just say they did a month at Christmas of unlimited for 429, I think you said, just pushing like 800 for 600. They get all of that. Plus a remote program that takes them from. Now ish, [00:17:00] until, I don’t know what I mean. Yeah, most of them will come back and have, Yeah, they’ll come back and they’ll be in week four of that first program.

Most of them. When they come back from finals. And, we honestly, then that gets into language of, Hey, this is great, we get to supervise the last handful of days, It’s basically like another assessment. We’re going to see how you’re handling the material. And then the next one’s going to be informed by what we see here over week four of this program.

That works great. And the math is simple. Yes, you’re giving a discount. And I know there’s people who are like, I don’t want a discount because it devalues my service. Do you need to get 10 people back? That’s additional six grand in revenue to serve them for collectively four weeks over the course of the season or the year, whether they’re back from school plus is doing right by the human, which has all sorts of downstream benefits.

This is. I’m assuming you guys are getting more than 10 just knowing it’s you guys, but even for the less established gym, this is big money. Yeah. So the email went off to 165 college athletes in the [00:18:00] last 48 hours. And our target is 40 plus. And so the beautiful thing about this, though, is that it’s just.

Mickey makes a point frequently, both internally in Unicorn Society and in his coaching calls. And I would imagine on podcasts here that we need to be anywhere from say four to eight or 10 weeks ahead of these conversations of these. And I look at this as an opportunity to get four to six weeks ahead of conversations surrounding what your summer plan is with these college guys, because they’re all going to get start getting hit with these.

Either sales pitches for summer programs of the nature of what we offer or summer baseball assignments from their coaches because they get distributed all over North America to play in college summer leagues. And we want to be part of their kind of menu of options they’re considering when those conversations start to happen.

And it’s really good if we’re fresh in their mind when they’re considering the menu. [00:19:00] I do want to touch on one thing, though, that I’ve been reminded of as we were building out the language for communicating the options. The email that went off is, Three ways to train with us during your upcoming holiday breaks.

One of them is a super high end bundled offering. It’s like the elite package. If you’re going to be here and you’re trying to do right by yourself, then you want the one that has training and pitching and a nutritional component. You want all the things. This is the best of the best. And the reminder for me is you should always have a kind of like grossly expensive service.

To sell one because it’ll anchor people. It’ll change the way they think of the rest of your services. So that one’s not that expensive, but two, there are people out there who just want to say they buy the best thing. And we have a package that we’re offering. That’s a 1, 200 package. And it is basically going to be all the things I mentioned.[00:20:00]

throwing program design, strength training program design, some information on nutritional insights. It’s a bundle. And the great thing about it is that we just, I don’t want to say arbitrarily, but we said, let’s, I said to my pitching coach blaze, I was like, Hey, how many bodies is too many bodies? He’s like, if we get to 20, um, I’m really going to need to ask you to hire another pitching coach to work with me or to design these three programs.

And I was like, cool. We just declared a hard cap of 20 bodies on this program. Let’s start selling it. And we’re going to sell 20 spots. And those people, we deliver them a good experience. Then we just say to them, Hey, here’s your discount. If you commit to our summer elite beefier, better version of what you just had.

And so we have, uh, 20 like custom made opportunities to close business. It’s going to have a maximum return for us in 2025. It makes a really good point with having the elite [00:21:00] or the platinum or the thing that you know, that not many people are going to buy, but somebody might, speaking from kind of a more gen pop standpoint, like we still offer one on one at my gym.

We just priced it 20 percent higher than market rate and we use it in every sales conversation to anchor. Look, you can do one on one with us. Assuming this is true. If you can do one on one with us, it’s 120 bucks a session. I don’t actually think you like that. Plus it sounds like you like the vibe of the small group.

And it’s only four on one. I don’t want to give the whole sales pitch, blah, blah, blah. And it surged anchor, but there are those people and forgive the assumption here, if this is wrong, but like you said, there’s the people who want to say they bought the best of the best. And I imagine with high school athletes, there’s also the parents of the kids who want to say that.

They bought the best of the best for their kid. Oh boy, do they exist? For example, we don’t generally offer all that much personal training. It’s not something we advertise. We’ll do it, but there’s very few things that Eric Cressy likes less than personal training, but we still need to know what it costs to personal train with Eric.

Because if someone asks, [00:22:00] there are occasions where we’ll throw a number out there that in our mind, we’re like, They’re going to be borderline insulted by us telling them that’s a number. I got to know since I’ve followed Eric for 15 years, what’s an hour of trading with Eric if money is not an option?

Right now, if I said to him, Hey, there’s like this maniac who is hell bent on working with you. He won’t, he refuses to entertain the idea of working with anyone else. And he wants to work with you, let’s say two days a week for an hour. We’re probably going to be in the seven, 800 a session range, because a one time consult with Eric is.

In that range, generally, and so basically the number is Eric, how much money do we need to collect for you not to be really pissed at me when you look at your calendar for tomorrow? And they’re like, if I were to stack your day full of that worst case scenario, What’s it going to cost? And I remember a time when it was like, I think we’re going to 200 bucks an hour.

And then it was, I think that [00:23:00] this has to be 350. Yeah. Joe Dowdell is charging 600 or something. I remember him saying that and being like, there’s our anchor. What are the, what’s Ben Bruno charging? What is, what are the elite trainers in the super urban markets training? That’s the only thing I will tolerate.

And we just realized that there are a lot of people out there who are like, yeah, whatever it takes, here’s my black card. Yeah. And the problem is, I think over time you find that you don’t have a ceiling. Like you get that amount of money. You hate the experience in the session. And then you’re like, no, we have to go up next time.

Like he’d walk into my office right away and he’d be like, we did not charge enough. And the next time we go up, so I don’t know what that ceiling is. We’ve already hit a couple of key lessons in this. I have one more question for you before we wrap this up. So the first one is coming up with some sort of bundled product.

Approach to off season or sorry, holiday training when you’re a sports performance gym, and you’ve done a really good job, like truly doing a [00:24:00] really good job of making it an appropriate price point compared to the rest of your services, but also making it a true win for the athlete. You’re not just trying to extract dollars from them.

You’re helping them capitalize on an opportunity. And in return, you get compensated for it. So I think there’s a lesson in there of like, yeah, even if they’re home for a week at Thanksgiving. That’s still a big enough week that you could do something about it. Don’t just write that off. I just want to make sure that the community knows that when we say make this affordable, it’s very important that we point back to the fact that this is for existing clients, because it’s really tough to do the price points I’ve outlined for you are not the same price points we charge non clients.

And so there’s about a 20 percent premium on top of those price points. If you’ve never worked with us before. But turnkey clients have a client return key for a reason. I’ve had a client say to my face, Rita, she’s been a client since six months into the, me having a gym. So we’ll call it nine and a half [00:25:00] years now.

And she already said to my face, she’s like, yeah, I know I had to earn the right to be low maintenance with you guys, but now can I do this thing? And I’m like, a hundred percent. You can like, if I could have a hundred Rita’s, that’s pretty damn close to my dream gym. Our Rita’s are the ones who will send us a text and be like, Hey, I got a major conflict.

Can I sneak in there and lift while you guys are lifting tomorrow morning? And we’ll be like, hell yeah, Rita, we’re not going to coach you at all, but you’re part of the group. And she’s like, that’s all I want. And those clients, those are the clients, Ben, that I would contend should be invited to the occasional like planning or strategy session because they become like nothing makes them feel more seen and valued than being a voice in the room.

Like I always joke that if we can get those people to a point where when they talk about our gym, they say we not they when they’re like, this is how we do things here. And they act like they have an ownership stake. [00:26:00] That behavior needs to be celebrated. Like it’s entitled amongst certain members where you’re like, no, you’re not a we yet.

Don’t act that way. Like you think you’re part of this, but like that person Rita over there, Rita can say we, but once you figure out who those people are, like your core. Ride or die clients you got to find a way to make them feel like they have a meaningful say over the direction of the operation because They do I’ve been read it to her husband Steve’s house for breakfast to talk a business idea Yeah so one lesson number one here is Thanksgiving Christmas is definitely an opportunity that you can capitalize on for the benefit of your former clients And your gym, the second one is definitely have some sort of outrageously priced high point, high anchor that you’re Eric is willing to do that.

He won’t hate all the time. Have it. It can be on or off the menu. Yes. And my [00:27:00] biggest question is, so you mentioned earlier to get four to eight weeks ahead. So you mentioned you sent an email out to 160 former Members or athletes who are away, can you give us like the Coles notes on what that marketing looks like?

Is it one email? Do you do follow ups? Do you send a text? Maybe I can frame this from if you were recommending this to another sports performance gym who wanted to do this for the first time How and when should they market this to get the most former athletes back? That’s a great question On a low key version of this, we start talking about it as they’re leaving from summer break.

And so this is more about expectation setting because athletes like this are notoriously not great at responding to their email or not great at getting back to text messages. And then coincidentally showing up in our inbox 24 hours prior to wanting to get back into the gym, which is a bad habit that every performance gym owner listening to this right now is saying, I know exactly who those 30 clients are who are going to send me a text message on [00:28:00] Sunday night and be like, Hey, I forgot to tell you I’m back.

I’m going to be there tomorrow morning at 10. Can’t wait. And you’re like, no, you’re not. They’re coming. So as people leave, I don’t sell them that program. What I tell them is I communicate to them when they’re going to hear from me. And so I’ll say, Hey, this like awesome summer, please keep us updated on how things are going.

You’re going to hear from us periodically, but I can tell you right now, I’m going to email you in the middle of November or middle of October, and remind you that if you’re home for a fall break, which a lot of kids have fall breaks, training is completely complimentary. Anyone who comes back on fall break, we just want you to show up.

We want to see your face. We want to chat, want you to get a lift in. We’re not going to write you a new program. We’re not going to evaluate you. We’re going to print your most recent program. You’re going to start on day one and you’re just going to come in and catch up because we want to see your face.

That’s one thing we do. Complimentary training on fall break. And that gets more and more popular. And it isn’t a burden because every school has [00:29:00] arbitrarily different fall breaks. It’s not like the whole world has a break at the same week and we get overrun. It’s more like I come in and I’m like, Holy shit, Ryan Cain’s here.

That’s awesome. I didn’t even know he was on fall break, but they take advantage of it. I give them the heads up on that. And then I say to, I’m going to email you on the first business day of November to explain exactly what our bundled winter offering looks like. Please stay tuned for that email. And then I’ll say, and if I don’t hear back from you after I send it, you’re going to hear from me a week before Thanksgiving saying you’re almost out of time.

And on top of that, we’re putting it on social media all the time. Being like, Hey, assessment schedule for Thanksgiving breaks, getting out of control. You are going to be on the outside looking in if we don’t hear from you in the next couple of days. And those aren’t the like bullshit online program, person sales, like this scarcity tactic.

One more spot. Exactly. It’s not that nonsense because that people can smell that lack of authenticity when you do it. So [00:30:00] this is more, I’m just trying to make your life easier. I do not want you to not have a slot to consider here. And so that’s how we play that game. But I just say, I’m going to email you this day.

I email you on the day I said I was going to. I’m going to harass you if I don’t hear from you. I do that. And we just keep coming and they read the emails. They still don’t respond. But they’re getting better and better, little by little. The key is just not to take offense. And I guess this is no different than when we’re talking GenPOP.

Some people need to be nudged three, four, five, six times. And we need to separate our feelings from this. You’re also doing a really important thing, which we talk about a lot, which is you’re only selling the next step. At the end of their summer, all you’re doing is selling them on coming back for a free week of training, which is like, Pretty good offer.

Let’s be real. And then in the, and you’re also just selling them on, Hey, I’m going to email you like open it. And if I don’t hear from you, I’m going to follow up. Like you’re, [00:31:00] it’s one step at a time. You’re not trying to sign up 40 athletes at the end of August to come back in Christmas. You’re just giving them just enough to keep them going without being like low integrity about it.

So this is, that is the principle. You’re not, if you’re running Facebook ads or you’re doing email marketing, you’re not selling a membership over email over your ads. All you’re doing is selling them like on responding to the email and putting up their hand to say, Hey, I think I’m interested in this.

Exactly. And you get them to do these micro commitments before they do a much more major commitment. And before you know it, they signed up for your off season program. And when you do this, sell the next step or communicate the next step thing, you stop feeling like you’re being pushy when someone says, Oh, I don’t want to, I don’t want to tell someone who’s ignoring my email three times about our Thanksgiving offer.

No, I don’t feel like I’m overdoing it. I feel like I’m doing what I said I was going to do. I’m following through on a commitment I made to you. And if someone was like on their way out the door at the end of the summer, yeah, please don’t do that. I don’t want that [00:32:00] email. They would never hear from me.

But why in the world would somebody say that at the back end of a good experience all summer? Where I just say, and I’ll be direct with them. I’ll say, Hey, I know how crazy college is. I know how distracted you’re going to be. I know you’re going to be in the weeds with midterms and preparing for finals and how excited you’re going to be to see family.

That’s why I’m going to show up a couple of times. It’s not cause I’m trying to be an asshole. I’m just going to make sure that I get through because I know how important your training is to you. I’ve seen how hard you work this summer. I don’t want you to miss the opportunity to do so during your winter break.

So I’m going to be a little pushy. Cool. And they’re like, Hey, I do that. And it’s done. Well, that is beautiful. My biggest hack, but I was hack, I say that in air quotes for when I was learning to get better at lead follow up was telling like in a voicemail or an email or a follow up text message to someone again, someone who’s raised their hand.

I’m not cold calling saying, Hey, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll try you again tomorrow. Or if I’m following up with a former member, it’s, Hey, when you left, I, you asked me to touch base in [00:33:00] three months, so I wanted to do the thing I said I was going to do. And then I get into my spiel because now it’s not a question of, are you following up too much?

It’s a question of, are you an integrity with the things that you promised them? Bingo. It is much easier to wrap your head around doing what you said you would do than it is to be like, fuck, I’m being pushy. Exactly. That’s gold right there. I think we went a little bit all over, but I think this one is full of gold.

Yeah. It’s impossible to summarize. It is. Yeah. Or I’m not trying. I can give it a shot. Quick recap. Thanksgiving and Christmas, particularly in sports performance, is an area that you have opportunity to capitalize on. Two, have a super high expensive offer and someone might buy it. The, I won’t be mad if they do, but I don’t expect anyone to do it offer.

And three, just sell them on the next step and put yourself in their shoes. As you just said. So perfectly Peter, like I know you’re busy in midterms or I know you’re busy with kids or I know you’re busy with whatever, that’s why I’ll hit you a couple of times and then just do what you said you would do.

And then the grand finale idea here, assuming you’re lucky enough to get a bunch of those college [00:34:00] kids to come back here during your break, Don’t miss the opportunity to sell the next thing. When they leave, you’re going to be stressed new year’s resolution. Crowd’s going to be coming through the door.

You still need to say to them, Hey, I’m going to hit your inbox in a couple of weeks to explain the summer offer. No pressure. You don’t even need to get back to it. I just want you to know it’s coming. I’ll harass you until I hear back. Can’t wait to hear about how the season’s going. Talk soon and you’re off and running.

I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it. If you’re looking for more marketing stuff and you want a done for you marketing system for 2025, join our webinar. It’s free and it’s going to be a lot of awesome shit. Do it. Thanks, Pete. This was great. Good chat. We’ll talk soon.