The Best Client Event Ever! with Ben Pickard

[00:00:00] Hello, my friends on today’s episode, I’m back with superstar Ben Pickard, and we’re talking about the best client event he ever did at his gym. I talk all the time on this podcast about the importance of community events to both improve retention at your gym and to attract new folks to your community as referral events.

And Ben did an event recently that was fantastic, one of the best he’s ever done. So he breaks down the event for you step by step so you can do it too. So if you want more referrals and better retention, there’s a great episode for you. Keep on listening.

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 [00:01:00] unicorn in the fitness industry.

Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business for Unicorns podcast. Before we jump into today’s conversation, I want to give you a quick. Shout out about our YouTube channel. We have some fantastic videos over on YouTube, really actionable, practical tips and advice for running and growing your gym.

So I would love you right now, go ahead and click the link down in our show notes, uh, and head over to the YouTube app, hit the subscribe button, hit that bell, because we’re going to put out, continue putting out great content on a regular basis and you don’t want to miss it. So go do it right now. Which brings me to today’s conversation with Mr.

Ben Pickard. How are you, my friend? I’m doing great. How are you doing? Good. We’re recording this right, like, uh, middle of November. How are you feeling about the upcoming holiday season? I’m feeling great. I mean, we got Canadian Thanksgiving out of the way already. That happens in October. Already did it. Um, and yeah, I’m excited [00:02:00] to, I’m always excited to end a quarter that ends with taking a little bit of time off.

It feels like I could go back in time. I think I’d operate on like pretending 12 weeks and taking the 13th week off. That might just be a pipe dream though. I love that idea. Oh my God. We should talk about that. That’s really fun. Oh wait. Do you all eat the same things for Canadian Thanksgiving that we do in the U.

S.? Is it like turkey, stuffing, gravy, same deal? Yeah. I think it’s pretty much the same, but as far as, I don’t know a single person who’s deep fried a turkey. I think that’s an American thing. Yeah. Um, but other than that, it’s the whole, it was intended to be around the harvest season. I Googled that actually, cause I’m like, why are they different?

Um, And in Canada, it’s because typically we’re more North than the States. I know there’s exceptions to that. So that means their harvest happens sooner, which means we’re celebrating the harvest. That makes sense. Yeah. I learned that last week. Yeah. That makes sense. I think it was any two things America is probably known for.

It’s guns and deep frying meat. And so it makes sense that our, we also [00:03:00] deep fry our turkeys. Yeah. Yeah. You shoot the turkey with your gun and then you deep fry it, hopefully non flammable location. That’s the most American idea we’ve ever said on this podcast. All right, let’s dive into today’s topic because I’m really excited for you to share this.

I’ll, I won’t spoil anything, but basically you did an event recently at your gym that was maybe your most successful and exciting community engagement event for current members that you’ve ever done. And I know all of you listening Really want your clients on a regular basis to feel engaged and valued and appreciated and connected to you and your team and each other.

We know how much that impacts retention. We know how it impacts just good vibes. We know how much that impacts referrals. And so today we’re going to walk through as Ben’s going to share in great detail, all the things they did recently for his most successful kind of client engagement and appreciation event ever.

I’m really excited for it. Let’s start with this, Ben, what made you decide to do something like this? Honestly. It came out [00:04:00] of a need to replace our not so successful previous annual events. We would normally do a barbecue in the summer. We’ve got nice big loading doors, like garage doors that are all glass, like a lot of gyms would have.

We’ve obviously got space cause that’s the gym. We’d get drinks and have a barbecue. And our attendance just dwindled year after year. And Misha and I were like, all right, this doesn’t seem to be checking the box anymore. What can we do instead? And. This year, BFU has been doing awards for the unicorn society.

So some members win these awesome unicorn awards that are exactly what you’re picturing them to be a literal unicorn for doing amazing things in their communities and business. And we’re like, you know what? Screw it. Let’s just try doing this at the gym. And we had a potluck previously like years ago and it was super successful.

So you know what? Let’s do a potluck and awards night because. We know we’re scrapping the barbecue. We knew it wasn’t point a, and we didn’t have a point B and the stars aligned. Yeah. I think that’s a really great, even just reflection for our current members is that if you have some community events that have been [00:05:00] losing steam, if you’ve done anything, client appreciation, hangouts, happy hours, whatever it is, and you would notice that like people just aren’t as stoked about it as they used to be.

That could be a really great sign. It’s time to switch shit up time to go make an exciting again. And if you and your team don’t even look forward to going, That’s also a sign that maybe no one else wants to be there either. And so people can feel that, right? Emotions are contagious. So if your team are showing up begrudgingly or your clients are showing up begrudgingly, no one’s going to be having a good time.

And the fact that you turned to an award ceremony, basically like celebrating people, like there’s, we were talking about this earlier. You can’t go wrong. People like being celebrated. People like seeing other people being celebrated. Right? I think having some event that recognizes great work that’s happening, He’s always going to be thrilling for people.

So walk me through what that kind of planning process looked like for you all. Yeah. So we made it a quarterly project for this quarter so that me and Leisha could stay on top of it with timelines, et cetera. And just to jump in, sorry to interrupt that [00:06:00] Leisha for all you listeners is Ben’s GM at the gym.

Yeah. And I should say, I want to give credit where credit’s due in case they just listen to this podcast and integrity. She did 95 percent of the work for this. I was a thought partner and we used my truck to pick stuff up. Was her brainchild. So I just want to give her the credit for this, which is also a lesson for you, Jim owners that you can leverage some of the people on your team to do this because our staff were stoked about it.

Yeah. Good job, Alicia. I’m sure Ben really meant like 98%. So we’ll let you, we’ll let you have it. 99. 9. Yeah. All right. So the planning process. So we decided a couple of months before that we were going to do this, we didn’t just pull the rabbit out of the hat. Yep. We got the logistics of like, when do we want the event to run?

How many people can we handle in our gym? Cause if all your clients show up at once, it doesn’t usually work so well. We got a clear on like the logistics that we decided we want to do a potluck. We were going to provide the booze. Everyone just brought a dish and it all worked out. We worked backwards in terms of like when registrations need to happen.

So we marketed it for. I think five weeks in advance of the [00:07:00] event. So far enough that we’d give people notice not so far that they would forget about it and lose steam and we’re just harassing them about it. And we also picked the date. So we decided to do a Friday from six till eight. That was this past Friday.

So that was November, like whatever it was, 15th, 16th, which is perfect timing because nothing really happens in November where we live again, Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is until December. People’s schedules aren’t full. We even had members be like, you guys nailed it with the date with this. Great. And it was short and sweet.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you told me two hours, right? Yeah. Six till eight. People arrived at six. We ate at six 30. We did awards at seven, seven 15 words probably took 25 minutes, two or three minutes per award. Like we were starting to clean up at eight o’clock. I love that. Let me just go back and highlight the things I think for our listeners that I hope that they’re hearing here is that this was not last minute.

I think the number one reason I see events fail like this is that people are like, Oh, we should do an event. How about next week? It’s, it’s not enough time for [00:08:00] people. People’s schedules are busy. So you all started marketing it five weeks in advance, which means you’re probably planning this six, seven, eight weeks in advance.

Yeah. And so you really have to get ahead of these things to make sure you pick the right date, you have time for logistics, you have time for people to register, let them know they’re coming, let you know they’re coming. Um, and I think if you don’t do that, you’re just going to lose a lot of people who already have plans who really would have wanted to be there.

And so I think all of that is fantastic. So let’s just go through in more detail what the actual agenda was. I think you just give a high level, but walk through what the night looked like. Yeah. So we let everyone know we did it. Well, first I should hit the RSVP. So. We did have to hit this pretty hard. So we did, I think a Google form that we just emailed the people, Hey, we’re doing awards nights, insert marketing content about that.

We announced it in sessions. And then Alicia had a good idea where we still use like folders with the paper programs for people. So everyone who had not registered had a, little, I don’t know, four by six card that we just printed off with a QR code. And the coach’s job was to be like, are you coming or [00:09:00] not coming?

We didn’t want any maybes, but we didn’t want any like unconfirms. Everyone either gave a yes or no was the goal. I’m not sure if that actually happened. And then we let them know the agenda. It was show up for six o’clock. Bring whatever dish you want. We kept it real casual, which aligns with like our vibe and culture of membership base.

So people just bring whatever. And we had a mixture of desserts, salads, mains, like when you got 40 people, I think we had 53 people in attendance, which is like 45 percent of our active member base. And so let’s say some of those were couples. Let’s say we have 35 people bring food. Like if you have 35 dishes at a potluck, you’re just going to naturally have varieties.

We weren’t worried about that. Yep. So people showed up at 6, they grabbed a drink, they chatted, they mingled, we had everything obviously set up beforehand. Our job was to bounce around and be the hosts. At 6. 30 we ate. And then, like, we had tables of 6 to 8 depending on the size, so we had a whole bunch of tables.

And then, I think we announced, [00:10:00] like, a 10 minute warning, hey, we’re going to do awards soon, go up and grab dessert and another drink if you want. 7, 10, 7, 15. We did the awards. We set it up that whoever we have a system, everyone gets custom programming. If I program for you, Michael, I’m considered your primary coach in my gym.

If you want an award because I’m your primary coach, I gave a little spiel. Nice. So the whole coaching team was involved in actually giving a little spiel for each of the awards specific to who they program for. I love that. Yeah, I did a couple of the awards for the OG members. Cause I don’t coach or do any programs anymore, but that was appropriate.

At least you did a couple for some that like. We’re a good fit for her that she knew well, but we basically here’s a list of people with the awards Who’s the best person to do that speech and then we made a point to really highlight The things that the member has done well, that’s important to them. So for instance, we’ve got a client, Melanie, Melanie’s number one goal is to be a good role model for her daughter.

So when we did the spiel, we acknowledged her for her consistency and the [00:11:00] progress she’s made, even though her award wasn’t best role model, it was actually heaviest lifting female because she’s a strong human being. We mentioned, we tied the results she got to her goal, which was critically important.

Like Melanie was, Tearing up a little bit, but she got the award. Yeah. Congrats, Melanie. I’m sure she’s a big fan of the podcast. Thanks. Congrats. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So give me some examples. What are the other awards? And if you can say a little bit, like, how’d you all decide these? So we had some that were like clear, obvious ones.

Like we have a client who will be hitting a thousand sessions with us. Her plan is on December 13th or 15th. She’s done the math for the number of times she comes. She’s actually probably done more than that because. We didn’t always track sessions. We had to do a little bit of creative accounting and extrapolation to get to that result.

So like most sessions, it’s like an obvious award to give. We were really clear that for our gym, we didn’t want to do outcome based awards. We didn’t want to do most pounds of fat lost or anything like that. We wanted to be process based outcomes, process based instead of outcomes. So some of them were like [00:12:00] most sessions, heaviest lifting male, heavy lifting female.

And then we had some people who we just like. So we made up categories that were exclusive to them. So an example was one of them was to Alejandro for fearless explorer, because he goes mountaineering. I swear to God once a quarter. Wow. He’s I’m going to Peru. I’m going to climb Kilimanjaro. Like he’s like, the reason he trains is to do awesome outdoorsy shit.

So we’re like, all right, we should give him an award. That’s cool. We also had a resilience award for someone who’s gone through a lot of hell and back almost literally. So we gave it to them. We had a bunch of people who got awards, couldn’t make it. We had maybe 25 total awards and we gave out 12 or 13.

Great. We have two guys who know each other well, Rob and Mark, who are just like, just bust each other’s balls 24 seven. Yeah. So I can’t remember the name of the award, but it was something around like most competitive or biggest ball busters or something like that. We have a husband and wife who train together who just feed off each other.

So they got a dynamic duo [00:13:00] award. Like we aside from the process not outcome side of things like we literally just made up categories to acknowledge people who yeah We thought were worthy. That’s amazing. What were people’s did you tell anyone in advance? They were getting an award everything else Yeah, that’s why you had some people who didn’t show and you just gave them afterwards.

That makes sense. What are people’s reactions? Oh God. We had some people who we heavily hinted that they were getting an award and they should attend. Yeah. Like the one who won heaviest lifting male is actually a former member. He left three weeks ago and he was like, I’m not a member anymore. I shouldn’t come.

And we’re like, Greg, we’d really love you to come. You should totally come. But yeah, not everyone could make it. And we, I don’t know, we weren’t like, we weren’t, we didn’t say explicitly you’re getting an award. But I’m sure they could connect the dots. Yeah, that makes sense. So what was like the reaction in the room?

Like, how do people respond to this kind of event? Honestly, a shitload of applause. Yeah, it was. So we give a little spiel that was, I don’t [00:14:00] know, 30 to 60 seconds, probably that we instructed our coaches, like, Do it from the heart. If anything, that’s a place we can improve because some of us are better at speaking than others.

Of course. Then we, so we announced the award. Then we announced the, who won it. Everyone would clap as the person comes up to the front. We’d shake hands or arm around them as appropriate. We’ve got a couple of photos, obviously, because marketing people would usually then like clap again as they went back.

Everybody was stoked for everybody. Good. One of the things I was concerned about is depending on the culture of your gym, By default, if some people are winners, but not everyone’s a winner, that means some people are losers. So I was a little bit concerned that some people would be like, why not me? I didn’t, that’d be a weird piece of feedback to receive.

So I wouldn’t expect anyone to get of it, but like everyone seems stoked. I think you mentioned to me, you’ve even got some people since the event who’ve given praise for, for this event. Yeah. Alicia mentioned when we met today that she had at least five or six people who emailed or texted over the weekend to just be like, That was amazing.

It was the best event you’ve done. I love [00:15:00] this. It was perfect. All sorts of praise. And then while we were meeting, actually more praise was coming in unsolicited from members, which was really cool. Yeah, that’s great. What advice do you have for anyone listening, thinking, I want to do an event like this.

It seems like a lot, might be overwhelming. What’s your, what’s your advice here? First one is delegate it. I’ve read this all the time. I didn’t have as heavy a lift. I think keep it simple. That might not apply to every single gym, but I’ve seen gyms do this where they do it as like a black tie affair and rent out a hall.

That just wasn’t in the cards for us from like a budget and timing perspective. Us doing potluck simple aligns with the culture that we have at the gym. Like we’re intentionally casual, not super fancy high end. Like a potluck worked well when you’ve got clients who are 50 plus who let’s be real come to the gym so that they can eat the shit that they like to eat.

They all wanted to share their cooking. They were stoked about that. So instead of getting it catered, like the potluck worked. I think the potluck was actually better than getting it catered and obviously more affordable. Also keep it short, if we [00:16:00] had made this like a gala from 5pm till midnight, I’m sure people would have been like, holy fuck, I got shit to do, like I’m not doing that.

Yeah. But 6 8 was like, we had people leave at 7. 30, it wasn’t weird, we had people stay till 8. 30, it wasn’t weird, because it was still a nice short event. And then from a registration perspective, don’t be afraid to hound your people. The way I think of this, which may be flawed, is our clients for the most part signed up to get results.

And the deal is. They give us money, we get them to their goals. Every single thing we ask them to do outside of that, whether it’s referring a friend, or doing a testimonial, or writing a review, or coming to an awards night, is us getting, it’s us asking for more than was initially agreed upon. So we try to be really respectful of that while also Like we need to remind them this wasn’t part of the original deal.

They don’t owe us anything. I think that’s a great takeaway is keep it simple. Keep it short. Don’t be afraid to hound the [00:17:00] shit out of people in advance. Were people able to bring like friends and family members if they wanted? Oh, totally. This was open to, this was open to everybody. We invited, we invited anyone on our member list.

So it was like an active member. The one was a former member. That’s just how the timing worked out. But we said we had kids come, we had friends come, we had, we have three people who are all friends that one of them is no longer a client. She came as like the plus one. We just want to be like, you know, we’re optimizing for leads for this.

We were really optimizing for client experience, but we still got some leads out of it just because I was going to say, I think that’s it. You could go either way. I think like I, on this podcast, I’ve said a million times, I think every event should be a referral event. And in this case, it just happened organically, but you could also push more in that direction if you wanted.

Is there anything you would do differently? Yeah. At least I debriefed not today. The first one was actually getting Lisha to ask for a bit more help. The team was ready to rock for 3 or 4 p. m. to come do all the set up. And she actually had it all done by 2 p. m. So I’m like, on one [00:18:00] hand, ask for help and delegate to your staff.

On the other hand, make sure they get what they need. Lisha, you didn’t have to put up all the streamers. Yeah, it’s tough with an event like this. There’s a lot of logistics. So you need a lot of hands to make it work. Yeah, table rentals, chair rentals, table cloths. We spent a lot of money at the dollar store getting like, Balloons and celebratory things to make the space look different.

The second thing we do differently is role play the speeches from the coaches more. I think I’m above average public speaking, but not exceptional. I probably could have used a little bit of feedback to get a bit more clear. One of our coaches just absolutely nailed it. She’s just, she’s got a ton of experience though.

And then one of our coaches, like he did really well, but you could tell like he was reading his speech from his card or getting a couple extra dry runs of that meant he probably could have just had like his three bullet points and said it. It would be a little bit less awkward, but it wasn’t bad. Yeah.

It still lands. People appreciate the sentiment, even if it’s read from a card, but you to your point here, it’s just a little practice that could have come across as a little more authentic and in the moment. Yeah. Any other [00:19:00] reflections? Yeah. The last one, this is very specific one, but at the end of the night, one of our new clients husbands actually came up to me and he’s, Hey, just so you know, like I’m a sales rep for.

Bye. Bye. This company, this alcohol company called Foundry, if you had to reach out to me before this, the booze would have been free because we provided, I don’t know, a few hundred dollars worth of booze. Not like people are going to pound wine for two hours at this event. We went through most of it. So there’s something, a lesson in there around like leverage your client, whether it’s for, maybe they have tables and chairs, they have extra, maybe they own like a engraving shop where they could have done the trophies for us.

In this case, it was someone who’s, next time you do this, just ask me and I’ll give you a whole bunch of free booze. You never know. Love it. I think that’s a great one. I think so many of us have clients who are so capable of contributing, whether they have tables, chairs, tablecloths, helium tank, you know, engraving, booze, you name it.

I think that people are willing to help, uh, but you need to ask. Yeah. I think it’s great. They, they wanted to help. Like I think a couple of clients in particular who just are [00:20:00] raving fans, I honestly think they’re like a little bit disappointed we didn’t ask them for stuff. Um, I love that just goes to show the kind of culture and community you’ve created there that people are so wanting to help.

And the fact that they’re already asking you to do more of this, it just shows like how connected this made it, you got some leads, you got people engaged, you got people celebrating each other. You got your team showcasing how much they give a shit. It’s just a, it’s all, it’s a five star event. So Bravo, my friend, Bravo.

Any final words as we wrap up. Yeah, I’m as many of you, many of you don’t know, I’m definitely on the introverted side of the scale compared to extroverted. So like I was. Don’t get me wrong. I was excited for this party, but if it had have fallen on me, I would have chosen to just not do it because I’m in my happy place, like reading a book on my own.

So I want to encourage you that if you haven’t, if you do a client event, try doing an awards thing. I thought it’d be a little bit cheesy, but it was a total smash hit. And if you’re, I might be alone in the introverted Jim owner side of things, um, but if you are out there, you’re not, you’re not, [00:21:00] uh, it’s a weird business to open if you’re an introvert, but if you’re not sure about this or you have any hesitations, do it anyways.

It was. Not that much work. Like the, this was an asymmetrical return for sure. It was so good to the point where I’m like, we are going to do this until this starts losing steam. We might even consider doing something similar in the spring, just because members were like, You know what? If you did this like end of May, early June, this would be an absolute hit.

Yeah. I just, I’m astounded at how good it went considering how simple we kept it. And as it gains more momentum and people look forward to it, I think it becomes an even better referral event and engagement event. So bravo for you, my friend. And for you, Alicia, if you’re listening for throwing such a great event and thanks for sharing it.

I hope our listeners are taking away some great notes about how they could do something Just like this at their gyms. Thanks. Pickard as a final reminder today, go check out our YouTube channel, head over there, click the link in the show notes, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell button. We’re going to keep creating amazing content.

So don’t miss it. I’ll see you on the next one. [00:22:00] Thank you.