Is Your Business Model Maturing With Your Client Avatar?

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business unicorns team 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.[00:00:30]

Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to The Business for Unicorns podcast. My name is Pete DePue. I’m gonna be your host today for a little change of pace, and I will have a guest, Ben Pickard. He is probably hosted with me as the guest more often than not, but we’re changing it up a little bit today. Turn the tables. How are you, Ben?

Speaker 3: I’m good, Pete. How you doing?

Speaker 2: We, I, mark started doing this with me where [00:02:00] we talk about the topic before we get on the phone. Or get on the recording and we’d agree on what we wanna talk about. And then we’d go. And one time he just said, Hey, do you want to just roll the dice and I’m gonna hit you with questions you don’t see coming?

And I said, yes, I like that. And it was a nice change of pace and I was thrilled when you told me you were willing to just. Field questions from me on the topic of my choice without any prep, and that’s what we’re gonna do today. Yes,

Speaker 3: I’m being blindsided today. Let’s see how I do on the spot.

Speaker 2: I wish I had something edgy for you, but I’ve got a, just a [00:02:30] straight up good podcast topic that I came across twice this week.

So set the table for us. My, my business partner John, recently lamented to me that. One of the great things about our strength camp, our adult fitness gen pop community, is that we are pretty world class at holding onto business for a long time. We’ve got a handful of clients who were here on the first day in 2012 that we were doing this, we’re still here.

Wow. And he is, this is a good thing, but it’s becoming problematic [00:03:00] because the person who was the 40-year-old soccer mom in 2012 is suddenly, uh, slightly more broken down, mid fifties. Client who has very different training needs from the client avatar that we’ve celebrated and pursued for so long, and it is forcing some challenging programming strategy, progressions, regressions, changing the pace of the sessions.

Basically, our what retained business is aging while we’re not targeting an [00:03:30] aging population. Now, that was the first time that I came across this. Then I was on a call earlier this week with our mutual friend, Kevin Bennett, and we were talking about how he really counts on his gen pop community to generate leads for his youth summer camps.

So basically he needs his parents in his community to nudge their kids toward working with ’em in the summer. And what he is finding is that his average client age is going up. And that is [00:04:00] changing his access to leads in that space. And it got me to thinking about the pros and cons of retaining a ton of business as your business ages.

But if you aren’t flexible. About maturing your programming and training philosophy and your lead gen strategy. You don’t mature with it. You put yourself in a really weird spot because you’re taking care of people that you on paper don’t want. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: Yeah. The, if [00:04:30] your avatar is 40-year-old moms for strength camp and 12, 14 years later, their mid fifties, almost potentially grandparents, depending on how that played out.

Do you want to just keep getting fresh blood with the 40-year-old moms, or do you want to adapt to be like 40 to 60-year-old women?

Speaker 2: Yep. And you have to understand that there are additional trickle down effects there because it changes the way you staff your operation as well. Now, I don’t want to get accused of ageism or [00:05:00] anything like that, but younger coaches tend to do really well in my environment with our typical client, which are younger athletes, and.

Putting a 23-year-old, fresh out of college green strength coach into the gym to work with the 40-year-old soccer moms back in the day, it was a little bit of a stretch, but it worked.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker 2: but that stretch is getting bigger and bigger because as you mentioned, sometimes these strength coaches are the same age as the grandkids of some of our older clients, and that’s a whole

Speaker 3: [00:05:30] different, we actually, we just got that feedback from our newest from a member, a longtime member of our newest coach.

Well

Speaker 2: elaborate.

Speaker 3: I talked to her, she reminds me of my daughter 15 years ago. I’m like, yep. She’s actually closer to my son’s age than my age, which I’m only 36. My son’s 14. Which

Speaker 2: I know is not a huge, I think I told you about this a couple years ago. We had, in the last five years, we had a kid come in for an initial evaluation and I was looking at his health history sheet and I looked at his date of birth and I’m like, I see [00:06:00] that comment.

And I’m like, why did this guy list the day that we started our business on his sheet? How would he know that? And I’m like, oh my God, that’s the day he was born. Our business is as old as the human being who’s standing in front of me paying for our services right now. That’s really cool. So that was a weird moment of realization.

It was like a moment of pride and an, oh my God, I’m old moment. So anyway, back on Target. What comes to mind for you here? Is this a problem or does this require a significant pivot, or are we making something out of nothing? [00:06:30]

Speaker 3: I don’t think I’ve ever discussed this topic with anybody. This is really interesting.

Speaker 2: That’s what I said to Kevin. I was like, we’re doing this.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I usually, I have. Like examples to pull from with coaching conversations with the unicorn society members or playbooks, or even just informal conversations we’ve had as BFU team on how to best serve our membership base. So this one is truly off the cuff.

You weren’t lying. I,

Speaker 2: let me tell you this. [00:07:00] I’m every bit as conflicted as you are and I don’t know what best practices are moving forward because I can’t. Shuffle times around our strength camps. We have a five 30, a six 30, and a seven 30. And if there’s one thing I know for damn sure, the person who’s been coming at five 30 since 2012 isn’t gonna be cool with me being like, Hey, seven 30 is a little more age appropriate for you.

Let’s get you over there. And we are, we’re at a little bit of a crossroads. How do we [00:07:30] think about our programming strategy and our training environment and our staffing in this circumstance?

Speaker 3: My initial impulse is curiosity. So I’m curious about what obstacles has this led to for you? Like why could this be a problem?

Speaker 2: It’s, it is a problem, like many problems in our business. It’s a problem that we see before our clients do, but I’m a little bit worried that’s gonna come down the pike eventually, or it’s gonna be one of those quiet problems [00:08:00] where. We have someone in for a trial. They do a couple classes and then they opt not to sign up.

And we’re like, what? What did you not like about it? And instead of saying, Hey, everybody was so old, they’re just like, eh, it doesn’t fit my schedule right now. I’m good. Because there’s a lot of those kind of leaving out the back door in the not most honest way. And so I’m a little bit afraid of that happening for starters.

And then beyond that, it slows things down pretty [00:08:30] dramatically. I’ve got a team that is feeling a little bit like the pace of their sessions can’t be what they need it to be, and that’s concerning because that is gonna impact retention eventually as well. If we are getting, say, 80% of the workload in that we used to in the same amount of time because we are really pausing to take care of people who are in a very different physical space from the youngest people in the community.

Speaker 3: Yes. Which will also have an impact on my [00:09:00] experience and results for those younger people who’ve got a little more gas in the tank.

Speaker 2: Sure. Again, I don’t know the answer. This is one of those moments where I’m coming to you to solve my problem and doing it in the disguise of a podcast topic.

Speaker 3: I’m honored to coming to me for solutions like I, I’m conflict, clearly conflicted.

I can see a world where you have such a niche avatar. Not you literally you Pete and CSP, but a human with a business. You’ve got like a [00:09:30] really niche avatar that is, we help high school students between a very, in a very small win age window, prepare for the SATs, and there’s probably a market where you truly can say.

There’s a big enough market and big enough business can be built on that. You can say we’re the absolute best in the world at doing that thing. And the necessity of, I’m assuming you don’t prep for the SATs when you’re 10. We don’t have them in this in Canada, but there’s a window there that you have to take advantage of because of your, but because we’re a brick and mortar [00:10:00] business that only serves a reasonable geographic area, yours is a little wider because of the pulse CFCP brings, but I assume for strength camp people aren’t driving four hours to come from a five 8:30 AM workout.

There is a necessity to have a wide enough window that is actually a large enough number of the population. They have a viable business. So in principle, or in theory, I like the idea of a super narrow nation being best in class. In practice, I do think you’d absolutely, you have to have a wider window. So it depends on what are the goals you have for [00:10:30] strength camp.

Are you looking to grow it? ’cause if it’s not looking to be grown massively and you can don’t need to pull from the 50 plus crowd, I don’t see there’s enough 40 to 50 year olds, then it might serve your needs. I’m also curious about, and we don’t need to get too in the weeds here, but like how programming style can adapt?

We found, because my gym is typically people 50 plus, like I joke with people, it’s 55, 2 kids in a bad knee and you fit our avatar. So we are the people who are slowing down strength camp for you. We found that programming density blocks works exceptionally well. [00:11:00] And I’m not suggesting you need to be doing it that way and you might already be doing it that way, but if you have a 20 minute or your B 1, 2, 3 exercise is now 20 minutes, a 39-year-old who’s a still identifies as an athlete, even though it’s been 20 years and wants to really push, they might get five rounds of whatever those exercises are.

The 55-year-old with two kids in a bad knee might get two and a half, but there isn’t a pacing issue. So I know I’m jumping to solutions before I’ve clearly identified the problem, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s contextual. [00:11:30]

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I’ll tell you one of the options we could consider.

Our gym is like most gyms in that the middle of the day gets fairly quiet. Now all of our professional athletes are gone. Our college athletes are in season. Our high schoolers are about to start their season. So we’ve got this middle third of the day where I continue to have my team and I’ve got tons of flexibility.

And we are thankfully talking about a subset of our population that has. Probably more freedom with their calendar than they did [00:12:00] 10 years ago. So one of our considerations is offering an opportunity to sample our semi-private model at a different time of the day at a either complimentary format, just to get a taste of it.

’cause it is more expensive than what we’re talking about these morning sessions or say to them because it’s quiet and perception of busyness is a good thing. We’re gonna let you do this at the strength camp rate, so long as you do it in these parts of the day, come on in, try out some individualized [00:12:30] programming, get a taste for a little bit more of a nuanced, comprehensive training experience and see what you think, and then win that business in the more expensive range.

Because with flexibility in your calendar, typically that’s aligned with buying power being at an all time high. Like we complain that when we’re in our twenties, we have all the energy in the world and no money to. Throw toward doing fun things. Thirties, early forties. We’re starting to have some money, but we don’t have time ’cause we’re hustling as hard as we can for our career.

And then after that it’s suddenly [00:13:00] we have free time and money, but we don’t have the energy to do the things.

Speaker 3: Yes,

Speaker 2: at the very least, these people are starting. We’re trying to help them rebuild that energy to do the things and they got that money to throw at the problem. So that is a solution we are considering.

But it’s not a viable long-term solution for me because for big parts of the year, the middle of the day is not hospitable to throw in a 65-year-old into the mix and just saying, Hey, you’re gonna [00:13:30] really like training with these big leaguers, and it’s a solution today that’ll work for the next 10 to 12 weeks for me.

And then it becomes, eh, this isn’t a viable one, but I’m experimenting with all these things and I’m tinkering with it. I’m just. I’m fascinated by the topic now because there’s a lot of parts of the year where I feel like at BFU we have this embarrassment of riches in playbooks and content and places to point people, [00:14:00] and it’s so rare that I get hit with a question on a coaching call where I’m like, no idea what best practices are.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker 2: same here.

Speaker 3: That has happened in a long time.

Speaker 2: Exactly. And it happened, so it triggered that curiosity. And I wanted to workshop it. I want to know what you would suggest, say to Kevin, for example, Kevin needs to start thinking about sourcing leads for his youth programs from a different place because suddenly all of his clients’ kids are going to college.

Speaker 3: Yeah. He’s got a kind of a different pro problem [00:14:30] because, or it sounds like a bit of a different problem because. The clients in program A provide the leads for program B, you don’t really have that problem. It’s just like how do you deliver consistent service for all age groups in program A? I think Kevin has to continue to just getting in front of new families all the time.

If you were doing my hypothetical prepping kids for the SATs, and you’ve only got a one year gap every year, like by default, people doing well in your program mean they’re never taking your program again. Like you, this isn’t a. There’s not gonna be [00:15:00] recurring revenue. Your marketing strategy needs to be dialed.

Yeah. So I think that applies a little more to Kevin for you. I think you have a little bit more flexibility to experiment. I, it is rare that I would recommend to a gym to make a new time slot for a temporary program. Like in 12 weeks is gonna have to change. ’cause it also isn’t guaranteed to solve the problem.

’cause if only 30% of the people of that age group opt in, you’re, it doesn’t solve the problem. You still gotta adapt. I, maybe I can answer this.

Speaker 2: Let’s pivot a tiny [00:15:30] bit. I want to pivot ’cause I want to get your 2 cents on this. And we are on a little bit of a timetable. We’re talking about maturing businesses.

We’re talking about what everybody would call a good problem to have here. We’re holding onto our businesses. Yeah. And we’ve been around long enough that we need to ask ourselves the challenging question, do we need our model to mature at the same rate that our average client is? And. When should that happen in an operation?

Operation? Because we’re [00:16:00] advocating for everybody to have a firm grasp on their avatar. We’re not cool with it. When someone comes into BFU and we’re like, who do you serve? And they’re like, anyone with a wallet, it’s sure I’m not turning away business, but I’m not marketing toward anyone with a wallet. So how often are we asking our community, ak the Unicorn Society community?

To reassess, does today’s model compliment the avatar we were chasing 10 years ago and are still [00:16:30] chasing today? Because I think that we need to be considering, I don’t wanna say reinvention, but being honest with ourselves about the kind of the ever changing needs of our active client roster.

Speaker 3: That is a, yeah, that’s probably a easier question to answer in my opinion.

I am in the process of. Revisiting my avatar right now. Alicia and I are going to be taking, we made a list of what criteria means. We have an A client. It’s not just [00:17:00] who do you like the most. There’s a, we came up with seven or eight questions that we’re gonna ask ourselves. We’re gonna hand pick 15 of our members.

We’re gonna invite 10 to 12 of them. We’ll invite 15, but 10 or 12 are probably gonna show. We’re gonna take them out for a fancy lunch and set expectations that we’re gonna ask them a bunch of questions. We are doing market research with them and we are bribing them with lunch while we’re at it slightly differently.

Because I suspect our avatar has actually developed. We have a client in our gym. I was talking to her on Tuesday. Her name’s Patricia. She loves us. She’s down to experiment. She [00:17:30] pushes herself. She’s an older lady, but she’s really fit. I would’ve bet anything that she was between 65 and 72. Someone on our team is, do you know she’s 84?

I’m like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2: Really? I’m like,

Speaker 3: I had no idea. She mo, she’s doing agility work. Like she’s overhead pressing. I’m like, holy shit. Patricia’s my new my, this is my new fitness goal is be like Patricia. And you

Speaker 2: can’t build a long-term business around 84-year-old.

Speaker 3: No, you can’t. [00:18:00] But I, but we started being in the 40 to 50 range.

We evolved more into the 50 to 70, 50 to 65 range. And we’ve actually seen for the 10% of our clientele, that’s probably north of 70. We’ve been able to spin it in a way that is a huge value add for the people who are 20 years, they’re younger, 20 years, they’re junior, which are still like in their mid fifties.

’cause they’re like, she’s here and she’s doing those things. And here I am at 55 thinking I’m broken. I can do that. But because it’s all semi-private and [00:18:30] custom program, we’re not encountering the same issue of it slowing down the session. ’cause everyone’s working at a different pace anyways. So there might be an opportunity here to use that as if you want to age gracefully and.

In a longevity driven way, like whoever your oldest client is, that could fit really well and maybe there is an opportunity to graduate up. But like I think it’s, I’m really excited to revisit my avatar. I’m really excited to do this market research and I think I’m gonna have a lot of, I think it’s really gonna help us open our eyes to who we truly serve best.

’cause we could serve anyone with a wallet, but I [00:19:00] sure don’t want to, and that’s bad marketing. I wanna work with the people we want to work with, provided there’s enough of them to make a business.

Speaker 2: Yep. Okay. So I’m gonna say that. One, I love the lunch idea. One of the most successful initiatives we’ve ever had from a client research standpoint is doing a micro version of what you’re talking about and identifying our one to three like hardcore people whose like feedback we value the most.

And we invite ’em to staff meeting and we bring ’em right in the [00:19:30] room and we encourage them to use the term we, and when they talk about how we do things around here and give them a feeling of ownership. And we get the best information from them. The best critical, difficult to receive feedback comes in that environment.

’cause it feels like I’m getting it from a colleague and not like a bitchy client. So any version of that, I want to, I wanna plus one that, but not the direction I expected to go. But I think the takeaway isn’t that there’s a best practices on how to react to these things, but [00:20:00] the best practice is to periodically.

And methodically reassess our avatar and just ask ourselves, are we rowing in the same direction today that we were three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago? And if the answer is yes, but we’re doing so with the exact same people in the boat, what do we wanna shift? And it’s just constantly asking yourself those questions.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Because I bet you there’s examples of gyms that I don’t know that have [00:20:30] had success on both sides of that. There’s probably people like, Hey, we just don’t cater to people 50 plus. If they slow down the session, they self-identify and opt out, and we’re totally fine with that change. We focus between 40 and 49, and then there’s people who are like, Hey, we’ve grown with our avatar and adapted accordingly.

I bet you both. I bet both work and they each has pros and cons, but it’s really just like what aligns with the business you want to build, which is really the superpower that we all have here being self-employed.

Speaker 2: [00:21:00] Yep. We’re gonna come back to this in some capacity. I’m gonna add it to the issues and opportunities so we can talk about it as a group in the future.

’cause I like this topic. All right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna wrap it there. I appreciate you being my guest on the Business Unicorns podcast today and thanks for showing up. We’ll do it again soon.

Speaker 3: Thank you. Appreciate the topic. It was a good one. Alright man,

Speaker 2: take care.

Speaker 3: Bye[00:21:30]

up.