Most fitness industry folks are convinced that their single biggest area for improvement is lead generation. If only they could get more people to know about their gym - and possibly even take a tour - then they'd absolutely blow up.
I hate to burst your bubble, but while your lead generation might need work, in the overwhelming majority of businesses, systems and retention are where the biggest opportunities for improvement exist. You see, if you shore things up on these two fronts, you'll create a better product and dramatically increase the number of word-of-mouth referrals you get. Over the life of your business, word-of-mouth should blow any direct mail or Facebook advertising you do out of the water, so why not work on the things that impact it the most?
Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I should actually talk a bit about lead generation, as the truth is that it's probably more complex than it's ever been.
If you look back 15-20 years, a lot of folks weren't on the internet - and they certainly didn't have social media. It was really, really hard to get in front of people affordably if you were a small business. If you didn't have the cash to pay for radio, TV, newspaper, or billboard ads, your only option for generating leads began and ended with pounding the pavement to shake hands and kiss babies. Nowadays, things are a whole lot different; you can get in front of just about anyone pretty quickly and easily.
If this wasn't the case, a kid from small town Maine named Cressey - who didn't even play high school baseball - wouldn't be training more than 100 professional baseball players each offseason.
This modern marketing world creates opportunities, but also a lot of noise. People are bombarded by more marketing messages than ever before because we have more devices (phones, tablets, computers, radios) and mediums (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Email, etc) than ever before. There is so much noise that people are completely desensitized to the marketing messages that are being sent their way. That means that top of mind awareness is substantially harder to achieve.
What does this mean for lead generation in the fitness industry? You have to get in front of people regularly and via a number of different marketing channels. If you're reading this blog, you probably hear from me here, on various social media channels, and via email. Perhaps you read an article by or about me on another website or print magazine or newspaper. We might have interacted with one another at a seminar, or we might have a mutual friend who recommended that you check out EricCressey.com.
The point is that you have to stand on your head to make expertise easy to perceive. It's just not good enough to just pay for a newspaper ad and hope for people to show up.
This is particularly complex because everyone will perceive expertise differently - and in different places. Teenagers aren't really on Facebook very often, but it's a great marketing avenue for those over the age of 30. Some of the people there might like video content, and others may prefer writing. Every lead must be generated via a unique marketing mix, and that can make it very challenging to be really successful across multiple niches. At Cressey Sports Performance, we can easily market to baseball players, coaches, and parents, but it'd be really hard for us to build a successful discharge program for cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation patients. It's an entirely different demographic that we'd struggle to access.
Bringing things all back together, some closing thoughts:
1. You probably generate a fair amount of leads but need to do better at making sure they aren't disappearing out the back door while you're so focused on getting more people in the door.
2. You may need to prioritize optimizing your systems to put yourself in the best position possible to deliver a high-quality product (both training and environment) that will yield more word-of-mouth referrals.
3. Make expertise easy to perceive across a variety of marketing mediums, especially if you're trying to cater to multiple demographics.
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In my blog the other day, I alluded to how I never really thought I'd open a gym. It kind of just happened. And, this experience has led me to the belief that the concept of having a ten-year plan is absurd. Heck, even five years seems like a prohibitively long time to have a plan in today’s rapidly changing world.
I went to college in 1999 thinking that I was going to be an accountant. I transferred in 2001 to pursue exercise science, and went to graduate school to pursue a career in strength and conditioning research. In 2003, after a month on campus, I realized I hated organic chemistry and loved training athletes. I moved to Southern Connecticut in 2005, and then to Massachusetts in 2006, then Florida in 2014. These were twists and turns in every direction that couldn’t have been accommodated by a rigid career plan.
There are a lot of people reading this blog who are probably stressing about moving to a different college major, making a career change, or relocating for a change of scenery or new opportunity. There are also business owners who are super concerned about building a brand that they can ultimately sell. They're focused on writing books and delivering seminars about the training they do with their clients before they've even truly evaluated whether that training actually works well.
As is usually the case with the training side of our industry, a quick solution is always to simplify. Before you start looking at being hugely successful in the long-term, try focusing on being consistently successful in the short-term with whatever it tackling. To paraphrase a hackneyed expression, you have to win the battle before you win the war - and in entrepreneurship, you have to have a successful business before you make the leap to truly building a brand. As this graph from the Bureau of Labor Statistics demonstrates, why have a ten year plan when less than 40% of small businesses are even around at that time period? And, you can bet that this number is substantially lower in the fitness industry, where many start-ups are trainers who have zero business training.
I think that this can actually be a big challenge for some upstart companies when they deal with business consultants who are very focused on developing something that can eventually be sold for $100 million dollars. In the push to create systems for scaling things larger, entrepreneurs can lose sight of shorter term opportunities to be profitable and evolve as a business. For this reason, small business consultants usually have much more to offer to fitness start-ups.
The fitness business is challenging. Competition is high, the industry is constantly evolving, and there is a lot of "noise" that can distract consumers from pursuing even the highest quality training options. For this reason, most fitness businesses are better off focusing on "winning the day" than "winning the decade."
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I am stopping and listening. Does my education and experience count? What is the role of a retired cop like me in giving guidance to the profession in which formed us? I have to say, not much. Instead, those of us who have this kind of inclination, concern, education and experience are often told we are “out of touch,” “arm chair quarterbacks,” or “things have changed since you were a cop.” To those of us who know the field so well, and the power of the blue subculture, it means shut up or you are no longer one of us! In the meantime fires are burning and buffalo stampeding.
There’s a tragic and sorrowful dance going on that is causing these fires to burn and animals to stampede. Citizens who have lost loved ones to the use of deadly force by police are first to speak out – and they often speak loudly. Others join them. Then more join and the protest becomes public, sometimes violent – Ferguson and Baltimore are two examples. You know of others, perhaps in your hometown; “Black lives matter!” “Blue lives matter! “All lives matter!”
There now comes the investigation on two levels – the district attorney looks into whether a crime has been committed by police knowing all along the low standard of Graham v. Connor – “I feared, therefore I defended my life and I shot!” More often than not, the act of the police officer followed Graham’s “objective reasonableness.” Should the incident be taken before a grand jury? There has been no finding of criminal negligence; thus, the police did not act improperly or illegally.
Should a bold prosecutor (like in Baltimore) rush to charge a police officer with a crime relating to a suspect’s death? If he or she does, they will soon feel the sting of both the police union and an active electorate in support of the officer. (In Baltimore, a number of officers were charged with crimes and all exonerated at trial. She lost her job.)
Internally (or by some chance) an external investigation will also find the officer did not violate state law, followed his or her training, and the policy of the department. No crime, no internal policy violations.
Meanwhile, the community divides along racial lines with some concerned whites joining the protests of the victim’s family and their supporters. At the same time, little is publicly said by the district attorney or chief of police who have received cautionary warnings from their legal counsels about the potential of civil suit and trial. In a civil proceeding the burden of police misconduct shifts from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to that of a “preponderance of evidence.” The silence from city leaders is deafening and provoking to the community which supports the victim’s family.
Thus the dance pattern continues to emerge. Two events unfold: first, the city’s legal counsel along with their insurance carrier, decide to negotiate a monetary settlement with the victim’s family in order to avoid a lengthy, public and sometimes precarious trial. When this occurs, we have seen settlements in the neighborhood of $3 to $6 million. When a settlement is made (and sometimes the victim’s family signs off on a “no disclosure” statement and that may end the public conversation), the police and their supporters cry “foul” and say they would have welcomed a public trial where they most certainly would have prevailed. After all, both the district attorney and internal investigations absolved the officers. The chief of police agrees and says his officers did no harm. Any arguments are now met with the importance of “officer safety” in these matters.
The other alternative is for the victim’s family to file a civil suit and go to trial to find the justice which they believe is due them. A most recent civil action involved two officers who used deadly force to resolve a standoff in which a disturbed woman was pointing a gun at her head and they shot and killed her. (As above, the officer was absolved of any criminal or department policy violations). As in most of these cases, the police department publicly declares the officer in line with state law, department policies, and training.
In this incident, after the officers were criminally and internally absolved of their actions, the police were sued and a civil trial began. After a jury heard arguments from both sides they determined the officer acted (using the Graham v, Connor rule as a measure) “un-objectively and un-reasonably.” The city now awaits the jury’s monetary award.
As an aside, it is particularly informing because one of the “30 Guidelines on Use of Force” promulgated by the Police Executive Research Forum last year addressed just such incidents – not to use deadly force to resolve situations in which a person is only a danger to him or herself; that is, persons who are suicidal.
Since Ferguson, Americans have witnessed and even participated in this public dance. It’s almost as if there is a script that cities and their police are using. Contrary to the efforts of most playwrights, there is no resolution or moral lesson in the last act.
By that I mean what comes out of this? Citizens supporting the victim think that the police will change because government just paid a big “fine” in the neighborhood of millions of dollars. And they believe this penalty will created improvements. Not so. Look at our big cities and what their liability payouts have been during the last five years. Millions? No, actually only thousands, because they carry liability insurance. Everyone in the pool pays a little; no one has to pay a lot. Nothing changes.
While inquiring minds will still want to know what the city and their police have learned from these trying and costly legal entanglements and days of property damage, arrests, and injuries, I can report from surveying the field that the cumulative effect of a 1,000 lives extinguished each year, predominately from the ranks of those who are either black, poor whites, or mentally disturbed is little when it comes to changing how police use deadly force..
This flies in the face of a presidential task force giving us 59 recommendations on how to do just this and 30 guidelines from a professional group of college-educated police leaders. Not much has happened. As police still desperately hang on to the 1989 USCC decision in Graham v. Connor, a decision in which many of our nation’s police leaders call “lawful, but awful,” the status quo reigns supreme.
But let’s get this one thing straight. Graham does not have to be changed. What needs to change is how police in our country are trained, coached, and led regarding how and when they will use deadly force to resolve a conflict. They must realize that in America, the sanctity of life is one of our strongest values.. This is what needs to happen. The dance needs to change. And it’s going to take new music, new steps, and some new dance instructors in order to do it!
As I noted in my post on Cressey Sports Performance's 10th anniversary, I wanted to use the next few days to outline a few thoughts on the entrepreneurial side of fitness over the next few days. They'll be quick ones - just a few paragraphs each - but hopefully impactful for those of you interested in the business of fitness.
To kick things off, I'll talk about opportunity cost, a concept that is actually remarkably applicable to all industries, not just fitness. Briefly, dictionary.com defines opportunity cost as "the money or other benefits lost when pursuing a particular course of action instead of a mutually-exclusive alternative."
It's probably best explained with an example. If you go on vacation, the opportunity cost of that time is continuing to work. You leave town and spend a bunch of money on flights, hotels, and touristy things - all while forgoing income at work during that time period. Most people only consider what they spend on the vacation, but your opportunity cost is that lost income. It might also be experiences that you could have had during that time you're vacationing.
To be clear, I'm not saying that you should skip all your vacations and just work all the time. I'm just saying that absolutely everything in life has an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of the coffee I'm drinking as I type this could be a glass of water or tea.
Early in your career, the opportunity cost of your time is far less expansive. You need to make money and build your reputation, so you should take on just about every client and continuing education opportunity that comes your way. And, if you want to be successful in writing and speaking, too, then you need to write and speak at every opportunity, even if nobody is or reading listening. The opportunity cost of your time is basically just watching the same episode of Sportscenter for the 47th time.
Having spent two years at business school before transferring into an exercise science program, opportunity cost was something of which I was keenly aware of at a young age. With that in mind, during my undergraduate and graduate years, I worked like a dog. I eschewed a social life in order to pick up every hour at the gym I could and do as much reading and writing as I possibly could. This tradeoff proved to be wildly important, as it helped me to build invaluable career capital and financial stability that opened many more doors for me down the road. As an example, I took time off from work, paid for a hotel room, traveled to Washington, DC, and spoke for free at this event in 2006 - and it proved to be a huge boost for my career.
Now, many years later, I have harder opportunity cost decisions. In the past week, I've gotten invited to speak in China, Brazil, Poland, and Minnesota. Each one of these poses different travel demands and compensation scenarios that all need to be weighed against time with family, hours coaching at CSP, what I could earn devoting that time somewhere else, and the impact I could have in other capacities. Eleven years after speaking at that DC event, there really isn't any circumstance under which I'd take that particular gig again.
A seminar halfway around the world would have been an instant “yes” in 2007, but now, it requires 18 months of planning and time away from family that I’m reluctant to take on. And, I’ve turned down multiple jobs in collegiate and professional sports over the past few years that would have been absolute dream jobs ten years ago. The "dream" changed – and it happened far faster than I could have ever imagined.
With all that in mind, here are three important takeaways from today's post:
1.
Good decisions when opportunity cost is low sets the stage for high opportunity cost choices later.
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2.
Say 'yes' a lot when young and building a career. Say 'no' more than 'yes' once more established.
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3.
Before you say 'no' or 'yes,' think about how you can shift that decision from 'either/or' to 'and.'
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With respect to point #3, I'd highly recommend Chip and Dan Heath's outstanding book, Decisive.
That'll do it for this post. I'll have another brain dump for you soon.
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