There’s a hidden cost weighing gyms down. In fact, they unknowingly pay this cost every single year. What’s really incredible? It’s a cost that could be eliminated forever with some simple steps.
Hint: It has to do with your gym trainers…
What’s this mystery cost?
Replacing trainers who leave your gym.
A Fixable Problem Costing U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion (Gallup)
According to Gallup (a major polling resource), the average cost of replacing an existing staff member ranges from 150% to 2X that staff member’s salary.
That means, if a trainer at your gym earns $40,000 per year, it would cost you time, headaches, and about $20,000 to $80,000 to find and train their replacement.
The number will vary (and can actually be worse) because, in addition to the expense of finding and training your new hire, there’s another factor.
If your trainer is really good, there’s the possibility of members leaving because of their attachment to their favorite trainer.
What this all adds up to is a very simple equation:
Keeping good staff members = Longer member retention + More money in your business.
How To Fix Member Turnover At Your Gym (Through Your Trainers)
In the fitness industry, most of the emphasis is usually placed on retaining clients.
Processes go in place like check-ins, gifting, challenges, etc. and they work! However, they’re exhausting, expensive, and oftentimes frenetic.
There’s a better way to retain members. It’s through the development of great staff who interact with your clients every day.
The simplest, most ROI positive way to begin developing your training staff at your gym is to provide them with education that makes them demonstrably more valuable to your members.
And in reality, this should take effect immediately after they go through their education.
Education for training staff is too often obscure. It usually fails to create an opportunity for a trainer to clearly show members how they can be more helpful.
Over the last two years, we have developed almost 2,000 trainers at Active Life, most of them completely remotely.
Here’s What Active Life Believes When It Comes To Gym Trainers
The best part about most trainers? They WANT to have a bigger role, a stake if you will, in growing your gym.
Here’s what we believe based on what we’ve seen:
- Trainers would prefer to be able to fix things for their clients than to work around them.
- They want to become a better trainer than they already are.
- For Trainers to earn a financially freeing income, they must become a measurable asset to the gym by taking an entrepreneurial approach to their career, generating additional revenue for the gym through retention and upsells.
The simplest way to start helping trainers do each of the three things above is to teach them how to perform a simple, reliable, repeatable, movement assessment.
Having a movement screen assessment that all of your trainers can easily communicate and implement the same way, and is easy for your members to understand, is the fast track to transforming your staff.
Movement screens are easy to explain, clearly demonstrate the member’s issue, and helps them perform daily workouts better. This builds a bridge of trust between member and trainer.
It elevates the professional morale of the trainer and it elevates the perceived value of the service to the member.
Why Members Actually Leave Their Gym
The number one reason why people leave a gym is because they are dealing with aches and pains.
They tell you it’s because their schedule changed, or because they don’t have money right now, or because…. fill in the blank.
But when properly surveyed, the tie that binds most of these ex members is the fact that they are dealing with some sort of ache, pain, or injury. Which of course, makes the gym less fun to be at.
Adding a movement assessment protocol reduces, and sometimes eliminates this leakage altogether.
As an added bonus, we have seen an uptick in personal training sales over 300% inside of three months in almost 100 gyms in the last year. All from providing a movement assessment and additional education to their training staff.
In one case in Las Vegas, a gym we work with was doing 8 training sessions a month on average, now they come close to 200 in a gym with only 150 members.
In closing, investing in developing your training staff is not only good for your relationships with them, it’s good for your bottom line.
About Dr. Sean Pastuch
Dr. Sean Pastuch is aggressively bridging the gap between healthcare and fitness.
Born into a family of classically trained Chiropractors, Dr. Sean has long understood that doctors are regarded as the gatekeepers to wellness in the current medical model.
His background in personal training made him think that there might be a better way.
Dr. Sean found that what most of his patients and clients needed actually fell somewhere between the worlds of healthcare and fitness.
With a patient roster including Olympic medalists, professional athletes, and everyday people exhausted by the medical model, Dr. Sean found himself practicing in a new way. A way that truly looked nothing like any other chiropractic clinic and training people unlike any other trainer.
He was inspired to get out of clinical practice and gym ownership to pursue helping other trainers and doctors (like himself) bridge the gap between fitness and health care.
His business, Active Life, was conceptualized at this intersection.
Now, over 10,000 individuals have dramatically improved their vitality as a result of working with Active Life. Over 2,000 trainers and coaches have followed the Active Life methodology to turn their passion into a meaningful career.
Active Life now supports gym owners and franchises to best leverage the skills of their coaches to achieve a fulfilling and profitable business.
Active Life believes that the healthcare model of the future includes the gym and especially the coach.
Dr. Sean and his team of doctors, athletic trainers, and coaches are on a mission to humanize the doctor, professionalize the coach, and empower the individual.
