What We Cover In This Episode:

• Important things to keep in mind as you’re updating your pricing model [3:56]

• The types of clients that boutique fitness attracts and why reasonable price increases should not matter to them [8:05]

• The reasons that including founding members in your price increases is necessary [12:51]

• Our thoughts on if you should plan an incentive to go along with your price increase [14:56]

• When is the best time to announce your price increase to members [17:58]

Quotes: 

“Is your landlord accounting for inflation? That’s one of those trickle down concepts. If your landlord is inflating your rent year-over-year, then you have to say, ‘hey member, my costs went up, so your costs go up.” [Nick, 4:39]

“I feel like there’s some software [companies] in our space that made price increases feel like a dirty thing. They don’t have to be a dirty thing, they can just be an honest thing of ‘some costs went up around the business and in order to keep giving you the experience that you’ve grown accustomed to, I’m going to need to raise my prices to keep up with those things.’” [Nick, 5:42] 

“You just don’t want to get yourself in a situation where you feel like the bad guy. It’s got to just be an honest conversation of what you can and what you can’t do. You can give them notice, [or] you can do ‘next year it will be this and the following year it will be that’, but you can’t live off these founder memberships.” [Nick, 7:06] 

“You shouldn't be dipping into what you’ve saved or what you’ve earned in order to pay those costs; that should be accounted for in your new rates.” [Megan, 10:53] 

LINKS:  

Episode 136: Keeping Your Pricing Streamlined in fitDEGREE

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• The best ways for a fitDEGREE client to send a support ticket for the team to look after, as well as what to expect for turnaround time [3:29]

• What to be aware of in terms of the order of urgency in which issues are addressed [8:15]

• Some of the “do’s and don’ts” when submitting a support ticket [10:47]

• Why Ali will often suggest that the person requesting support hop on a call with her versus corresponding via email [15:59]

• An underutilized resource that has great benefits when used to solve issues that arise [18:30] 

Quotes:

“I think a big thing is we want to do a great job, [but] we're not mind readers and it’s ok to explain the first email like you’re explaining it to a 5-year old.” [Nick, 5:54] 

“Don’t think that everything is going to be solved in 24 hours if you’re reporting an issue that you’re having, and specifically a big issue. If it’s a very pressing bug we tackle things in an order of urgency, and we assign levels to those things.” [Ali, 10:50 

“A lot of times when I get questions I’ll send back a reply and then I’ll suggest we get on a call together, because I think it’ll be easier to discuss this further via call, because whatever the topic is, it’s just more involved than email can handle.” [Ali, 15:59] 

LINKS:  

Loom

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• Ways to determine what is not being offered in your community [1:54]

• What to keep in mind when observing physical locations [6:22]

• The importance of understanding the standard of boutique fitness in the area [7:00]

• How to research both the physical and online presence of other businesses in your community [7:56]

• Why attending industry events and community events to see the type of messaging they are trying to get across is so powerful [9:11]

• How you can point potential customers to the competition if it's a better fit for them and not a fit for you [9:32]

• A few marketing strategies to be aware of [10:17]

• What the process of visiting competitors and introducing yourself can look like [11:13]

• Approaches to avoid that may not be respectful to competitors [12:42]

• Why you should strive to avoid creating tension and boost cross referrals when researching the competition [14:30]

Quotes:

“I think it's vital to look at your competition, because if you have this grand vision of what you would want to offer and you find out there are two studios that already do it, your whole basis of business survival is going to be a bloodbath to prove why you're better, and it's going to get emotional.” [Nick, 3:31] 

“If [your competitors] go all out on their website, you better start searching. If you can find who built their website, even better, but you now have a new standard that you need to reach.” [Nick, 8:39] 

“Nine times out of ten, you're going to be signing up for the same masterminds, you’re taking a lot of the same certifications, [so] you might as well talk to each other. Don't become enemies, become best friends and work with each other.” [Megan, 19:04]

LINKS:  

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• More on an exciting upcoming feature that facilitates internal interactions [3:06]

• How it will allow you to invite others through the app via chat instead of external text message [4:49]

• The way that the chat feature evolved [5:38]

• What to be aware of with the social and privacy settings from the student perspective [10:53]

• The admin-facing features that will give you the ability to disable or define the people in your chats [12:42]

• Group chat features and benefits [14:47]

Quotes:

“The main use was getting to improve community features [so] that clients can talk to each other. We also get to improve the instructor/client communication, and now [chat] is this admin tool as well for the internal staff.” Nick [4:38]

“With inviting people, you don’t have to send them a text anymore. Now when you hit the invite button, what we’ve done is we’ve made it so it’ll actually pop up and ask you who you want to message internally in the fitDEGREE app, and as it sends them the invite, it’ll also start a chat. So, you can talk to the person about it or send it to a group of people at once.” [Dan, 4:51]   

“One of our big things is we wanted to make it feel like it was a modern chat app, not like just a tack-on to an app that would feel like a lesser experience.” [Dan, 6:17]

“It is more than just messaging, it is fitDEGREE messaging. It is the things that matter to us, like sharing a class, and it previews your friends that are already going. That’s all unique stuff that we had to build, obviously from the ground up, but people don’t think about it.” [Nick, 9:59]

“I think it has just such great potential, because I know a lot of studios run accountability groups and or series sessions, where [customers] have to download WhatsApp, or they all have to go to Telegram or whatever other random app, and now it just lives in fitDEGREE.” [Megan [17:07]

LINKS:  

Prologue 2: The Story of fitDEGREE: Dan Read's Version

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• What the popularity reports in fitDEGREE are and where you can find them [2:17]

• How to dive into the session data to get even more detailed reporting [4:40]

• The ways that popularity reports help you grow your business and what you get out of it as a studio owner [5:32]

• Using the data to determine classes or instructors that are successful or not, and the importance of the unique number feature [8:55]

• What really matters in the end when using these reports [11:26]

Quotes: 

“I think it’s exciting to see which class is doing the best and which instructor is doing the best, but I would probably look at it with the reverse angle of which class is underperforming and which instructor is underperforming?” [Nick, 5:33] 

“It’s funny that it’s [called] the popularity report, because if I’m going to this report, I’m really trying to figure out what I can weed out and what I should turn my attention to after I weed those things out.” [Nick, 6:53] 

“I really feel like the magic number for boutique fitness is two to three times a week per person. So, I think really drilling down into each class or each instructor and finding that magical number of unique people creating a certain amount of registrations, [that] is the number that I would be looking at.” [Nick, 9:41]

LINKS:  

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• What things Pixality does best and why they exclusively use Squarespace [1:48]

• Connie’s opinions on Canva getting into web design [4:07]

• When it is time for most small business to update their websites [6:48]

• A few common reasons you may want to review or redesign your website right now [8:27]

• Whether she thinks there is a “line in the sand” on when to determine if you should do a refresh or a rebuild of your website [10:22]

• The top reasons why you should rebuild your website [12:58]

• Why Connie recommends building your website with Squarespace [18:31]

• What to expect when getting started to work with Connie and the Pixality team [19:57]

Quotes:

“We do see that most small businesses at about the 3 to 5-year point [need to redesign their website]. Technology just gets outdated and your business changes enough that it is time to start fresh and redefine what you want to be known for on the Internet.” [Connie, 6:48]

“If you can’t edit your own website, if you can't go in right now, there is an emergency, your studio heaven forbid floods and you have to put that on your website, if you or your team internally can't do that, you need to be on a platform you can do that on and Squarespace is on of them.” [Connie,18:39]

“If you don't have that branding, if you don't have those words flushed out, if you don't have those photos, you are going to have a hard time building the website. So, we can do all of that prior to actually starting the project.” [Connie, 21:20]

LINKS:  

Pixality’s Website & fitDEGREE-Integrated Web Design Services 

Their Instagram

Blog Post, How Often Do You Need to Redesign Your Fitness Website

Episode 94 with Connie

Squarespace & Canva

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• Some of the common ways to fund your fitness business [2:13]

• The pros and cons of obtaining funding from outside of your personal savings [5:49]

• What to be aware of in terms of equity investments [8:04]

• Why are you considered cash flow negative once funded [9:42]

• How to ensure that you become cash flow positive, and stay there [12:03]

Quotes:

“Maybe you could do personal income, a grant and maybe an investor, that would probably be the quickest way to get started, because you definitely want to limit the amount of money you're taking from other people, whether that’s the bank or an investor.” [Nick, 5:08]

“So it’s a really scary fine line, of how certain are you that is going to work out? Even if you have credit for a great personal loan, or you have the business plan for the right business loan, if those first two years don't go your way, they don't really care. The second you miss a payment they are coming for you.” [Nick, 7:08]  

“So, you’ve really got to figure out, do I have enough capital to start this business and enough runway to get to cash flow positive?” [Nick, 11:42]

LINKS:  

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• How this industry is a “moving target” and adaptability is essential [1:28]

• The relatability Stephanie gained by being a studio owner turned consultant [3:04]

• 3 things to consider when crafting an intro offer [9:25]

• Why you need to realize that you can't control what type of buyer your client is or where they personally see the value [14:09]

• Add value: Your intro offer doesn’t have to be a price reduction [15:16]

• How can you use an intro offer as a win-back strategy [19:34]

• Why limited memberships often force a higher rate of consistency [23:04]

• Stephanie’s thoughts on free intro offers [24:14]

• Her tips for infusing creativity and trying some fun stuff with your offers [31:44]

Quotes:

“This industry seems to be shifting and changing so quickly, so I think adaptability should be the theme.” [Stephanie, 1:28] 

“It’s been really cool to kind of be in a situation to filter through a lot of the noise for my clients, to bring them the things that I feel like is something that they need to focus on in the time that they’re in.” [Stephanie, 4:55]   

“Having those conversations I think empowers the studio owner to be able to be in their studio more and be present. Let's all be honest; our goal is to create that community, because it's really easy to leave an exercise but it's really hard to leave a community.” [Stephanie, 5:39]

“Clarity [with offers] is very important, because people want to follow. You are the expert, what does it need to look like?” [Stephanie, 10:27]

LINKS:  

Stephanie’s Website, Instagram & LinkedIn

Episode 103 with Stephanie

Episode 138: How to Generate Your Financial Plan

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• What exactly a payment processor is and how it works within fitDEGREE [1:47]

• Rates to be considered during the integration of the payment processor [3:08]

• What to be aware of in terms of chargeback fees based on your business practices [5:09]

• Tips for initializing your application as a small business to set up Payably [8:38]

• Our thoughts on PCI compliance [9:25]

Quotes:

“In fitDEGREE’s situation, where we’re a software company that has many businesses underneath of us, we need to work with a payment processing partner to pull this relationship off.” Nick [2:21]

“It’s a seamless process inside fitDEGREE. After you fill out your merchant application when you sign up with us, you will probably forget there even is a payment processor, but it is not fitDEGREE processing those payments, it is a third-party integration that we just hired in the background.” [Nick, 2:53]

“When you’re working with fitDEGREE, you just have to worry about a transaction rate. If you’re not on fitDEGREE, check your merchant statement. There’s going to be monthly fees, annual fees, different fees for different cards being used; it’s a messy, messy world.” [Nick, 4:42]

LINKS:  

Payably 

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q 

What We Cover In This Episode:

• How Ali got started in the industry and what led her becoming a studio owner [2:45]

• Montse’s journey into the fitness world and the certifications and experiences she has had obtained since college [6:19]

• Nick’s thoughts on the lack of community and camaraderie in the gym, and how he wanted to build a community-based software as a result of this [8:29]

• What we like best about helping studio owners as part of the fitDEGREE team [17:02]

• The future of the competitions feature in fitDEGREE [20:29]

• An update on spot bookings [22:34]

• How you’ll be able to use the competitions feature to visualize your milestones and/or progress [25:27]

• The chat function on the app and how it will simplifying making friends at your studio [25:53]

LINKS:

fitDEGREE’s Business Portal

https://calendly.com/fitdegree/support 

[email protected]

https://www.instagram.com/fitdegree/

​​https://www.instagram.com/fitspot_guru/ 

https://www.instagram.com/whycoachingandconsulting/ 

https://www.fitdegree.com/blog 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJ5rK6zWPXjbxtUQx3ys9Q