Ep4: How To Have a 90%+ Retention Rate

Welcome to the show, episode four. This is the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. So I'm your host. My name is Matt Dart. I'm a PT still in the industry and I also mentor or do some business coaching for the personal trainers all across Australia and also worldwide as well. So first off, I will have an announcement soon, in the coming, coming weeks about, about my gym. So I'm in my gym currently, if you're watching the actual video. I'm in my gym currently. A couple of changes happening for the gym, which I'll go into a bit more in detail later on. But I'm getting bombarded with messages about my gym. But yeah, I'll have an announcement for you guys about that in the coming episodes. I will do a, a proper description of what's happening because there'll be, there'll be a few changes. But anyway, we're going to talk about retention today. So, you know, I've been a PC for about, this is my fourth year being a PT and I've still got clients that have trained with me from the start. Like, people, you know, generally come and go, but how do you actually have a high retention rate? Because you don't want to be doing sales and marketing forever, like, unless you really enjoy it. Like I do. I really enjoy it. But for most people, they don't want to be doing sales and marketing every single week, day in or not, day in, day out, week after week after week, for years and years to come. So how do you actually do that? So I'm going to break it down into four little secrets that I'm going to cover today to ensure you have a retention of over 90%, which means you have a churn rate of or under 10%. So churn means basically they, that they've left and you know, they've, they've stopped the service for whatever reason. So let's get stuck in. And also if, if you, if you are enjoying these podcast episodes, I'd love some feedback. I've got some really good feedback so far in the episodes, especially the one around my story. So if you haven't watched that, how I went from 0 to 15,000 per week in under two years, that is full of golden nuggets. So if you do like it, share with a friend, make sure you follow, follow podcast on whatever platform you're listening to it on. And let's get stuck in. So first thing, to have a 90% retention, you need to forecast client results. So when they're starting with you, you're obviously talking about Their goals. Right. So generally people are only thinking, you know, three to six months in advance. So how am I getting people to stay with me for, you know, two, three, four years plus because I'm reforecasting their goals, reassessing where they're at and making a new plan. Let's say someone wants to lose 10 kilos. You can lose 10 kilos in like four to six months. But what are you doing after that? You better reassess where they're at and make new goals. There's always something else to work on. So after they've hit the 10 kilos, what about their strength training? Maybe they actually fell in love with the strength process and they want to get super strong. So you change everything. Change the macros, change the calories, change the training. Easier said than done. So when, when you forecast, this is what I mean. So for me, and what I suggest is I do what I call a goal setting and reassessment session every four to six weeks. The reason why is because I just want to make sure that the client knows where they're at in their journey to getting their result and then reassessing their new, their new long term goal. So for example, someone comes to you and they, they want to lose. Let's, let's do 20 kilos. So it's a long term goal. So signed up, they're doing, you know, two sessions a week or whatever. After their first four to six weeks, I'm reassessing where they're at. So I redo their fitness test, I redo their measurements, do a body scan as well, see exactly where they're at, reassess the progress. Cool. So John, we've seen here, you've, you've lost two kilos in the first month, which is awesome. So two kilos of body fat, which is awesome. Your strength is maintained, which is amazing. Any measurements have gone down by X, Y, Z. Well done. Congratulations. So that puts us on track. So your 20 kilo weight loss goal, originally we had it, we wanted to achieve it in 12 months, which is awesome, which means we're on track. So in 11 months time we're just going to keep doing what we're doing and we'll achieve that result. Happy days. Tick. Well done. Next month comes along, we lose five kilos this month. John, you're absolutely crushing it. Well done. Seven kilos down. So 13 to go. So this is going to bring forward our goal. We're going to hit this in like, I don't know, eight, nine months, which is awesome. But Your, your strength is improving dramatically as well. So what we might do, let's set some strength goals. You're at a 50 kilo bench press at the moment. Let's aim to get to 100 kilo bench press in the next, you know, 12 to 24 months. I give adapted and then what we're going to do, we're actually going to break that down into some medium term and short term goals as well. So in the next two years we want to get to 100 kilo bench press. So which means in the next 12 months we want to get to about 50, we want to get to a 75 kilo bench press in the next 12 months. So let's reassess where we're at next month and we'll, we'll make changes as required. You keep doing this every single month. They've always got something to work on. What about their fitness level? And then eventually you might find that people train with you just to catch up with you, which I'll get into in a second. I've got a couple of clients that don't care at all about their health and fitness anymore, like within reason. Like they obviously want to stay fit and whatnot, but there's no fitness goal anymore. They just come and catch up with me every week, which is great. I've got clients that, yeah, we're just talking about my daughter the whole time, which is awesome. It's good to have those relationships. Good little segue here. The second, second one is relationships. You need to be able to build relationships with your clients that go past just training them, talk about their personal stuff, relate to them, you open up to them. What's going on in your world, Talk about your family, talk about what you're doing outside of pt. Have you got a side hustle going on? You know, people want you to win. What else are you doing in your world? I play cricket. So some of my clients ask me about cricket every week. It's funny because it kind of puts a bit of pressure on me to perform. So I go back onto my clients next week and say, hey look, I got a 50 or I got 100. I'm always super excited if I score runs or if I take any wickets at cricket. So I play most weekends. I'm always excited to go to their session, be like, hey Look, I got 50 runs on the weekend. And they're so excited. It's, it's the little things in life, but you know what I mean, like whatever, whatever happened on the weekend, if you're if you're a new relationship, you talk about what's happening in the relationship. Hey, this is what I'm struggling with. Oh, what do you think about this? They said this to me and I want to respond like this, but I don't know what they're going to say. Better relationship, more if you're. I don't know, talk about what you're doing on the weekend, relate to your clients. I'm pretty lucky. I've got. I've got clients anywhere from like, 18 up to 65. I've got a variety of clients, so it's always, it's always good just to, yeah, have a bit of banter as well. I love a bit of banter in my sessions, which helps build relationships with me as well. I love a bit of bit of banter, a bit of joking around, a few dad jokes here and there. Now it's good fun. But anyway, relationships, you can't just be solely focused on, you know, health and fitness because people go in and out of motivation. They want to talk about other things. They don't just want to talk about health and fitness. So that's my second point. Number three is similar to forecasting, but it's tracking results, making sure your clients actually understand where they're at in the process of getting to their goal. So if you're not tracking results, how do you. How are you meant to know they're on track and how are they meant to know they're looking at themselves every single day and they're not seeing any changes. Say that's the whole point of the goal setting and reassessment session. They might not see this, the change, but after four weeks, they've improved their bench press by 5 kilos, 10 kilos, they've lost 1 kilo, 2 kilos you've done after photos, so they can see the difference. You say, look, you've lost four centimeters off your chest or off your stomach in like two months. And like, oh, I didn't even realize. So track results for you as well. So you know, you're actually getting results so you can adjust things if required, but for them, they ultimately came to you to get a result, so make sure you deliver on that result. People often leave because they're not getting results. It's not so much because they don't like you, that is, they paid you to get a result and if you're not, you're not getting them the result, then, yeah, it's kind of pointless then paying you. That makes sense. So you're forecasting relationships and then tracking results. The last thing is community events. People will stay with you longer if there is a community aspect to it. So I do, I do like some semi private clients as well, which is like small group and a lot of the time they'll never leave because they love the community aspect. They've made friends with the other people, they relate to the other people as well. They're all on a similar journey but community events outside of the gym as well. Like I used to do this once a month where we used to, you know, do a hike or we went, we got went out to breakfast or. Yeah, easier said than done because obviously if you're doing one on one sessions, everyone's at different times. But if you're doing like group stuff then you can easily just go out for breakfast after training session or you go to a beach, do a beach workout, invite everyone to the beach workout, go for breakfast afterwards. You don't necessarily have to do it like once a month, but at least once a quarter every three months. And then Christmas party, always have a Christmas party, get all your clients together, celebrate the wins. It's not meant to be like a boozy weekend or a boozy night. Feel free to have some drink. It's all about balance. You got to enjoy yourself but celebrate the wins. Even give out, give out some awards. I've given out awards before and people strive for that stuff. People strive for the awards, the recognition. Hey, congratulations to Julie. She's done 100 PT sessions with me. Here's your certificate. I'm going to give you a shirt. Like I've got, I've got Magnum Fitness, Singlets, shirts, etc, have a community that will then attract other people to join your community, to become friends with other people. I was listening to another podcast actually about, I did a study, I can't remember the figures but essentially the single most important thing for people on their, on their deathbed is the relationships that they've had over time. So people want, relationships, want friendships. So people, people strive to, you know, you don't obviously want to be lonely. You want, you want friends, you want relationships, communities that you can go to for support, to lean on. Future life gets hard and you're same with your PT sessions. The PT sessions are hard, but people's lives are hard as well. Like you might have some tough times that you want to just talk about and your clients will help you through it. I've had that heaps of times. Like when I got kicked out of Anytime Fitness. All my clients were there for me. Like I talked about it openly with my clients. Hey, this is what's happening. Feeling a bit crappy. I've been crying all weekend and they'll be like, oh, come out for, come out and let's play some golf or something, you know, whatever it is. But be sure you care about your clients level. They'll. They'll take care of you in return. So, short episode today. I'm not sure how long we've been going for, but I'll wrap it up and just summarize. So this is how you're going to have 90 plus retention. Forecast the results, which, which is goal setting and reassessments. Personally, I do it every four to six weeks. Relationships. Become friends with your clients. Track your results so people know where they're at on their journey and if they're actually getting results. So tangible progress, measurements, fitness testing, body scans, you know, scale, weight, and community events. Make sure you have community events at a bare minimum. I would probably say every quarter, so every three months. Because you should like, you should like hanging out with your clients as well. But I'll leave it there. If you haven't already, share this with a friend and I'll see you in the next podcast episode.