S1 Ep 6: How To Pandemic Proof Your Fitness Business
In this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up Show, host Richard Toutounji and co‑host Ev discuss practical ways fitness‑business owners can safeguard their operations against pandemic‑style disruptions. They argue that the core of pandemic‑proofing lies in strong, consistent leadership and a community‑first mindset. The conversation outlines four pillars: (1) decisive, heart‑centered leadership; (2) showing up every day—whether via texts, Facebook Live, Zoom, or personal calls—to stay top‑of‑mind; (3) "filling the piggy bank" by continuously delivering value, attention, and kindness, which builds a reserve of goodwill that converts into future sales; and (4) nurturing a tight‑knit community that becomes the primary source of member retention and acquisition. Tactical examples include personalized texts, daily quotes, live video sessions, postcards, and leveraging local networks. The hosts also stress the importance of owner self‑care—rest, journaling, meditation, and delegating work—to sustain the energy needed for daily leadership. Real‑world outcomes are cited: some clients have maintained or even grown membership during lockdowns, while others have limited losses to 10‑30%. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to subscribe, review, and apply these principles to keep their fitness businesses resilient.
Chapters
Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Show. I'm Richard Turtungi, and today we tell you all things marketing, all things muscle up. And today we're gonna have a quick short segment. And we call this the Marketing Muscle-Up Reps. I'm joined here with Ev. How are you?
I'm great. How are you, Rich?
Good, very good. And, um, today we're going to get straight into the topics of a quick question and a quick answer when it comes to basically muscling up a fitness owner's marketing.
Yeah, this is going to be the reps that you have to put in to build your marketing. So I think it'd be a good place to start given that the times that we're in is talking about, and we've been talking about this for the last maybe 18 months now with our ninjas, is how to kind of pandemic-proof your business and what that takes and And really, you know, hopefully we're not going to go through many pandemics in our life, but there's certainly ups and downs and crises that do happen in business. So how do we kind of get through those times?
All right. So how do we get through pandemic-proofing your business? As you said, you know, is there going to be another pandemic like this? Let's hope no, but, you know, who knows what's around the corner. We've spent a lot of time talking about this subject and I think going back probably 18, 19 months ago when this first hit, I remember very, very clear where I was at. I was in New Zealand and I was about to get a jump on a plane and people were talking about you have to wear masks and the world's going to end, etc., etc. And, you know, I landed at the airport and I was like, oh my gosh, it is, the world's ending, there's nobody here. And anyway, so throughout this whole period of the pandemic, obviously the fitness industry has been heavily impacted. like a lot of industries, you know, closing gyms and so forth. And Melbourne's up to lockdown 6, extended lockdown 6, and Sydney's currently in lockdown and New Zealand's in lockdown. And we're all being in our lockdowns and very tight restrictions of how many people can fit into a class and a studio and all those kinds of things. And it's been a really big challenge for a lot of people. And I first of all want to sort of say that We have such a resilient industry. We have such resilient fitness business operators. And if you're still here today, it means you went into business for the right reason. So that's point one. If you're here today, it means you're in the business for the right reasons. You're in to serve, you're in to give. I know, very, very— we're a very heart-centered If you haven't heard that before, like a heart-centered industry and a business where we want to give, give, give, give, and that's what we do. And so I think to answer this question, this comes from the multitude of the hundreds of conversations deep inside our clients' businesses and what they're going through and we're going through and the conversations of what's happening here and overseas and seeing behind the walls of other businesses through, you know, large organizations like Fitness Australia and seeing what everybody's doing to cap load and the conversations. And I think there's a few things that can pandemic-proof your fitness business at any time. These are the things that we've realized. Number 1, number 1, leadership is important to pandemic-proof your fitness business. A good leader is what we need in this time. I think it's fair to say that a lot of us are sick of the political leaders at the moment. Let's not go there.
Let's not.
And so I think there's a lot of poor leadership decisions happening around the country and around the world. If we love or hate the a lot of disagreements here. It means also too that the non, I guess, one leader leading the country, we have a lot of split now, premiers and states, that's caused a lot of confusion. It's also caused a lot of splitting up communities. It's caused a lot of splitting up families. And so what we have to do is we have to be strong leaders inside our community. Because we actually have a really good community of fitness professionals. You know, when you look at an environment, a local area, I just moved to a local region here in Queensland, a very small country town. You know, you've got your butcher, your baker, you've got your doctor, your carpet maker, I know, and then you've got a gym and a fitness center, right? And then you might have a sporting ground or an RSL, and your big players are your RSLs. your local sporting teams, your gyms, your health clubs. You know, people go to gyms and health clubs 2, 3 times a week when they may go, and they go, they stay there for an hour, they have friends, they work out. It's different to going into a butcher and saying, hey, and then you're leaving. It's different to going into a, you know, the pharmacy and saying, hey, thanks so much. Yes, that's community. But we are in a position to lead our tribe, our crew, our team, whatever we call them, to give them hope, to give them inspiration, to give them excitement, to give them a way through, to show them the better way to think when everything's up against them. And that's exactly what we do with our tribe of ninjas. Very early on in the piece, when I came back from New Zealand, I remember I got on a call, a Zoom call straight away, and I showed a way out and I showed a way through, most importantly, to hold your members and retain your members and what to say to your members because there's no rulebook in this at all. It's not. Anybody says they have a rule book is, is very arrogant in this because there is no rule book. And, and the only item that we can go off is what's worked in the past and what works through disruptions in time, what works in wins, in sporting wins, in worldwide wins. And it's always about ensuring that you have a leader that is leading And doing a very good job in this time. And, and as a leader, you sometimes don't know the way through. You don't know what to say. But this is the thing, you've got to turn up daily.
Yep.
That's probably point 2. Leadership number 2 is turn up daily. Turn up daily. And it's hard to turn up when you don't know what to say. It's hard to turn up to say, oh well, I don't know, we're gonna be out of this. I don't know when you can come back to the studio. I don't know when you come back to the gym. But there's other things that you can lead up. You can lead up and put a quote out. You can lead up, you can, you can, you know, lead the way and you can lead up, stand up, sorry, turn up every day and just turn up and say, how are you? You can text your clients and say, I just want to check in with you to see how you're feeling in this time. I'm here for you. It's turning up by doing a Facebook Live in maybe your members Facebook community group. It's turning up daily and having a conversation with as most people you can one-on-one or in a group in this time. It's turning up daily and giving them possibly some, something to do outside watching the news.
Yeah.
Updates every day. And it doesn't have to be much. It doesn't have to cost anything. But turning up is the key. And, and that goes kind of on my third point here, which is you've got to understand in this time when you feel that turning up is not going to solve the answer or leading is not going to solve the answer, what you're doing, you're actually filling up your pity bank. And when I should say not solving the answer to open up or not solving the answer to get all my clients paying me money again, and as a gym you might have zero revenue in But you're filling up your piggy bank, meaning that everything that every time you connect to a client, part of your community, is that they may not come back to you and may not jump onto your Zoom sessions if you're doing those or if you're not doing those. But what they are doing is it's filling your piggy bank in awareness, in attention, in caring, in gratitude, in kindness. And then so once they do decide that they're ready to do something, you'll be the first they go to. Because locking down a fitness facility, a gym for a long period of time, yeah, you're going to have your raving fans that, that are doing something, going out and run and walking. But the majority of people, we know the majority of people aren't at fitness centers are basically going to do nothing. Yep. And they're going to do what they can officially do, and, and that's going to the bottle-o, possibly. That's watching the news, possibly. That's buying into the fear, possibly. And so we need to, you know, as a business operator, go, okay, well, I might not be making a client here, I might not be converting, but what we are doing— we are, we are, we're converting through filling our PE bank up through all those items that I just explained. And the 4th thing and the final thing I want to refocus on here is community. And all the points I just spoke about is community. However, community is the key to retain your members. Community is the key to bringing new members. So serving your community like you've never served them before in the history of your community. Because your community, they need help. And are they gonna— where are they gonna get the help from? Where would they get it from? They're gonna go get it from their coffee shop? Are they gonna get it from the butcher? Are they gonna get it from the Coles checkout person when they go there? Are they gonna get it from when they go and watch the news at 11 o'clock, the updates? Are they gonna get it with the slagging and the disagreements and the comments and the and all that what's happening around their space? Are they going to get it from, you know, their kids homeschooling? No.
No.
They're going to get it from you being the leader, from you ensuring that they're part of your community. So if you've got a community and you've spent years building up this community, start working the community, start caring for community, and ensure that the game to retain clients, the game to pandemic-proof your business anytime is community. And that's been proven, by the way. That's been proven. Yeah. We have 18, 19, 20 months now of history, of records. And all our clients that have been doing these 4 points well have done so because they've turned up, they've led the community, they've filled their piggy bank, they've been great leaders. And what we have now is we have business operators that are actually, in fact, in some situations growing their members. We've got one, one example we just spoke to last week, one of our clients, Kate. She's growing her members. Yeah. In this time, our other clients have only lost 10%, 20%, 30%, holding steady. And you would think that this time, you know, from what we've been asked to do, which is close our doors,
Yeah.
Isn't that like the worst thing you could ever do in the history of a business is close your doors? Yet get this, we're still serving our community and we're still winning in this space. And in fact, I just spoke to one of our ninjas yesterday and they're opening, they want to open up a new studio ready to go once we're out of this. And that's self-belief. That's not getting knocked down. And this is— these are big box gyms that have got big rents to pay, and they're getting through and they're pushing through because their community is backing them. And so I think that's the answer to pandemic-proof your fitness business.
I think so. I think there's some great points there. And I think, um, uh, I, I think that, uh, you know, that, that one about showing up every day, it's like you've gotta— even when you don't feel like it, you You're the, you're the leader, you're the business owner, you've got to lead your community. So I think there's some great points in there for people right now.
Yeah. And, and just the tactical, you know, some tactical things you can do with that. I think it honestly just comes down to the simple things. We talk about text, texting, we're talking about showing up on a Facebook Live, showing up on a Zoom, um, we're talking about, um, putting some quotes out.
Yeah,
who it matters. We're talking about personally texting someone. We're talking about, um, doing more than you usually would. We're talking about getting the community together if they're not involved. If they're not coming to Zooms, well, find a place that you can communicate with them on. Um, the world's gone— the world is flat. And, um, you know, if someone's Zoomed out, well, give them a call.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, I even spoke to one of our clients the other day. They're sending postcards out to people who are not on Zooms, and I think that's okay. I think it's okay for people to say, I'm a bit Zoomed out today, I don't want to, because they've been on Zoom for a long time. I think you just have to find other ways to connect with them and keep them part of the community.
Yeah. And I think the last thing I do want to add on this is if you personally, fitness professionals or business owners listening to this, and you're struggling to actually turn up personally yourself, it does come down to looking after yourself. And I've said this as well before in the past, is that, you know, if you need to take an extra day off, take an extra day off. If you need to share the workload on Zoom, find a fitness colleague, and we do that and share the workload. There's a lot of, there's a lot of help that you can get on here. So it's about making sure you're journaling, you're meditating, you're getting up, you're doing your personal thing. Yeah. Then you can show— I always, my analogy every day, you know, in a, in a pandemic or a non-pandemic is is that you must realize that every day you've got to like literally put your bulletproof vest on in the mornings and know that something in business is probably not going to go your way. But if we think that every problem is going to arise and just cause us to have a heartache and heartburn and get really angry and annoyed, you're not going to last very long. And especially now, so much uncertainty going around, with so much emotions and the energy and very heavy, very heavy. So you've got to also look after yourself. It's like the old analogy, you get on the plane. Who's been on those for a while? Yeah. And they say, put your mask on before you put your kid's mask on and think, why would I do that for? I want to save my kid. But you're not going to save anybody if you don't save yourself personally. And then you can save everybody else around you. You're going to be the light for everybody else around you. So be the light in this time, and that's how you pandemic-proof your fitness business.
Absolutely.
Guys, if you've enjoyed this episode, simply subscribe and turn the notifications tab on, on whatever platform that you'd prefer to get these podcast episodes from. And if you have loved this, go to the review section, leave us a review. It would mean the world to me And because that's going to get this message out to the people that need it and the people need to hear it. So until next time, until tomorrow, have an amazing day.
