Better Customer Management with Wodify

Thanks everybody for tuning in here today. I have some amazing people with Watify. Obviously, the name speaks for itself. I think you'd be crazy to not have already heard about Watify. But one of the things that we look at when it comes to helping gym owners stay in business and reaching profitability, there's a lot of there's a lot of how that's intertwined with how gym owners are using. their CRM software, because it— in our day and age, the way it works, you have to have the ability to track the things that these softwares track. So I wanted to bring in Wotify so they can give us some insights onto things. Um, so we're just going to start off right off the bat, and, uh, either one of you feel free to respond. Um, what are 3 to 5 tips that you guys have to help gym owners evaluate which CRM they should be using?

Yeah, I can, I can start, Brendan, if that's okay. Um, so I think, um, first thing that comes to mind is specifically what does their training and their support look like? Because I think when, when someone's thinking about switching softwares, it can definitely feel overwhelming and maybe like a little overcomplicated. But if the CRM that you're looking into has a solid onboarding process and they have ongoing education and training, I think it takes a lot of the pressure off. Um, kind of on a similar note, I think it's important, um, just to make sure that you're going to have access to customer support 7 days a week. I mean, I, I don't have to tell you that gyms aren't a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday business. So I think I want to be able to know that I can reach out to someone on the weekends, on the evening. I want to be able to reach out if I need help on a Saturday morning for a class, if I'm hosting a competition, I have questions about it. So I think that just support is super important.

On that, how do you know ahead of time if you haven't created the actual relationship yet or signed up? Is there a way, like some sort of technique where gym owners can figure out, oh, I feel like I'm going to get good support from the CRM?

Yeah, I think first talking— so during your initial conversations, maybe with sales, the sales team, just understanding what does that look like. Talking to other gym owners that are using that CRM. So asking for a couple of references up front so that you can reach out. I know that we do that. on our end. I'll have someone on our sales team reach out and say, hey, do we have someone in California who would be a, you know, a good person to this— for this potential lead to talk to? So I think talking to people, inquiring when you're speaking to the sales team are definitely ways that you can evaluate that before you actually dive in.

Yeah. It's actually, as you said that, I remembered we had met Probably 2 years ago with one of your competitors, and they just— the sales guy did not respond promptly to any of our questions as we like did. We walked through our demo and we, we tried it out ourselves, and like it was just silence. And ultimately we decided not to go with them because for the single reason that it took them so long to get back to us on the sales side.

Right.

We assumed they were going to then give us the same type of lackadaisical treatment once we signed up.

Oh yeah, I think first impressions are usually pretty spot on, so I probably would have done the same thing. Um, yeah, I think, um, yeah, uh, another thing that I— that came to mind is just understanding, um, like the depth of features. And I think again, like this is something that you'd have to dig into a little bit. So I've seen checklists for CRMs like, we offer this, check, we offer this, check. And it all looks like really compelling, but you really just have to dig into what those capabilities really are. So I'll just use an example on a feature that we have in Wodify. So as we see some of our gyms pivot a little bit, they start to use our appointments feature, which is a one-on-one, the ability to create and offer one-on-one services. But above and beyond that, there's so much more that you wouldn't necessarily know if you just saw that checkmark checked off on our website. Like, they can sync their Google Calendar, they can— leads can book an appointment with a provider based on the availability they set. So I think there's so much more to features that aren't necessarily— you wouldn't necessarily know about unless you ask. And again, I think that's, that's something that you have to do a little bit, you know, you got to do a little bit of work on your part when you're evaluating.

Totally. It's the same way as you're evaluating a member and they're evaluating you, right? Like, it's no different with a vendor relationship. I love that idea. Like, do the work. You have to do a little bit of work yourself and just flat out ask them, what are your features?

Right.

Give me a list. Walk me through it. Because I know sometimes when I experience a demo, I can get pretty bored real fast because I don't They seem to be showing me something. It's like, I don't— I'm not going to use that. Well, how do I use it for this? And so I guess one, having someone responsive enough to actually honor your request is also another probably important factor as well.

Sure. I think that just made me think of something because we do have— when someone requests a demo, we do ask for some upfront information so that someone on our sales team can do just You know, do a little bit of research before they get on the call. Every call is different, and I know that because I've listened to them. So, um, you know, they're, they're— it's based on what your needs are. So I'm not going to bring you through, or our sales team's not going to bring you through a feature that they know is not going to be something that is relevant to you guys. Um, so yeah, there's obviously there's work that has to be done on our end also. Good.

Yeah, just to add to Carla, there are 2 that came to mind for me, going back to the question of how to help gym owners evaluate which CRM they should be using. One is understanding what your processing fees and your processing payment processing structure is going to look like before going into that relationship. So we were talking a little bit about this before we started live, but a lot of people, a lot of gym owners are are, you know, look at the sticker price of the software. CRM software is a monthly fee, and Wodify, like, we're one of the more expensive ones, right? But our processing fees are as low as 2.6% plus $0.25 per transaction for like any type of card, no hidden fees and whatnot. And I've seen a lot of gym owners who don't even understand what their processing fees are because there's these weird monthly fees they get hit with. There's Batch pro— there's like all these, these weird fees. So one is like, get a really clear understanding of what your fee structure is going to look like, and then use that to factor into your total cost decision. Because we have a, we have a competitor, I won't name names, but they offer much cheaper software than us and charge more than 1% in additional fees on processing volume, which if you do the math, like if you're doing, say you're doing $25,000 a month and you're paying 1% more in processing fees, you might not factor that into your initial decision. That's $250 a month, which is more expensive than— software to start with. So really thinking about the true cost of your software, it's not that monthly fee you see on their website. It's that plus, you know, evaluate how many transactions you're doing, how much volume you're doing, and really dig into what the processing fee structure is going to look like.

Yeah.

And so I'll, I'll throw in here too. So I know for a fact ZenPlanner, for example, uses a company called PaySimple and they don't have very great rates. So I went out and reached out to my merchant processor guy who helped me with my tax firm and got me phenomenal rates. And I'm like, okay, well, I mean, are you a partner with ZenPlanner? Can we get this integrated? Oh yeah, sure, no problem. We can totally get that worked out so that we could get better rates. Because for us, you know, when we're fighting for profitability, even $100 extra a month in processing fees makes a big difference. If you're a gym owner and, you know, you're working in the business and that's the purpose of the business to support your lifestyle and you're not paying yourself, the extra $100 is super important, you know. So yeah, they got to pay attention to the rates. But anyway, so Zen Planner, for example, if you want to switch off of PaySimple, they, as of last week, because I have the email to prove it, you know, they said it's an additional $168 a month. If you want to use your rates and you go through a platform called Authorize.net, which plugs into ZenPlanner, but for some reason, I guess it causes, causes a whole lot of extra work for them to do that with their software, which is why they're somehow justifying the extra $14,000 or $1,400 a year in additional payroll processing fees. We definitely talked about this. So it's not just your rates, but, um, before you give me your other tip, Brendan, we always recommend gym owners look at how often they're batching as well. Because if you're literally— what that means is you're going in and you're saying, hey, I had this charge, or today I had this charge, I want it to be deposited into my account as soon as possible. That's considered a batch. And if I'm doing that every day, Merchant processing companies have a batch processing fee usually, and so if you can minimize that and say, okay, I'm going to— I'm just going to batch on Fridays, or I know some people can get to twice a month, you've reduced, you know, a $2 charge-ish 20 times during the year if you can reduce it. So that's always another thing we recommend gym owners look at when it comes to merchant processing.

Yeah, and there really isn't, you know, the sooner you start thinking about that, the better, because that is a cost that's going to scale with your business. So really, it's not, you know, if you're just starting out or you're opening a new gym, it's never too early to start thinking about that. Last tip on this point is just a quick one, which is there's, for ourselves and most of our competitors, there's so many features when you're looking at a CRM, so many bells and whistles, it does so much. So the recommendation I have is really evaluate against 2 criteria. How is that feature capability going to save you time or make you money? And if it doesn't check one of those boxes, but it just looks kind of cool or nice, take a second, second kind of a thought at how much you really need that. And so those are the 2 things: save you time or make you money, and using that as a filter when you're hearing about all the different features and all the different things they do.

Yeah, and I would say, I, I mean, I mentioned demos can be boring, but To Carla's point, like, you, you got to do the work. You really want to get your hands dirty. If, if the software company is giving you a chance to do the demo, get in there, look at all the features. Don't just do it at a surface level. And I'm gonna— I know I'm gonna ask you about reports here in a little bit because I think it's a really important feature. But, uh, you know, some, some programs— like, everyone's marketing, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you're marketing, I'm marketing. We want people to use our services. And as gym owners, we have to understand that that's what's going on. And so someone can say, I have 500 reports and it's the most user-friendly and you can do all these things. Okay, well, like, get your hands dirty. Because I know, like, again, we're currently with ZenPlanner. I can run a report with a few different factors. The report should give me the same result. I'm an accountant, so I understand the numbers and I can do the numbers in Excel, yet they don't. And so you really want to make sure that the reporting information that you're getting is super accurate as well.

Yeah.

But you're not going to know that unless you get your hands dirty in the demo. If they're giving you a chance to dig in, like, take the opportunity. It's a big— it's a big task to switch. especially the larger your client base is and, and all that good stuff with switching people over. Um, so anyway, so Carla, gym owners have a lot of CRM options, obviously. So how is Wodify different than the other options?

Uh, so I think we have a few different differentiators. I want to focus on Just a couple of things. One, I'm always going to go back to support only because I was on the support team for 3 years. So I understand, I understand how important it is. So I think supporting our customers, the way we do that is definitely a differentiator. We have support available 7 days a week. We have evening hours, we have weekend coverage, and it's also available not just to the gym owner, to the to their managers, to their coaches, and even to their athletes. We also understand that people like to receive their support in different ways. So I think that's where our differentiator is. So we typically do our calls over screen share, like over a Zoom, so that we can literally log into their account, share our screen, and walk them through whatever they have questions on. If they want to walk through a particular feature, they can share their screen with us and we can We like to give them, like you said, want them to dig in and make them feel empowered that they can kind of solve the issue or the question on their own. But we understand that not everybody wants to be face to face. So we, we have the ability to book calls with us. People like to get emails, and all of our email responses will include video walkthroughs. And again, we'll log into their system, we'll answer questions. It's not a generic answer. It's, it's an answer that is relative to the, to the, to their, to their environment. So I think that would probably be number one. So immediate support, we have it there. Ongoing support as well. Brendan and his team created a training portal we call Wodify Blueprint. It's basically where people can go, our admins, our coaches, and our managers. They can log in, they can do courses, they can watch a webinar. And again, they can pick topics and courses that are relevant to their business and then work through those courses at their own pace. So support, number one for me. Number 2, I think, are automation. So we have a lot of different automations in Wotify. We have automated emails that make it easier for owners to follow up with athletes and leads. But like, I think that's probably a fundamental necessity and a fundamental feature amongst all CRMs. One of the newer automations that we have is our WOD Marketplace. So do you know what that is?

No.

Okay, so we have a direct integration with 6 different programming options and see fit Hamplan, DECA Comp, those are just a few to name. So this integration will automatically publish their workouts into your system. So not only is it a time saver for our gym owners, but it pretty much guarantees that throughout the course of the day, any customer or client is going to get a consistent experience in the gym, right? Regardless if they come at 5 AM with coach Sandy, or if they come at 6 o'clock with Mark, the coaches have access to videos, notes, tips, scaling options, demonstrations, everything they need to run a class from start to finish. And it's all going to be in the software for them. And then I know there's more.

So yeah. One I would just add to that, Carla touched on a little bit, but I think this is probably the most consistent thing I've heard from all the gym owners I've visited or talked to that use Waterfy. And what they say is like, it really is an all-in-one. Like it actually does everything I need it to do. And so a lot of people who switch from some of our competitors were patching together 3 or 4 softwares. And even if they can't do like our appointment scheduling is not as robust as Acuity, which is another, like, that's all they do, but there's a huge benefit to having that all-in-one system. So if you compromise a little bit on like, okay, you can't customize this exact form field, but like when I hear people talk about why they stick with Wodify or what they really like about it compared to competitors, it's they pay one bill a month and they use it for everything. And so all their data is in the same system. Their coaches are in the same system. We have, like Carla said, WOD Marketplace. We have a heart rate training add-on. We have websites that are integrated. So just being able to have one company you interact with and one software to learn. Makes a huge difference. One password to remember, all that stuff.

Yeah, very good. So obviously you guys have a ton of features. Um, other CRMs have a ton of features. I know just being in the industry for a while now, I, I kind of feel like gym owners never fully utilize all the features in the CRM. Um, so like, uh, I mean, we were talking before we got on previously about How Watify has a bunch of reports that provide really important metrics, but some gym owners might not be aware of that, or they might not be using it the right way. So how, based on your guys' experience, how can a gym owner better leverage the CRM to run their business just more effectively?

I think just to quickly tee it off, I think the Just the fact that you're acknowledging that isn't necessarily intuitive to every gym owner. So I think it's important just to say that, like, as, as unfun as CRMs are compared to running classes and coaching, it will help you run a better business to use your CRM better. So I think just going in with that mindset of like, this isn't going to be fun, but the more you're using the features and the better you're leveraging it, the more successful your business is going to be. And we've designed things like Wodify Blueprint, which is a whole academy. You can get certified. You can book 15-minute sessions with our support team at any time. So we try to give you the resources to help you with that. But I'm glad that, you know, it's a good question. I think it's worth just pointing out, like, that is the case, like investing in your software acumen and using your CRM better is worth the investment. Um, so yeah, Carla, why don't you kick it? I think when we were thinking about this, there were 3 categories that came to mind specifically related, I think, for this conversation, we can talk about reporting and financial metrics. And for gym owners, the themes we came up with were using your CRM to have better financial clarity, financial efficiency, and making financial-based decisions. And so I'll let Carla start with financial clarity, but that's kind of how we thought about approaching this.

Okay.

Yeah. So we've recently revamped our reporting dashboards because we knew how important it was to have like clear information about the business. Like you said, you can have 500 reports in the system, but like, we need somewhere to go where I can get just like a general overview of how my business is performing. So we broke those down into 6 distinct categories. And one of those, I'll just touch on one of those, we call Business Health. So it's a report where you get like a high-level overview of how the business is doing. So there's a couple of metrics there that I thought would best answer this question. One metric is our revenue by revenue category dashboard. So I log in, I look at my business health dashboard, I see a revenue by revenue category report. Basically, that's going to tell me what are my top performers in revenue, where should I focus. Okay, membership, obviously is going to be a top performer, but are my— how are my one-on-one personal training? How's that doing? So it gives me a really quick and real-time actionable item to focus on. Another one that you'll find in there is the average length of time or length of engagement that a member has been active at the gym. And that's a really great metric because You could really move the needle or increase your earnings if you just focus on lengthening that number. So like think of all the savings you can have on marketing and advertising to new customers if you just focus on the retention of your current customers. So—

So true.

Yeah.

Honestly, true growth comes more from retaining your members than it does adding new members.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. And, and being able to track it that conveniently by clicking a button would be awesome.

Yeah. And then—

And we kind of, just to jump in, like, yeah, this, uh, these insights dashboards that Carla was talking about, this concept of financial clarity, a lot of that's new in the past 6 months and came from this idea that we, we do have, like you said, we have like 500 reports. Like, we give you all this data to dig through, but now what we've done is run some fairly basic, but we've run some calculations to give you meaningful Like key metrics. So we've taken data from our, like, maybe 3 or 4 reports that you would have to run and do the math yourself and said, we divided, you know, your members by how long— like, we've done some math and here's the number you need to focus on. So that's, that's helped gym owners, I think, get that clarity of, okay, now I understand the number I'm trying to move up into the right and can focus on not digging through 500 reports.

Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, you kind of touched on this before, but little things can add up. So financial efficiency, adjusting things like my auto bill settings so that a credit card isn't attempted night after night on a failed invoice. You— a lot of our gym owners don't know that they're incurring like failed payment fees, and they can seem insignificant. They could be anywhere from like $20 25 cents to 30 cents, but I have seen them rack up over time, like big time. So little things like that. Another good one is if we're talking about transaction fees, we were talking about transaction fees. Our integration in Wotify is with Stripe and the fees are significantly lower, I think across the board with all merchant processors. But if if an athlete were to add an ACH or a bank account as payment method, as opposed to adding their credit card, the benefit to you as a gym owner is you'd incur lower fees. Your fees for that transaction would be between 30% and 50% less. So— And they don't expire. And they don't expire, although Stripe will update your credit card if it does expire. So that's Oh, nice. A little tidbit from there. But, um, you can— in Wodify, you can prevent people from adding a credit card. I mean, that's one way to do it. But I actually spoke to a gym owner recently that was onboarding from another software. He said, uh, he was asking all of his members to add a bank account, um, as opposed to— and remove their credit card. And every person who did that got an entry to win a free pair of Nanos. And I thought that was a really cute idea. Um, to, to get people to re-add a bank account into the system. So, uh, little things like that. So, you know, if you're looking at 50% less on your fees, then say you have $1,000 in merchant fees a month. I mean, you can significantly reduce those fees by just asking your athletes to re-add a payment method and possibly win a—

That's a great idea. Um, if you're listening, like, yeah. Try that out because the ACH transaction cost is so much cheaper than the merchant, like the credit card processing.

So much cheaper.

Yeah, like he'll make back the money on those Nanos the first month.

Yeah, exactly.

And just gamifying it a little bit helps a lot.

Yeah, it's a no-brainer. And we also, we have an integration with QuickBooks, which is super helpful 'cause you can automatically sync QuickBooks Online account to reconcile bank statements, monitor any chargebacks that you get, refunds, taxes, your fees. It's all going to be done in one spot. So again, it's efficient. Little things like that, they don't just save you money, they save you time.

And monitoring chargebacks, it's actually a really good behavior to do, right? I mean, if you're not monitoring that, which I'm hoping everyone listening is, but if you're not, man, you gotta do that. Then you're gonna have members showing up and you don't even realize that they haven't paid completely. So yeah, absolutely, you gotta get that done.

Yeah, last point on the financial stuff is the kind of financial-based decision-making, making sure you're not just like looking at all this data in your CRM, but using it to run your business. So we, we, Wodify processes, well, we partner with 5,000 gyms around the world, so we have a lot of data. And one of the things we looked at recently was what percent of all the revenue processed through Wodify is like membership-based, and it's over 90%. So if you're looking at your dashboard and almost all your revenue is membership-based, ask yourself, like, you're probably doing stuff to attract new members, but there's untapped revenue streams there, whether it's retail or personal services. And so when we look at our most successful gyms, The split looks a little different there. Usually they're generating a significant portion of their revenue from stuff outside of just membership. So it might be more like 75 memberships, 20, 20% appointment services, and 5% retail or something like that. So, so again, it's not only just knowing where to have these reports or having access to data, but driving your business decisions based on that. And in Watify, like looking at our insights dashboard and One thing I like hearing customers do is like they use it as part of their team meetings. So let's say every month my coaches or my managers and I have a meeting, we pull up these 3 dashboards, and every month we're looking at the same things, we're looking at the same metrics, and you say, this was our goal, here's where we're at, what are the 5 things we're doing to move the needle on that? So just kind of closing the loop on all the things we talked about, it's, it's finding a way, whether you're using Lottiefy or something else, to weave all that data into your actual business operations and decision-making.

Yeah, great, great idea. Um, pull the reports that are conveniently available to you and review them frequently, especially with everybody. Sometimes gym owners, I feel like, hold things a little too close to the vest. When if you open it up to your coaches and let them see what's going on, they might, you know, be able to help you find some ways to improve that. You know, one of the things that you said, um, For gym owners, I just know from experience this aspect of looking at reports and metrics isn't always the fun, you know, the most fun thing, because it's not. But it's the same thing with working out, right? I mean, we see our members do it every day. We do it. Uh, like, I did not have fun during my workout today, but it'll be fun that I can do what I want to do physically because I'm healthy. It's the same with a business. If your business is healthy and running better, that's fun. Sometimes we have to do some of these things that may not be as fun to get to the— have the ability and opportunity to actually do the fun things. Um, so last question for you guys. I, you know, when I talk to gym owners and they've switched, um, CRMs, one of the common responses I hear from them is Yeah, I just, I was starting to feel like I was a number. Um, and so to me, what that means is that that company failed to have a human connection with the person and show them through their action that they actually care about their business. So I was wondering if you could, um, share with us what, what's your passion? What's Watify's passion? What keeps you guys up at night? Like, You know, give us that. What is that?

Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, it's a great question. And I think one of the things that, um, I can speak kind of personally and for our company that we find a lot of fulfillment in, um, like our, our company's stated purpose is to empower a fulfilled life. And we are, at the end of the day, an empowerment tool for gym owners. Like, we serve entrepreneurs who are building, who are putting, you know, their, their entire livelihood on the line. They're taking all the risks to start these businesses in the most like selfless category to like help people be healthier. So our passion is like enabling gym owners to be successful. We still, the number one reason we lose customers is they go out of business. And so our, what keeps us up at night is keeping our customers in business and helping them build successful businesses. And there's a very human element to that. And I'll tell one quick story about why it's like so ingrained in our DNA. We, when we released the feature, the WOD marketplace feature Carla mentioned, it saves gym owners anywhere between 5 and 10 hours a week. And I called one of our first customers and I was like, hey, can we get a testimonial from you? And she started, she broke down and started crying on the phone because she was like, I can spend my Sundays with my kids again. And I was like, whoa, that's, that's something that I wasn't expecting. Um, so I think what keeps us, and we're a small team, you know, some people think Wodify, and I don't know, maybe you think we're way bigger than we are. We have about 40, 40 people in an office in Center City, Philadelphia. Like, We're not owned by a big private equity company. We want to just help gym owners be successful.

Yeah, very cool.

Yeah. Carla, what's your answer?

Yeah, you're going to make a follow-up to that? I think that was it. So yeah, I mean, I agree with Brendan. I think for me, because I have a little bit more— interaction with our customers from a customer support, you know, background. Just like, I really enjoy talking to them. You know, we really love getting face time. That's one of the reasons why we implemented, you know, Zooms or cameras. I remember when our CEO walked in and was like, everyone's going to have a camera on their monitor. And I was like, why? No. But now, you know, I get it. So I think that that really helps. to see the person behind the email or the phone, to really, you know, understand the business, have conversations with our customers. I mean, we invite them to book calls with us any time. But for me, what keeps me up at night, you know, I love being able— one of the most fun, I think, things is just like being able to talk to a gym owner who's kind of like ingrained in the way they run their business. They have like a particular way of doing things. They actually, you know, don't necessarily care to, to, to kind of explore the features in Wadify. So just being able to show them a feature that they were not— they were never using that would significantly change the way they do their day-to-day and their current processes, that's just like one of the best things, um, from my perspective.

Very good. I, I appreciate that. I know it's a bit of a vulnerable question because it's Um, you know, software, you oftentimes we interact with, I mean, we all interact with software every day across the board, whatever software it may be, Windows, Microsoft products, Adobe, all that stuff. And so sometimes it's easy to think of a relationship with the CRM company as pretty cold. Um, but I, I love that you guys actually have passion. You're thinking about the owners. That's what you enjoy doing. That's why you're at the company that you're at. So again, hey, thanks, thanks for your time today, guys. Brandon, if people want to reach out to you, do you want—

how do you want them to do that? Reach out to us. If you're, if you're a gym owner interested in learning more about Wodify, wodify.com, and just book a demo. That's the easiest way for us to show you our software and talk about all the stuff we talked through. But My email is brendan@wodify.com. Shoot me an email. I'm more than happy to talk to anyone.

Perfect. And shameless plug for me, guys, Profit First for Microgyms. It's a pretty cool book, probably a really good $20 investment. You'll get a return on it, I promise. Hey, thanks for your time, both of you, Carla, Brendan. And for you guys, remember, profit is a choice. Choose to be profitable. All right, we'll see you.

Thanks. Thanks for having us, John.