How to Build a Loyal Fitness Community (Without Fake Engagement)

The difference between a struggling fitness studio and a thriving community often comes down to one critical factor: authentic engagement. When you focus solely on bringing new members through the door without building genuine connections, you're setting yourself up for high turnover and limited growth.

This episode dives deep into transforming transactional relationships into meaningful member experiences that dramatically boost retention. We explore practical, actionable strategies you can implement immediately - from personalized daily interactions that go beyond the dreaded "how's your day going" small talk to developing a compelling studio narrative that resonates with your ideal members. You'll discover why studies show facilities with authentic communication enjoy up to 50% higher membership retention rates.

For studio owners caught in the growth plateau (especially those approaching the half-million to million-dollar mark), we break down exactly how to articulate your values and vision in ways that naturally attract members who share your mindset. We examine the delicate balance between leveraging technology for efficiency while maintaining the human touch that builds community loyalty. The insights shared will help you identify and eliminate low-value activities that drain resources without contributing to member advocacy.

Ready to transform casual attendees into passionate advocates who drive organic growth through word-of-mouth? This episode provides the roadmap for creating an ecosystem where authentic connections flourish. Download our opportunities worksheet, implement these strategies consistently, and watch as your studio community transforms from a business transaction into a thriving, supportive environment members can't wait to tell others about. Subscribe for more insights on building sustainable studio growth through authentic leadership and community engagement.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Transactional Trap
• 2:50 ] Personal Recognition and Storytelling
• 4:57 ] Turning Casual Members into Advocates
• 6:34 ] The 50% Retention Advantage
• 7:25 ] Final Thoughts and Community Request

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

many studio owners, especially at the beginning of a new location, you kind of get to a point where you really focus on that transactional side of things let's just bring members in really pushes towards making it very hard for you to maintain that level of engagement to your members. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fidget Grit cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today we're going to talk about authentic communication and engagement and how you can really start to build a much more loyal fan base as you continue to grow your studios. You know we're going to go through practical ways you can start authentically engaging and interacting with your members daily. We're going to talk about personal recognition and we're also going to kind of go into turning some of your casual members into much more long time and lifetime advocates for your studio. As you know, I'm really big on the advocacy, so let's really dive into it.

Speaker 0: 0:51

Many studio owners really start to achieve some of that initial visibility. You may have been there. You may have seen that within your studio environment, especially at the beginning of a new location or the beginning of your first location, you kind of get to a point where you really focus on that transactional side of things. Let's just bring members in, let's just kind of push forward with what we have and, you know, really pushes towards making it very hard for you to maintain that, really that level of engagement to your members. And without any of that sort of authentic interaction with them, clients will start to feel disconnected and you'll start to limit some of that long term growth, not just for your retention and the growth of the studio, but the relationships you're building and the ability to have your members become your advocates for what you're doing. You know, early on in most studios and the environment and with everything we've seen with every studio that we've worked with, we've kind of come up with a pattern of when these certain stages and pain points arise, engagement tends to be very transactional for most of these studio owners. Right, it's not really authentic. Either the studio owner has a hard time focusing on any sort of digital marketing. They haven't really found out what their values are and really come up with something that really works for what they're trying to accomplish, or they're not really trying to foster any real connection yet. Maybe they're not just that, maybe they're not there yet, maybe they're a silent investor, who knows? But that's really what kind of happens at the very beginning stages of most studios or not just studios, but you know multiple locations where you may have general managers running them right Retention rate starts to improve drastically once you start to build these deeper connections.

Speaker 0: 2:38

Now I want to really dive in here and go through these three steps. But last week we really talked about how you can start to clarify your expertise, which I think really resonates with this, because it will help you understand how to really create those opportunities for yourself. So if you haven't already, go up here, click the link, download our worksheet, watch the video, get an understanding of how you can really lay some of these opportunities in place and not just rely on luck. And I think that same worksheet will really help you out today as you continue to develop and try to turn lower attention to higher attention on a much more personal level, how to get deeper connections with your members. So, diving in, let's really talk about practical ways to authentically engage and interact with your members daily. Now, a lot of you may already do this. You may use a system, you may use a product or a gym management software to really boost some of those daily engagements and those weekly or monthly type interactions. So this isn't something that I would recommend you doing on a digital play. This isn't an email notification. This isn't a sending out a text message to every single year members daily. It's more of how do you find authentic ways to engage with them internally while you're at your facility.

Speaker 0: 4:03

Now, if you take that worksheet on opportunity versus luck, you could kind of look at it in a way of how do you set that first real milestone for yourself to start changing some of this perspective right? So I would first and foremost write down, you know, something along the lines of how do we really, as a studio, how do we really start to engage more authentically with our audience? More authentically with our audience? It may be something as simple as hey, every time a member comes in, I wanna work with the team to come up with a resolution to say hi or to offer them something of compliment, or just the way they introduce. When somebody comes in and you know you may already be doing this you may already say hi at the door or say this and that, but it may be something even deeper.

Speaker 0: 4:49

If you have this system online, it may be as simple enough as that every time they log in not log in, but scan their membership to come in for the day their situation comes up. You may have some notes on the board and you may have to ask them a personal question hey, how's that family? How's your family doing? I know you had that big trips plan for last week or something like that. Leave more personal notes and have smaller communications. Don't make it a fancy 10 hour. You know conversation, but do something to show that you have interest in them. I mean, I cringe every time someone asked me how is your day going, because I know if I said bad they wouldn't care and as a customer, I do have more important things to do than to do small talk. But starting to build a connection with your members is something that you have an advantage because they're there daily or every other day, and so setting up something that you can do on your list of hey, how do I start having better conversations with my team and members? Maybe your goal is hey, I'm going to go out myself every single day and I'm going to talk to, I'm going to have a small conversation with a member just one member a day and as you start building that stuff up, as we said in the past. Your environment and your luck is going to shift and change and you're going to start getting yourself to a point where you're going to have better communication, better relationships, and then you can start pushing that kind of responsibility on to your team members.

Speaker 0: 6:12

Again, use the sheet. You can download it below or watch the video going over that opportunities versus luck sheet. Now, this is a big one, you know, using personal recognition and storytelling to strengthen client loyalty. We are, you know, a branding firm. We really dive heavy on experiences and helping studios, you know, make it to that next level by making branding systems. And part of that is your vision, your mission and your values right, those at the very beginning of, if you're creating a brand identity, those don't really need to partake. But if you're hitting somewhere between the, I'd say, half a million mark, you're finally hitting that half a million mark, you're trying to get it to a million and you either want to expand or you want to eventually sell. You're going to have to create a whole bunch of extra systems that don't necessarily rely on just ops, for instance brand messaging, vision. How are these things going to partake into the growth of client loyalty?

Speaker 0: 7:05

And so number two here is to really sit down and figure out your story. Put that on your opportunities versus luck list. Put your story down, start to create a story, start to create some of your values, and then what you can kind of do is you can kind of places you can go, what are the types of places you value, those that you can partake in those kinds of scenarios? For those value and I'm not saying that you're going to do that forever, but what I'm saying is it's going to help you bring out these values, to start understanding how to develop these values and same with the vision you may have to go, and you may have to go to different types of events, have maybe a coffee group with some other studio owners, or just do something a little bit different that can guide you towards that direction of coming up with your unique story, and that you can practice. Does that mean you have to jump up on the TEDx stage, like I did, or do any sort of you know public speaking opportunities? If you want to, yes, but I wouldn't necessarily utilize that as a way for you to start understanding your personal recognition and storytelling. There's many a path you can go on this.

Speaker 0: 8:09

And lastly here, how do you start to turn those casual members into lifelong advocates for your studios much more authentically? How do you engage with them more, move away from that transactional type environment and move much more to that advocacy type situation? You know, I would say, if you're in that middle ground, that pain point of plateauing, and you're trying to grow, but you kind of get stuck around the same number over and over and over again, you need to start looking at ways you can cut out. I would honestly find ways you can start cutting out some of that low fat. So I would kind of say, what is your digital marketing side? How does that contribute to your advocacy side?

Speaker 0: 8:49

You know I talk a lot about Google reviews, for instance. How are you utilizing your, your review system much more effectively and personally? You know? You know there's a couple of platforms that we utilize to help this engagement better, but I think most studios are so caught up in the AI game that they don't understand the importance of community and experience and what people like me, how we feel when we come to the gym or a studio and we are building relationships, and so I would take a look through a lot of your messaging. How do you intertwine some of that more personalization in there. A great example of that is I'd possibly move away from having an AI response reply, that is, and move much more toward a personal. You know, thanks for coming in, thanks for working with Amy. You know I really appreciate your review here. Try to find some of those touch points and add a little bit of personalization to it.

Speaker 0: 9:43

You, as a business owner people want to hear this. People want to hear how the business is growing. They want to hear how your operations is changing and evolving. Remember, you, as an owner, are the personal brand. That doesn't mean you have to go on stage. That doesn't mean you're just going to promote everything yourself online. It just means that you are starting to build an ecosystem of people that have very similar values, very similar mindset as you when it comes to evolving your studio. So creating content around your personality, your voice, is just going to show how much you care for your audience, which will eventually start to weed out the people that are a little bit more transactional and will start to bring in more people that are advocates for your studio, people that have long-term commitments towards their goals at your fitness studio. There was a study that came out by Ace Fitness that indicated that studios fostering much more authentic communication receive 50% higher membership retention. Again, that's 50% increase in their retention compared to those that lack those genuine interactions.

Speaker 0: 10:55

You know, I did have a podcast recently with ABC Fitness and Mohammed over there he's part of the board of ABC Fitness. We had a podcast. We really talked a lot about AI and how everyone's on this hype train of AI but in a field where we're really focusing in on community and building much more of an interaction and advocacy compared to transactional, how do you kind of take that and still foster the AI and but really still have a much deeper connection with your audience? And so, again, if you want to watch that podcast episode, you can go up here. We linked it up here on the top. Both of these videos, of course, will also be at the very end of the video.

Speaker 0: 11:34

But overall, just looking back on the key points that we cover today, authentic engagement can really transform your studio and help you kind of make it to the next level. It should be your main focus from going from a transactional type system into much more of a relational. This can increase your membership loyalty, community reputation, a huge one and really the long-term success of your studio by potentially increasing your retention rate by upwards of 50%. Again, I want to thank you for coming on to this video. We really appreciate it and if you could, you know, subscribe like send people. And if you've ever gone through a situation at your studio where you've started to see the shift between transactional to relational, I'd love to talk about it in the comment section below. What are some of the things you did that helped you kind of take your studio to that next stage? Again, zach Coleman, 50 Grit Cast. I hope you all stay gritty.