The Alumni Whisperer: How to Win Back Old Gym Members

Most gyms treat old members as if they’re gone forever—but Xtra Mile Fitness brought back 36 departed clients in one year.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Corey Lewis (owner of Xtra Mile Fitness) reveals how he reactivated 36 alumni—comprising nearly 40% of his “new” members—last year.

Corey’s philosophy: The client journey doesn’t end when someone leaves your gym.

To help you reacquire members, he lays out fundamental exit practices every gym should implement: exit goal reviews, thank you postcards and 90-day follow-up texts.

He also shares more advanced tactics for winning old members back, including social media engagement, video texts and coffee meetings.

Corey never “pitches” to alumni. He leads with a "help first" mentality and checks in genuinely. The resale happens naturally when the person is ready.

Tune in to get Corey’s complete system for reactivating former gym members, then implement it in your gym!

Links

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0:00 - 36 returning members

2:44 - Exit goal reviews

6:22 - Postcard follow-ups

9:03 - Social media engagement

13:13 - Why this works

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to this episode of Run the Profitable Gym. I'm your host, John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain Business. And today we're going to be talking about bringing back old members. With me is the owner of Extra Mile Fitness and 2Brain mentor, Corey Lewis. How are you doing, man? I'm fantastic. Excited to be here today. So tell me a little bit about your gym. What type of training do you do, and where are you guys located? Absolutely. So I opened Extra Mile Fitness in 2012, and we were primarily CrossFit-style large group until I joined Two Brain as a mentee myself, and that's where we really expanded. And now we do large group, small group, and personal training just outside of St. Louis. Okay. And talk to me about Topline. How many members do you have in your gym right now? Right now, I think we're at 148. We kind of sit between that and about 158 to 160. Okay. And I asked you to be on this podcast because you've developed a little bit of a reputation as a guy who knows how to bring back old members. The alumni whisperer. Yes. Okay. There was this stat you brought out. You had 97 new members last year. So throughout the year, almost 100 people joined your gym. Yes. Right? Of that 97, 36 of them were previous clients? Correct. So that means almost 40% of your new member base was old members. Yes. How do you do it? I think the biggest thing we focus on is our client journey doesn't end when someone leaves our gym. I think that's where a lot of gyms fail. They kind of view that person is no longer a part of their gym. And we really lead with the help-first mindset and continue that client journey for the continuation of knowing that person long after they leave our gym. So we'll break this up into two pieces. Right? The first piece is going to be the fundamentals. These are things every gym owner should be doing. Yes. At a minimum, if they want to bring back members the way you do. And then we'll talk about kind of the ninja stuff. Yep. You know, the stuff that we're going to be giving to the Two Brain Growth clients for your leading a challenge next month is the Bring Back Two Challenge, where we're going to try and get every gym in Two Brain to reactivate two of their old members. Yes. Very excited to run that with the community. But before we get into the good stuff, let's start with the basics, right? Because we always want to start with the fundamentals. Yes. So the first thing you told me is goal reviews. So explain how you do goal reviews of somebody leaving. Absolutely. So that's part of the continuing the client journey. And just like when they join our gym, we want to sit down with them. Figure out their goals and prescribe them a plan that doesn't end just because they're leaving our gym because sometimes it's circumstances that we can't control. Um, so we invite everyone that terminates at our gym to come in for a final goal review where we evaluate their goals going forward and we set them up with a plan to continue movement after they leave our gym. And what type of questions, like what, what run me through one of those? Yeah. So we run it just like a normal goal review with, you know, uh, what are your goals that we want to continue with? And we, we still celebrate their bright spots with what they've achieved in their time at the gym. Uh, and then we help them design a plan for how they can continue to move. Maybe they're moving or maybe it's just work stuff. Uh, so we extend that hand and do our best to set them up with a plan that they can leave our gym with a positive note and still continue getting movement in and living a healthier life. So it's like, Steve, you're busy. You're going to go, you're going to be traveling a lot for work. Yep. I think we can get you some type of program or something like that. And you allow Steve to kind of, uh, do his own program, but you, you give him some advice on how to not get injured or do anything crazy. Yeah. We really give them a goals to continue to work towards and then be kind of a rough plan that allows us to follow up with them down the road, uh, to check in and see how their progress is going, uh, you know, away from the gym. Or it's like, Hey, Sydney, you're moving to, Florida. Let me help you find a gym that does what we do down there. So you don't, you know, get hurt or something like that. Yeah. And that's what makes the two brain community so great as we can help them find a gym, set them up for success wherever they'd be moving to. So what percentage of your members who say like, Hey, I'm going to cancel, take you up on that final goal review. I would say it's probably 60 to 65% of our clients. Wow. That's more than I would have guessed. So we get, and the nice thing is, is, you know, we follow the two brain philosophy and we have regular 90 day goal reviews. Um, so a lot of times it's an easy invite. Cause like, Oh, you have a goal review scheduled in three weeks. How about we just go ahead and move that up and we get that in before you leave the gym. So we can celebrate your time with us and set you up with a solid plan to move forward. And if you're unfamiliar with goal reviews, it's just exactly what Corey said. It's a 90 day check-in where you're celebrating wins. So, Hey, these are the things that were awesome that happened. Uh, do you do some type of like scan or progress check-in during those? We do an in-body scan at all of our goal reviews. Okay. So, Hey, you lost some weight or Hey, you gained some weight or whatever, whatever the stats show. And then you build a plan for the following quarter based off of the conversations. Right. And so that may be, if they're still a member, you know, Hey, maybe do a little small group personal training or do personal training or Hey, personal training. Like you don't need a personal training anymore. You should just be in the group class, you know, just making sure they feel heard and, uh, are doing the right thing for what their goals are. Right. Yes. And that allows you to go deeper with each member, right? Absolutely. It allows us to have that personal connection with them. Uh, and one thing we find from time to time with, by having their goal review when they're leaving, is it uncovers something that maybe we could avoid and we get them to, you know, stay with us at that time, or it makes an easy comeback down the road. Yeah. Not only are these great for ascending clients into other programs, they they're awesome for getting feedback. Yes. Like, like so much marketing material can come from goal review sessions because you're actually speaking the literal language of your dream clients, you know what I mean? Yes. Speaking that language, but also giving a chance to celebrate what they've accomplished, which is even more vital when they're getting ready to leave to remind them of the amazing times they had at the gym. So they leave with a bunch of value through this goal review session. What's the next thing you do? I see you're literally mailing them stuff. Yes. So we use a lot of the same tools we use in our traditional client journey, and I'll send them a postcard the following month, uh, just to personally written for me, just to thank them for their time. And I'll usually tie into that one of the bright spots that we had celebrated or had, uh, just so they have a remembrance of their time at extra mile. And this doesn't take a long time, right? Like how much time does this take you each month? No, like I can write all my termination and my anniversary postcards in the span of 10 to 15 minutes. And do you get good feedback about those? Oh, absolutely. We'll get people that, you know, text us or, you know, send us an email, uh, to just thank us and to let us know know that they've never left a business and gotten a thank you note mailed to them from the owner. It is a nice touch. I would appreciate it. And so that's the second touch point. So you have the goal review, you do a thank you postcard. And then what's the third touch point? Roughly 90 days down the road, we'll do a follow-up text message to them. Just like we would be doing a goal review in our gym with an active client, we text in and ask them how the progress is going towards the goals that we set in that goal review. And we make sure to personalize these so they don't think it's just an automation that we send out. So we'll call them by name. We'll reference one or two goals that we set and just see how that's going. And then we extend a hand again of how can we help them on their journey. Do you get a decent response rate on those or is it mostly crickets? I would say with that, it's still over 50% respond to it. Some go in-depth. Others just, you know, things are going great. Thanks for checking. Yeah. And at this point, have you won back any members? Like, are you still just playing the long game here? I would say at this point, it's rare if somebody comes back that quick. But again, it's playing the long game to get them back down the road. Okay. And so we would class this as like the fundamentals, right? Like this is, you know, you said nothing crazy. You're offering them a 30-minute chat before they leave to just help them. Yep. You're sending them the postcard a month out. So that just requires some type of system to, you know, remind you to do it and sending out the postcard, which you said takes 15 minutes. Yep. And then the text, and that's probably, you know, five minutes a pop if you're doing a good job and really personalizing it. Yeah. So if you're not doing these things, just steal that and that's going to put you ahead of 90% of gym owners, right? Now, let's go into some of the hidden stuff. Don't give everything away. You know, we want to save something for that bring back to challenge, but let's talk about some of the more advanced tactics. Maybe a gym owner's doing this, covering the basics, and they want to go deeper and really focus on reactivation. What are some of the other things that they can do? I would say the easiest one that I do on my daily walks is engage with people on social media. When they make a post, or a lot of times I see things on stories, because when they join our gym, they friend all of us because we add them to our community page, and so they're still my friends on social media, and I can comment on, you know, posts they make, or I can comment on a story they make. Sometimes it's fitness related, so it's just another way to remind them we're there, and to show them we're still celebrating their successes. And you're not doing it in like a cheesy way, right? No. It's just authentic? Like even today, when I was out walking, I saw an old client posted that they. PR'd one of their lifts, and I just told them, great job, we're proud of you. So it's a simple message. It took a matter of seconds, and we'll see. Maybe they'll respond when I go back to my phone later. And then what other communication are you doing, aside from, you know, creeping on their socials, and just being social on social media? Yep. The other thing we do is, you know, we call them just random texts, but we do kind of plan out how often we want to make touch points, and we just, you know, we'll reference the class they used to go to, or, you know, if somebody had ever mentioned their name recently, or we get a lot of our members want to check in on people, we'll send their message early and reference that. And we do that via usually text message, but for certain moments, we'll send a video text through our gym software to let them know we're still thinking about them, and just add another layer of personalization to it. And what does one of those sound and look like? Yep. So usually it's just me saying like, hey, Joe in the noon class was just checking in on you. I just wanted to reach out and say we miss you. But we've also gone as crazy as sending a video text from their noon class with people telling them that they miss them and that they hope they're doing well. So you're just selfie style, like, hey, Sally, you know, we got everybody in here. They're asking about you. Hope you're doing well. I hope you're crushing it. Just want to let you know that we appreciate you. Yeah. Simple as that. And sending them well wishes, because again, even if they're not coming back right then, we want to see them succeed. And then ultimately, hopefully they do find their way back to us. And is that done on a regimented basis, or is this just something you do every sometime? In our client journey, we have mapped out that we want to make, you know, roughly two touches a year with each person. But then they are, there is a level of randomness. If somebody is mentioned at the gym or if in our staff meeting, if a coach references someone or brings the name up when we give open floor, we'll move them up. But we do have it regimented that we are making two touches per year at minimum with every client. And are you doing anything like events or anything like that to try and give alumni an opportunity to come back into the physical space? Or is everything just, you know, text, video, that kind of thing? Yep. So we'll do a lot of our texting around our bring a friend days. That's when we'll invite them in for a workout. But also if we do community events, or we do a bigger charity event every year, we'll send out messages and personally inviting them to that. And even with some of our clients, I'll take them out for coffee leading into like the charity event is just a way to connect with past people and bring them into our events. And is this something where you're hitting them with a hard pitch at any point in the journey, like come back, I'll give you a 50% off your first month? No, we don't extend a we don't do any kind of discounts ever. But we don't even put a sales pitch into our text. It's literally just checking in on them. And then that leads to more conversations. And a lot of times like I picked up a personal training client in early March, and it was literally me checking in with her when she referenced that she had been following us on social, she was inspired, but she hadn't been doing anything. And a few messages back and forth. She's now$680 a month client that hadn't been at the gym for I believe it was close to two years, and came back just by me checking in and asking how it was. And I didn't make a sales pitch until she extended saying she needed help. So it's not a salesy thing you wrote here that you lead with a help first mindset. What does that mean? Leading with the help first mindset is just extending or everything we do is extending a hand to give someone the lift up or the help they need. And that's really what two brain is all about. When we're working with gyms is if we're always leading with the help first mindset and putting the customer first, it's going to make all of us in our businesses and everything we do the most successful we can be. So what is it about this system that works so much better than the average gym, right? Because the average gym is not bringing back 40% of their... From the alumni base. Is it just you're doing all of these things? Or is it just most gym owners are doing none of these things? What makes this work so well? I think it's a combo. I think it's first, a lot of gyms, I feel just reach out to past members when they're in desperation to get clients in because leads are low or something like that. And they also probably lead with sales instead of leading with help first. What makes ours work so well, first, we provide them an amazing product while they're at the gym. And then second, we are systematic with our touch points early on, letting them know that we're always there for them and then doing our regular check-ins. So it doesn't seem like, oh, Corey's just needing a new member. That's why he reached out to me. They know, okay, he reached out to me a few months ago. This is regular for him to do. And that I'm always there when they finally want to receive my hand and come back to the gym. So at that point, you know, when they, when they kind of like feeling bad about themselves, like you're still on their mind, that line of communication is open. And at no point are you being kind of like a salesman? It sounds like you generally care about these people and want to bring them back into the fold. Yeah. And my team is, has the same mindset. So several months ago, my coach that runs most of our goal reviews, I saw her messaging with a past client, sending her recipes and things to help with nutrition. Um, and just recently that client came back, um, cause she had only left the gym because life was crazy. And the fact that my coach showed her that she still invested, still cared. It just made an easy pathway for that person to come back. Uh, cause people can sense when you're genuine or when you're just trying to sell things. And if you lead with genuinely caring and wanting to help people, you're going to win more often than not. So what involvement does the staff have in this process? Like, is it a requirement of their job or do you lead this charge and they just kind of see you leading by example and follow? Yep. It's probably the latter of the two is I lead the way in our staff and our community is built around the help best mindset and going above and beyond. Uh, we S I see it in the, the inner chat all the time at our gym. Uh, and then my coach that leads goal reviews, she does take it upon herself. Again, it's not mandated by her, but she sees the benefit it has. And she truly wants to help people. So I guess I'm lucky to have staff that, you know, have that passion. Um, but I lead the way and they follow and do the same things. And so you're a mentor. Uh, you you've helped implement this in other gyms. What kind of results are typical for people, you know, who maybe didn't, uh, have this in their DNA from the beginning and implemented it, you know, later stage? Is it something where it's slow for a while and picks up a year down the road? Or is it something where you can see pretty immediate results if, you know, you just put the time and effort in to care about these people and reach out? I think they're going to get a combo of both. You know, like when I assign this often to my mentees to reach out to past clients, and I think they usually see, you know, on the average, a couple people come back right off the bat. You know, they just timed it perfectly, it worked out. But for the most part, it's the long game, and they're building the habit of continuously doing these check-ins, and it pays off for them, down the road, whether that's six, eight, 12 months later. But they're seeing returns on both ends of the spectrum with that. So if you're a gym owner, we are inceptioning you with this help first mentality. Corey just shared with you a bunch of tactical tips that you can use in your business today to win back a couple of members. And if you are a member of the Two Brain. Business Growth Group, I want you to go in and like Corey's post and write, I'm in. I think you have over 110 gyms committed to the Bring Back Two Challenge. Yes, the energy is high, which is awesome. So yeah, we're going to help Two Brain Gyms win back over 200 alumni next month. I'm really looking forward to this challenge. Corey, thank you for making time on your vacation here to come in and yap with me and share your strategies with the gym world. I hope you guys got value out of this. And if you did, please like and subscribe and tune in next time for Run