Six months on PushPress, Nela Athletics posted its best revenue month since 2020

Paul Austad had been running a gym for 12 years when he worked out that his software was the constraint.

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Austad owns Nela Athletics in Los Angeles, CA, a 220-member gym with 10 coaches and a busy personal training side. Until December 2022 he ran it on a stack of tools that did not talk to each other, with a lot of the work done by hand.

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Six months after switching to PushPress, May was the best revenue month the gym had recorded since before the pandemic hit in 2020.

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The Problem

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A 100-day onboarding plan that never actually ran

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Austad had designed a 100-day process for new clients. Every step of it was manual, so steps went missing. He remembers new members getting their welcome email two months into their membership.

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"So it was more embarrassing than it was useful."

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Systems that did not talk to each other

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Nothing was centralized, so nothing was reliable.

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"We had these plans, but we were always manually doing the work instead of letting triggers and workflows do it."

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Leads arriving faster than the team could answer

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Facebook was producing an adequate number of leads. Austad and his coaches could not keep up with them, so most went unworked. Follow-up on trial clients meant phone calls, attempted the next day, often forgotten.

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"Before, it was all the phone calls. And we tried to call them the next day, but (often) they would get lost."

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The Solution

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Core and Grow in one place

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What convinced Austad to move was the integration between Core and Grow: gym management and CRM on one platform, with notifications at each step so he can step in and handle something personally whenever he wants to.

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"It's so much more organized, clear and concise. We are much more productive with our time."

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The 100-Day Workflow, switched on

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New members now drop straight into the 100-Day Workflow, which carries them through the first three months. Austad says setup was easy. He tweaked the copy to make it more personalized and to tell the gym's story, then turned it on and left it running.

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Facebook leads wired into the pipeline

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Leads from Facebook and other paid ads now feed the same automated workflows, so they get nurtured through to membership instead of stacking up unanswered.

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Check-in milestones worth celebrating

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Austad had all but abandoned attendance tracking. Once a year he would run a report to see who had hit 200 check-ins, and he was not convinced the data was accurate. Now he can see who has crossed 100, 200, 500 and 750. At 200 a member earns a custom t-shirt.

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"PushPress makes it a lot easier to keep track."

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A safety net for members who leave or pause

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Cancelled members go into the Lost Clients workflow and get an automated text six months later asking how their fitness is going. Sometimes that is enough to get them back in the door. Members on hold get monthly check-ins and a message before their membership restarts.

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"In the past, they would have just fallen off for good."

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Appointments that pay for themselves at payroll

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Nela Athletics does a lot of personal training. Booking and tracking appointments got simpler for clients and coaches alike, and Austad saves a few extra hours every month when it is time to run payroll.

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Result

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Best revenue month since 2020

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Six months into being a PushPress client, May was the strongest revenue month Nela Athletics had posted since before the pandemic.

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160 five-star reviews

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After PushPress founder Dan Uyemura suggested gyms try GymHappy, a tool that asks clients for reviews, Austad picked it up. He collected 160 five-star reviews in a matter of months, which pulled in new leads and lifted his 10 coaches.

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"There's a lot of positive energy internally because of it. And it lets us know the team is on the right trajectory."

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Nobody lost in the shuffle

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Leads, new members, paused members and lapsed members all sit in a workflow now, each with a notification attached.

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Conclusion

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Austad's next move is pushing check-in milestones into the PushPress Members App so the whole community can celebrate them. The bigger change is that he can plan again.

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"Now we have a clear direction. And now we can create standard operating procedures on what needs to happen next."

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Ready to automate onboarding, work every lead, and stop losing members quietly? Book a demo and see what PushPress Core and Grow can do for your gym.