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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'll say underutilized tools that gym owners have for both
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: keeping and growing their gym membership. And that tool is running successful events. Keyword successful. Not the kind of events that drain your energy and get, you know, 4 people to show up, but the kind of events that your members, they talk about, the ones that they bring their friends to, and the ones that they remember, the ones that create memories.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That lasts a lifetime. So, I've got 3 rockstar gym owners with me today, and they have figured out that secret formula. They've figured out how to run successful events, and they're going to walk you through exactly how they do it. Mr. Trey Mills, is it Miles or Mills? I'm sorry.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Miles.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Miles, I'm so sorry about that. Trey, you're from Rushmore CrossFit, right? And we have Nick Johnson from CrossFit Liminal, and Ms. Amy Mauler from Swift River CrossFit.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It is a pleasure and honor to have you three on this webinar with us. I'm super excited. Before we get into exactly how these three gym owners run their events, I'd like to talk about why most gym owners get this wrong in the first place.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, many gym owners struggle to find success with events because of one of two reasons. They, or they don't…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Not because of these two reasons, but they end up giving up on an event because they are either too busy, or they just can't justify the ROI. They don't understand how it's going to help, or the amount of work that it takes to get a successful event. They're unsure as to what the payoff is going to
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: B, and therefore, they just write it off as something that's not worth it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Or, they've ran events in the past, and they stopped doing it because they were unsuccessful, or they felt like
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: it was a chore. Their team complained, there was no enjoyment, or lack of success is the easiest way to label, label that scenario. But the good news is there's no single way to do a correct event, or there's no single metric of success.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But there is a right answer for your specific gym, and it starts with knowing what you're trying to accomplish. So, let's dig in with…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Amy, Nick, Trey, I want to talk about the 3 archetypes that we have
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: For our examples today, we have a member party, or an event that is specifically for your members.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Right, and Ms. Trey, you're gonna be talking about that. A fundraiser event, which is really a community highlight, and Nick, you're gonna give your breakdown of how you run, Ruck for Refugees, and then a Bring a Friends style, event that allows your members to expose your community to.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: their…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: close friend circle, and Miss Amy, I'm gonna lean on you for information on that. So I'd like to hear directly from you three. Oh, Dan, you're jumping right in, you're crashing my webinar. What is that? What are you drinking?
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Aimee Moller: Dan!
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Everybody say hi, it's a celebrity dropping, Mr. Dan, the CEO, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, cool, so we're gonna jump into one of these three events, and we're gonna go right down the list. I'm gonna ask each one of you guys
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Hey, how have you prioritized, or what have you prioritized about measuring
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: metrics, or what metrics, excuse me, I can't talk this morning, guys, I'm only halfway through my coffee. What metrics have you decided to prioritize to determine if your event is successful or not? Nick, what do you… what do you look for when you run Ruck for Refugees? What are you looking for
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: To maximize, to determine whether or not you've run a successful event.
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Nick Johnson: I mean, first, for our fundraiser, one of the biggest determinants is how much money we raise.
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Nick Johnson: And so, we want to see that increase every year. And then attendance, both looking at how many members come, but also who from the community comes. And if we can get, like, a 50-50 for us, members, and members from the community, then that's a win for us, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So you're looking for a specific ratio, a specific breakdown of, community members, non-members, right?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, and a lot of the non-members are friends or family of our members, but some aren't. Some just hear about the event, come to it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So it sounds like you had 3 top-line items. You had total amount of money fundraised, which makes total sense for a fundraiser event, and then total attendance, but then that total attendance, you want to break down by members in your community versus non-members.
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Nick Johnson: Correct, yeah. Cool. Like, are our members showing up? Is it something they want, and is it something that speaks to the community as well?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Awesome. Amy, how about you? What are you looking for?
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Aimee Moller: We're looking for attendance, obviously. I mean, it is an event that's designed to bring in new people, but…
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Aimee Moller: we want to make sure that our members that are coming are bringing a friend, so at least 90% of the members that attend should have brought a friend with them. We're looking for total attendance between 40 and 60 women for a wine and wad event.
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Aimee Moller: And then, on the back end, converting anywhere from 3 to 10 of the friends that were brought.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Now, that's… those are a little bit more specific numbers, because, Nick, you mentioned, you know, a totality of funds raised, and I'm guessing that you're looking for year-over-year improvement, and same thing with attendance, but Amy, why did you land on 40 to 60?
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Aimee Moller: When we first started doing this, I was running it myself, and then I ended up handing it off to another coach who runs it really well, so the 40 kind of floor is about where it was when I was running it and handing it off. She's actually grown it beyond
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Aimee Moller: what I was doing.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So you were just looking for, hey, you set the baseline, and you're looking for improvement every time you run it. Okay, so that makes total sense. You're just going off of the first initial baseline.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Trey, what… you're a little bit different, because you're not trying to, generate new referrals, or maybe you are, I don't know, you tell me, referrals or fundraise, but at a member party, what is the metric, or what objectivity do you have to gauge success?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: So we go… I mean, year over year, we're looking for more members coming, or a higher percentage of our active membership attending. And then, while maybe it's not fundraising, but we do sponsorships, so…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: you know, more sponsor buy-in year over year is a good metric. It means…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: They see the value in it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, that's phenomenal. So you… you also do have a dollar KPI, and it's the amount of funds or sponsorship value that is brought to the… it's an annual member party, correct?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Correct.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's phenomenal, that's a great way. And so, now that we know what each one of you are trying to accomplish, what metric you're trying to improve upon year over year, we can kind of dig into what it is that you do to ensure that happens.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And this goes into building the actual event.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, I want to know…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: From each of you, and Nick, let's start with you. How did you come up with the idea for your fundraiser? First off, give us a little background about it, and like, what… what helped you shape it to the success that it is today? What were you looking to, change or improve upon year over year about the day of event? Or maybe the planning leading up?
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Nick Johnson: Sure.
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Nick Johnson: So we're a little unique in that we already have kind of a mission built into our gym, so we're located, in a town that, has resettled refugees.
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Nick Johnson: And so, part of what we do is make fitness and nutrition accessible to those refugees. And so there was already kind of a mission that was
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Nick Johnson: Kind of baked into what we do, but we wanted a way to better connect our… our… our members who pay for membership, to kind of that mission, and also to, bring the community into that as well, too.
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Nick Johnson: We actually started it out as a workout. We called it Reps for Refugees. We wanted something that was accessible, and so we made the workout accessible, but, you know, as a CrossFit gym, there still can be that kind of initial, like, oh, I can't go do a CrossFit workout, it's gonna be too, too much for me. So, year two, we changed it to Ruck for Refugees.
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Nick Johnson: Something that lots of folks are doing. They're putting on weight on their shoulders and walking through their neighborhoods, so something even more accessible. But I think for us, even, it was able to tie in a little bit into a theme,
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Nick Johnson: of what refugees carry with them, right? When they have to flee their homes, they pack their belongings on their back, and they flee. And so, for us, it was a way to kind of identify with that mission of what it means to carry weight for other people who have had to carry more weight than we have.
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Nick Johnson: And so, and so, yeah, making it accessible for folks that could come in from outside, making it easy to run, getting us in the community. We're now walking through neighborhoods where refugees live. We're helping out at community gardens where refugees have plots.
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Nick Johnson: And so it really helps, it has helped us better engage in that,
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Nick Johnson: And for our members, you know, I think this is one of the important things, too, in a fundraiser, is something that your members care about.
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Nick Johnson: something that they're already engaged in, and for us, with that already baked in, it was a real win. Folks join our gym, they know that we care about refugees. They probably do, too, if they're joining our gym, and so it was real easy to tie… tie what we're doing into something that our members already cared about.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's… so, what… if you went from workout to the ruck, what… Was the thing that you…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: decided to change about the day… I'm trying to recall our conversation that we had a week or so ago, and you were like, yeah, it wasn't successful until recently.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And you were talking about… you weren't… it seemed like you weren't talking about the amount of money that was being raised, but the flow or the operations. And was there a vetting process? I know we're gonna get into, like, the follow-up process and writing AARs after…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: However, this, like, post-event, but was there something specific they were like, hey, I changed this, and this was the pivoting year. When we made this change, it became…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It became night and day better.
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Nick Johnson: I mean, there's a couple ways to answer that, and I'll try not to talk too long, but the first one was, you know, from reps for refugees to rep for refugees, it gave us a bit more control over the event, because for reps, we tried to get other gyms involved.
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Nick Johnson: So, us hosting it centrally allowed us to, make sure that the event was run how we wanted to, make sure it ran better. The other thing that we did this year that I think really put it,
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Nick Johnson: over the top in terms of, like, success was we, added two more components. That night, we had an adult prom.
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Nick Johnson: That was kind of a way to celebrate the day and expand the fundraiser beyond just rucking, but you could also raise money at the adult prom. And we included a month-long challenge that month as well. And so, the challenge was to raise money and to ruck miles.
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Nick Johnson: And the top folks in the gym who raised the most or wrecked the most.
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Nick Johnson: got to ride in a prom… ride in a limo to the prom. And so, it engaged the community for an entire month around the whole theme. So they're sharing on social what they're doing, they're… that's doing a lot of the work for promoting for us. They're thinking about it, so they're inviting their friends, and so creating that kind of month-long way to engage folks and celebrate at the end of the day, I mean, it was… it was probably the best day that we've had as a gym.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So that's… that's a pretty unique and, a…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'll say amazing, design change is that the actual event was the culmination
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: of that month-long build-up. So, I would say that the framework and the structure actually depended on you doing that build-up, and then the day of was kind of just, like, the finale of that. So that's…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: that's an interesting strategy, or maybe tactic, that other gym owners could bake into their process. Amy, how did you decide to do wine and wad versus some other format? Like, give me a breakdown of what it is that
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That drew you to that format.
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Aimee Moller: Yeah, I mean, first I'll say I did not develop the wine and wad concept. I got it from 2Brain during my 2Brain days, but I'm always learning from other gym owners and taking things and putting my own spin on it.
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Aimee Moller: We really wanted something that was a community engagement piece and something fun, but also that would bring in friends, of our members, and Wine and Wad just really…
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Aimee Moller: fit with that. We definitely had some hiccups our first couple of times running it. Our first time, we had, like, 30 ladies and one friend. Because I was not super clear that…
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Aimee Moller: you're expected to bring a friend with you as your ticket in the door. So that… that just helped inform, like, our whole framework that we use now, around getting people there, getting engagement, and then our… our follow-up at the end.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I thought you were gonna go… you were gonna say, like, hey, we had some hiccups early on because we did the wine first, and then we did the wad, or something like that. I'm just like, that'd be the terrible… that'd be a terrible, terrible order, right? So, was there anything that you knew going into your first event? You were like, hey, this is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: how I want it structured because it's going to be better in the end, or did you kind of just wing it and then reiterate over and over and over? I know you got your template from, you said, 2Brain, which, yeah, that's a phenomenal resource. I think they put out some great stuff, but was there anything that you did specific to your location that was off-template, maybe?
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Aimee Moller: Not necessarily off-template, they're…
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Aimee Moller: we just didn't have a framework of how to make it really successful when it comes to the systems and processes that are around it. Okay. So, just things on the front end, like…
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Aimee Moller: Four weeks ahead of time, we start posting about it. We post in every single channel that we can, so we make sure we hit every person in the gym.
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Aimee Moller: there's a whiteboard briefing every single day, it's consistent in every single class, because I create it as a workout of the day that shows up on our push press screens in our gym, so the coach has to talk about it. Got it.
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Aimee Moller: consistently building Facebook messages that go out every single week. We always create, a private Facebook event in our members-only group for any event that we do, because we can one-click invite every single person that's in that private group. So they get a message in their Facebook.
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Aimee Moller: Whenever they get on Facebook again, that they were invited to an event, and then they keep seeing the stuff that's posted in there.
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Aimee Moller: Email…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It sounds like a lot of your work was centered around communicating to your members about the event to begin. That's what you had to really, make efficient and dress up. Okay.
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Aimee Moller: Yeah, and constantly communicating that the expectation is to bring a friend with you. And then recently, we started adding an incentive for whoever brings the most friends. The winner gets a pair of CrossFit shoes of their choice, they just tell me what they want and what size, and we order it for them after the event's over.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's kinda cool. Yeah, I like that. Alright, Trey, I'm… I've… I looked at the website that you had for the RSVP for the annual member party, I think you shared that with me, and I saw some social media pictures, and I'm just… I'm like…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Man, that party just looked fun. And I… I have to ask, did you have…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: fun party-throwing experience before? Like, did you… did you ever host a party, like, elsewhere, or how did you figure out, hey, this is what we're gonna do to make this thing a blast for our… for our members? Or did… was it just something that… it's, like, your knack? Did you just naturally have the talent?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I think… I think it might be a natural talent, and I always tell members, if I didn't own the gym, I would be an event planner, coordinator, whatever. I love that. It's… it's my jam.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, tell me, what did you structure around the event to ensure that people had fun? Because that's one of the most important aspects, almost, of any event, is that the enjoyment factor's there, right? So, what did you do day of to make sure that it was fun?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I mean, open bar certainly helps. We get a DJ, so we have music, and we have someone kind of keeping the flow going, and if…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: there's ever, like, maybe a lull, he will play a game, or get some sort of interaction going, so I think that's really important, especially because it takes it off of
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Traie Roberson-Miles: my plate, like, I'm not trying to be the host as much. I get to enjoy the night just as much as my members, because I have that person making sure… I mean, it's just like having a DJ at a wedding, right? Like, they make sure the vibe is… is on point.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, that makes sense. We've all… I think we've all, at this point, been to weddings with good DJs and bad DJs.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Thank you, J.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And you know that can absolutely kill the vibe and reduce the enjoyment. So, okay, so gym owners that are listening, you have an idea. You have an idea for an event that you want to run, and developing that idea is one thing, but getting people to show up is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: as these gym owners have spoken to, it's a completely different task, so I would like to spend some time specifically talking about promotion, or the work that goes into planning. So, all three of you guys, Trey, Nick, Amy, you have
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: pre… pre-event systems, right? It seems that you guys have a checklist of some major, or what I'll say, critical items that need to occur in order to guarantee or ensure attendance happens the way that you'd like it to happen. So, if you were to talk about
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: one or two things you're like, hey, this needs to happen, otherwise I can pretty much guarantee we're gonna have a nosedive in attendance. What would that look like? Trey, let's start with you.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: We, have kind of figured out the dates, or timeline of the year that it needs to happen, and we plan that, like, we set that 6 months out.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Mmm.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: And we kind of make sure it doesn't conflict with spring break, prom, things like that. Because we know if we…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: accidentally do it the same weekend as spring break, we're not gonna have anyone here, so we look at those schedules, and we try to get that date set about 6 months prior.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's super smart. So you're looking at, basically, how do you get that information? You're looking at the seasonality and what other major milestones occur during the year, so that when you do schedule an event, people don't have something else, like a prior commitment, right?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Huh.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: that's… that's something that might not be extremely obvious to gym owners. That's awesome. So, when do you do the annual member party? What month?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: We do it in April.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And so you said you're playing around prom or spring break, is that what you said?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Spring break, yeah, so there's, like, here the school system gives
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Traie Roberson-Miles: a week, well, it ends up being, like, 10 days off from school, so we know our members take that time and travel a lot, so if we have it on the weekend before or after, we're gonna be missing people, so we wait, and that's around Easter, so…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: We check the Easter schedule, we check the school schedule, I usually have at least one member that has a…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Kid that's prom age, so we know when prom is.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: And then kind of narrow down our dates from there.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: smart, very intelligent. I mean, that will ensure that people don't have an excuse not to come. I like that.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Nick, what is… I… I… we had a question in the…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: chat about sponsorship, so I do want to lean on you for this real quick. What is… what does the timeline for sponsor outreach look like? What is… what is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: why do you have to spend so much time ahead of the event, like, cultivating relationships with sponsors and communicating with them? What does that look like for your event?
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Nick Johnson: Sure. Well, when you run an event, like a REC for Refugees, or you could think about, like, a 5K or something like that, the sponsorships are where most of your money comes in.
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Nick Johnson: Not from, like, event registrations and whatnot. And so, you know, 4 months out, and I have a board, but because we're a non-profit, but you might just have a committee that's helping you plan the event. You know, 4 months out.
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Nick Johnson: you know, we're all kind of tasked with, alright, we got a spreadsheet, let's list all possible kind of, like, businesses, that we know are in the area that might want to sponsor. Do we have any, like, national brands that we can reach out to, any connections? And so we're… we're thinking about that 4 months out.
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Nick Johnson: And then, trying to, two months out, have all of our sponsors lined up, especially if we have any, like, headliner or big sponsors that kind of want to, you know, present the event that we're doing. And so getting them in ahead of time.
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Nick Johnson: Starts to kind of build some awareness about the event.
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Nick Johnson: but also helps us also see, kind of, where we're at with fundraising. And then, and then our members, too. We just put a blast out to our members. Hey, do you know any businesses? And we had a few responses come from that as well, too, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And I think people hear sponsors, and Trey, you got… you have sponsors for the annual party, right? I think people hear that, and they immediately think, oh, dollars, I'm gonna get money for… from sponsors for putting on the event, and they undervalue the marketing and promotional power that having sponsors brings, because the sponsors want the event to be successful, so they're also going to be talking about the event and putting it out on their channels.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And that's why it's important to at least
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: ask your member base, both of you guys, probably, ask your member base for people that are… or businesses that are willing to sponsor, and it's not just the dollars, but it's also the voice that they bring. Trey, do you… with a member-only event, do you feel like your sponsors help promote, or are they just there to provide funding for the event so that they can be put in front of your members during the event?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: They'll share, like, because, like, once we secure a sponsor, we make a social media post, tag them, so they'll reshare those things. I don't… I mean, and it's not a big deal for us for them to share it as much, I'm… because…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: internal.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: it's internal. I think for them, it's important for their name to be in front of our members, though, because then, you know, that's a very small…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: group of people that are looking for their services, so, you know, a lot of it's medical, or service-based, like, we had… this year, what did we have an organizational company, like Closets and Garage Organization, and…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You know.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah, yeah. And for them, they're like, your members are our target demographic, right? Disposable income, those types of things, so they want to be in front of those people, and it's pretty…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: You know, narrow, but it's… it's also the right people, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep. That was a great question from Zach again in the chat. What kind of sponsor would you get, and what do you feel works best? Is there a sponsor type for an event type? I, I'm not sure that I would pigeonhole it, sponsor type, event type, although there probably is, something like that. Do you guys… real quick, Nick, Trey, do you guys have any, like, hey, these are the types of sponsors you should look for?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: for… I know, Nick, you were talking about, like, national level.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: sponsors.
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, I mean, so last year, GORUP donated some, equipment to us, so something like that, you know.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That makes sense for a ruck event.
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Nick Johnson: things that are, yeah, for a record event, right? And I think, you know, like you, like Trey said,
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Nick Johnson: we had a chiropractic office that we work with, a sports recovery place that we partner with, so what businesses, our clients go to? And then, and then what kind of businesses are just nearby and might have a similar mission, because they're in the area and aware of what's going on, so…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah, that's it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: All right for you?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, all of our sponsors are members that happen to have a business, you know, typically a service-based business. Our open bar sponsor is a liquor store. The general manager comes here, so it kind of, you know, it makes sense.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: In those ways, but, like, our, we had a landscaping company that sponsored our photo booth, so, it's… it's a lot of just service-based businesses, but we started internally with our members.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I imagine as things grow, we might get external businesses. Another thing, I guess, that didn't get brought up, I don't know if I would classify it as sponsors, but any of your, like, wholesale…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: accounts like FitAid, Podium…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: first form. I reach out to all of those people, and usually it's some sort of, like, product donation, but we always, you know, we put that on our social media as a little shout-out there, and some of them will reshare that as well, so…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: It might not be a monetary sponsorship, but it might be in the form of product.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's still promo. So it sounds like, from you guys, it sounds like, if I were to summarize.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Local businesses
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: service-based businesses, businesses that share the same, mission. I like that word that you used, Nick, and then also any business that your members are a part of, or that they are already, engaged with, seem to be the best opportunities for sponsorships of a given
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: event. Amy, do you have sponsors for the Wyden Wand, or is everything in-house? And, I'm just curious, because I don't think we actually talked about that. Do you bother to get any sponsors?
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Aimee Moller: No, but I am now.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, there you go. I like that. I really like your style event, and I think most gym owners can relate to any type of bring a friend style event, but how do you get your members bought into actually bringing guests? I know you incentivize the behavior with… it was a pair of shoes, right? Is the person who brings the most?
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Aimee Moller: Yep.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Is there anything else that you throw out there that really drives your members to bring their friends?
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Aimee Moller: Yeah, I mean, the other thing that we do, it's not just a workout event. We do do a workout, we do a team-based workout, but we also do a free seminar on the other end of that, so there's, like, some wind-down time, we have free snacks and wine, obviously.
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Aimee Moller: And we've done all kinds of different seminars, but we really try to make it something that the ladies would really want to come to that they don't normally get when they're at the gym, so…
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Aimee Moller: We've done… we've brought in a women's pelvic floor specialist for a seminar. We partnered with a new hot yoga studio last year. Their yoga instructors came and did, like, a wind-down yoga session.
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Aimee Moller: I've taught a women's self-defense seminar at the end. We've done nutrition talks at the end.
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Aimee Moller: We just try to make it something different that they would really want and be interested in.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So your focus is value. It's literally like, hey, you're going to want to bring your friends because your friends value what it is that we're doing, and just communicating that, hey, this is something that we've been asked for, or something that we think that people need, and just doing a good job of communicating that, then.
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Aimee Moller: Yeah, and our coaches are consistently having conversations on the floor leading up to it of, who are you bringing, any issues getting people signed up?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So it's just… and also constant engagement, then, about the event. I think that is,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That is something that a lot of gym owners can learn from, is that constant engagement. I think a lot of gym owners and trainers specifically might feel like they're pestering or bothering people, but just putting it at your whiteboard brief and just constantly reminding people, and not making the assumption that they remember or they heard you the first time.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Right? And just constantly putting in front of people flyers in the house, you know, in-house signage. I think that's one of the most, effective ways, high ROI, to make sure that attendance occurs and that the desired outcome is there. Yeah.
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Aimee Moller: I'm glad you mentioned the in-house signage, because that is a super important piece, and I think a lot of gym owners overlook it.
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Aimee Moller: Like, any event or specialty course we do, we have posters everywhere with QR codes to the push press link to sign up. Especially in the bathrooms, like, that's the best place to put posters.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Why is that?
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Aimee Moller: I mean, they're paying.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Do we need to explain?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What else are you doing while you're in there? Jeez.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, so, all three of you guys have really…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Really solid checklists and pre-event systems, and everybody that registered for this webinar and the recording, you guys are gonna get a playbook, breaking all these systems down.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But there is a window in every event cycle where things can kind of fall apart, or that lull can occur, and it's usually
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: A little bit earlier than you'd think, and most often.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: There's this window, depending on how far out you've been planning it, there's this window one… one week out, maybe three weeks out for a longer,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: timeline where the excitement or optimism or uncertainty can creep up, and optimism dies out, and there's this lull in either registration or enthusiasm, and that's when it's even more critical to do exactly what Amy was talking about, and
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: continue to be engaged and be present with the people that you want to attend. So…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: what I'm… what I want to get across to gym owners is, don't let up in the days leading up to the event. As you start to reconcile and worry about the day of the event, continue to push marketing, continue to promote the event.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Even though you may be distracted about confirming with vendors, or, oh, crap, this sponsorship payment didn't come through, or a contribution, or, oh, I gotta schedule the sandbags to be dropped off over here, or logistics like that.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What you'll find is all three of these gym owners have help. They have people doing, assigned roles so that they can continue to drive promotion and make sure that attendance is going to be where it's at.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And I do want to talk about the day of, because, Nick, I want to start with you, because you… you're very busy on the day of your event, right? You… you're… you do the race, right? You… do you emcee the event, too?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, that's to improve next year, is to have another event person alongside of what I do. So long…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But you're also managing the whole thing, so can you… how do you… how do you hold together all your roles on the day of the event and ensure that it's still a good event?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, so I… I do have some volunteers with me at the RUC, you know, they get early, I orient them, they help manage it some. But I… but yeah, I'm, right now.
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Nick Johnson: Work in the floor, you know.
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Nick Johnson: people that aren't part of the gym, just talking to them before the event. This year, I had to clean up spilled water all over the floor right before I got up to talk. And then I'm kind of the MC at the RUC as well. This is the first year I didn't do the whole ruck. I would kind of go ahead of folks so I could meet them at our different spots along the way, and get some additional kind of video. We did have a photographer, but get some additional work.
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Nick Johnson: And I think that made the event run a little bit smoother, that I was…
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Nick Johnson: freed up to do that. But what also helped for our prom night at the… at that evening, we did have a committee for that, and they were running that, so I could kind of, like, trust, okay, that's getting done, and… and be a part of that, and focus really my effort on the ruck in the morning, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It sounds to me, I think.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Dan, actually, I think Dan is the one that I learned this from. He said, at an event, the leader of the event, or the leader of the community, like, they should just be focused on being a good host.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And you should be…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: delegating or hiring out all the roles that you know need to be filled, so you can fulfill the aspect of being a good host and connecting people, and helping them generate relationships. And that sounds like… you said you hired a photographer, and you hired a group of other people to handle the prom stuff, so you can do exactly that. Is that what I'm hearing?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, definitely, and and I'm glad that the first couple years running it, I was doing everything. It helped me see all parts of it to kind of understand what I need to do better, but I think as we grow, I am going to need someone who can more direct logistics, so I can do what you said. I can kind of be the face.
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Nick Johnson: of the event, and host, and network, and, MC where needed, and not worry about cleaning up water or dealing with some other smaller logistic.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, I like that. Trey, what are you personally managing on event day? Because you used the line, you're like, hey, I've done their career, I would be an event planner, or something like that, right? So, what are you managing versus what have you learned to delegate?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: What's nice is we… where we host the party, they have an event staff, so a lot of stuff gets taken care of by them, food set up.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: The bar, obviously, you know, clean up anything like that. So really, day of, we are packing anything that needs to go down to the venue, like, raffle prizes and giveaways.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: We've got maybe… we've probably got it down to about 2 hours of setup, as far as, like, you know, we're setting up the photo booth backdrop,
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Traie Roberson-Miles: anything like that. My DJ knows the layout, so he's taking care of all of that, and then it's just, you know, doors open, and I'm greeting our members as they're coming in.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You're the host. I love that.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Amy, are you… are you completely removed from the waden Wine now, and you said you had someone else running it?
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Aimee Moller: Yes, yep. The first couple years, I ran it and hosted it, and now I'm… I'm completely hands-off. I don't even go, because I tend to micromanage and jump into too many things. And they're… they're doing better than I ever did, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Well, that's, I mean, that's encouraging to hear, because I think that's one of the most business owners' biggest fears, is when they delegate, they hand something off, that it's going to end up being worse.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: or lackluster versus what they could deliver themselves. So, can you briefly explain the process of that delegation so that you could remove yourself? What… what… how long did it take? What did it look like? What did you focus on?
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Aimee Moller: It… it took a couple of years. The first year that it wasn't just me, I brought in the coach who now runs the actual workout part of it, and my operations manager, and the three of us did it together, I think, for 2 years.
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Aimee Moller: But we were at the point where they had done it twice, they knew what their roles were, we had created all the assets that they just needed to update and refresh year over year, and the framework was all there, so it's very easy for them to just step in and do it now.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And I'm sure at some point, there was a lot of conversation about, like, hey, these are the expectations, these are the outcomes that we want to see, this is what will determine if the event is done well. You know, you want people smiling, you want A, B, and C to occur. Was there any a time, and this is a question for all three of you guys, where you delegated something for the event?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'm throwing you guys a curveball, I don't think I told you I was gonna ask this. Was there any time
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Where you delegated something for the event, and it went completely wrong. Does anybody have a story, like a… like a nightmare story?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: No.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I would say, I mean, I don't… I wouldn't say it was necessarily delegating, but we use… I mean, we order and use a lot of signage for our events.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Hmm.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: And I've definitely had things not show up, and I'm down at Office Depot trying to figure out how to print a banner or whatever same day within, you know, a couple hours.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I've had that, yep, I've had that.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That, where it's like, oh crap, people don't know where to park, they don't know where the entrance is.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We're gonna have to staff people out front waving them in, because we can't get signage. Yeah.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Nope.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, that's never fun.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Cool. So, the event, the day of is only half the equation, right? You guys put on this awesome event, but what do you do after the event to make sure that you reap the reward, right? What you do in the 7 days, the week, the week and a half after, that's where, you know, the retention, the referral payoff, that's where it actually lives.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, for a member party, Trey, what does your post-event follow-up look like? Who are you talking to? What are you saying?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: We're definitely writing thank you cards to all of our sponsors, wrapping up any loose ends with payments to vendors and things like that. Usually some sort of, like, confirmation of, hey, we'll see you next year, that way they know we're intending on doing it the next year.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: And then, I sit down and I do, like, a debrief, and I have, like, a running Word document of things that I need to change for next year.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: people I need to contact. Like, this year we had… I had members that are like, hey, I'll sponsor XYZ next year, let me know.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: So I have kind of that running debrief of what to change or update for next year, and then we do, like, a social media post wrap-up with all of the pictures, because, like I mentioned, we have a photo booth, and then,
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I also had a photographer as well that did more candid shots, so we get all of that posted out there for people to reshare and make sure all that gets out there.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's… that's phenomenal. I bet you that's incredibly powerful. I… I'm trying to…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I wish that I had social media when I was in my party age. Is that, like, I don't know.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I'm sure.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: my age, we didn't really have cameras when I was at that age, but, like.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: If I go to an annual member party, I don't know, Dan has seen me drink, we shouldn't talk about this right now, but there's some good… there's some good photography moments that can happen, and I… and I bet you… Party Zach is not a real thing. Thanks, Dan, I appreciate you confirming that. I bet you the members live for those… those post-event pictures, and I… and that's probably the same thing for the Ruck event, right? Nick, there's probably a lot of people that want…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: photos of the event, them in action. What does your process look like after the event? Do you go through, like, a standard AAR, like, hey, after action review, this is what we're improving, this is what we're doing next year, that's gonna be different? What does that look like for you?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, I mean, my follow-up is very similar to Trey. There's follow-up to all the folks that attended, thank them for coming, getting stuff on social media's pictures as soon as I can.
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Nick Johnson: I do think next year, I do want to tighten that timeline for my photographer, in terms of when we have some to get out. And then, for us, too, because they're non-members, you know, the initial email is thanking folks coming for an event, reporting back the impact. But then a week later, I'm also sending out,
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Nick Johnson: An email. Hey, thanks again for coming.
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Nick Johnson: you know, you experience what our gym is like, and kind of an invitation to consider being a part of our gym, too, with a kind of call to action to set up an intro meeting. So there's also a lead… lead process, there as well.
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Nick Johnson: And then we'll get together, you know, I have a board, we get together 3 or 4 times a year, so we haven't had our meeting yet, but that'll be a big debrief place to think about what we need to improve and what we'll do next year, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'd imagine your follow-up to the non-members is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: is anything but salesy, right? It's probably… it's probably very low-key, just a reminder, like, hey, if you are looking for a place to get your fitness on, and you want to join a great community, now you've experienced us, this is any… what, you have some way for them to reach out, and is it book an intro? Is it a free week? What's the offer that you… that you present to those people?
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Nick Johnson: Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, the first email is not salesy at all, it's just a thank you, thanks for coming. That's awesome. We're grateful they participated. The second email is, hey, you've experienced us.
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Nick Johnson: what might a next step look like? And we do offer them, because, you know, they've also already contributed, towards the work that we're doing, and so we do offer them,
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Nick Johnson: we… this year, we offered them $100 off their first month, if they join. So, and they have until the end of this month to… to respond with that, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, that's great. So it's like, hey, you donated to the fundraiser, this is how you get that value back, dollar for dollar. I love that, that's great. Amy, walk us through… your follow-up sequence is very specific. Can you walk us through how you came up with it, and why every… what pieces are most important to you?
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Aimee Moller: Yeah, so, everyone that attends gets a handwritten thank you card that we send in the mail, so that means we have to have a sign-in sheet up front with all that information. And then in the thank you card, we send them a couple of our Committed Club stickers, which are super fun.
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Aimee Moller: And then we also have a… we have a membership, we call it our Black Card, but normally it goes out to new members.
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Aimee Moller: And it's got our friend referral offer on the back of it, and a QR code to book a no-sweat intro. So we either put that in the thank you cards, or if our offer is something a little sweeter than our normal friend referral, we'll do some kind of card in there with a code to just make it easy to scan and…
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Aimee Moller: Book their no-sweat intro with us. And then beyond that, our operations manager will follow up through text message 2 or 3 times with every single person.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So that's great. So you have this list of people that showed up, we're gonna talk about non-members. They get a handwritten thank you note, and when you say a card with a referral code on it, is it… are we talking just, like, a business card thing with, like, a QR code on it, or…
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Aimee Moller: It looks like a business card, but it's plastic, so it's a little more hefty.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's fancy!
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Aimee Moller: It is fancy, and then our offer… our evergreen offer for a friend referral is give 75, get 75. So they get $75 off, the member that brought them in gets $75 cash that we give at the whiteboard.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Like, cash, like, dollars? Like, you give them the green? Oh, wow.
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Aimee Moller: We give them green at the whiteboard, because I want people to remember that we have that friend referral offer, so we're just always trying to create FOMO in our gym to get people to sign up for things.
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Aimee Moller: So, that's how we do FOMO for our referral offer.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Nice. That's really cool. Awesome. So, as a,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: A staunch believer in ever-improving, your business operations and, like, your events.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: There's some things on this slide that you can pretty much just categorize, hey, you gotta send out thank yous to anybody that showed up. You gotta make sure that you book the appointments, that you reinforce the time, day, place, who's gonna be there for anybody that booked an NSI, or a referral, or, like, a free class.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Pay your vendors, obviously. Social media posts seem to be a huge thing. And you didn't touch on social media. Is there a lot of social media posts that go on after the fact about the Wine Watt event? I'd imagine so.
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Aimee Moller: Yes, I mean, we have social media posts leading up to the event, too, because it's not just our members that we're trying to get to come in, obviously. Our social media person is there all night long taking videos and pictures, and then she just starts the next day making
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Aimee Moller: Reels, so people can see how much fun we had, and posting all about it for next year.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's great. Then you got… obviously, you all have those metrics that we spoke about earlier on in the webinar that you are… you are honed in on, that you are driving success towards, so you're probably, getting all that information, all that data, so you can report on the metrics.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Nick, you were talking about sitting down with your board and reviewing what happened, what can improve for the next time, and updating any playbooks that you have so that the next event is always slightly better. Don't give up on it, right? You want to always be looking for ways to improve.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, with that being said, as a gym owner.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: where do you go from here, right? Wherever you land with the framework that we've discussed so far, the next move is relatively the same.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: start simple, start soon, and these are the bullet points that I want you to focus on. First, I want you to find your goal. What is it that you're trying to improve by having the event? Most people will say right off the bat, like, oh, I just want to do something for my community that is fun, but I would challenge you to come up with a specific metric
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Or,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: or number that you can measure and strive to improve every single time you do this event. Pick a date. I'd give yourself a minimum of 6 to 8 weeks planning any given event, if it's the first time you've done it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And that's not arbitrary, that's just because you're gonna have to communicate… one, you're gonna have to promote it and market it, but two, you're gonna have to coordinate with potentially sponsors or vendors, and also, educate your team on what it is they're going to be doing the day of, or in the lead-up to.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I want you to identify who owns the execution, even if that's you. Having someone set you… one of the three…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: owners in front of you, all of them have people that own certain aspects of the event, and it makes it exponentially easier if you can go to someone and say, hey, I need your help, and they agree, obviously, and this is what I want you to own.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It doesn't have to be the entire event, but certain aspects will make it easier for you. Then, choose how you're going to run the event, and…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: come up with a goal for attendance. It doesn't have to be major, your first event doesn't have to be hundreds of people, but set a goal, and even if you don't hit that goal, you'll at least have a baseline to work towards, and you'll be able to reevaluate and reiterate every single time.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Send a communication this week that plants a seed. So once you come up with all those ideas and those previous bullet points, this week, I want you to send out, an email to your members, a social media post, an email to potential vendors or sponsors. Just one thing to get the ball rolling and hold you accountable for.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, with that being said, we're gonna wrap up, and we're gonna do a Q&A. I know we have at least
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: There was a couple questions in here, and I saw someone raise their hand, but I think I accidentally misclicked. So if someone had a question, go ahead and put it in the Q&A or in the chat. One thing I wanted to bring up, Zachary asked another question. Is there a good percentage of members
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: to event show-up ratio, so I'm guessing, like, hey, if you have 100 members, what would be a good percentage of them to show up to any given event? Does anybody have a baseline answer for that?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I would think it would depend on the style of event, right? Like, Amy, you're not a women's-only gym, but when you do the wide and wine, is it specifically geared towards women, right?
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Aimee Moller: Yep.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Cool, so if 50% of your membership is women, do you have a certain percentage of those women that you're trying to get into the event?
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Aimee Moller: No, we haven't really looked at it percentage-wise. It's been more of a headcount, but it's more important to me that a high percentage of them bring a friend.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep. Okay, that makes sense. What about you, Trey? You… I mean, you're… it's a member party, so I'm imagining you want all the members to be showing up.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yeah, so we look at… I actually dug into it after
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Traie Roberson-Miles: you had posted the question, and I… you know, at first it looks like, I think it's around, like, 75% of our total membership, but once we weed out, like.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: you know, we have a few people on punch passes, we weed out our at-risk people who haven't been here for 30 days or more. We're closer to 90%.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Wow.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: And I think that's probably a really good one. Ideally, I'd love it to be 100 out of that, but, you know, people have things… people still have things going on that we can't…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Out-schedule or maneuver, or convince them, no matter how hard we try.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, there's all… getting 100% would be, I think, would be the golden rabbit that nobody's ever catching, right? Like, that's an elusive target. Nick, your event is a little bit different in the sense that you also have, I'm assuming, a predominantly high amount of non-members relative to members. Do you see more members or more non-members for your event?
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Nick Johnson: This year, it was split about 50-50.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Wow.
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Nick Johnson: That's cool. And yeah, I mean, obviously we'd love to have as much of our community out as possible, but it's a big investment to invest half a day, and raise some money, and things like that, and so if we could get half our membership out there, that's great, and I think we were right around that this year, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Cool, very cool. Next question, do you feel a certain headcount gets best results? For example, not enough people is not good, but too many people can make it impersonal, or lack,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: lack the relationship that… relationships, ability to build relationships. I'm trying to think… again, I think it's going to be event-dependent, right? Like, is there a point where Juan Wine would have too many people, Amy?
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Aimee Moller: We… that's something we're probably gonna need to consider, because we had way more people this year than I ever planned would show up for an event like that, but we're very intentional about…
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Aimee Moller: creating relationships during that, so the warm-up is, like, a fun team warm-up game. The workout is team-based, so all the women are in a pod with the friend that brought them, and a seasoned member who's the captain of their team, and we keep those teams really small. And then the coach, who's the head coach, is very experienced with
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Aimee Moller: Running one-off groups of 50 or 60 people at a time, and she does.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, wow.
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Aimee Moller: excellent job at it, and we've always gotten really great feedback about those events so far. So, I don't think we've hit that number yet, and I don't know what that number would be with the way we've structured things.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It sounds like… and… well, it sounds like there's a ratio of either members to non-members, or staff members
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: to attendees, that might be ideal. Trey, does your entire staff go to… I'm assuming all your trainers go to the member party, right?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yes.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Do you see them walking around, like, doing work to also be good hosts? And do you feel like if you had the same amount of staff, but twice amount of members, it would be worse, or better? What do you think?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: I think it would be the same, probably. I mean, we… the way our,
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Our venue is set up is we do about a half mixture of, like, seated tables, and then we do a half of the, like, cocktail standing tables.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, wait, the high tops?
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yep, the high top. So people are naturally kind of floating through the room, especially the more social people. So, there's a lot of interacting and mingling going on with or without staff, and I think
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Traie Roberson-Miles: more would just… I mean, it would just…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: continue. I don't think it would affect it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It sounds like it has less to do with the overall number, more to do with the ratio, and the way that the event is set up to facilitate socialization.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Like, if there's a big lull, or if there's a reason to not be doing anything, people will not do something. But if there's a reason to talk, if there's a reason to engage, I think it might be hard to make it feel impersonal unless you are actively trying to make it feel impersonal.
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Oh, no.
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Nick Johnson: Well, that and space size, I think, is important, too. So, like, 100 people in our gym makes it feel packed, but if we started in a huge parking lot somewhere, 100 people might feel small. So I think space creates a perception about…
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Traie Roberson-Miles: Yes, absolutely.
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Nick Johnson: Success and excitement, and things like that, too.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, that's a phenomenal point. So, Zachary, there you go. That's a objective way. Take a look at your expected headcount, and then look at the space where you're hosting, and be like, hey, what's it gonna feel like if the 30 people that I'm anticipating show up actually show up? Is this space too big?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Or is the space too small? That, that, and what can I do to alter that? Do I need to fill it up with more bodies? Okay, well, what do I need to do now? Or, do I need to have an overflow area planned? So we're like, oh, cool, let's open the doors and we're gonna go to the outside turf area if so many people show up. Yeah, that might be a contingency that you need to play for. Great, that's a great point, Nick. See?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I'm glad that you guys are on this call.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Well, with that being said, that was all the questions. Amy.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Trey, Nick, thank you so much for giving us your time and walking us through that. If you guys are listening, or if you registered for this webinar, you are, like I said before, you are going to be getting a playbook that breaks down a Bring a Friend-style event, a fundraiser-style event, and an annual member party-style event, and give you some systems and SOPs to make sure that you
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Hit the ground running, and you start off on the right foot.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Guys, thank you so much for being here. We got another webinar in 2 weeks. It's me and Rob Schwartz. We're gonna talk about DIY, do-it-yourself paid ads, using our Grows system. So, if you guys have
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: any questions, feel free to send them to me, zach at pushpress.com, or jump into the Facebook community group, you guys know where that's at, and start posting online.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We'll see you next time. Thanks, everyone.
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