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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Awesome.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Perfect, so…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Push Start webinar. Today, we are talking about something every gym owner needs once in a while, a little bit of a reset.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So I am joined by, Mr. Dave Kovar, founder of Kovar Systems, and we are going to walk through his 8Rs, the 8 practical areas, I guess, the 8 practical, verticals inside your business.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Everything from your facility to staff, member engagement, referrals, retention, and we're gonna walk through each one of them and what, you should probably prioritize
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: looking at and resetting, quote-unquote, in order to get set up for the new year. The goal is simple. We want to figure out what's gotten stale, what needs attention, and where you can create some momentum heading into
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 2027. Does that sound about right, Dave?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Absolutely, yeah.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, well, we're gonna kick off with,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: this… this is the best time of year, right, Dave? The fall is the perfect season for this reset, but can you expound on that? Can you explain why this sets gym owners up for going into, into next year? Well…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So I think what's important is that, is that every now and then, you need to do kind of a, we call it zero-basing, where you take a look at everything that you do in your school, and to make sure that, that you're, you're being as effective and efficient as possible. And there's a story I learned a million years ago, really quickly. It's, it's that grandma, they're having a Thanksgiving, what,
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: party, and several generations are there, and daughter goes up to… and mom is making the ham, and daughter goes up to mom and goes, Mom, why do you cut the ends off the ham before you put the ham in the…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: stove. You've probably heard this one, Zach. And and so the mom goes, I don't know why I do it. Ask grandma. She's right around the corner. So daughter goes up to Grandma and says, Grandma, why do we cut the ends off the ham before we make the ham? And she goes, well, it's how my mom showed me to do it. Great-grandma's here, why don't you go ask her? So she goes up to great-grandma and says, why do you cut the ends off the ham? She goes, because we had a really small pan.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Okay, so the point is.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Every business, sometimes they do stuff, and they're not even really clear as to why they're doing it. It's just what we've always done, right? And so I think every now and then, and this is the perfect time, fall's the perfect time to, especially because, you know, first of the year, January's that, you know, that month where you just want to have, you want to be all dialed in, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, for the new season, for all the new people, the new year, yeah, yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: New Year's resolution guys, right? So, zero basing is about going, okay, you know, how can we make sure that we're covering all the bases? And so, the idea with the 8Rs is a way of just kind of categorizing all the different things that go into our business and making sure that we're, you know, we're doing a reset. And, you know, it's really about being brilliant in the basics. It's like, you know, the gyms and schools that I see that are successful.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: They're not slick. They… they do the basics really well and consistently, and that's what really this is about.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I just… you're muted there, oh, you were.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, I had muted myself, because I'm battling this cough, Dave, and I'll tell you what, something's going around, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, you were talking about the reset, and I've used it in the past. I've used the term audit. We've audited different areas of our business
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: to make sure that they're up to snuff and see if there was any, first off, low-hanging fruit in any aspect of the business that we could improve quickly. But in order to see if there's low-hanging fruit, you have to take the time and look at what I think are each of these individual areas. We have the ARs that we're going to go over, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: before we dive into any one of them, is there… is there a specific order to this? Are they prioritized in a certain way? Like, would you prefer people to go through this? Do you have a system for that?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So, it's a great question. This is how… I put these in the order how I think. I think what's, the syntax is less important than actually going through the process, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Okay.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But… but the bottom line is you kind of start, you've got to start somewhere. And starting, making sure that you refresh and say, is my facility, you know, looking right? Am I giving the right first impression? I think that's a good starting point.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, cool, so let's start with that. Refresh.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, so, anybody ever, like, you walk into somebody else's gym, and right away… as a matter of fact, I was in New Jersey visiting our schools this weekend, and the school that we hosted an event at, I walk in, the first thing I notice is there's some sheetrock repair that needs to be done, you know what I'm saying? And some of the chairs in the reception weren't matching and weren't lined up, and the head instructor at that location wasn't even aware of it, because they see it every day.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It took some kind of fresh eyes, right? So, the kind of thing is, is can you walk into your gym like it's the first time you're walking, like you're… actually, before that, start in the parking lot. How visible. I was at, I was visiting one of my clients' jiu-jitsu schools about a month and a half ago, and it was really… he's on the second floor, and he's really hard to find. The signage is tricky, and I go, I just, yeah, hey man, have you ever thought about doing, you know, putting the sign here?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: never thought of that. Had he…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: kind of looked at it from a customer's experience, or eyes, he probably would have been able to detect that. So, the first step is to kind of go through your gym. And by the way, we've even done secret shopper stuff.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: had somebody say, alright, come into your gym and look for things, you know, that… what do you like about the look of it? What can we improve upon? And inevitably, you might not like what you hear, and you might want to be defensive. You're like, oh, wait a minute, that's there, but it's really important that you hear it, right? And something… and a lot of times, you're gonna… you're gonna go, bang, it's right in front of me, I didn't even see it, thank you for that observation.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, we do that on a pretty regular basis, and I think it actually has a lot of power to it, where you step outside the facility, like… like you said, start in the parking lot. I will…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: quite literally, like, I will look at the ground, and I will close my eyes, try to clear my brain, like, blank slate my brain, and then I'll open my eyes and look at the front door, and I will walk through as though I've never been there. And that… I'm not sure if it…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: speaks to my, my previous life, where I was able to compartmentalize information a little bit differently than most people, but it does every single time I do that, I do notice something different about my business that I want to change or improve.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I think walking through your facility through the eyes of a customer, or if you don't have the ability to turn that off, grab someone that you trust that isn't regularly exposed to your business, like a family member, or maybe another business owner down the street, and take them through the facility and be like, hey, what's your impression of this? Walking through, what do you notice? What jumps out at you?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Give me your honest feedback, right?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Another thing that's important. Understand, when you move the display, because you know this, like, if you have a retail shop, you know, space, and if you never move stuff around, people don't even notice, right? Just like making sure that you refresh it. But the other thing is, when you paint that wall or get a new piece of equipment, it tells the world you care about your school, and you're intentional about it. It's a real subtle thing that makes a difference. It's like, oh man, look at that. You know, it might be a piece of equipment no one's ever going to use.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But the fact that it's new and it's there kind of, you know, I appreciate that as a customer. So, you can keep it, you're pretty looking sharp. Go ahead.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, so Refresh focuses on the physical appearance, the organization, the layout, the… the cleanliness of the physical space, correct?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: 100%.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Alright, cool, I like that as a good spl… it seems like a simple place to start, right? But what about refocus?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So here's what happens, man. It's so easy to get sidetracked, especially going into the holidays, right? A lot of… I look at the holiday season from kind of like, Halloween to New Year's. You know, there's a
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: two-month frame. There's almost November, December, people just think different, you know, we're all kind of in, you know, we're wired to kind of take time off over Thanksgiving, and by the way, so are our clients and customers, right? Yeah. You know, without a doubt. So, the whole idea, when we're talking about refocus is that, you know, making sure that you don't let your habits slip too far. It's really common for me to kind of get out of… here's an example.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: New Year's resolutions, fitness business, big deal. I mean, it's a, you know, an important time of year, and I'm amazed by… this happened, I think, Monday was January 2nd or 3rd of this year, right? And I go to the gym every morning really early, and I show up, and it's 5 o'clock in the morning, and I'm going, what the heck? This place is packed, what's going on?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And I'm trying to figure out, am I in the wrong time?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: New Year's resolutions, right? And what happened a week later, the place was as empty as ever, right? You know, because people… so many… this is another subject, but so many times people overestimate what they can do in a short period of time. They, you know, they're too aggressive with their goals, maybe, but… and we can talk more about that on one of the other Rs, but my point on this is for us, it happens to us, is we, you know, we're not as maybe focused on our business
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: as we should be, because we're spending time with family, which is a great thing to do, right? But the point is, my father taught me a line, it was, wherever you are, be there. And it means when you're at the gym.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Be at the gym, be all in. The worst thing you can do is be there and be thinking about, oh, I wish I was… you know, or worse than that is when you're somewhere else and you're thinking about your gym. So, the idea is to refocus is when you show up, you roll your sleeves up, you are all in.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I find this interesting that, going back and forth between refresh being probably the most
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Not objective, but the most…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I guess, visible, because you're walking through a physical space and you're seeing something, right? And it's like, hey, that is either good or it's bad, and you can visually recognize
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: whether or not it's something you want to change, or whether or not it's something that you need to give attention to, whereas refocus is on the opposite end of the spectrum, where it requires you to look within, and it really requires you to examine
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the business, not the visible thing, not the physical thing that's in front of you, but the consequences of all those other things. It's a little bit more vague and nebulous, and I have a feeling that the people listening right now, all of our webinar attendees and the people that are listening to this recording, they're probably going to be very good at one
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: or the other. They probably have a strength on one side.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: or the other side. Do you think there's, a benefit to, like, leaning into one or more of those, or should people be doing all this at once?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Well, I think it's a great distinction. As we go through this, I think what's important, it's going to be different for different people, is you focus on the one that speaks to you the most.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Someone's gonna go, you know, I should probably do this better, you know? But what I'll tell you with the refocus, in my opinion, there's two things you gotta do to get to the next level, and that's business, health.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: whatever it is, is introspection and self-discipline. And introspection is going to… what am I doing well, what can I do better, right? Like, and being given your honest feedback, right? And I think introspection is really covered, like you just nailed on both of these, right? Refresh, refocus is kind of, you know, what's the physical things that I can see, you know, introspectively, what can I do better? And then refocus, what is the business aspects? And then the self-discipline is really about
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: taking the action on it, and I think the slides we're going to go through coming up are going to kind of address that to a certain degree.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely. So, and retrain now takes… takes the, onus to your team in… team members, or your staff, your employees. Where… where should we focus on getting our team.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Let
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I'll give you an example, and I'm dating myself, because this is an example from when we used to do most of our inquiries that were on the phone, right? We know that's not the case as much anymore.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Right.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It's important to have good phone skills, but that's not a big of a priority. But years ago, we're doing a… we would call it ring-ring. In a staff meeting, we're practicing an inquiry calls, and we're doing, you know, how to answer the phone to… and the whole point of the phone call is simply to schedule an appointment, right? Is not to get sidetracked with that. And so I have this gentleman, his name is Paul, and Paul…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Paul's got this. He's a cross between, like, a lounge singer, Mr. Miyagi, and like a, you know, like a Southern Baptist preacher. Like, he's got this voice, and he's just so… he's the perfect guy for the phone, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I have no idea how you… how you… how you get Mr. Miyagi's Southern Baptist, and… what was the third? That blows my mind, but yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Like a lounge singer, you know what I mean? Just a guy that has this wise presence to him, you know?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Okay, okay, cool.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: All right, and he's, like, one of the best guys on the phone and in person ever. If you want… if you want someone to enroll somebody, Paul's your guy. If someone shows up, they're gonna enroll, right? And so I go, Paul, let's… let's practice on this process. And so he goes through it, and he's smooth as silk. When we got done, there was two things he forgot. He forgot to, you know, we have a thing, do you know where we're located? Yes. Well, then you know we're located on 7520 Fair Oaks Boulevard. It doesn't matter if they say yes or no, because they might be thinking they're calling the gym down the street.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Right? So you can turn that. And…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: He didn't ask for their name. So, it was too little minor details, because he hadn't reviewed it in a long time.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And so what happens, if you have your core scripts, right, that you're gonna do, and you're enrolling somebody, or giving a tour, or whatever it is, if you don't pull the sheet out and review this, right, what's gonna happen is, over time, you're gonna deviate from it. Just 10% here, 5% there, and all of a sudden, you're missing some key points on your presentation.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And that's… so taking your core presentations, your core things you train your team on, and don't assume they know, because you did it 6 months ago. Back off and review those core training modules, so make sure everybody's on the same track.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And it makes sense, like you said, to retrain your employees during what is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: notoriously known as the downtime of the year, when membership sign-ups and activity is relatively low, you can fill the gap with, you know, prepping your staff for the busy season at the turn of the year. This is the best time to do that, so their skills
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And those systems are sharp and, and…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: new or fresh in their mind before January.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, and you know what's fun? Being good at something is fun, and let me explain what I mean by that. I had one of the gyms that I was coaching where they were doing… their conversion rate when people are coming in from their trial to actually enrolling was really poor, right?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And so what happened was, is he wasn't spending a lot of time training that, and so he had a team of, like, 3 different people that could do the tour and the enrollment, right? And what happened is, none of them were very comfortable at it, so they're all kind of deferring to the other person. So here's this… you come in, and you're motivated, you want to enroll, and everybody's kind of wanting to… they don't want to be the guy to not enroll you, you know what I'm saying? And so what we did is we just doubled down and said, alright, man.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: we're gonna get really good at this whole process again. So we doubled down, and pretty soon, after a couple weeks of training, the three of them were fighting over who got to do the tour, because they were good at it again, you know what I'm saying?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It's like making sure that the processes that you have in place on a regular basis, everybody, you know, can do in their sleep really well.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, that's interesting. I think this will play into the next slide, but I do have a very specific question. Remotivate speaks to members, but before we talk about members, what you just brought up.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: was…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: getting… getting people really good at it, and then they enjoy doing things that they're good at, but how you create the buy-in with your staff to get there in the first place? It's an aspect of motivation, isn't it?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, 100%, and we know that… that motivation follows action. You don't get motivated, you can't rely on motivation. It's really self-discipline. You know what I'm talking about? Like, of course, if you're motivated to do the calls, it's like… it's… there's comfort, and there's growth, but you can't have both.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: People get comfortable, and they don't want to do stuff out of their… but the only way you improve
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: like, in your job description is you do things that you're uncomfortable with, right? And that's where that, like, that retraining module comes in. And my experience has been, is that initially, when you have a new system, or you need to improve somebody's skills on something, you can't just… it's not a one and done. I gotta go, hey, Zach, do you mind if you and I work on your tour a little bit more? You know, and then over time, what happens? Your tour gets better, your close ratio
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: ratio improves, and… You appreciate the extra effort that went into it, because now you're more competent with it.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I don't know if I answered your question, but that would be… in the results, the results, like, we have this thing that we just went through, getting our team to really double down on DNS. For us, that did not show calls, right? Yep. And we used to say, you gotta do them more. Well, we actually…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: doubled down on the process and went through everybody at all our schools, who's on their DNS list, what was your contact point, what did you say? You know, just helping them reestablish habits, and it's amazing the difference in retention and just doing that for 3 months now.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It sounds like you get buy-in on the action, and then, which is what you said, action precedes the motivation. You get buy-in on the action, you get everybody on board with, hey, no matter what, this is what we're doing over and over and over. And the…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the end assumption, I guess, is that the result, the desired result, will happen, but that seems to be, like, the after effect. That just seems like, hey, let's focus on doing A, B, and C. But in the back of your mind, you're just like.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: But, you know what? I want to see XYZ occur as a result of it, but we're gonna focus on enjoying ABC.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Now, how does that apply to members? When we need to re-motivate members because during the holiday season, during the fall season, they're drifting, right? They're getting to a point where it's like, hey, I'm gonna put my membership on pause, or I might think about canceling because it's getting too hectic, I can't maintain. What are some things that business owners should be striving to re-motivate.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, I think, I think, really, it's about, it's… my experience has been, someone's inconsistent, they… they sometimes feel they're behind, right? They're out of the regime, they're behind. And if I can get somebody in, one time, again, right? To get their workout and get their class in, and then spend a little time just with them, feedback is the breakfast of champions, right? Like, giving them
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Feedback on, on, you know, what they did well, where there's areas of improvement, and just basically…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: kind of doing a one-on-one update with him, and often, you know, what are your goals, Zach, what are your goals for the year? I know you've been a little inconsistent through the holidays, what would you like to accomplish? Well, I really, you know, and you tell me, and then I kind of help you see that vision as to where you're going, right? Hey, and a lot of times, as people… I had a guy quit training, he was a pilot, and he was the most consistent student ever, right? Never missed class, and then he switched airlines.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And now he's really inconsistent. He came up, and at one point he goes.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Dave, I just want to let you know I'm quitting. I go, what do you mean, Dan? How come you're quitting? He goes,
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I'm way behind, I'm missing all these classes, I'm way behind. Well, who the heck is he way behind?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: You understand what I'm talking about? And I had to kind of remind him, hey, man, maintaining is gaining. You're a busy guy, get in when you can, your schedule's… and so I was able to, just through kind of, you know, kind of pointing out what seemed obvious to me that didn't seem as obvious to him, you know, where he was, and he was like, well, yeah, you're right. And all of a sudden, he's re-motivated, he's back on track. And then, the other thing is celebrating small victories. When you see progress, you gotta be there to catch it, you know, and see it and comment on it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I think that's definitely huge, the celebrating small victories. I think a coaching staff that gets really good at that, and there's no single person that can be relied on to do that, unless you are a one-person show, but, I think that is something that coaches need to be reminded of over and over and over, is to celebrate the small wins loudly. And some… and what we've started to do at
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: work ethic, and I say started to do because this is our first fall season, is we're getting out ahead of the,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the vacation or the schedule switch up, and we're already asking our members, like, hey, are you guys… are you traveling this year for the holidays? Like, what do you… what do you think your schedule's gonna be like? Is that gonna impact your current… and getting out ahead of it, and I know this is resource intensive, because it is, like, a 5-10 minute conversation with each
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: individual, and right now, it's me and one other trainer, and we…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It's gonna be a while before we get through everybody. But, one, it lets them know that we're aware that their attendance could be
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: dwindling or changing up, or the consistency or the cadence could be different, but two, it puts it in their mind, like, hey, this is okay, this is nothing that is insurmountable, doesn't mean I need to stop, it just means that this season of life, or this season of the year, is going to be different, and that can curb the demotivation of
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Of the holiday season.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: 100%, 100%. And by the way, the joke is only do that with the clients you want to keep.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yes.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Meaning, meaning, and it is time-consuming, but it's worth every penny of it, and what I love about that process, it's your… it's a preemptive strike. See, if you wait until someone says, I'm really busy, I don't know if I can come in anymore, and you say, it doesn't matter, you're going to be inconsistent, it's almost like they've made up their mind, but when you tell them ahead of time, hey, the holiday seasons are going to be busy.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But don't worry about it, you know, get in as consistently as you can. It'll all be good, it happens every year. People are going, man, I'm getting busy. Oh, that's just like Zach said. Okay, I won't worry about it, because you told me ahead of time. And the other thing is we really lean into is really pre-framing. I don't know if this is true, I guess I could find out, go to ChatGPT, and it would tell me right away, but I remember reading at some point to where the majority of the average adult gains something like 2 or 3 pounds a year.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And they usually do it between Halloween and New Year's. And if you can simply maintain your weight through that season, you're good, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Makes total sense, absolutely.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And that's kind of like a good… that's something that we've talked about plenty over the time, just, you know, maintaining is gaining, you know? Just try not to fall back too far over that season.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: It is an aspect of education. Now, I'm a… I say I'm a teacher at heart, I like to coach, I like to help people learn new things and reach new goals, but
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I really appreciated this aspect of your system, the, of the 8Rs.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: re-educate, and to me, that means I am taking my core membership, or the people that I have in my business right now, and I'm making sure that they understand the culture of the business before we get an onslaught of new members who could.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: potentially disrupt that culture. And not disrupt like they're coming in, they're trying to change things, but every time you get someone to sign up at your gym.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: there's an integration process, onboarding, in which they have to assimilate to the culture in order to maintain that. And I feel like the more that your members are educated on what that culture is, the more likely new members are to integrate well, or self-select and not be part of your business. But is that… is that a good summation of what you mean by re-educate?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Absolutely. In addition to, I think it's really important that you kind of continue on a regular basis to really share the V's and B's of your program, the values and benefits, what you're going to get out of this, right? And it might be different from a jiu-jitsu school, you know, from a gym, but a lot of it is the same as well. But one of the things that I think is important is that you ever have anybody that's discouraged because they haven't…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: you know, they haven't… or they don't feel like they've hit their personal best in a while, and some lift, or… and you have to remind them, like, let's use push-ups, for example. Man, my goal was to be able to do 50 straight push-ups, you know, by my 40th birthday, and darn it, I'm not able to do that. It's up to us to remind them, well, yeah, but when you started, you can only do 10, and now you can do 25. Oh, yeah, that's right. You know, so re-education is also kind of painting a picture of
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: the benefits they're seeing. It might be as simple as saying, hey guys, how many, due to training, have you ever, like, not wanted to come to class, but you did anyway?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: You had an excuse, you know, you felt a cold coming on, a busy schedule, but you came anyway, and your hands will go up. Are you glad you came? Always, right? Remember, you're a better person for your family when you're feeling good about yourself. So your training, you know, one of my mindsets is I take great care of myself because the world needs me at my best. And in my belief, and it's not a belief, it's the reality for me, I'm a better husband, I'm a better
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: father, I'm a better boss, I'm a better instructor, I'm a better coach, when I'm feeling good about myself, right? And it's the same with our clients and students, right? So I think that's something on a regular basis to re-educate them on, this is not selfish. Taking care of yourself, you know, going to the gym four times a week, or doing jiu-jitsu, whatever it is, that's the best thing you can do for your family as well, and this is why. That's another aspect of the re-education thing that I think's important.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I like that. That makes total sense to me. We had a question from Kenda Swanson in the chat,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: she asked, what kind of info or education do you suggest including in newsletters, and how often? Like, my immediate response would be, if you have a monthly newsletter, you should have some sort of education or re-education every single newsletter, if it's monthly.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I would agree, and I think it's… you share victories.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: That's what you do, is you share… you share, you know, your client victories. You know, somebody had a breakthrough. I think that's a great place to be, because… and also remember, storytelling, we know the value of it, right? I can give you a bunch of stats about something, or I can share a story about… and that draws people in. So the more that you can, like, through this… let me tell you about Joyce Jones.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Joyce Jones started with us 6 months ago, she was dealing with X, Y, and Z, and here she is now. Boom, you know, and it's kind of like it reminds people, all right, it reminds people of victories that are happening around them that makes them more mindful of their personal victories as well.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I definitely… I definitely think, community wins are great, like if one of your members achieved, you know, their first pull-up in that month, or, one of the things I've seen other gyms do well, and I can't remember, I saw… I'm subscribed to a handful of gyms' newsletters, just because I like to steal ideas.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: And this one gym, it's not Grandview… crap, I can't remember the gym…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: name, but they did it really, really well. They have… they present, like, a stat sheet. It's like, this is how many PRs we had in classes this month. This is how many total check-ins we had. This is how many, people in the committee club we had. And it was, like, a real quick… it was almost like a report card, and it gave people… here's the thing I like about it, is that it centered on
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: On progress, and the things that mattered to that business.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: When I say re-educate, I feel like the most important thing to re-educate your members on is the culture that you're trying to build, which should be surrounded or built from your core values as a business, so you could take any one of your core values and just give a little tidbit as how it relates. Like, one of our core values for our coaching staff is.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: walk the walk. Like, all of our coaches have to walk the walk. So, in that newsletter, I'm gonna say, hey, this is how… this is what Coach Ben does for his meal prep on Sunday, headed into the week. And it's just basically, like, a real quick couple paragraphs on…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: an example of how we can live that core value. There's a lot of different ways to go with that, but I think avoiding it or not doing it is probably the biggest misstep. I think
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: as a business owner, I'm… and I'm talking to, Kenda, you specifically, just pick something and do it, and I think you'll learn as… as you do it.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, I think it's great, and the idea when you're this… I've never done this before, done is better than perfect, meaning just take some action, man, you know, and over time, you'll figure it out. You'll figure out the best way to… method to do this.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, I agree. Now, this is something that I think a lot of gym owners will benefit, and they tend to forget. The reactivateR is, something that we're about to go into starting next week.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Reactivation, it's, it's…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It's low-hanging fruit, and reactivation is different. When I look at reactivation, these are not old leads that, you know, these are people that actually train with us, that are no longer training with us, okay? And who knows, you know, like in the first bullet point there, former members who left for life reasons, their stuff comes up, you know, I get an injury, busy work, busy schedule, who knows what it is. But I promise you.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: If you, you know, shop in the grocery store by your gym, you bump into old students all the time in the comments, oh, I'm gonna get back, I mean to get back, right? Or every one of you guys has had someone that took 6 months, a year, 2 years.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I had one guy that came back after 17 years of not being a student, right? And gets back in the, you know, into training. So, the idea with Reactivate is to reach out to former members, and there's several different things you do it. And what I wanted to talk about first is, obviously, PushPress has all kinds of programs that you can put to work so you can really maximize, right? Without, you know, being super effective.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And you should take advantage of every one of them. You know, and of course, we're all utilizing AI, like.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And I want to talk about AI, but it's not the AI you think. It's not artificial intelligence. That's the yin. The yang is authentic interaction.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And I think that's what's really going to separate us, is using both, right? And so when it comes to Reactivate, if all you do is send out a, you know.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: A generated text or email.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Some people are going to look at it, a lot of people aren't going to look at it. Like, you know, if I look at my… I'm getting, I don't know about you, I get 75 to 100 emails a day, right? And if it's something from my old gym, I'm probably going to just delete. I'm probably not going to look at it. I might, nothing wrong with doing it, maybe I do, but… so, we certainly want to send that out. We certainly want to send out the automated texts, but on top of that, what I would do is I would go through your reactivation, I'd go through all your old members.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And look at people that you remember specifically. You gotta, you put the name and the face together, and, oh yeah, man, Bob Jones, he was great, I loved having him. That's right, he quit because he broke his arm, you know, playing softball, and he was supposed to come back. Let me pick up, you know, pick up the… you know, or here's the best thing to do, in my opinion.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I pull out my phone, I push it to video, and I go, hey.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Josh, just want to let you know, man, this is… we really miss you, love to have you back. If you're interested in coming back, please give me a call. Boom. Video, push send, takes you that much amount of time, and that's authentic interaction. That's not generating. And he… chances are really good he's going to take a look at it. Yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And so, when you do a reactivation, do everything that your system will allow you to do, and on top of that, allow yourself some amount of time for authentic interaction with former clients. And that's going to go a long ways.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I think that's genius, and what we tend to do, in our past gyms, and I say we as in the gyms that I used to run.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: We would work in 6-month blocks, but if I were to do the authentic interaction, I'd probably have to shorten it up just a little bit, because there would be too many people. So, for instance, I said next week we're about to do this reactivation. We will look at everyone from, I believe it's April.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Which is just after when we opened, right? All the way for 6 months until October. And any lead that, said, you know, not now, or anybody that we had lost, which was a couple members because we had just opened, right? We are planning on getting that list of everybody in the past 6 months that
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: fits that, tag. And in Grow, in our CRM, PushPress Grow, what we did was we tagged them
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: reactivate OCT OCT for October 26, right? And this was everybody that was, put into that bucket between April and October. And then Ben and I, my
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: my co-coach, will go through that list, and we will decide, hey, who do we know well enough, or who do we have in an authentic relationship?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: with that I can send a personal message to, or who needs an actual, just, like, an automated text, because they just need a reminder. And then we'll do that again for another 6-month block. So, from October all the way through, I believe it'll be next April, we're gonna do the same exact thing, where all these people are gonna be tagged.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: reactivate April 27, and then we'll repeat that process. And at the previous gyms in Vegas, we would net a handful of people from a list of 100 to 150 people. So, I mean, is it worth it, in my opinion?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Dan Kennedy, maybe you've heard of him, he's a pretty famous marketer, you know, his department was, I don't know one way to get 20 new members, but I know 20 ways to get one new member, right? And reactivation is one of those things, absolutely. And it's one of those basic procedures, and by the way, sometimes it doesn't work. So we see it in all our locations, right? We did a reactivation campaign going into summer, and the 8 locations we have in
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: in Sacramento.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And we had a couple schools that got zero response, and we had… but we overall, we netted, like, 38 people on a reactivation campaign. It was worthwhile. Here's my point.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: the two that didn't get a response, if that's the… they did… oh, I'm not gonna do that again, it didn't work. It's kind of like going fishing. You're not always gonna catch a fish, but you gotta put the… you gotta… you gotta put a worm on the hook and throw it in the water, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Like, it's still worth doing. You never know when it's gonna… what's gonna pay in spades.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, for everyone listening, I definitely think if you don't have a system or a plan to do a reactivation campaign, I think you should probably sit down and build at least something that you could repeat. Dave, what would you say? Twice a year, a reactivation campaign?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I like it.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Three times per year.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I think our season, in my opinion, it's first of the year, clearly. You start pushing it, you know, over the holidays, right? Because that's… but I think summer's a good time, beginning of summer, especially if you have a kids program, because, you know, people.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: and then back to school season. Even if you're… for your adults, we're wired since kindergarten to kind of take summer off and kind of get, I'm going to get back to my routine this fall. So those are, to me, the three times to do reactivation campaigns.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's perfect, I love that. So that's a great place for everybody to start. Alright, talk to me about Recruit.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, what I want to focus on is, like, grassroots marketing stuff, right? And the whole intention with this, there's so many different ways to do this, is we actually recently… I might… my stats might be off a bit, but you'll get the sense of it. We're pretty good about tracking stats, and with something like…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: 56% of our, of our leads came from our online presence, our, you know, our, you know, everything we're doing on social media. And that leaves 44%, which are old-school, buddy days, ask for referrals. But here's what's interesting. 66% of our students that actually enrolled
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: came from our old-school stuff. Meaning, two-thirds of our clients came from
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: the organic stuff, the one-on-one, and it's a reminder, if you are putting all your eggs in the basket, if you're just paying for ads, and you're putting a lot of social media stuff out there, that's great, you should, but you're missing the boat if you're not really doing old-school recruiting. What do I mean by old-school recruiting? First off, you touched on it. We look at recruiting separately from reactivation, although they both are affected by this. When it comes to recruiting, is every league
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: you've ever had in the system that you reach out to, right, on a regular basis? And the one we did…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: We did the 7… I'm sure you're familiar with this, I think it's a 7 or 8 word react… it was a text that said, hey.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Are you still interested in training?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, yeah, I do remember you talking about that. It was super simple.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, yeah, and it's just a… and, you know, it's surprising how many people will say, yeah, I still am interested, right? And what we did with it, at the same time we did a reactivation, we also did a recruiting one, so we did a little different text for the two of them, but if you're still interested in training, comment.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: you know, comment, train, and we'll send you, you know, we'll set up a schedule for you. That was the idea. And we did surprisingly well on that as well. Now, there… by the way, our list is thousands long.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: business long, right? So the percentage was maybe, you know, we got a 2% return, but that's all good. You know, you put out a thousand texts, that means you're getting 20 back, you know what I'm saying? It's worth doing. So that would be… but here's the one that I would really like to focus on. I know we talked about this on one of our other calls. When it comes to recruiting.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: The best, absolute hand down, always, if I was to… if we were to pull all the clients on the phone, everybody on the phone right now, all the school owners and gym owners on this webinar, and we asked, what's the best source of new members, I'm guessing they would say referrals. That's what they…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Absolutely, probably, yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And then, if we were to ask another question, who can be better at referrals, I'm guessing pretty much every hand would go up.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Okay? And one of the reasons is, is because a lot of times we don't want to be pushy. We don't want to feel like we're being pushy, right? What's important to understand is that
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: We're not selling some used car or some worthless trinket. What we do has massive value, and we get that spouse to come in, or that friend that needs to, you know, get in better shape. If we get them to actually join our gym, they're not gonna… two years later, they're not gonna go, darn you.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I'm so mad you got me in the gym, I'm in the best shape of my life, you know, my stress is reduced dramatically, I'm eating better, how dare you ask me for… you know, they're gonna thank us.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: You understand what I'm saying? So, what I… my point is, it's almost like we owe it to our community, we're almost obligated to go out and talk to as many people as possible, right? Because we really do have their best interests in mind. Oh, by the way, it's going to help us make a better living and keep the doors open, of course.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But that's not what we lead with. So, and I'll tell you what, what's interesting is one-on-one. So if you have some poster that says, you know, we've got a, you know, we've got an event, come bring your friends, and you announce it, and you post it online, that's all great. But the best thing I can do is go, hey, Zach, you know we have a special buddy workout this Saturday. Are you coming? And are you bringing somebody?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And here's an example. I have a group text for all of my senior instructors, and let's just say that I need some coverage on Saturday morning to a special class we do for advanced students, okay? And I do a group text, and I say, hey, can anybody help me out on this Saturday at 8 o'clock? I may or may not get a response, but if I reach out individually, I get a response from everybody, and it's almost always yes.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Okay? So, the one-on-one, it's time-consuming, heck yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But this goes back to authentic interaction. The only time I talk to of my clients and my students outside the class is I ask them for referrals, that's not a good thing. That's why I have to have a relationship with them, an ongoing relationship with them. And if I do, every now and then, I go, hey, Zach, you know, you and I are buddies, you know, in a professional way, but every now and then I ask, hey, you have anybody that can bring to it?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: you're happy to do it, right? Yep. And then the other one is that if you see somebody coming in from your program, and you think, oh, I don't want to bug them, let them tell you no.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Don't assume they're not interested. Let them say, no, it's not for me, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, and so with recruiting, I've always thought of it, I've always placed in two…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: two buckets. And it's like, I can do a referral event.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Where I set up at the… at our business. Like, in… I know CrossFit affiliates or functional fitness gyms do this thing called Bring a Friend Week.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Right? That's very popular, and it's usually very successful if you can do it well, right? Where, you know, the workouts are simplified for that week, and everybody can bring
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: their friends in to train for free, or with some sort of stipulation, and so that's what I call an in-house referral event. And then there are recruiting events, which I travel to. So that's like going to, a local 5K to get… to go to some… go somewhere else and actually get people interested, like, pull non-members
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: interest towards, either if I've set up a booth, or if I have a group there that's competing. Like, if you had a, gym going at
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: or not a gym, but, like, a team going to a High Rocks event, and you were going there to, you know, wear, you know, your gym shirt and promote yourself, and the event was local to your community. That, I would think, would be, like, a recruiting event, or a CrossFit competition, or something like that. How much of recruiting do you think is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Relayed to in-person events.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Oh, man, I'll tell you what, I mean, we could honestly, sometime, maybe we do it, we could do a whole, you know, webinar on, on, on running booths. To me, they are golden, golden opportunity. And, you know, how do you grow your business? Meet more people and tell your story.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Okay? And there's so many, like, I can't tell you how often we've had booths that we just knocked it out of the park. Like, literally, we have one, and it's called the Chicken Festival, and it serves two of our locations. And it's, you know, it's a two-day thing where they cook chicken a million different ways, and you know the drill. You know, it's the local at the park, and the.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Sounds delicious.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, yeah, and and last year, we scheduled 62 appointments.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: 44 showed up, and we ended up enrolling 26 members off this 2-day event.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Why?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Now, by the way, I'm bragging about that one, they don't always go that way. You know, sometimes they're, like, you don't do much, but it's such a great, you know, there's a lot to it, we can maybe talk more about it at another time, but, you know, right, and by the way, there's still some events, it's not too late, depending on where you live in the country. You've still got a few weeks, and here's all you have to do. It's just, is just type in your zip code, and
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: community events, and.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But all of a sudden, you have all these opportunities, and a lot of them won't be a fit, but there's going to be one or two that you could put a table at, and, you know, it's a good use of your time.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yep, there's plenty of fall festivals out there, or turkey trot 5Ks, or something like that, that I'm sure gyms could do in the fall season. Or…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: MMA studios, jiu-jitsu studios, stuff like that. Now, when it comes to retain, I think a lot of gyms, a lot of businesses are starting to come around, and they are focusing on this, but maybe auditing your retention systems, it is a good time to do that in the fall season, as you have a little bit more time, or focus on giving back to your members in your community during the holidays as
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: as many people do. What do you think, gym owners should focus on with this R?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So, you know, a couple things. There's an assumption that your program rocks.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah. It's great, because Stephen Covey said, you can't talk yourself out of a situation you behaved yourself into. Meaning, if your program is only mediocre, there's nothing you're gonna do to keep members. They're gonna, you know, if they, yeah, it's okay, you know, we gotta try to create raving fans. And, you know, I know it's very cliche.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: You know, and that's not easy to do, but that's the focus, right? And so that's… of course, that's what happens, you know, when people show up, but besides that, when they're in the lobby, all the other… it's about making sure that you create a relationship with them.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Right? And and it's so… like, when I talk to people, they say, yeah, I keep all my members, just tell me how to get new members. No, you don't.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: If you don't know what your retention is, it's probably a lot worse than you think, right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's true, that's true.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I think, to sum it up really quickly, is that with new members, get them in the habit of coming to class, get them in the habit of showing up. And the sooner you can reach out to a new member, you know, oh, you're supposed to train, you know, that's why I'm a… I'm a fan of having standing appointments. If you run a gym, yeah, you come in whenever you want, here's classes, we have them 6 days a week or 7 days a week, and you can make it anytime you want, that's great.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: But what I would recommend doing is saying, but let's, Zach, let me tell you, what days are we planning to go? All right, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the 6 a.m. class, great, now I know, so I can expect you there, right? So, this is good for you, because if you, you know, if, you know, I can go anytime I want, guess what happens? You often never go.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So you have to set routine. Now, there's a set time, it's good for you, because you've got, you know, we're creatures of habit. Number two, when you don't show up.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It's easier for me to track that down and reach out to you.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: I was wondering if I had my intra-month sheet.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: here on my desk, I don't, but when we take… when we onboard a new member, one of the first things on the… on the intake sheet is, cool, what days, are you planning on training every week? Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Awesome. What time slot? At 12 p.m? Okay, cool. I'm just marking it here so all the coaches know to expect you Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 12 p.m. And the first month, if they… if they start to fall off that, we're on being like, hey, do we need to switch up the schedule, or do we need to, like, hey, what's going on?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: like, that is one of the most powerful things, is right off the bat with new members, creating that habit of attendance, that rhythm, that cadence that you're speaking about. That's phenomenal. I definitely.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I think that's… that's money right there, that's golden. Like, it's… because once someone's got the habit, then it's the habit. You know, right now, they're doing something else Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon. It might be, you know, eating lunch, watching Netflix, who knows? But we have to break that habit and establish a new habit, right?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And the slide white belt moment for us, that means that when they finally… something clicks, they, they, I feel it, yeah, I get that. They fall in love with the, you know, with training. That's what we're trying to create, because if we can do that, get them to have them come to class, which is first, and help them fall in love, and then the third part is get them thinking long-term.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Try to future-pace where they're gonna be. And, you know, create a vision.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: And then visit it often. Have them really be clear as to where they're going. If we can do that, man, shh, that makes such a big difference.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: You got someone for life there. Yeah, absolutely. So…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Then, we went through all the R's, and I know I brought this up at the beginning, like, hey, it's… is it in a specific order? And you said, no, I think gym owners should focus on… was it that you think they should focus on where they… their strengths lie, or the lowest hanging fruit? How do you think someone should attack going through these Rs?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: So what I would do is be aware of the fact that the best way to do nothing is to try to do everything, and if you try to cover something on everyone, you're not gonna… you know, you're gonna get caught up in the moment. So I would… hopefully, if you've been on the call, you've got a list of ideas of things that make sense to you, and I would narrow it down to
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I like it breaking it down to,
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Must do, should do, nice to-dos.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Right?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Damn.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: I must… and then focus, and if you have 2 or 3 must-dos, take as much action as you can on the first one before you add anything to that list.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Right? That, that would be kind of… and then, and then from there, you can go to the nice to-dos. But,
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: That's smart.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, otherwise you would… I think it's called decision fatigue. When you have too many different things you're trying to do, man, it just… it tires you out, right? 100%. I don't think a really big, long to-do list is a good thing. I think a shorter to-do list…
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: is easier, it's, you know… and by the way, you can have, you know, a separate list of when you get done with this, there's this larger one, but… so you show up, and your focus is on one or two areas, right? And that way, once I've got that, either once I've checked off the box, like I did that, like I called all my old members, won't checked off the box, or once I've established
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: this train… into my routine, then I can add on. But until then, I focus on this.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Yeah, I think that's… that's smart. It's better to do one, two, or three, a few things really, really well, really focused, right, than try to do a bunch of things and look everywhere and not really…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: really, be successful at any of them. Also, there is something to be said for maybe if you do have a team that's backing you, involving the team, and going through, like, hey, this is what I think, you know, or what I've noticed, this is what I've looked at, this is where I think our attention is deserved.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: How do you guys feel about this? Because if your team's not on board with it, it's gonna be you fighting an uphill battle, I feel like, the entire time.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Dave, we got a question from Jocelyn. Outside of attendance.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: What is another retention behavior that you recommend measuring?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Oh, man, it's harder to measure, but you can feel it when someone's there and they're not there. You know what I'm talking about? It's usually attendance and attitude.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Attitude.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Yeah, you can kind of see when someone's just kind of a little more lackadaisical, and sometimes, sometimes you might be wrong. They might just be preoccupied with work or something. But every now and then, yeah, I'm frustrated, I'm not making any progress, and, you know, or something, it gives you a chance to kind of double down and sit down and help them, you know, look at their goals again. So that would be a good one.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: So, Jocelyn, I do like that, like, you could use, if you use PushPress, the Notes app, or not the Notes app, excuse me, the notes in, the staff app for the coaches, if they, if they write in, if they notice something off about a member, if they write that stuff in, it'll probably give, a better conversation starter if you ever have to reach out to that person about attendance.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Two things that we look at, to track Retention behavior is…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: interactions in the social feed. So, how often is a member going in and reacting with an emoji, or actually posting comments? How often do they react or interact with our Instagram? That's a pretty big indication of retention. And then also, what was the other thing that we started tracking?
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Oh, workouts logged.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: if someone's actually logging or tracking their… not just their attendance, but actually their training, because the more often someone tracks their training, the more likely they are to stay. I… so hopefully that's… that answers your question. If there was something else, let me know. But…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Dave, was there anything else that you wanted to cover?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: You know, I would just say that it's not easy.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Running a gym, running a school is not easy, right? But what is? And sometimes we look, the grass is greener over there. Well, the grass is greener where you water it, right? Like, you know, where else can you do something you love that's good for people, where you don't have to work very hard and there's no stress?
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: It doesn't exist. You know, and once we make peace with the fact that, you know what, we've got to roll the sleeves up and, you know, put in the time, man, you know, with enthusiasm. And it's hard to do consistently, but that would be… I just remind everybody that, you know, remember when you first opened your gym, you first opened your school, the enthusiasm and your excitement that you had.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: Try to keep that, man. Try to keep that alive. And you can do that, and you do that by, like, reading thank you notes, or cards, or comments that people said. When you do that, it just… it sustains you, you know? It makes… you get the challenge a little bit easier. And stepping in and being enthusiastic.
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Dave Kovar, Kovar Systems: people can smell, when people are out of it, you know what I'm talking about? They can smell… they can smell stress, they can smell desperation. So we gotta work on ourself to make sure that we show up, we walk into school, we have our A-game on, and sometimes you have to fake it a little bit till you get your momentum, but that's that X factor that can make all the difference.
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: 100%. I had one of those days last week as I was starting to feel a sickness coming on. I just did not have the energy, and it was… it was one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of days, and… and it took me half a class to find my stride again, but it… the… the… the coaches…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: Energy, vibe, and enthusiasm has more impact on the… the…
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Zach Forrest, PushPress: the culture and the atmosphere than, I think, any single other thing. Dave, thank you so much for going through your 8Rs. There is so much information, and I feel like each one of those Rs could be its own little mini webinar series that we could really dive into, like, individual specific tactics.
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