What a confusing time to watch what has been going on in the world as a small business owner!
Signing up to work in the Fitness Industry, you sign up to work with people face to face. Then one day, your PM decides for the safety of the National, that we need a lockdown. No, face to face contact. As we all know the gyms were one of the first to go!
Adapt Adapt Adapt!
How do we do this, how many conversations do we need to have about the same topic, and you still can’t fit a circle into a square hole - no matter how many ways you look at it or how many ways that you try!
Time to embrace my biggest fear…. COMPUTERS! I still love to use pen and paper, my weekly schedule is handwritten when l have a business meeting or work with someone new l use colour pens to help me be creative. All that was over! To the screen, we must go!
Adapt Adapt Adapt!
One of the most used phrases in our business over the lockdown was “JOOOOOOSSSSHHHHH, it’s not WORKING, l am being nice and l am trying!” Or “wheres the core, back in my day we used to just pull the core to reset…. There’s no CORE!!!!!”
Then the biggest question came, ‘how do we provide the same service to our team when we can see them face to face!’ The most popular reason people join a gym, besides, the weight loss, fitness reason, is because they want to feel like they belong somewhere, they want to feel needed and valued.
How can we keep our clients feeling like this?
Here is what we did at CHPT!
First, we made a youtube clip of the daily workout. The clip was then emailed out to all of our current clients/members. We were keeping the lines of communication open. We also wanted to make sure the email was light and funny. There was enough going on in the world, that our team didn’t need to be told how to live, or what to eat. All they need to hear was that they were still important to us and that we as their Coachs were still here.
The daily email always ended with a Joke of the Day (l maybe writing a book soon, there were some good ones in there!) Somedays l got replies others not, some did the workouts and some just wanted to see a different face for the day.
Second, we did an online group/personal training sessions. We used Go To Meeting, due to the fact that the Air Force wouldn’t use zoom, and l always thought it might crash with the amount of traffic going through it.
Third, we send our individual programming, if clients asked for it. The client received a personal program sent to them every Sunday morning, some we lent equipment too, others already had it a set up at home. This also leads to another line of communication.
Fourth, we ran an inhouse online partnered workout competition. Grab a buddy do the workout when it suited and posts the time on our private Facebook page. This created a conversation between our members and extra support throughout our community.
Fifth, we did a fundraising tee, who doesn’t love Merch? It was our biggest order to date, we are still overwhelmed by the response and also how great the tops look!
Sixth, we have handwritten thank you notes, to all of our members/clients for their support throughout this time and gave them a little daily planner (designed by CHPT) to help keep them on track. As we are starting to see people returning, it is lovely to let them know that we do appreciated them.
Everything that was done and decided was based on, ‘how can we make our community stronger, how can we make our clients feel supported and valued form afar. I am sure there were days that our clients got ‘another’ email from us, and thought, oh ‘not another one’ and there were days that they were super excited to mainly see what the joke of the day was.
Our main goal at CHPT is to provided a safe space, a safe space for our clients to come and be themselves. To talk, to feel free to talk about anything - exercise and talking through different issues go hand in hand. In the time of lockdown, l didn’t want anyone of our team to feel like they were alone, or had none.
If it wasn’t for the clients of CHPT, CHPT wouldn’t be as great as what it is, or it wouldn’t even still be here coming in 10 years. Yeah, there have been people come and go, and we have learnt from each and every one of them. We have learnt through our mistakes, which we are only human with emotions after all, but we have learnt how to be better Coaches and Trainers, to really value the people that come through our doors.
CHPT is a business at the end of the day, and every business needs to make money. If CHPT was about the coin at the end of the day, we wouldn’t be able to make the business work with our family. If we didn’t have our family involved then l am not sure what kind of values we would hold dear to us.
We do love CHPT because the people are part of our family.
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