Business Owners and Work Life Balance
When creating RISE Fitness as a franchise model during the COVID-19 lockdowns, we had a mental health and work life balance agenda from the start. Why? Well partly due to the effects of the pandemic on everyone but we also recognised the burn out rate of personal trainers was an issue for the whole industry. This was caused either by the extreme unsocial hours they had to work, the massive pressure of continual selling and the lack of support around their one person businesses. An uncertain income also adds stress to the mix.
How is RISE Structured to Achieve Success for Customers and Owners?
For Customers
First thing is to create something that gives people what they want. But what is that? Just saying results is a bit flat and trite, sure everybody wants results. But after living through the life changing experience that was the pandemic people want more.
They want to be healthy enough to help stave off infections; they crave some fresh air and outdoors; they want community and encouragement; they now have hybrid working so the want something super local; they want to understand how to get and stay fit and healthy.
For Owners
Personal trainers have seen their in-gym livelihoods severely compromised by the multiple lockdowns and that the pivot to digital was quick but was it sustainable? What looked more likely to us here at RISE was that a hybrid model would be part of the sector for the foreseeable future.
We could see that by mixing face to face sessions with online support, guidance and coaching, the business model could achieve 2 things:
- TIME SAVING – efficient use of time by funnelling each cohort of members into two outdoor sessions per week & then online support
- CONSISTENT INCOME -the combination package created a membership opportunity
Instead of selling courses, or just come along and pay a fiver, RISE could sell memberships to a community of likeminded individuals who could see the value of outdoors and the convenience of digital. As we wrote in a prior article, the value of recurring revenue over pay as you go is huge.
Part of the reason for the use of heart rate monitoring technology was that we could immediately see the benefits of Myzone heart rate belts to a membership model. The coaching and communication could also be driven through Myzone as well as the key education piece. That education meant that members could feel and measure an increase in activity using the Myzone Effort Points (MEPs) scheme. So the coaching extended beyond the face to face.
What Does This Do for Work Life Balance?
Using all the above we created a business model that meant a personal trainer could make a good living running 6 -8 bootcamps a week and then the flexible delivery of the online support element could be done throughout the week. So no more 6am- 9am followed by an hour at lunch then 6pm-10pm. Killer schedule!
The membership model gives the RISE coach a consistency in income. Sure after the launch effort there is always an element of topping up with new members but the fact that you can have 80 people paying you monthly and you can easily track their engagement means there are no nasty surprises.
The franchise set up also means that you create an actual business entity i.e. something of value. All the effort that goes into building a client base as a PT is not a waste but it is difficult to sell on. With a franchise you can either do an additional one or two franchises to boost your earnings or sell it as a going concern.
Talk to us about starting a fitness franchise that will transform your working life!
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Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
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