Bump them down before the season ends

I went around my Tuesday call and asked everybody what their season is.

Every single person knew. Summer for the guy training youth athletes. August, September and March for another. Spring in Canada, because the winters are dark and nobody leaves the house. Mine's the reverse of most of yours, because Cape Coral in July is a billion degrees and March is the best month of the year.

Everybody knew their busy months cold.

Almost nobody had any plan at all for the falloff.

Which is strange when you say it out loud, because the falloff is just as predictable as the boom. Same calendar. We just only make plans for the half we enjoy.

Here's the move, and it's going to feel wrong the first time.

You make the change before they do.

It's late in the season, you already know the next stretch is going to get weird, so you go to the member while they are still happy with you and say: hey, want to drop to once a week for a bit?

Compare that to what actually happens now, which is that you wait. The season ends, their motivation dips, and they sit there paying full price for something they've stopped using. And a person paying for something they've stopped using goes LOOKING for a reason to leave.

They will find one. They always find one. And it won't be about the season, it'll be about a coach or a class time or a thing you said in March.

You'd rather have somebody at once a week for eight months than at three times a week for four and then gone.

The guy running the summer youth business added the piece I hadn't thought about. Parents don't think in seasons the way we do. They think baseball is over, so training is over. It never crosses their mind that a once-a-week maintenance option exists, because none of us ever mention it. We're all too busy selling three days a week to admit one day a week is a real product.

And something that genuinely surprised me from launching the gymnastics program this month: in youth training, once a week is completely normal. Nobody blinks. It's only in adult fitness that we've decided once a week isn't enough to bother with, and I'm not sure who decided that or why we all agreed.

So name your slow season. Then pick the actual date you'll start moving people down, and put it in the calendar now, while it's still far enough away to feel unnecessary.

Nick

Nick Habich owns Shark Bite Fitness in Cape Coral, Florida, and coaches gym owners in Pathfinder Collective. These notes go out to his email list on Tuesdays and Thursdays.