Where to find Dan: https://www.instagram.com/danielsan

Where to find Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-reyes21

Where to find our free community for gym owners: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PushPressUsers/

[:20] The myth of leads

[1:10] What actually is onboarding?

[3:58] Give a tour of the physical space

[5:39] Set clear rules

[6:46] Share your gym’s culture

[8:58] Showcase rituals

[9:52] Set realistic expectations

[11:32] Immerse members into your community

Dan Uyemura: [00:00:00] They're not churning your business at this point because you have bad service, not churning because you're not delivering results. They're just churning because you didn't make them feel good. You are now listening to the push press podcast, helping gym owners 

Nick Reyes: succeed one episode at a time. Man, I think the industry largely believes that leads are the biggest problem.

Nick Reyes: And I think we've done some work to change that, right? We've highlighted churn. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I mean, the idea of leads being the biggest problem in the gym industry is lazy. It's a bunch of people who don't understand any of the mechanics of their own business, just deciding that they need to put more things at the top of the funnel to make it work.

Nick Reyes: I look at it as a mandate or a tourniquet for flaws. That are causing the business to bleed out. And today we were going to jump into one of those, which you believe is onboarding, right? The way that we bring customers into our business. 

Dan Uyemura: One hundred percent. Yeah. I think, uh, not onboarding your customers correctly is probably the biggest place you're losing blood since you've already been on that [00:01:00] analogy.

Nick Reyes: Yeah. So, uh, if the biggest issue that we have is churn and that onboarding or maybe a lack thereof causes churn. Maybe we can talk a little bit about like how we define onboarding because I think it can kind of become this big hairy monster of like it's everything. Uh, I, I personally view onboarding as starting from like the time that the sales process is like the handoff from sales into.

Nick Reyes: Becoming a client. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. And I think honestly, and the reason I purposefully titled this episode to be something on the lens of onboarding is your number one problem in your gym is I don't think anyone thinks about onboarding as even a step, right? It's like sales and then into class. Yep. Right. And I guess in the, in the traditional sense of a lot of group fitness, it's like sales, beginner class, that's onboarding and then into class, but really it's like onboarding is really this amorphous, uh, stage, uh, stage.

Dan Uyemura: Even in the beginning of sales, you can start onboarding people, right? Cause it's about shaping their expectations, their mindset, what they, you [00:02:00] know, what, what they're going to get at the gym and then transitioning them into becoming a lifelong member. A 

Nick Reyes: hundred percent. So then if that's where it starts, where do you think onboarding ends?

Nick Reyes: For a new, a new customer. 

Dan Uyemura: Oh, we got a reaction. This is very disturbing. 

Nick Reyes: Podcast walls streaming live. Not a good thing. Not a good. Okay. So I'll answer that question. Give you a chance to noodle on it while you're getting your Instagram distractions. Uh, I think typically like in a SAS company, it's when they're an expert.

Nick Reyes: So at push press, we would look to say like they, they, they ask less, less support questions. They, their staff knows how to use the entire product. So for someone that's walking into a gym, it's like. When are they teaching others the basics of how to be, how to be a member, right? Or when are they, when do they feel comfortable with every little bit, every, when the class times are, what the holiday schedule is, when the newsletter is going to come out, like they [00:03:00] know how the business operates and how they are supported.

Nick Reyes: The cadence of the business. 

Dan Uyemura: And if you really think about it, it's like, we go through this mental checklist, every business we walk into, when I walk into a coffee shop. It's, it's so rudimentary. We don't process it, but it's like, where do I stand in line? Like legit. There's been some coffee shops I've gone to where I'm like, I don't even know where to stand in line here.

Dan Uyemura: Right? Like how much more friction can you put in place for that? So what we need to do as we're onboarding people is, and this goes back to the original concept we talked about a little bit ago is you need to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and try to understand like, what do they need to see, hear, feel, touch, taste, you know, all of that.

Dan Uyemura: To become a successful client for the long run. And you need to pack that into an onboarding period that you can dole that out over time and not make them feel like they're drinking from a fire hose. 

Nick Reyes: Yeah. Yeah. So let's jam on some of these, right? We've got six different. Uh, kind of themes or areas of onboarding, uh, identified here in our notes.

Nick Reyes: That's, uh, let's, let's kick this first one off. I thought this first one that you listed was [00:04:00] insightful and something that I hadn't even wrapped my mind around, which was physical space. Yeah. You want to noodle on that one for 

Dan Uyemura: me? Yeah. So I mean, I think most people do this, but again, they do it without intention.

Dan Uyemura: They do it as part of the sales tour. Here's where the bathroom is. Here's where my office is. Here's the front desk. Yeah. Yeah. Here's where we work out is kind of like to the same idea of that coffee shop. I was just speaking about if, if someone has to walk in and try and figure out things on their own causes friction.

Dan Uyemura: So really it's like, take people around the most important areas of your gym, your establishment. Here's. Where the locker rooms are. Here's where the bathroom is. Here's where my office is. You'll find me here from nine to five, whatever. Here's the front desk or we find out, you know, blah, blah, blah. Here's the gym workout floor.

Dan Uyemura: Here's the jump ropes are here's where we do rowing work. So when it comes up in class, what you don't want the person to do is like, okay, everyone go pull out a wall ball. And they're like, Where are the walls? What are those walls? Where are those? You know, like, you don't want them to feel stupid in the first moment.

Dan Uyemura: We've all 

Nick Reyes: had the, that, that feeling of anxiety when we are in an area that we're [00:05:00] slightly unfamiliar with and it's like, what do I do here? Where do I go? Who do I talk to? And generally, that's how I think about the physical space section. It's like, We, we want to remove that anxious feeling across the board for any new client or business.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, I think, uh, now that we've put in this framework as a spoiler alert for every other one that's coming up, or most of the ones that are coming up, uh, the end result is you just don't want your customer to feel stupid. The more, the more you make them feel stupid, the more likely they're going to remain a customer of your business, right?

Dan Uyemura: So it's like, if I have to go feel dumb for asking somewhere where I can go to the bathroom, then you've, you've created a friction point for me to want to even be there. 

Nick Reyes: Absolutely, yeah. Uh, number two rules. And so kind of in the same token, no one likes breaking rules, but especially if you didn't know the damn rule existed.

Nick Reyes: Yup. Right. And so, uh, some of the rules are show up to class five minutes early. If you don't show up early, you're, you're giving burpees. I think there's probably still some gyms that do that dumb shit, but it's like, what are all the rules? [00:06:00] Are, is there cussing? Can you cuss in class? Can you take your shirt off?

Nick Reyes: You know, it's, can you bring your kids in on a Saturday? There's a lot of different rules. Can you bring your dog up to the gym? You know, but just outline them so that someone doesn't feel stupid whenever they bring their dog up because they saw a dog, but it was the owner's dog. Like, you know, whatever that shit.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you've been on the receiving end of this. I have where it's like you break a rule, you get shamed because they think it's funny and you don't even know the rule exists. So you, it makes you angry that you're, you're being ridiculed for breaking a rule that everyone else seemed to know.

Dan Uyemura: And you weren't clued in on. And that all can just be alleviated by just making sure that someone either knows the rules or knows what the rules are posted. Or, if, you know, a new person breaks the rule, you don't just make a huge example out of them and be a jerk anyway. 

Nick Reyes: Yep, absolutely. Uh, kind of a similar, but an offshoot here would be culture.

Nick Reyes: You want to go into a little bit of how, uh, how you view culture? 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. So, so, you know, if rules are kind of the, uh, established, established, um, you know, criteria of things that we do [00:07:00] in the gym that make the gym harmonious and work. Culture is actually the unwritten rules, the unwritten things that. People express in the gym as, as, as just a natural evolution of what your gym stands for.

Dan Uyemura: So for instance, that could be ringing a bell when someone hits a PR, you know, that could be not cleaning up your shit until everyone's done working out. Right? That's a good one. Right? And so these are especially important to make sure you onboard someone through because they're not written to them, right?

Dan Uyemura: Culture is explicitly not written and it's, it's felt, it's seen, it's heard. And um, it's, it's an expression of the gym when, you know, when the owner isn't around. So you have to make sure it's, it's very clear and to the point that like when there, whenever there's a new person in a class or whatever, you have a process in place for your coaches to say like, Hey, just to let you know, we don't clean up.

Dan Uyemura: You know, we, we stick around, cheer, look, those people are cheering. Like, let's share everyone on or whatever you do in a positive way to make sure that person understands, ideally it's even better before class. 

Nick Reyes: I think everyone can, can, uh, [00:08:00] remember a time where there was either like the PR bell rang or a barbell full of weights drops from overhead.

Nick Reyes: And there's always like the new person's like, Oh my God, what was that? You know? And it kind of goes back to what you're saying. The dropping barbells, just the immediate noise. If you're, I think we take for granted, like, cause we're just around bringing barbells and, or barbells, ringing bells and dropping barbells all day.

Nick Reyes: Yeah. You know, so it can make you feel out of place, unprepared. What am I doing here? Again, anxiety levels go through the roof and then suddenly you feel like a fish out of water. Right. 

Dan Uyemura: And just, just to bring this back off full circle again, we've got a couple more to go through, but like, these are the types of feelings I get people put on the edge, put on the outside of like, Oh, I'm not part of this community.

Dan Uyemura: Oh, I'm not, I don't fit in here. Oh, they don't care about me. Which, which puts them down the path of churn sooner than later. Like they're not churning your business at this point because you have bad service, not churning because you're not delivering results. They're just churning because you didn't make them feel good.

Nick Reyes: Uh, next one, rituals. [00:09:00] So rituals will be things like we do Friday night lights during the open or Murph on Memorial day. We host barbecues and there'll be YLB. We would love to have you. We're going to set up kids games. It just kind of, what are the things that we do? You know routinely throughout the year that we would love if you actually joined us in right Anything else to add to the ritual side?

Dan Uyemura: No, but again, it's part of the explaining that there's so much more to this gym than just coming in and getting a workout so that they can understand up front and before everything starts happening, that there is value coming from different directions. And if I participate in those directions, I'll get that value as well.

Dan Uyemura: Yep. You know, that's like going to church and just saying like, I just come for Sunday service, but there's also youth activities and there, you know, there's so much more that goes on community wise that we need to make sure people are aware of. As they're onboarding so that they know it's, it's part of the process.

Nick Reyes: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, expectations. 

Dan Uyemura: Oh, it's a big one. Right. So, um, actually we can probably do a little show on this. I will go back and forth on [00:10:00] like, uh, expectations, good or bad. Um, ultimately they're real. People have expectations and if you haven't set up your business around managing expectations and setting expectations, you've really kind of just let that up to chance that if someone, hopefully someone has the same expect that their expectations align with yours.

Dan Uyemura: It would be almost like getting into a marriage with somebody and just not saying like, Hey, I expect these types of things, right? Like this is the type of relationship I want to be in. And, um, that's really what your business is. It's a relationship with someone else. And if you're not setting those expectations of what you plan to deliver, what you will deliver, what you won't deliver, probably more importantly, then you're leaving it up to chance for someone else to interpret that, uh, you know, internalize that for themselves and then hold you accountable for something that you haven't even signed up for, 

Nick Reyes: right?

Nick Reyes: Yeah. So, I mean, a big part of the reason why people churn is, you know, Their perceived reality doesn't align with The expectations that they had when they first engage with the service, the business, [00:11:00] whatever the offering, whatever it might be. And so making sure that you, you know, if it's, Hey, I want to lose 30 pounds.

Nick Reyes: And it's like, okay, that's going to take you six months. 

Dan Uyemura: That's another great example. Like expectations, timing wise, it's not just what you're going to do, but when, how long it will take, how 

Nick Reyes: long it's, what's it going to take? How long is it going to take? You know, what's the sacrifice that we're doing?

Nick Reyes: Should you even do that? Should you do it? When can you expect me to check in with you along the way? What are the protocols? 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. All 

Nick Reyes: of that falls into expectation that that could be an entirely another show by itself. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then last one, immersion. So immersion is kind of your, uh, I would almost say like, We've done it.

Nick Reyes: We've got you. Once you can get to this final point, they should feel like a member of the community. They should feel right at home where maybe if you did have a miss with a new client coming in the door, hopefully this this client is immersed well enough where they wrap their hand around the new guy and say, Hey, [00:12:00] Let me give you the lay of the land and they could almost be an onboarding expert for you.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, it's almost a culmination of all these, all the rest of them, you know, community, the rules, the culture, the rituals, like once you've instilled all of that stuff in your members, they can actually become living, walking, breathing versions of that for you. An extension of you, if you will. Um, but also it's, you know, like I've actually experienced this at some gyms that I've tried.

Dan Uyemura: Like I'll come in, I'll understand the rules. I'll understand the rituals. I'll understand all that stuff. But I didn't make a personal connection with anybody and they didn't build into their process, like, Hey, you know what, you have a question. Uh, this is the person to talk to you, or this is your buddy for class or whatever it is.

Dan Uyemura: And so I'm just on my island. Everyone has their own clicks. Everyone's having their own fun. And I feel stupid. Like, again, it always just goes back to like, do I feel stupid ultimately? Right. And I happen to feel stupid a lot. So that's a problem. And to maybe 

Nick Reyes: double click in there, the feeling of. The, that feeling of like you're a fish out of water, like you feel stupid.

Nick Reyes: We [00:13:00] shouldn't, I'm just letting the Instagrammers know. We shouldn't poo poo that feeling because it's important to understand that trying anything new is hard. So I've actually been thinking about starting, uh, uh, some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, right? You and me both. And, and I wrestled from the time that I was a kid until I was 18, right?

Nick Reyes: Uh, hand to hand combat is nothing new to me. But I'm still like, damn, I'm 42. This is new, you know? So that, that feeling of like walking in and doing something, it's a lot of courage to get beyond, don't layer on additional things that we're outlining here to just beat that person down even further when they already are on it.

Dan Uyemura: For real. Do you remember the first time you walked into a CrossFit gym? I still remember that. I do. Yeah. For me, it was like, I remember sitting in a parking lot and I watched two whole classes go on. From the parking lot, doubting if I should go in until this is, uh, I Forest Chung. Mm-hmm . [00:14:00] South Bay. He literally saw me sitting in the car and he walked out and he is like, Hey, can I help?

Dan Uyemura: Because I was sitting there for so long , and I was like, yeah, I had a, I had a guy an appointment two hours ago, but like all those shirtless people like made me really scared. Yeah. You know, I didn't realize that. Yeah. A force. 

Nick Reyes: Great guy. . Yeah. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. So anyway, uh, let's just recap all that. I mean, I, I think it's important to think about.

Dan Uyemura: Um, it's important to think about all of these topics in the lens of churn, right? Onboarding is really a churn reducing tool. That's what it is. It's a, it's a process to get someone from zero to part of your community, understanding your value, like understanding exactly why they're showing up and what they're going to, what they're going to get out of what you're doing and, and, um, streamlining that process.

Dan Uyemura: So you don't leave anything to chance. And I guess if like you've been around me enough and anyone who's like, kind of listened to my, the BS I put out on Tik TOK or Instagram enough, like you don't lead business to chance. Like it has to be built with intention. And I think this is like one of those gaps in [00:15:00] businesses that nobody has put enough intention to.

Dan Uyemura: I can't say any better than that.

Nick Reyes: So I don't know if I'm supposed to look at you or this camera or this camera or that camera. Have you ever signed up for a service and feel like you've been thrown to the wolves? If you have, email us at podcast@pushpress.com. Thanks for listening guys. 

Dan Uyemura: See ya. And for all you guys who made it, I don't know if any of you did, thank you guys for watching live.

Dan Uyemura: From the Ray Bans. See you guys later. Thanks for listening to another episode of the PushPress Podcast, where we help gym owners, entrepreneurs, and fitness enthusiasts thrive with actionable insights, inspiring stories, and strategies for growth. 

Nick Reyes: Don't forget to follow the show to stay updated on new episodes.

Nick Reyes: And if you're ready for more, join our free Facebook community for gym owners. Check the show notes for the link, and we'll see you next time. Keep raising the bar for your business and community.

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