[01:50] - Gyms can fulfill the need for human connection

[4:58] - Fitness fuels self esteem

[6:38] - Provide a mental escape from daily life

[8:48] - Learning and growth are unexpected retention drivers

[10:41] - Workout accountability doesn't happen at home

[14:37] - What gyms actually sell

Dan Uyemura: [00:00:00] Stop selling fitness, start selling this instead. Welcome to the PushPress Podcast. Where gym owners learn to dodge bad advice, crush the competition, and actually make money doing what they love. Let's get after it.

Nick Reyes: You ready, Dan? I'm ready. Alright. Let's do this. Who's sponsoring this episode? Uh Anybody?

Who's the shirt? Oh, you're right. I forgot to look.

Dan Uyemura: Oh, it's LC Valley. Dude, let's go. CrossFit LC Valley. It's Amanda, huh? Amanda. Amanda, can I get a shirt?

Nick Reyes: Thank you, Amanda. Can I get a shirt? I need a shirt. Right here. Dan gave me the shirt off his back. All right. So, uh, what are you really selling to your clients?

You know, uh, fitness at this point is a commodity, right? Like you can go out, we can go outside right now and go for a run. We can do some burpees. Uh, in fact, we should probably take a little fit break after this episode, do squats and whatnot. Right. But, uh, if fitness is a commodity, And outcomes are different from person [00:01:00] to person.

I think it's worth us noodling on like, what do we really sell in our gyms? Uh, and as we go through this episode, you know, think about, uh, how, how you might, how this might change how you market yourself, uh, how you would talk to your leads, things of that nature. So, uh, anything to add to that? Yeah, I just, I just think,

Dan Uyemura: I think it's interesting because, um, You know, if you think about it, like when you go to a coffee shop, why do you go?

And the obvious answer is for coffee. But the reality is like a lot of times people go for a place to work, for a place to read, a place to think, a place to just sit down with a friend and talk. So sometimes a coffee is like the reason you go there, but it's not the reason you are there, if that makes sense.

It absolutely does. And I think it's the same for fitness, and that's what we're going to dig into here. Alright, let's get after. Okay, okay, I'll kick it off. So I think one of the first things people join the gym for is really The connection to community and I think community has been almost a [00:02:00] commoditized word.

People throw it around like, Oh, my community, my community, but they haven't really thought this through in terms of how do they position this to people they're selling to, right? Or people are not even how you're selling to, uh, why people stay. And I think that's a good way to frame. This is people come for fitness in general, but they stay for other things and community is one of them.

Um, and, and fuck, I haven't gotten into it, but another way to actually frame this is 10 percent of the world out there knows that they need fitness and 90 percent of the world, like they see the fitness as the broccoli, like the thing they don't want to do, they know they have to do it, but they don't want to do it.

And so how do we start speaking to people that get them in for different reasons? Community is one. Why? Um, loneliness. First of all, like. I think they've identified, they, someone out there has identified that loneliness is one of the biggest plagues, one of the biggest problems in the world, like trillions of dollars type of problem to solve.

Nick Reyes: And, you know, I work from home all day by myself in [00:03:00] the office and, uh, the days that I don't go to the gym, Cameron walks in the door and she's like, You can go run errands or get out of the house if you need to, you know, so like, there's a very real thing around this whole work from home culture that we've built around, uh, having a place to get out and interact with other humans face to face.

Uh, I mean, heck, we're having our entire team here this weekend for our sales kickoff. We all see each other every day on Zoom. There's something magical about being around other humans in person.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, and loneliness is a strong word. Like, the average person won't be like, Oh, I'm not lonely. You know what I mean?

But it really, deep down inside, it's like we are wired for human connection. And when you sit in front of a TV screen with little Zoom boxes all day long, It's not really connecting. It's not satisfying that that need. Right? Absolutely. And so as we, as we work more and more in an isolated world and we're scrolling our phones and we're interacting through DMS and zooms and stuff, actual face to [00:04:00] face connection is critical.

And the thing, the big mind blowing epiphany I had recently was We, a lot of us lost our second place. Like I used to go into an office every day. I had a water cooler to talk to. I had a coffee pot. I had a lunch to go out to with people too. I don't have that anymore.

Nick Reyes: Right.

Dan Uyemura: You know?

Nick Reyes: Right.

Dan Uyemura: And so, but luckily I work at home and, and my wife does too.

So I have somebody, but there's a lot of people who work from home alone. Yeah. Right. And so, or you go to a coffee shop and work and you're just around random people, like not even people that you would talk to.

Nick Reyes: It's the equivalent of a globo gym, right? Exactly. Yeah. Headphones in whatever. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. What is it? Uh, 37 percent of Gen Z go to a gym to socialize.

Dan Uyemura: It's huge. That's over a third, right? That's their primary reason.

Nick Reyes: Yep, exactly. Yeah. And another 42 percent of people have made friendships while keeping fit, like in their fit group. Yeah. You know, that's like minded individuals getting together.

You know, that type of thing. Right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, uh, so yeah, you know, point two here, [00:05:00] like connection to self. So, uh, there's something about learning. About what you can do with your own body right in a gym and it may not necessarily be tied to a fitness outcome per se But it is what am I capable of?

Am I pushing my own limits? And being able to like being in touch with that is a very real thing And I think you see this in that that might be an example for fitness, but in like a martial arts discipline It's kind of the same thing. It's like I've got another person putting their hands on me and are they going to toss me to the ground?

Like, what am I mentally made of? How am I connected to my feelings when that type of thing happens?

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. And really what you see is, uh, a personal in like an inward outward growth, right? Self esteem, understanding of ability, you know, just knowing, Hey, like I wasn't able to do a pull up before. Now I can, you know, kudos me, whatever it might be, or I wasn't able to show up for fitness before.

Whatever. And now I do four times a week. Like that is a growth.

Nick Reyes: Yeah. I mean, [00:06:00] we, we talked a little bit about this in the meta skills episode, uh, that we released, which was like just having that higher health, uh, self esteem, those outcomes from your fitness journey. Right. Which again, people think like, Oh, I'm here to like get abs or lose weight, but really the outcome or what the, what you end up finding is like this better connection to self, this, this higher self esteem, you know, these better feelings about who you are.

Dan Uyemura: Right. And, and again, uh, fitness is an amorphous thing. Community is an amorphous thing, but actually like giving someone something intrinsic that they value. It is immeasurable in terms of like what that's worth to people. Um, the third thing that I think is actually super important that these gyms are.

Uh, retaining or selling to their members is the escape from the grind. And this kind of loosely ties into my first point of community, but, and lack of second place or third place. Right. But the idea here is you're kind of giving someone a one hour vacation from their own life. Right where they don't have to [00:07:00] worry about emails and the stress and doing chores and the stuff that their kids are requiring them and the softball game or whatever you've got to do, like all bills to pay all the stuff us as adults have to deal with.

You show up at the gym, you have no responsibility, you have no agenda, you do what you're told, you know, you do the lesson plan. You get to escape and just be away for the day. And I think like gym owners, this is, I think this is so critical. Nick mentioned this earlier, like as we think of how we market and go to market and talk to people that are out in the community, like that is really, it makes me feel good to think like I can have a one hour break to myself for me, that that's not afforded to me normally.

And I think that's a huge selling point that we're missing in general.

Nick Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah. To, to dive into that a little more, I was listening to, um, a talk with. Trevor Noah and, um, oh gosh, Simon Sinek, and they're talking about how when we lost that third place and when we quit going to bowling alleys after work and those types of things that we essentially lost [00:08:00] that person that we could vent to about our day and how that's impacted our Relation, our relationships inside of our home and our relationships inside of our work is now I vent to my colleagues or I vent to my wife, which has put that negative energy into two places instead of just throwing, throwing the bowling ball down the alley and being like, Dan, dude, today was rough.

And then like we, we leave it there though. Right? Like you didn't have, but now it's bleeding over. So that third place is so critical. Uh, that escape from the grind is so critical. to the rest of our relationships.

Dan Uyemura: I had never thought about that.

Nick Reyes: Uh, so yeah, fourth one here, uh, growth in education. So there's something about.

Uh, understanding how your body moves in space, skill development, uh, giving people a path to learn and focus on, uh, unlocking cool new things, you know, uh, seeing how those things blend into [00:09:00] sport and blend into your life. Uh, there's something about learning how to walk on your hands if you're a CrossFitter or, you know, How far can I ride a bike and and all of these little things that that that come out of the growth side and being coached.

Okay, let me move my hips back here. Let me do you know. I've been through the level one, but we did the level one at the Lone Star Summit. And I still have Zach who's, uh, you know, on seminar staff and works for PushPress still over here, correcting movement. I've been doing this for well over a decade and it's like, oh yeah, a little bit of learning, a little bit of growth every single time.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. And again, I think if we re if, as long as we, let's keep the frame of this in. People who are not exposed to fitness, like how do we bring them into the gyms? This is the bigger opportunity. Uh, there's people like me, I didn't realize this until just recently, but I'm, uh, kind of an addict for learning.

Like I like. I like learning. I like growth and I reflect back on my first years in CrossFit and I remember just being a sponge like, Oh my God, that's what a metabolic [00:10:00] pathway is. Oh my God, this is how, this is the difference between hip hinge and you know, like movement patterns. Oh my God, this is why, you know, wearing socks to my knees might make my deadlift stronger or you know, whatever.

But the point is like. Like the amount of education, I felt like a newborn. And the weird thing is like, I had been in my body for 30 years and I was like, I didn't even know it. Right. So there's something out there where it's just like, not only in the movement pattern, but nutrition and physiology and sleep and just all of the things that you can learn in a gym when you have a coach working with you is astronomical.

And I think that's super cool. Absolutely agree. One more, and I think this one again, well known. I'm doing all the obvious ones. I think accountability right now to me. I'm trying to think through like How do we solve for getting the 90 percent of the people who don't already buy into fitness into the gym?

Because if you're just selling fitness, you're attracting 10 percent of the market. And then [00:11:00] like, how do we open this pie up? And what I realized, I actually didn't have this on my list to begin with. But then I thought about it and I'm like, Hmm, a lot of people do fitness at home. Like the solution, everyone self loathes, right?

Everyone's watching a rerun of Seinfeld at 10pm and going like, I should stop doing this or scrolling and I should stop doing this, but, um, and what happens like they buy a Peloton, they buy some, they buy some, uh, app that lets them do yoga at home. They do something where they are the test for their fitness journey and it fails 99 percent chance it fails.

And for those people, after they failed two, three, four times, because they probably have keep trying, they have now unlocked this avenue of accountability because they know deep down inside they're failing because they are trying to do this themselves. Right. So as we go to market, as we're talking on websites, stuff like that, it's like the accountability piece.

It's something that you hone in on and again, I'm going to make this point time and time again. Like I think too many websites talk about [00:12:00] fitness, talk about, they talk about what it is that you actually do. It's like the coffee shop selling coffee and not, not selling a place to talk

Nick Reyes: and go one place, one level further here.

It's not go on the website and change your copy to say we hold you accountable or, you know, uh, guaranteed results. And instead it's more of like, Paint the picture of what being held accountable looks like. And so, that might surface in ways of like, you know, I guess there's a couple ways. You could go like, tired of failing.

You could speak to the negative emotion. I personally like speaking to the positive side of the emotion. Of like, you know, uh, success as you envision it, right? Like, and, and, and people's imagination will lead to Yeah, I don't have anyone holding my hand. Right. So like you can do things to, with your copy to insinuate accountability.

You don't, we don't, what we don't want to have you do is like go through all five of these bullet points and like, okay, escape from the grind connection to self. Like that. Cause that's not going to resonate. Right. You have to speak to what the feeling is that they're going to get out [00:13:00] of those things.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I mean, if anything, you could have an area on your, a page on your website that covers each of these, like why people fail. Right. Absolutely. Or what people are missing. Um, I mean the, the accountability piece worked for you recently, right? You were telling me a story about this.

Nick Reyes: Yeah. So, uh, been using, I've had a nutrition coach and I skip on step on a scale every single day.

He texts me early this morning, said, Hey man, when can we catch up? We have a check in call every week. If anything looks off in what I'm logging, like my metrics and everything else, he's texting me like, Hey dude, what happened? The

Dan Uyemura: data and your inputs. Yep. It's a daily

Nick Reyes: cycle. Right. And I lost, you know, 20 pounds in the last five months.

And where

Dan Uyemura: did

Nick Reyes: you lose it, man? Oh, dude, I'm gonna put it back on this weekend, but yeah,

Dan Uyemura: I think, I think it's notable to say, like, if you talk about ICPs and people that might come in your gym, Nick's one, like you've been doing, you've been in the fitness world for a long time and you still need accountability,

Nick Reyes: still need accountability.

I, I wasn't able with, with an olive, with the background of owning a gym for a [00:14:00] decade and being around it for forever. Uh, I wasn't able in my early forties here to shed the fat at the rate that I thought I should be able to without a coach. Yeah. But I had all the knowledge I had all the tools. I needed the accountability.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, and you know what the data backs that up Because 65 percent of people out there are more likely to to hit their goals that they have for themselves when they actually commit to another Person and of those people 95 percent of those are successful when they actually schedule regularly checkup So it sounds like whatever your nutrition coaching is doing like they understand Exactly the mechanisms to get people to follow through on what they say they want to do.

Nick Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely So the thing you sell, uh, it's, it's funny, we always have this phrase of like chocolate and broccoli, right? Like we think we're selling fitness, clients believe they're coming in for fitness. What they're really buying is the broccoli. They're really buying these other things. I think for the most part, right?

Would you agree with that? Typically, that's what most gyms, like that's the [00:15:00] mechanism. We sell fitness and they come in and they're like, oh shit, here's. Yeah. Community of like minded individuals. I'm learning some stuff, right? Like that's the ultimate thing. We're pretty sure we're trying to paint here.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. And I think that's the unlock that this episode is trying to get is like, we put a logo on the door. We have something in our brand statement that says, you know, we're fitness people and I'm gonna go back to the coffee one just to take this away. Cause everyone can relate to going, I don't know, can go relate to coffee, but like coffee shop, just selling coffee is not going to be as impactful to a coffee shop.

That's selling, you know, spaces to work, places to be ways to get work done. A place to talk to your friend. Like, these are all different things than coffee coffee. And I, you know, like we've mentioned, we fucking should be sponsored by Starbucks because we've mentioned so much, but like Starbucks sells.

Subpar coffee, and they're full every time you go to them, and they're full of people working, and they're full of people talking, and they're full of people doing things, and it's not the coffee that brings them there.

Nick Reyes: It's not, not at all. Speaking of, uh, data and whatnot, we have [00:16:00] This really cool product that you built called GymHappy and it collects reviews on, uh, tons of different class experiences and it does it pretty intelligently.

We won't go into the results here, but we have well over 30,000 reviews close to 50, reviews collected and we did some some lightweight analysis on this right. And, uh, some of the insights that I thought were just mind boggling to me, uh, as we, as we mentioned, some of this is like, Okay. learning and education.

20 percent of reviews mention learning and education as a key reason. And we're looking at like the five-star, top-of-the-line reviews that members are getting at gyms all over, all over the world.

Dan Uyemura: Yup. Yup, exactly. Um, yeah, we'll, we'll just run through the list. That's pretty cool here. So, I mean, we'll start with the.

The chocolate or the broccoli, depending on how you look at it, fitness and results, value delivered 52.3% of all reviews mention something along the lines of fitness, [00:17:00] you know, value, which is to be expected because that's what they should be getting at the gym. But you know what? Only 52%.

Nick Reyes: Yeah, yeah.

And so another 45%, uh, 45 percent of all the reviews mentioned, uh, class experience coaching, right? Which I think goes, goes Again, we are a group fitness based gym, but that experience matters so much. They're not going there, uh, for the sake of just to, just to show up or just because of, you know, fitness or what have you.

I mean, I

Dan Uyemura: think the key word there is experience. So that could be like. Like top notch coaching and it could be my coach made me feel good about myself today

Nick Reyes: Yep, right

Dan Uyemura: and I will caveat all these numbers aren't gonna add up to 100 percent because one review could mention many buckets, right? And then what's going on the list like fun and recreation.

Like did you have fun in class today? Was this a Fun experience 41

Nick Reyes: percent 41 percent reviews. That's that's actually a lot higher than I would have originally anticipated. Correct?

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, and then next which I actually thought would be higher community and friendship 38. 7 percent

Nick Reyes: right

Dan Uyemura: Um, so [00:18:00] over a third of people have list mentioned in their review that some aspect of community, the friends they made, the people that are around are important to them in this, in this gym.

I mean, that's still a very

Nick Reyes: high percentage.

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I thought it would've been like 60 to be honest, like,

Nick Reyes: uh, customer service, uh, 29%.

Dan Uyemura: So yeah, it goes to show like just showing up and doing the

Nick Reyes: job. Oh, uh. One of our, one of our team members who's traveling down showed a, showed a picture in slack yesterday. Uh, he drops into Open Gym and the, the, the person who was running Open Gym, this was not a PushPress client by the way, uh, drops into Open Gym and the guy who's running Open Gym is sitting in a chair with some headphones on, on his phone during Open Gym just Ignoring anyone else in the room.

Right? So like, Hey, customer service is roughly 30 percent of a good review.

Dan Uyemura: Yep. And then, uh, you know, rounding it out support and accountability. Oh, accountability, 33.6%. So again, another third talk about the support. That the structures within a gym, the accountability and then facilities 22%. [00:19:00] So like, do you have dried up cat shit on your doorstep or not?

Uh, you know, like 22 percent of the people actually are, are actually leaving positive reviews saying that the facility is immaculate, the equipment's great, you know, I love this place. And that matters to them. It matters.

Nick Reyes: Yep. And so to re to rewind back through these real quick connection to community, connection to self, escape from the grind, growth in education, accountability. And so, uh, gym owners: every gym is built completely different. What I would love to know, what we would love to know is, which of those three, if you only had to choose three, what do you think those three most important ones are to your client? Email us at podcast@ pushpress.com.

Dan Uyemura: Let us know. We can feature you on a future episode. Thanks guys. 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 [00:20:00] follow the show to stay updated on new episodes.

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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