Build your primary retention funnel from class 1 to membership with Josh Biro

0:16 Hey, Cat. let me make sure Josh has this as a panelist. Yes. No, he's not here yet. Oh, there you are. Hey, dude. Hi. How are you? Good. Oh my gosh. It's good to see your face. You, too. It's been a minute. I know. Hey, I'm excited for today. I know. Me, too. Are you in your new house? I am. This is my new a mess office constant surfboards. Surfboards are there. That's all that matters. Yeah, there's some stuff that's okay. Yeah. real quick. So, I threw this together because I was working on something sort of parallel to this. There's probably way more slides than we need. So, yeah, we need we can jump around or whatever, but you know, 45 minutes is fast. So just Yeah, totally. Especially don't be scared to be like let's let's move on. Yeah.

1:32 And we can always That's exciting. That's exciting that you're going to integrate chat GBT into marketing suite. It's just like a It's just like a whatever a prompt box like Fit Grid has or whatever. Yeah, very similar. yeah, it's it's we've got a couple things we're going to release first, like the next phases that have newsletters. I think we release next week like scheduled newsletters. And then we have lead forms that are going to be popup lead forms or embedded lead forms. And then funnels, which are basically like being able to build a funnel like this is stage one, this is stage two. people that fall into this audience are stage one, this audience stage two, this stage three, and then watching people through that funnel, being able to communicate through that and then seeing conversion rates at different stages. So, I like that.

2:25 Yeah, that actually I mean I think that is the necessary future and no one's asking for it because it's like literally not even on their radar. Yeah. I mean like franchise level is asking for it, but Yeah. Yeah. Okay, everyone that's popping in. Yeah. And the exciting thing is we'll be able to look at conversion like actual ROI like dollars. We'll be able to show what you made by people moving through each funnel and through or each stage and through the different automations that you send. We'll be able to say like this has generated X dollars. So yeah. Can the attendees see us already? Now they can. Yep. Now they can. What's up you guys? Hey Cat Haley. Shannon. Shannon's here. I was just visiting Shannon. I was just visiting Shannon with Terry. I heard I'm gonna be visiting Shannon in a couple weeks, too. I'm gonna head up to LA. How was your LA trip, Josh?

3:22 Awesome. It was a whirlwind and awesome. Cool. Cool. I can report I can report that Shannon Studio is beautiful, high-powered, good classes, and I died in her hot Pilates class. right or right beside her in a hot class. I can also report that in Ventura we had trouble finding a room to rent. So, we stayed in like a really janky Motel 6. It was in Ventura. Real It was real fun. So, if you're ever there, that's my recommendation. Motel 6 right. Well, I'm I'm going to be up there. I might spend the night. So, we'll see. Go. Yeah. I got I got a hookup. Yes. Don't do it. Don't do what Shannon says. Hey Ian, glad to see you here. Welcome everyone that's popping in. hey guys, this is going to be webinar style, not like your normal Zoom meeting. So don't be alarmed if you don't see your face across the screen. You're still here. We know you're here.

4:24 we just do that do it this way so it's less distraction. please feel free I'd love to have everybody at the beginning of these just pop into the chat and introduce yourself. we do these events every month and it's a great opportunity to kind of see who some of the other Walla studios are, get to know some names, some business names, and if some of you guys are here that aren't on Walla, get to see some businesses that are using our product and maybe check out their websites or some of the owners afterwards. we're going to kick off because I like to be on time. So, welcome. Welcome officially to our August Walla webinar series where we are joined by Josh Biro from the Yogreneur Collective. Josh and I have worked together for quite a few years and I've been honored to be on stages with him, speak at events with him. we have gotten to brainstorm on how to make this industry better and your businesses more successful. So getting to talk about the client journey and really how to communicate effectively with clients is always an exciting thing. just a couple of quick housekeeping items as we get started. If you have questions during the whole experience, we have a little Q&A at the bottom. So you can see a Q&A you know at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Please post your questions in there. that way we can make sure we cover them live in the call. And then

6:00 if you guys just want to chat with each other or kind of side convoying, that's great for the chat box. But I don't watch the chat box as much during the conversation as much as I will the Q&A. I think that's it. So let's let's get down to business. for those of you actually I haven't met yet, my name is Laura Munkholm. I see some names on here that are new to me. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm the president and co-founder here at Walla. I can't believe I'm saying this, but we are a three-year-old business now. We've only been selling software for about a year and a half, but we started this whole journey a few years ago during co. So, it's pretty exciting to be where we are at this point. And just love bringing content like this to you guys on a monthly basis. one of my promises to myself and to our clients is that what we send you and what we share with you will be valuable and actionable. So, that's why we've got Josh here today.

7:01 All right. Well, I'll let you jump in and start with pulling up your screen. Yeah. But the talk to us about why you wanted to speak on this topic today, I guess, before we actually pull up PowerPoint. Yeah. the 32nd for those of you I see a lot of names I recognize some that are new to me as well so excited to chat with you guys today I'm Josh from the yogreneur collective I've been in the yoga business industry for well over you know 15 years at this point whether that's owning my own studios and selling traveling around or our communities for yoga entrepreneurs but everything we'll talk about is applicable to any boutique fitness and why this conversation To go back to Laura's your original question, I think that we're at a unique moment in time right now where the sort of consumer desire has shifted in its nuance, especially post pandemic. And it's not necessarily because that I just think that sped it up. it through things in people's face where you know there's a disillusionment from the many boutique fitness owners I speak with around marketing and what works and doesn't around retention around sales and then also the expectations that are imposed on us by the consumers themselves which is really where we need to look like what is happening in the industry and stuff can often be a little noisy. We really have to look at like who are your clients and what do they

8:33 want and what's going to work for them. and when we see studios implementing what I would call current best business practices of like personalization, and we're going to get into this today, how to market, but internally and retain, those are the businesses that are most successful. It's as simple as that. Yep. And there's a lot of data that is backing this up. We'll talk about a little bit as well. So, awesome. Yeah, I'm I'm absolutely with you. I'm excited to talk about why personalization is key at this point in time and what has happened to expectations because I feel like we are living in a different world right now than a couple years ago. Definitely. And I feel like one of the things that we will touch on today that's really important is a lot of the words that are being said in the marketing and boutique fitness world around personalization, retention, sales, etc. are nice narrative sounding words, but no one's actually having the conversation of like what does that actually look like? And you know the difference is in the details. So that's why we've titled this building your ultimate retention funnel. it's an extension of marketing. I'm just trying to see if I can get into a better presenter mode for you guys here.

9:51 Zoom in. Yeah, I 100% agree. It is it's easy to say the words, but the goal here guys and I think you'll find those of you who have come to most of our Walla webinar series is that we try to have something that you can literally do today that will make an impact on your business after this conversation. and you know maybe many things that you can do over the next week or month that are really truly action steps and not just you know words on a page. Actually I would say even if you're watching this recording after the fact stick it through to the end because we made sure to put in a slide that says like here's three things you can do in under an hour in the next month that will directly impact this immediately. So they'll definitely be leaving with some hyper actionability. That is why we bring Josh on these webinars. He gets it. So Laura, maybe I'll jump in and you just let me know. I can't see the Q&A and stuff, but you can just pipe it as you go.

10:46 I'll monitor that for you. I think that everyone knows that we should retain clients. We don't often attach retention with marketing and sales, but often when people say retention, what they mean is sales. When we say like, did I retain someone by them buying my intro pass and then buying something else? that is in fact a sale not just retention. Retention is bigger than that. So sales are a function of retention but aren't retention in itself. In the end the reason this really matters though and we all know that it matters but I think like really deeply at your core understanding that this not only matters but should be like a primary focus of your efforts on the daily helps you prioritize where you focus and get this stuff right. and we'll explain why that, you know, impacts the business. But the big thing is like client longevity and making sure that you have sustainable revenue. If you can't retain people, then any other marketing effort, any advertising you put out there is completely pointless because your I played hockey growing up, so I'll use a hockey word civ, which is not just a hockey word, but if a goalender just lets all the shots in, we call them a civ. So, same idea here. If you get people in your business, let's say you get a 100 people in, cool. But like if 98 of them two months later aren't there anymore, that was a lot of effort and probably expenditure whether

12:08 energetically or financially that was for not because we missed out. Yeah. generally it also leads to your margins. So your cost of building loyal clientele is really high if you can't keep them. And that cuts in that cuts directly into your bottom line of whether you are profitable or not in your business. Here's the symptom which is a result of this problem if you don't get it right. Most boutique fitness owners I speak with ultimately have a way under financed marketing department. like they basically do not budget for marketing because they feel so disillusioned with their success and they think that it's because marketing doesn't work when in many cases it's because their retention funnel sucks. Right. So we get that right then spending on marketing is not scary anymore. Yeah, it's a really good I think just quickly on that a lot of people see the cost of marketing and the KPI they look at afterwards is how much more money did I make last year, not how many people did I get in the door and keep from that marketing budget.

13:20 So I'm totally with you. And the final point on slide here is we all know that word of mouth and referrals is one of the you know three to five primary drivers for any good business out there. And there are a lot of ways that happens. But the simplistic way to look at this is if I come into your studio and then I purchase your autopay membership and stick around for four months or I buy like an annual pass and throw down a,00500 $2,000 for the year. How likely am I going to go out and tell someone else that you're awesome? Versus if I come in and do like a drop in and then don't come back, how likely am I going to go tell someone else that you're awesome? So, in a really simple way, retained clients are your brand evangelists. So, it also builds this like compounding snowballing effect that if you get this right, it can really highly impact the business. So, obviously I had to put the sinking ship on here. you know, frequent client turnover, skyrocketing costs, but really more than anything else, plateauing in your business growth. If we find a studio, everyone knows about studios that are like struggling and maybe going down, but the conversation really in the industry should be what happens if you're like just flat because you'll stay flat for a long time before you go down. That's the moment where you have to look at your business and say, what can I do to like not stay flat

14:46 anymore? and retention is very often you know what you want to do with the first place you want to look to solve for that. obviously I, you know, as a business nerd, Laura will appreciate this too. Having metrics, having data driving your decisions, not in its entirety, you got also trust your gut, but having it to balance out the pure emotional feeling of your business is very empowering because metrics don't lie. They just give you a non-emotional snapshot of what's going on. What's beautiful in Wallace specifically is there's very little time spent like formulating too much reporting. You just get the answer to certain questions. So when we're talking about retention, I would suggest that this is these are your starting point retention metrics that I would look at. So first class retention basically does someone come in and do they come back and actually take another class. The precursor to that is someone registers. Do they actually show up and ever take a class?

15:49 That's not a huge group of people, but it's like most people have no plan in place for that gap. And there is a percentage of people who somehow get registered and just never show up and then we just don't follow up with them. that's a lost potential client. And obviously they were interested because they filled out whatever they did to register. Yeah. The intro purchase rate. Go ahead. One quick like anecdote on that. I was sitting in my Pilates class the other day overhearing a conversation at the front desk of a mom or a woman saying or the girl at the front desk was talking her through the first visit experience and it was her first time there and she's like, "Oh my god, I can't believe I'm finally here. I swear I signed up for with you guys like 6 months ago and I'm just finally making it in." And I was like, "Ah, those are the people like how did they let her go six months without stepping?" She created an account six months ago.

16:49 Anyway, sorry. Right. Keep going. No. And I mean, that's that would be actually what's common out there is I create an account and nothing happens after that and I don't show up for a class. I even ghost you on the first class I register for. So, it's just realizing that like that time frame is something that you can capitalize on. And right now, it's the bar is so low on that time frame with clients that literally if you did anything if you just see there's a registration in Walla and then you like send a message just one that's it that you're already a thousand% better than the industry sent. So, it's a good time moment to be aware of. Then there's obviously your intro purchase rate and whatever your intro is whether it's an intro path, a direct to membership, a second class free, first class free, then sell, that is less relevant than someone makes it in because you know many of you who know me, I tell this story all the time.

17:48 If you think about like if I get my butt off my couch and drive across town and find a parking spot and make it into the studio on time for a class that you scheduled, that's an insanely large action. So, I'm not getting there by accident. You can assume I want to try a practice with you and have an experience because if I didn't, I wouldn't be there. So, for someone to not take your first offer doesn't make logical sense like there would need to be some other reason. So, if you're not converting, you know, 70% plus of your clients onto your first offer, then something is missing. And on the business side, if I don't end up on your first offer, then how do I even enter your salesunnel? Yeah. I mean, literally, that is the pinnacle thing that must happen for you to even get to participate with me, right? enough to really make a difference in the business. Intro retention rate is a straightforward one. And then on a more macro level, what's your MR, monthly recurring revenue? You could look at that as number of memberships etc. But how you articulate the metric that you're tracking changes your strategy.

19:01 So if I say I want to have 500 members, then it's a viable strategy for me to say I'm going to charge $10 a month for my autopay and I'll get 500 people. That's a viable strategy. But we all know that would be insanity depending on your product and I'm not recommending that you do that. If you say I need my MR to be XYZ, now it's different because you could get the 50,000 a month in MR from a 100 clients. You could get it from 500 clients depending on what you're doing. So it's a better true metric for the business growth side of it. Yeah. And then churn rate is a unique one. it's hard to get in any system anywhere. Walla has the ability to pull this out. This is the one exception I want to say on screen where there isn't a churn rate report to it that I know of yet, but you can export from Walla. So, I wouldn't say this is a metric you're pulling all the time. Churn rate is the rate at which you lose clients on your membership. So, you would need to look at in January I had a 100 clients on my membership. How many of them were not on my membership in February of that same group? So, you'd export and just count.

20:14 If you just did it once every six months, that's enough check-in on this. But what it tells you is the percentage of what of how many clients you lose. And it lets you calculate, okay, I know that I'm getting this many new clients to MR per month and I'm losing this percentage. You can actually project the direction of your business. That's why that one can be powerful. We actually just a quick note here we made a an update to our plan gain loss report in the last month that will give you a really clearer and easier picture of that change or that churn rate. And for those who are yeah who are direct to membership model studios we are releasing a retention report like basically a heat map where you can see the fall off and the and the turn rate of members. and that's very soon, like fall, the early fall, that'll be coming out. So, thanks to Josh's feedback and feedback from a lot of you businesses that have, you know, just this model where you don't have an intro offer. It's just people dive right in.

21:16 this will have a little bit easier of a glimpse into it. Yeah. Actually, I misspoke. We would export before, but I would use the membership report in Walla, and you can even just hover the bar and look button by month. Yeah, exactly. And then you count you literally count the differential. So it takes 15 minutes and you can see for like a six-month gap and get an average of what your monthly churn is pretty quickly. Yeah. So then going back to what we alluded to earlier that retention is more than sales or more than just purchases like what is it? I think that there are like three primary phases that we would want to consider when someone is being retained. The fourth one that's not here is like class one to two. That is kind of its own little phase. but assuming you get them past that, then what are we doing? And it's really like class one through month four is the way I would look at it or like month four through the first year or year one and beyond. And we'll go into these in depth, but the explanation here is that from class one to month four, most studios lose like 90% of the clients that come in that time frame. So, that ends up being a really big focus. The industry average for class-based at least for retention on autopay is four to six months.

22:36 High performing studios are longer than that. We're seeing six to eight 8 to 12 in that range. But the point being, if you get them past month four, that's like the first hurdle where it's likely you're going to get them to 8, 10, 12 months. So that's where that second phase is. And then the third phase here is like how do they become a lifetime client basically. So the considerations is from the perspective of the client because remember we're here to serve them. They are the hero in the journey. So everything that we do strategy-wise although is ultimately to serve your business and everything else it's also to serve your impact purpose of helping people. Therefore we have to really take the angle of like what's going on with them as the starting point for what we do. So in your first one like one to four months the questions that are subconsciously taking place in someone's mind are do I enjoy this?

23:34 Do I like them the studio? Do I connect with them? and is this working? Like, am I getting any benefit from this? That's it. Because if I like you and I'm having fun and clearly it's making a difference in my life, I'm going to stick around. The hiccup with this is, right, the hiccup with this is clearly this has to do with the quality of your product. But I'll tell you right now that one of the biggest misunderstandings that I encounter is that we think my yoga class, my Pilates class, my whatever is so good it speaks for itself because we have what we call the curse of knowledge which is your current viewpoint on the value of your product is so deep that you have completely forgotten what it was like to be on class one and have no clue what you're doing. at all. So although these things straightforward and it's product ccentric, I would reframe your vision for your product to be not just the class you offer.

24:40 We often use the analogy that like Laura might be the single greatest yoga teacher that the world has ever seen. Like I don't even know how we judge that but for the sake of the conversation, right? But in my first class, especially if it's like a hot yoga class for example, right? I don't hear anything Laura says. I'm worried about like my mat's moving, there's sweat in my eye, that guy stinks, how long is this glass? Like I can't even receive the value of it. Yeah. And if I'm, you know, if I'm one of the scenarios where like I haven't really worked out for 10 years of time and like finally I'm like empty nesting and coming in to take your Pilates and I jump on a reformer for the first time, like I'm sorry, but it sucks. Like it is not you do not leave that first class like yep feel like a million b I mean you feel good but like it is going to challenge you. Yeah. So if that's true it means if we leave our retention only up to do they love the class or not we're going to lose people because the risk is very high.

25:47 Yeah. We know they've got to take more classes than one. Yeah. I would I would challenge anybody on this call to go take a class at a studio that is totally outside your comfort zone. Like go take if you're a yoga studio, go take a boxing class. Go if you're a studio, go take a hot yoga. I mean, whatever it might be that maybe isn't your normal, have a first client experience somewhere else just to remind yourself what it's like doing something that's outside your comfort zone because really it's people walk in your studios every day and live through that. And you're spot on, Josh. It is. They're thinking about so many things that you couldn't imagine. They're not thinking about the structure of the teacher's words and the sequencing. So, well, and a comical story I can share that like many people maybe experienced something similar. I can still remember teaching a yoga class years and years and years ago, and some dude rolled in.

26:44 He was clearly hung over cuz he smelt like beer. And he tried to take our hot yoga class wearing jean shorts. But like there was there's no possibility that this person is in the best state to experience this class at this point. And it was all okay. Like we you know we handled it. just even how a first visit client appear like comes into the studio or even in the first four months like how they arrive in the condition they're in from outside impacts their experience of you and that's not totally in your control. So the point here would be that the solution is understanding this means all of the other things you do outside of your classroom. How you engage with people, how you welcome them, the thing you sell them, the followup that you give them. These really matter during this time because they're the things that buffer for we're asking them to go through a process that might not be as powerful as it ultimately will be for them during this phase. So really focusing on those other things we see has extreme impact.

27:55 In the second phase, you're kind of like solidifying the relationship or the bond with people. And the two subconscious questions that are likely happening is, can I make this a habit? And am I seeing progress? The habit part, it's like a lot of people, it's the January boom and bust situation. I'm coming in, I'm going to get in shape. I practice 15 times in my first month, then I miss a week, and then I'm gone. So it's really about making a habitual practice of it and them fitting that in where it's like the message in this phase from month four through year 1 isn't practice every day necessarily. It's like what is the continuity that you can just like clockwork this is just part of your reality. Tuesdays I go to my Pilates class. On Wednesdays I always show up to on Fridays I'm always taking my yoga class. Whatever it is, it's like it just be integrating into their regular habitual life. That's what's happening. If you can help them make that happen, then that's how you keep them.

29:01 Yeah. The second thing is the am I seeing progress. Here's the analogy. If I'm in a boat and I'm trying to go from San Diego to Japan, as I'm leaving San Diego and I can see the shore, I can see how far I've come. I'm like, "Oh, there's the shore. I Oh, I'm a mile offshore. I'm 2 miles. I'm 5 kilometers." Whatever. Then eventually I can't see the shore. And when I get in the middle of the ocean, I also can't see where I'm going. Now, when I arrive in Japan, I'm like, "Oh, we're almost there." Land hoe. There it is. I'm getting closer. We're only a kilometer out. We're almost there. Let's get closer. But in the middle of the ocean, I can't see anything. So, I don't even know if I'm making progress anymore. I've lost the contextual perspective from where I've come from or where I'm going to. When people are practicing fitness and wellness with you, we know as long-term practitioners that there is a time where you get yourself situated, you can do the class, you can do the stuff, and then you feel like you're not progressing anymore, even though you are, but it's the more subtle things. It's the deeper stuff.

30:17 It's the like really actual refraraming of you as a person that's taking place. So in this time frame of month four to year 1, it's often when the people get into that thing and that ri the risk is they lose enthusiasm. Then that's when someone who practices five days a week for six months comes in one day and says cancel me and you're like dude what? Like what's going on? They're like I want to try something else which is like the biggest stinger ever. Yep. So the solution there being you have to have conversation with them that helps them continue to register the progress that they're making. I like it. Yeah. I think that's a really I don't know. I haven't thought about it in that context before and it's a really good time to check back in with people. And I would say for most of us that's when we stop communicating with people is once they've gotten over that hump of coming regularly, right? We're like, "Okay, we won. Great." But in fact, you're in. I've got you. Yeah.

31:21 Yeah. That is actually when there's a huge risk of losing them. And guys, I think what we forget about sometimes is once you have those people in the door, they are still being bombarded with ads and friends telling them to go somewhere else and, you know, something new opening around the corner from them. So, you know, we can't just rest on our laurels and assume. I love that point specifically with Walla as well. This is the phase where I feel like the personality types are actually the most powerful because you have more time with people in this phase. Y like in the first phase you're really just like learn their name, be really nice to them, whatever. But the personality types are harder to integrate into the conversation. At this phase though, you've got time to be like, "Okay, Josh is a thinker." Which, by the way, I've taken the personality quiz like 15 times and I'm like, I'm not going to be a thinker this time. And you always get it.

32:21 That's like Natalie, our head of product. She's so try to cheat. Yes, that's I want to be a maverick. That has a better name. And there's no way I can make myself be a Maverick on. I always end up being thinker. I overthink being a maverick, which makes me a thinker. Exactly. So, so but during you know those personality types you could say like oh Josh is a thinker. So the type of conversation that we can curate with him is more in line with that knowledge or like the giver is more in line with like that you know it just it lets you filter a bit and this is where it can have more impact because these are these are depth of relationship with someone that you get to curate with that. And guys, actually, just to like put a final thought there with the marketing suite and the automations you can build, you can literally create an audience that's like, you know, started their membership 5 months ago, has taken more than x number of classes and is a thinker. And that's how you can make sure the communication is spot-on for them.

33:28 Because I'll tell you right now, I'm in month like five at this Pilates studio I'm going to right now. And every communication I get from them at this point is either a deal that's being pushed out to everybody that says membership excluded like in small print at the bottom like spend or take 25 classes, get $25 off your next purchase. And then at the bottom in small print it's like membership excluded like autopay members. And I'm like why are you sending this to me? That's just mean. So that's the only communication I get are now like buy our summer 10 pack for X or take these classes. And I think it's a huge mistake a lot of businesses make is they send that communication that is so geared at people at the beginning of their journey to people in the middle and it's annoying and frustrating. Now I'm like why am I even on your email list anymore? because clearly nothing you send is for me, right? And it's all it's all generic. It Lauri, you and I some time back talked about both of us are on I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of email lists for studios out there.

34:36 On my birthday, assuming I put my birthday in correctly because I get a lot of random birthday ones. I can open up my promotions tab and I have 380 happy birthday messages. They're the same message. They all say basically the same thing, you know. So, it mean it makes it that although we think it's being nice, you're reaching out on my birthday, I'm totally indifferent to them because none of them are outside of the communication box. All right, to speed this up here. So, the third phase is like becoming integral. It's basically they're asking the question, am I this person? And we all know this because like I identify as someone who practices yoga. I'm a yogi. Someone who does Pilates their whole life like I do Pilates. I'm a boxer. It's like it's an identity that's here. That takes time to develop. It isn't just immediate. You don't practice two yoga classes like I'm a yogi. Like it has to become something that is you. So the second underlying question is this irreplaceable for me? I've made a decision that yoga is something in my life that I need personally and want like period. It's like brushing my teeth. I'm just going to keep doing it because I want to do it and it does something positive for me. Right? So in this one year and beyond, if someone is making this part of their identity, this is where the conversation grows and the people are more interested

36:09 in the detail like the nerdy stuff that you want to talk to everyone about. This is where that's that's the group of people who are like this is now interesting. And an example of this would be if you poll people for why they decide to do a yoga teacher training. 50% or more will at first before they're done the training say I just want to deepen my practice. So it's a perfect example of like those are generally people who've been practicing for a year plus they have a regular practice and they want more. So then that's like one of the paths that they take. It's not because they're like I just really want to teach yoga. That's like actually not that likely of an answer anymore. Yeah. It doesn't mean they don't ultimately end up teaching, but it's because it's an identity element of it. Perfect. Okay, let's get to some practical stuff. We're going to rifle through a couple of these. I have a million slides for you guys and I know we're not going to get through all of them, so we're going to jump around. we talked at the start about personalization. One of the ways to make things feel more personal is to keep it spicy. it's making a diverse amount of contact. The contact that I have at the studio, at the desk, talking with Laura, high impact. A text message that feels like it comes from the manager who's my friend and it's personalized, high impact. The an email that's like automated and clearly part

37:40 of a automated funnel, I'll accept if what's in there is actually good. A personalized email is different. a snail mail letter showing up at my door. in the class, the teacher saying something to me at the right point in time to celebrate me. If you have this diversity of contact, a DM on social media, a follow, a tagging in a picture, etc., etc., etc., this is how you have more volume of contact with somebody, more engagement without it feeling like we're spamming them. Because if I just send you like 10 emails in 10 days, you're like, I don't want to I don't want to open these up. Not that you can't do that, but the variety helps to buffer so that you can increase engagement points. And I would say that the point of engagement is top of mindness. I can be a one time a week practitioner, but I can engage with you three times a week, which is not as good as me taking three classes, per se, but when we're building up that connection with you, if I engage with you three times a week, like once on social media, once in the class, and one other time through something you send me, you are part of my reality. And we have to be real that right now your general consumer to Laura's point earlier with still getting ads and stuff sees three to eight,000 ads and offers a day like the human brain just is good at shutting all that stuff out and consumers are asking for some relief from that.

39:10 That just reframes the value of engagement. If I respond to a text message that you send me from Walla, that is really big. Yeah. If I pick up the phone and actually talk to you, that is a huge action. If I open your email, read the whole thing, and click respond or click the link and do the other thing, like I'm engaging with you. It I'm telling you in my action, I find you and this communication valuable in my life. So when we create variety, we create more opportunity for that without it feeling like we're just sending a bunch of generic stuff as we alluded to earlier. Yep. The extension of this is embracing like hyperpersonalization. So, everyone knows about personalization since circa 2007 that it's like, "Hello, insert name. Welcome to the studio. We're glad to have you." You know, the name and your little sign off or whatever, like the signature or a great example in an email is like making sure they have your logo at the top. We're like, "Personalize it to the business and they know what's going on." Sure.

40:23 But ask yourself like just gut check really honestly if I have your name at the start of the email, my logo and then your special signature or my special signature and you read that, do you even register that stuff? Like do you even give a at all? And I would debate probably not. Yeah. So when we're talking about personalization, that's not it. That's just like normal. That's how that's just an email. Yeah. So, your tone really makes a huge impact here. The tone being both what's your brand's tone, but also what's the tone of the specific communication. Here's the example. If I send an email that's supposed to be generic, then I make the tone purposely generic and I almost like call it out. You go a little meta on the whole thing. Hey, this is an automated email that says you got one left on your 10 pack. here's a link to reup. Just call it out. Versus if I text message Laura after her first class as the owner of the studio, even if it goes through an automation, I'm going to write it like this. Hey Laura, it's Josh, the owner at Nomad Yoga. Saw you took your first class. I wanted to personally reach out and just say we're super excited to have you at the studio. Let me know if we can help you out getting your next class booked or anything else.

41:46 Yeah, perfect. That's personalization in a way that like that feels good. And also notice in that text message example, I'm not asking anything from Laura. Yep. Because if Laura is actually my friend, I don't text my friends and be like, "Hey friend that I've known for a long time, can you click this link real quick?" I've never sent that text message one time in my whole life. Make this purchase here. Make your next purchase here. Yeah. Laura, I think you'd really like this yoga class. Here's a link for you to buy their intro. says no one ever in a text message. Right? So, right, when we're talking about personalization, that's and tone, that's really where the angle is. And then, if possible, personalization comes down to segmenting audiences and communicating within context. If I've practiced two times in a one-month intro, and then you send me an email that says, "Josh, you should sign up for our membership for $120 a month." and you know that I need to practice eight times a month for that to be worthwhile. That is contextually incorrect. It doesn't make sense. Which means that message is only about you, the business, and you clearly contextually have not personalized to me and you don't give a about me.

43:02 On the other hand, if you're like, Josh, we know that you practice a couple times. We'd love to jump on a call and find the best membership for you based on your practice frequency. A really great option would be our 10 pack. You have a whole year to use them. Yep. Love it. Now it's like not about the sale, not about the money. It's about you, the person receiving it. Think about how different that will feel compared to what they're getting from every other business they've walked into in this universe. You know, it's it's just that immediately will have an impact. Yeah. the call out here is obviously the marketing suite that Walla has is it's still in its infancy and it's already awesome. So, I know for sure it's going to just continue to get super epic. sometimes marketing suite and wallow right now what I would say is jump on a call with the wall team or like ask questions in the chat and stuff about how it works because even if it doesn't do exactly like it what you want and how it's presented it has additional benefits once you understand how it works. So the example is you create these audiences and that lets you create the segmentation so that even if it's a manual reachout like you know who to reach out with what. and it's almost it's not exactly reporting but then you can like make an audience and see like oh there's this many people that are categorically like this. Like that

44:31 information is hyper powerful. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. It has a lot of angles to it that end up giving you groups of people that are important in whatever stage of the journey. Well, and the one thing I would say and Walla does this extremely well and that's kind of alludes to this next slide. If you can segment audiences sometimes like as a studio owner when we're in a state of a little bit overwhelm with all the things we got to do, we want the automation. and we're like, I just want to push easy go and it just bloop and sends all these messages and converts people. But the comical or the irony of that is what we're alluding to that like you as a consumer is that the kind of message you want to receive. So it's not to say that you don't use that. Absolutely 100% you do have to use that. I would suggest that one of the major shifts right now is we're seeing way more value in adding like manual human touch back into these as a supplement. So when you have with Walla you can have the automations going and then you can supplement to these special segmented groups by like clicking group message and then writing the message or individually or whatever. It makes it super easy to do that because you're not like having to pull a bunch of weird reports and export this and then go through a checklist and blah like we used to do, right? The goal is absolute customization to whatever group you want

46:04 to communicate with. And whether that's automated communication or picking up the phone and calling them or, you know, literally writing them a handwritten note, whatever it might be, you get the list of people that fall into that segment. Yeah. So from that context as well, the one of the things that I can tell you for sure right now is ultra high impact is using manual outreach, especially in more personalized forms such as direct message or text message and it not being automated. The automation is you st you make a standard operating procedure, an SOP in your business that says at class 5 reach out to these people in this way. That's the automated part. But the reach out is not templated. Like it has like a starting template, but then you are hyperpersonalizing it to that person specifically. And you're writing it in the way we've demonstrated already where it's like it's literally me, Josh, the human being, reaching out to you, Laura, the human being. And that's my goal is a connection between two human beings, not an auto, hey, buy this thing. And it works. It has really high impact about how someone feels about your business and how integrated they feel into the team, especially up front.

47:25 So, Cat just had a question with that and making this some of these manual. She said, "When will tasks be available to automate within a journey?" Because she just loves the idea of the front desk getting tasked with writing a handwritten note or texting somebody or DMing them at the 3 or 4 month point. like in the next month we it's designed it's in QA right now so it is almost there so those of you who are using our marketing suite right now within journeys where it says you know what's the action send a text send an email the next step of that is going to be create a task for who so this will be you know more and more of it will be able to be automated so it's just something that's an SOP your staff walks in they open their tasks they dive in Yep I love it and I would say yes. And if your technology that you're using in your business is the barrier, I would suggest zooming out for a minute and re-evaluating the whole thing because more often than not, I find that the technology isn't the barrier. We just have to reframe what we're trying to do. So the task is a simple example that like if Walla is your marketing suite and your customer CRM, Gmail is your email like that's separate from that where things come back into and then you use like a sauna, Trello, whatever else for your standard SOPs.

48:49 You just make it like if I work at your desk, I come in and I just open those three things up every day. And you can put things into a sauna that says like check the roster for anyone who has a number five next to their name. Write them on a list and then send them this message. So there's other ways to solve for it. That's not in challenge to what Cat's asking. I think this is why Wall is awesome. Like we do want to keep developing towards making it even simpler than that. And at this point, and the reason I'm saying this is like at this point, if studio A is like, "Oh, well, it's hard for me to get my team to do this and create this automation, so like we're just not going to do it." And Studio B does it. So, Studio A makes two contact points per month with a certain client group, and Studio B makes 10. and you have to bet between the 10 contact point studio and the two contact point studio who wins at the end of the month and you have to put your own money on it. Who are you betting on?

49:50 We're always going to bet on the studio that has the volume production. So, and right now in terms of like where do you focus your efforts? If you're look going back to your KPIs and you're like we are just not converting at the rate that's necessary, what else are you doing? Like is that more laborious than it needs to be? Maybe. But what's more important than that? I like very often there's got to be other 10 other tasks that you could probably sacrifice them completely and get your desk to do that and you'd get better results when we're talking about impact for your students and growth of your business. All right, let's let's dive ahead to some action or Yeah, I think this one and then let's go all the way, Laura, if it's cool. I think we're I know we're at the end of time here. So, I wanted to just bring a couple of little outside of the box things. These aren't even outside of the box anymore, but you know, notoriously boutique fitness is 5 to 10 years behind whatever cutting edge is. So, I feel obligated to put on your radar that like there are intelligent ways to approach your business that are new now that are really exciting if we embrace them and to start to incorporate them into your thought process is a good idea. So, a simple idea is when we're talking about all these hyperpersonalizations or writing an email or editing something,

51:20 there is a lot of effort in that. But the simple starting point if you haven't done it already is using AI in some way to not just create that's not necessarily what I would say but as the testing ground and the place for you to edit and perfect a message and get new ideas. It's like your own personal sounding board is insanely powerful. I would say that I'm pretty good through my experience at communicating with our clients and with clients in the yoga studio. And I can produce a slide deck like this one, a email, a custom text message. I just this morning wrote a describer sentence underneath a form that we get people to fill out using AI in at least 30 to 50% less time. and be more happy with the outcome. It does. It's not like write me this and it spits it out and I use that. That's not how you use it in my opinion, but it lets me just go through the process of like getting my first draft down and then testing it through and change this and do that at speed.

52:32 So now I can really make these things like hyperpersonalization, the right wording, the right tone. It's easier to get that stuff done. So, I would just say consider that's like already powerful and is going to exponentially get more powerful as we continue through. And then the other the last thing on this also is if you haven't heard of Zapier, it's one example. There's a few programs out there that it lets you connect things online. So the other thing that's not necessarily just Walla, but with your entire tech stack, doing things like figuring out how to automate stuff, including a response. So if someone sends you a Gmail, you can say, "Send this Gmail over to through Zapier over to chat GPT4. Customize this response, send it back into Gmail, and send it out." Like that's a silly example. I don't know if I would even do that, but like that's possible right now. So, just starting to realize like interconnectivity of things is also a real a very viable option.

53:40 Just a quick little aside here and teaser, this is definitely on the radar right now for us and how we'll be and it will be woven into our marketing suite being able to use AI for communication. Yeah, I am so excited to see that because I feel like it's just then it's just right there. You're like, I you know that day when you're on your best, it's easy to write the response message you need or write the email. It's the days when you're like you had too many cancellations this morning, your kid spilled their milk all over the counter, one of your teachers quit, and someone else asked for a raise even though they absolutely haven't done anything new in the business. and you've got a headache and then you're like, I'm supposed to sit down and write this thing. Those are the moments where it's like it's pretty helpful to have something to just get some momentum going on it. Yeah.

54:33 okay. Quickfire retention boosters. What can you go do like kind of right now? Well, one, personalized check-ins for absentees. If anyone registers for a class and doesn't show up, follow up with them personally. It can be an automated thing too, but like reach out to them especially huge asterisks if they are a new client. If it's a first visit person and they don't come to that first class, which is common hyperpersonalization like I would phone them. If they don't answer the phone, then I would text them saying that you phone them. They don't respond to the text. I would email them the next day saying, "Hey, I texted you yesterday because I had phoned you." And like reach out to them. Yeah. chase it down and it makes a huge impact. Another thing is you could draft a really quick feedback survey. Now feedback surveys are tricky. When I say quick, I mean like literally two or three questions and the feedback survey conceptually is you send it out to somebody not to like not about classes or whatever. You ask them about their practice. This is the hack to help someone think about the progress that they are making in their practice.

55:50 So you send the person when they hit month four be like, "Hey, super important two question survey Laura wondering if you could help us out." And the survey says, "Tell us about the biggest change that you've seen in your yoga practice." And now like I have to think about it. I have to write it down. I have to tell you about it. And if I put like I don't know if I'm seeing a change, then you pick up the phone with that person, for example. Awesome. and then announce a referral incentive. This one, I feel like it's not going to be the all endall. I'm not going to refer someone to you because you give me a referral incentive, but it creates contextual excuse for you to bring up, hey, you should refer people. that's it. So that's really in my mind the purpose is to make sure that you are able to have that conversation. And just before the last quick thing on that referral incentive, use get if you are not a low capacity studio.

56:55 Use guest passes as much as you possibly can in your business. like they are the businesses we have using guest passes consistently and pushing it and talking about it are driving so many new people through their door and converting them. So if you are a business that has additional capacity and you can handle having a friend in a class, do it. It is such an effective way to get new members. I 100% agree. It's super simple in Walla. And here's an I'll just add on to this too. Like if you want to test this out, rather than making it a whole program that's evergreen that you run forever, do it as a campaign. Be like, "Okay, September is buddy month and whoever brings in the most guests in September wins XYZ." Like gify it and see what happens for a month and make that your communication and stuff. And it'll also let your community learn how the guest pass system works in Walla, which is I like once they've done it once, it's just so brainlessly simple.

57:59 You know, they just go in and be like name, email, boom, they're in class. Like, Laura, you're coming with me. And now Laura has to be like, "No, Josh, I'm not coming." Which she's not going to do. We're friends. So, yeah. In fact, that's my April Fool's joke on Laura. that she's going to forget about by the time we get there. I'm going to go into wallet and just invite her to like a hundred different classes with me all over the wallet systems and we'll just see we'll just see what happens. My email my text message and be like you are booked into this class. You are booked into this class. All right. All right. real quick, if you are a yoga business, that's who we work with. We have a free community, Yogrepreneur Collective, but we do a free coaching call. So, if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know, I need to hash this out some more. You can book a call directly with me, it's just yogreneurcollective.comfree coaching call. That's it. I'd love to chat with you. It's actually an hourlong coaching call. That's what it is. So, come with your questions and I'd be happy to help out.

59:01 Awesome. This was so good. And guys, thank you for sticking around for the whole thing. And I will say for sure, like everything Josh just talked about in providing value to your clients and personalizing and making sure it's about them and not just you, he lives and breathes that in his business with the studios he works with. And some of you guys on this call have worked with Josh and his team. So I highly encourage you if you've never had a conversation to connect. for those of you that are watching this on recording, please reach out to us if you would like with any questions that you didn't get to answer to ask live. and otherwise, we will be coming back next month actually talking with the sales arm, which is an amazing company that does a lot of this personalized reach out for you. So, one of the reasons I wanted to bring them in and kind of hear their reasoning behind it was exactly what Josh talked about having the different pieces that this keeping the spice in it with communication and having actual phone conversations with some of your clients. So, we'll see you guys in Facebook overwa and thank you thank you Josh for joining us today for spending an hour of your day with us and we'll talk to you soon.

1:00:15 My pleasure. We'll talk soon everyone. All right. Bye.