Why Sales May Seem Easier Than Retention in the Fitness Industry

Why Sales May Seem Easier Than Retention in the Fitness Industry

Why Sales May Seem Easier Than Retention in the Fitness and Wellness Industry

Why Sales Seems Easier Than Retention in the Fitness and Wellness Industry

Grant Ian Gamble is a Founder of AFFINITY OS™, the #1 AI and Human-Driven Customer Experience and Employee Engagement Business Intelligence Platform. He is also a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. Grant has four decades of experience in building and growing global fitness and wellness brands and communities, leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach in the health, fitness and wellness sector.

In sales, you see the results of your efforts almost immediately. With retention, the payoff is long-term and requires an authentic, sustained relationship.

In the fitness and wellness industry, sales often grab the spotlight due to their immediate results and clear metrics, like quick sign-ups and instant revenue boosts. However, as industry leaders, it’s crucial to understand why retention might seem less controllable but is equally vital for sustainable success.

Sales is the act of conversion, a moment in time. Retention, however, is an ongoing journey that requires continuous engagement and value delivery.

Brian Solis

Digital Analyst and Anthropologist

The Immediate Gratification of Sales

Sales in the fitness industry provide immediate gratification—a new member signs up, and the success is instantly visible. This can make sales feel more rewarding and within our control, as digital analyst Brian Solis points out, “Sales is the act of conversion, a moment in time.”

Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Retention is about caring consistently over time.

Harvey Mackay

Businessman and Author

The Complexity of Retention

Conversely, retention requires an ongoing commitment to relationship-building, deeply understanding customer needs, and providing consistent value, which is more complex and less predictable than direct sales. Harvey Mackay captures this sentiment well, stating, “Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Leveraging AI for Deep Insights

This is where AI-driven platforms like AFFINITY OS™ (AOS) come into play. By accurately measuring nuanced factors such as member satisfaction and community feel, AOS provides the insights needed to tailor services and enhance member retention effectively.

Building Long-Term Relationships

The real challenge—and opportunity—in retention lies in continuously engaging members and aligning offerings with their evolving expectations.

It’s about creating a community where members feel a sense of belonging and value, making them less likely to leave for a competitor.

Conclusion: Balancing Sales and Retention for Growth

While the allure of immediate sales results is strong, the fitness industry must balance this with robust retention strategies. By investing in tools like AOS that provide real-time feedback and actionable insights, businesses can foster a loyal community, ultimately leading to sustained growth and profitability.

For more insights on building a successful fitness business, explore the principles laid out in my book, “The Affinity Principle,” and discover how AI-driven strategies can transform your approach to member engagement and retention.

CONSULTING SERVICES:

Creating Transformative Wellness Through Innovative Design, Sustainable Solutions, and Operational Excellence

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

AFFINITY Podcast

Affinity Podcast Feature Image

Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

More Articles:

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly. IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

read more
Who Wins When BI (Business Intelligence) meets AI

Who Wins When BI (Business Intelligence) meets AI

Who Wins When BI (Business Intelligence) meets AI

AI and BI

Grant Ian Gamble is a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. He has over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach.

The business world is abuzz with all things AI (Artificial Intelligence). But, what does it mean for jobs? How can it be leveraged? What should we be wary of when implementing AI? How does AI relate to what we do? And more importantly how do we apply AI to what we do? 

All these and more questions abound. Having been in the AI space for over three years now, I have grown an appreciation of how powerful AI can be, but I have also come to recognize the importance of integrating BI (Business Intelligence) with AI to leverage insights AI can bring to light.

Today, BI and AI are becoming ubiquitous in the business world, but they serve different purposes AND most importantly work best when used together. Here’s a breakdown of their functionality:

BI: Making Sense of Data

  • Focus: Analyzes historical data to identify trends, patterns, and performance metrics.
  • Outputs: Provides reports, dashboards, and visualizations to help you understand their past performance and make informed decisions.
  • Strengths: Easy to understand, efficient data organization, good for identifying correlations.

AI: Unveiling Hidden Insights

  • Focus: Uses algorithms to learn from data and make predictions about the future, identify anomalies, and automate tasks.
  • Outputs: Can generate forecasts, recommend actions, and even automate business processes based on data analysis.
  • Strengths: Powerful pattern recognition, ability to handle complex data sets, ability to bring sentiment and ‘texture’ into focus, potential for automation.

The Synergy of BI and AI

While they are distinct, BI and AI complement each other perfectly:

  • BI provides the foundation: Historical data analyzed by BI tools provides the training ground for AI algorithms.
  • AI unlocks deeper insights: AI can analyze vast amounts of data and identify hidden patterns and sentiment that BI might miss.
  • AI automates tasks: AI can take over repetitive tasks like data analysis and reporting, freeing up human resources for more strategic thinking.

Here are some examples of how BI and AI work together:

  • Sales Forecasting: BI data on past sales trends can be combined with AI to predict future sales figures and optimize resource management and marketing focus.
  • Customer Churn Prediction: AI can analyze customer behavior data to identify customers at risk of churning and suggest strategies to retain them.
  • Referral Generation: AI can analyze customer feedback to detect sentiment and likelihood to refer and automate referral offers to those customers.

AI Meets BI in the Real World

At AFFINITY OS we use AI to do all the heavy lifting in analyzing customer feedback and team engagement in real time. We use BI to bring this feedback into focus. We use a combination of AI and BI to recommend and prioritize actions in a paint by numbers approach that drives retention, referrals and team engagement. The AI engine also illuminates trends that will impact financial performance and these lead indicators allow you to proactively address these opportunities or threats.   

The Future of BI and AI

The integration of BI and AI is an ongoing trend. As AI technology continues to develop, we can expect even more powerful tools that combine data analysis, forecasting, and automation to give businesses a significant competitive edge.

If you want to know more about AI and BI in action feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] 

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

AFFINITY Podcast

Affinity Podcast Feature Image

Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

More Articles:

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly. IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

read more
Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

AI-driven Business Intelligence

Grant Ian Gamble is a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. He has over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

ThoughtSpot then went on to say, “At inception, dashboards were the perfect vehicle for delivering  key report KPIs without data workers needing a background in coding or IT. But much has changed over the last two decades, including the appetite and needs of business users.”

They go on to cite that 67% of executives aren’t comfortable accessing or using data from their existing dashboard resources.

They point out that it takes on average 4.5 days for a dashboard report to be populated.

And that 50% of data budgets is wasted by remedial data tasks versus analysis.

And then I breathed a sigh of relief.

In Chapter 6 of the article, they point out that the future of data analytics is AI-driven. BI and dashboards aren’t dead, they’re using AI to transform their data into actionable business insights. 

And that is exactly how AFFINITY OS works. We use AI to do all the heavy lifting, analyzing customer feedback and team engagement in real time. We use BI to bring this feedback into focus. We use a combination of AI and BI to recommend and prioritize actions in a paint by numbers approach that drives customer experience, retention, referrals, team engagement and growth. Our AI engine also illuminates trends that will impact financial performance and these lead indicators allow you to proactively address these opportunities or threats.   

The Future of BI and AI

The integration of BI and AI is an ongoing trend. As AI technology continues to develop, we continue to create even more powerful tools that combine live data analysis, forecasting, and automation to give your business a significant competitive edge.

If you want to know more about AI and BI in action, feel free to reach out to me for a demonstration of AI-driven insights use-case roadmap discovery session.

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

AFFINITY Podcast

Affinity Podcast Feature Image

Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

More Articles:

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly. IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

fitness business

Grant Ian Gamble is a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. He has over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach.

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

The effectiveness of their simulation technology stemmed from its ability to replicate real-world sailing dynamics accurately by  linking various sailing components digitally. This simulation environment not only hosted virtual pre-race trials but also provided race-day analytics, offering consistent and rapid data analysis. This capability allowed for quick adjustments; foil configurations that previously took days to adjust could now be completed in hours.

Moreover, the success of Team New Zealand highlighted the cumulative impact of multiple data points driving small innovations, as noted by one of the designers. Their AI systems efficiently explored numerous potential configurations, pinpointing the optimal design parameters for peak performance. This approach underscores the team’s strategic use of digital advancements to drive significant improvements in yacht racing.

It’s the same approach that helps AFFINITY OS™ navigate the tens of thousands of daily data points, from Team Members and Members, to speed up the learning curve of fitness businesses.

We live in a fast paced, ever changing, trending and diverging business ecosystem that is impossible to navigate using conventional tools. We used to track Team Member and Member feedback through annual surveys. This was labor intensive and even though it delivered important information, this intel was often rendered redundant because it was dated by the time we processed the surveys.

We then went to automation to process surveys more quickly, but an annual survey is still about as useful as flip flops in a snowstorm.

We realized we needed to be taking pulse checks on our team and members in real time, but how do you manage that much data? 

Enter AI. Much like Team New Zealand we were able to use AI to process huge amounts of data and distill that data into actionable intelligence, all in real-time, all the time.

It wasn’t just a matter of measuring, it was critical to capture sentiment and prioritize the feedback we were receiving. We needed to remove the chatter and get down to the things that would move the needle on Team Engagement and the Member Experience.

AFFINITY OS was conceived and built around this fast paced world we live in. It was designed to cut through the clutter and produce real time opportunities to fine tune your business. It was engineered to do all the heavy lifting and chart out obvious opportunities to sail past your competition.

Like Team New Zealand, we understand that it is the little things that ultimately make the most difference and help you navigate the complex forces at play in your business today. As much as it might sound contradictory, it is only by leveraging technology that you can hope to get the people piece in focus.

And isn’t it ultimately the people who work in the business that serve the people who pay the bills that matter? 

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

AFFINITY Podcast

Affinity Podcast Feature Image

Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

More Articles:

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly. IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

fitness industry priorities

Grant Ian Gamble is a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. He has over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach.

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly.

IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

Club offerings vary but when it comes to the basics, most gyms offer similar strength and cardio equipment. So how do they differentiate themselves amid fierce competition for click conversions? There is a lot of overlap even in the Group Ex space.

Some clubs sell on volume of equipment, some market their specific equipment, most project images that suggest potential members will have rippling abs and bulging biceps if they sign up today. With high attrition and escalating competition, it is getting harder and harder for clubs to extract themselves from the bloodied waters of the feeding frenzy when most of the messaging feels and looks very similar. 

In the boutique space, clubs and studios celebrate their uniqueness. But the boutique model suffers even higher attrition and has even bigger challenges at present. The smaller footprint boutique clubs are specialized, and as a result I believe people eventually get bored or don’t resonate with the offering in the longer term and move on. 

Regardless of the model or the breadth or limitation of offerings, the fitness and wellness industry is cycling through another boom and facing incredible challenges. In an attempt to address those challenges, industry icons express the need to create differentiation through the Member Experience. But how? And more specifically, how do you scale that differentiation?

I believe it revolves around people . . . around the Team! After all, we are, and always will be, a people business.

We serve people through people. We attract people through people. And people remain the most significant differentiator in terms of the member experience. 

Great people join this industry on a daily basis and equally many depart the industry, very often disillusioned. They’re the same people that walked through the door full of aspirations and hope, but what happened? We’re facing churn similar to hospitality and the telecom industry, and scrapping for the bottom rung of the team retention ladder.

Some suggest that the kids entering the workforce don’t have “the same work ethic as we did”; others suggest that it is a more transient world; and almost across the board club group employers complain that they can’t attract enough team members, let alone “quality team members”.

So if we have a revolving door of team members, how do we consistently deliver great member experiences? Something has to change.

When my partners and I built AFFINITY OS™, we did not build it because the industry needs another software platform. Because that’s sure as heck not true. We built AFFINITY OS because as an industry we need to do a better job of engaging our Team Members and in turn enhancing the Member Experience. These two things are indelibly intertwined. 

I had learned that listening to what your team has to say and distilling the relevant trends into actionable intelligence provides us with a great place to start. Data clearly shows that as Team Engagement improves, the Member Experience follows. It’s not rocket science. 

I am writing this blog because we have a problem in this industry, and yes I think we have a solution. But regardless of whether you use our tools to drive Team Engagement and measure Member Experience, this is where we need to start. Anyone with enough money can build a great facility and populate it with great equipment. It is and will always be the people that will make the heart of that business beat. Your Team Members are your “moat” against the competition! 

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

AFFINITY Podcast

Affinity Podcast Feature Image

Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

More Articles:

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

Dashboards are Dead. AI-Driven Business Intelligence is the Future.

When I read “Dashboards are Dead”, a recent ThoughtSpot headline, it made me cringe.

Our product, AFFINITY OS™, uses dashboards to visualize the data our AI engine collects from customers/members and team members of our clients’ businesses. Did this mean we needed to rethink the UX, and/or the BI (Business Intelligence) that brings our data into focus?

As ThoughtSpot said in their opening paragraph, “For more than 20 years, dashboards served as a foundational element of business intelligence, helping leaders visualize and share valuable data across their organization.”

read more
How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

How to Win the America’s Cup of Fitness Business

Team New Zealand’s innovative application of digital technology in yacht racing contributed significantly to its back-to-back victories in the America’s Cup races of 2017 and 2021. The team had a thorough understanding of the performance of its 75-foot AC75 monohull even before its launch in 2021, thanks to an AI-powered simulation tool. This tool enabled the team to conduct virtual races across numerous prototypes, honing their skills to navigate at speeds of 50 knots on meticulously refined hydrofoils under challenging conditions.

read more
Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

Fitness Industry Boom Amid a Significant Decline in Online Search for Fitness?

There is, seemingly, a health and fitness club or a boutique offering on every street corner today. And yet online searches for health and fitness clubs have diminished significantly. IBISWorld reports over 6,466 Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia in 2024, and that does not include many outlier categories. And yet, online searches for these facilities have diminished by almost 10%!

read more
Member Referrals are Like a Box of Chocolates…Or are They?

Member Referrals are Like a Box of Chocolates…Or are They?

Member Referrals Are Like a Box of Chocolates…Or Are They?

member referrals

Grant Ian Gamble is a best-selling mindful leadership author and speaker. He has over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize mindfulness in their approach.

Referrals are the No.1 source of Members in the Fitness and Wellness Industry.

Here are some facts:

  • Referrals are the number one source of new members across the fitness and wellness sector.
  • $ROI is highest on Referrals when compared to all other marketing sources.
  • Three quarters of all referrals come from ‘Promoters’ (high NPS* score) in the fitness and wellness sector.
  • The avg. referral rate for Promoters = 58% when offered a referral opportunity
  • Prospective members are 4x more likely to join a gym if they were referred by a friend​.
  • In the fitness industry, referred members have historically had a 37% higher retention rate as opposed to non-referred members.**

And yet most clubs and club groups do a pretty average job garnering and leveraging referral opportunities. Asking random members for referrals is like ‘a box of chocolates’, you never know what you’ll get. 

Whereas asking Promoters is almost guaranteed to be met with a positive response. Every club has its fair share of Detractors and Passively Satisfied members, but the Promoters have stated clearly that, they “Are likely to recommend the club to their friends, family and/or colleagues.”

AFFINITY OS™ automatically provides Promoters with a simple but compelling referral opportunity. The uptake and conversion is significantly higher than mass marketing offers to all club members. 

Below are some averages for clubs using the AFFINITY OS Referral System:

  • 52 promoters ave. per month  = 30 referred prospective members per month 
  • Average conversion of referred members @ 85% = 25 new referred members per month
  • If Ave. Lifetime Value per member = $2,500 those referrals add $62.5k each month

You can do your own math based on your LTV, but as Forrest Gump might say, “Referrals and growth go together like peas and carrots”.

* NPS = Net Promoter Score

** IHRSA attributes this higher retention rate to the social connections and sense of belonging that often comes with being referred by a friend or acquaintance.

Interested in learning more about how to transform your organization’s approach to team member engagement and customer experience? Reach out to our team at AFFINITY OS, specialists in AI-driven customer experience and team member engagement optimization.

Dive into the heart of exceptional leadership and customer-centric success with AOS Academy. Our certification courses, guided by the “PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS” mantra, are designed to support professionals as mindful, effective leaders and service providers. 

By integrating key insights from Grant Ian Gamble’s best-selling mindful leadership book, “The Affinity Principle”, we focus on nurturing people-centric cultures of empathy, effective communication, and customer service excellence.

The AOS Academy is more than just training – it’s a journey towards personal and professional transformation, ensuring every interaction and decision is rooted in understanding and valuing people first.

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Put PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS and watch your business flourish.

Dive deep into the latest trends in customer experience and team engagement, mindful leadership and management. Discover practical tools and strategies that you can use to build a people-centric culture, the foundation for sustainable long-term business growth and success.

Led by mindful leadership expert, Grant Ian Gamble, a best-selling author and true visionary with over 30 years of experience in leading teams to create innovative customer experiences, building engaged, inspired and fulfilled workforces, and developing leaders who prioritize genuine connection in their approach.

The guiding principle behind all of Grant’s work is PEOPLE FIRST, ALWAYS.

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