The Great Gym Deception

Gyms have to be filled with the biggest load of body dysmorphics in
the world; each trying to achieve some Adonis inspired impossibility
of perfection and becoming even more dysmorphic in the process. Last
week, if you remember, I griped about my gym subscription, I thought I
would carry on with the trend. Many people go to gym essentially out
of fear; fear of rejection by the girl across the room, fear of the
fat-induced heart attack, fear that you do not live up to the
photoshopped expectations of the Men's Health cover guy. Others go to
satisfy the macho-image of bench pressing a ludicrous amount of metal
in the name of manhood. Seriously when else do you ever lie on your
back and push a weight off your chest. Unless you are a mechanic and a
VW golf falls on top of you I fail to see the practical benefit of the
bench press. “Ah but bru it gives you better pecs.” Sure, that's a
great reason for performing a non-functional exercise with massive
shoulder wrecking capabilities if done wrong. Despite all this I
really love gym. A convenient way (not the only way) to get some
exercise in and a great endorphin release. I still cannot justify the
expense at the new subscription rates though.

Here is my problem with gyms. They are a luxury experience at the high
end of my expense bill. Like most businesses in Zimbabwe they are
targeting the small minority of people with an above average income.
All the gyms are basically competing for the same, finite pool of
individuals. It is like being in a room of starving people and
fighting over the same small pot of sadza instead of cooking up
another batch from the ingredients in the kitchen. Only one gym in
recent history came into the local market with a strategy of targeting
new clients and even then I do not see it happening any more. What we
have is a pool of professional gym hoppers, people who shift from one
gym to the other. What we do not have is large numbers of people who
have never done gym before trying it out and sticking with it. What we
do not have is a sustained marketing strategy aimed at converting
people over to the product, no one is increasing the size of the sadza
pot.

It takes effort to come up with a way of targeting new clients and
building a relationship with them. The process can be scripted and
systematic, but it needs to be intentional. As a business you cannot
sit around and expect clients to fall into your lap. You have to be
intentional about targeting them, reaching out, and keeping them. Nor
should you be waiting for a lull before you jump into action. It needs
to be part of your process from the opening all the way through. If
you focus on enriching the lives of the client rather than lining your
pocket you will probably do a better job at keeping them. So for the
gym, that means being a little more concerned about my health and
fitness than about just increasing your fees, because if you take care
of me well enough I may just bring a friend along to train.

This is not a gym unique problem. It affects almost any business in
the country right now.

I was reminded this last week of a quote from the 1954 movie Sabrina,
where Linus Larrabee is explaining to his brother his motivation for
business;

'A new product has been found, something of use to the world. A new
industry moves into an undeveloped area. Factories go up, machines go
in and you're in business. It's coincidental that people who've never
seen a dime now have a dollar and barefooted kids wear shoes and have
their faces washed. What's wrong with an urge that gives people
libraries, hospitals, baseball diamonds and movies on a Saturday
night?'

If we keep fighting over the same pot of food we will never grow as a
nation. If we never bother to grow other people and enrich their lives
we will never grow as a nation. If our business is all about just us
getting money, getting fat, and never giving anything back we will
never grow as a nation. It is that simple. We will become a bunch of
greedy, corrupt people, happy to screw each other over in the name of
gain; a bunch of people the rest of the world will never want to deal
with because all we ever do is take.

I want to leave you with another quote from Sabrina, “Making money
isn't the main point of business. Money is a by-product.” Have a great
week.

What Really Matters

Grey's Anatomy has to be one of the most emotional television series in the world (well the current season anyway).
It is a behind the scenes, dramatic look at the world of emergency medicine. It still, however, gets it wrong.

It really fails to get across just how much effort goes into performing a surgery.
Yes, they show the cutting and sewing, but in the essence of high moving drama they leave out a whole chunk of the administration bits.
They leave out the sterilising of equipment, the major disinfecting and cleaning, the often numerous trays of theatre equipment that are on standby, the systems of booking theatre time, of ordering and pumping anaesthetic into the theatre, the waste disposal.
Unless you are in the medical field you have no idea what the real goings on in a theatre are, you just don’t see the complexity of the backend.
Primarily an IT term in website design, the backend refers to the whole bunch of stuff that takes place behind the scenes that the client never gets to see. And for the most part the client does not really care.
Most clients only care about the front-end, the bit that they interact with and that they see.
For the most part the client doesn’t even think about what happens at the back, unless you are like me, of course, and are fascinated by what makes things tick.
I am the sort of guy that will fly into a new city and be intrigued by how they dispose of the daily waste of 10 million people without you really noticing that the rubbish disappears every week never to be seen again.
This is probably an intrigue that is fuelled perhaps by the failure of my rubbish to vanish more than twice a month. But then Zach is a bit of an oddity.
As a client, if you think about it hard enough it makes sense that there are systems that happen behind the scenes, that there must be banking, billing, accounting, stock ordering, tracking, data capture and storage etc.
But in all reality it never really crosses your mind. For a patient in theatre all that matters is that they go in, are operated on and resuscitated with their problem solved and preferably without pain.
And that is the crux of any client interaction in any business, I go in with a problem and you solve it for me as painlessly as possible with a perceived cost-benefit in my favour.
It is only when the backend has a problem that interferes with the front-end that the client may actually care.
So how do you build a great front-end and a solid backend to support it?
Well start at the beginning of the problem-painfree solution-cost benefit idea.
Learn to identify what your clients really want. The man who walks into a sports shop asking for a new set of golf clubs does not just want a new piece of sporting equipment, what he wants is to better his game of golf.
If you just sell him a set of clubs he may be happy, if you sell him a set of clubs that improves his handicap he will be ecstatic, and will tell his mates on the green what a difference you made in his life.
That may require a better sales pitch, better research into what each club does, a little scientific application into what the best club length to golfer height ratio is, and an indoor driving range to practice his swing on so he can see the benefit while in your store.
But I am getting ahead of myself. First really ask what the client wants experientially. Once you know the problem you can accurately identify the solution.
Solution solving if more of us did this our lives would be better. Now for a little application of the KISS principle. KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid.
Fifty step solutions help no one. Both in the front-end where your client will hate it and in the backend where some poor staff member has to work the magic.
The more steps there are, the greater the chance that something may go wrong.
The more parts, the less the chance of perfection and (not always) greater the cost.
Building a simple system takes as much, and if not more, time as a building a complicated one because you have to cut through the crap.
ZBC changed strategy from giving fines to offering solutions. You can buy your radio licence disc there in the car park.
You are no longer penalised on the street. They cut out a whole system that was open to circumvention, which annoyed people on end and involved a lot of administration. They identified the problem and found an answer for it.
Now the last bit, perceived cost benefit. At the end of this month I will be cancelling my gym subscription.
It just went up by 50 percent and no explanation given. Whatever backend processes created this decision I could not care.
I can find better ways of spending US$1 000 a year (new prices) than on fitness, and I can find cheaper ways of keeping fit.
There is no change in terms of benefits for me after this massive cost increase beyond the level of inflation.
So for them to make money at the new rates they have to hope that one in three current members do leave.
Cost benefit is difficult to gauge at times and requires a chunk of research (more that “wow we need more money”).
However, if you can correctly identify and simply solve your client’s problem they will probably be willing to pay a little bit more.