The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
Why Fitness Studio Growth Depends on Experience
Ever wonder why some fitness studios instantly command premium prices while others struggle to justify their value? The secret lies not in what they charge, but how they communicate that pricing to potential clients.
Pricing confidence is the hidden differentiator in today's competitive fitness landscape. According to recent HubSpot research, studios with clear, confident pricing structures see a remarkable 23% revenue increase compared to those using vague or hidden pricing strategies. Yet many studio owners continue hiding their prices out of fear—afraid that transparency will drive potential clients to cheaper alternatives.
This episode explores the crucial distinction between volume-based pricing (think big box gyms) and value-based models (premium boutique studios), revealing why most independent studios should position themselves confidently between these extremes. We dive deep into both verbal and visual communication strategies that establish pricing credibility, including simple techniques like using "starting at" pricing language that pre-qualifies leads while still allowing flexibility in sales conversations.
The most surprising insight? Your visual branding must match your pricing strategy. Premium services demand sophisticated design elements in everything from your website to your facility aesthetic. We share a powerful case study of a $1,000/month studio whose "approachable" branding was attracting all the wrong clients, creating constant price shock and poor conversions. The episode concludes with practical guidance on conducting annual pricing reviews, simplifying your pricing structure, and avoiding common pitfalls that undermine studio credibility.
Ready to stop hiding your prices and start attracting clients who value what you offer? Subscribe to the Frit to Grit cast as we transition from our foundational series into advanced growth strategies for fitness entrepreneurs looking to scale beyond $500K and expand to multiple locations.
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Pricing is usually hidden, especially for the boutique studios that are a little bit higher in price. You see the big box gym pushing pricing all the time because they're cheap and so you have the fear of putting higher prices out there because you think if you put out a higher price? Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Frit to Grit cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and we're getting close to the end of our foundational series and moving on to our advanced series segment. We're getting close to the end of our foundational series and moving on to our advanced series segment and to kind of celebrate in that transition period of that, we're going to kind of talk about a few topics over the next few weeks that are going to kind of of in that transition of going from 250 to 500k or starting to move up to thinking about systematizing to two locations. I want to really communicate a few videos that I think are really going to help a lot of people. I want to talk about today really just pricing pitfalls, really going through pricing in general and how your communication style will make or break your studio. Now HubSpot came out with some research recently that showcases that studios that build a clear and confident pricing structure and communicate that pricing structure effectively, actually see a 23% increase compared to those that are unclear with their pricing. So you know, first off, I get it, building pricing can be intimidating. Creating your offers, making it communicate effectively can be very intimidating. You have your competitors in the area. You may be in a larger city, a smaller city, a higher profitable city, a lower profitable city, a small town, so to say. But I really wanted to dive into this one and we're going to dive into a further episode in regards to that statistic a little bit more when it comes to websites on a further episode.
Speaker 0:But for this episode here, I really want to dive into that communication, the term communication and what it really means, because I think a lot of people underestimate the power of communication when it comes to building a business. I myself started to see this trend as I continued to grow my business, where I realized that you know what the make or break of any business is Communication, and so let's dive into that. When I first started my business, I did the pretty much what I think, the exact opposite of what you hear everyone say online. Right, they say you know you should, probably you should go higher in your pricing. I kind of did the opposite. You know I came from the corporate world, worked with a lot of large brands, had a lot delegated from get go when I opened my business and I had my prices too high and everyone's like what really? But yeah, you can have your prices too high and so really kind of building into yourself and understanding that pricing is kind of one of those situations that should fluctuate year over year I think is going to be drastic for you and the communication and the growth of your studio.
Speaker 0:Let's talk about that communication a little bit. You know I'm going to dive into a little bit here the importance of clear verbal communication when it comes to your pricing and, funny enough, a beginning state of what we'll talk about in another video. But we'll talk about the visual communication. Aha, I didn't know if you think I would bring up the visual side and how that can really dictate your pricing and then common pitfalls that weaken that pricing credibility. So let's start off by the importance of clear verbal communication of pricing. You know you think it's pretty easy. You know you put a lot of marketing effort out there and or you do the opposite when you are talking pricing, especially in the studio environment and I've seen this quite a bit is that pricing is usually hidden, especially for the boutique studios that are a little bit higher in price. You see the big box gym pushing pricing all the time because they're cheap, and so you have the fear of putting higher prices out there because you think if you put out a higher price you're not gonna be able to compete with the big box studios. But there's ways around that, right, and we'll dive into that a little bit more later.
Speaker 0:I've started to see this trend in the industry, by a trend I want to talk about really the only two ways that you can price and where you're actually pricing yourself. Right now you have volume, so volume is, hey, low price. You have value, which is really really high price no-transcript but when it comes to the volume based, you're afraid that you can't compete with those prices. So what do you do? You just don't put your prices on your website, you don't verbally communicate them, you wait until someone comes in and has a conversation with you. So even when you're dealing with challenges, you're saying come in for a free class. And then there's that pitfall which we'll talk about later on credibility where they're like oh wait, you're $150 a month after this class, hence why your retention is low.
Speaker 0:The importance of a clear verbal communication is you need to make sure that with all of your catered packages, that you have one clear price that you kind of go off of for each type of package. And I'll tell you a trick a little bit later in this episode. But you can either say hey, I'm going to show all my prices, and this is what normally they do. They'll make a one-sheeter and show all the prices on there and then hope that the person you know they'll try to push someone towards a certain price. And then you have the volume side, right where you're $1,000 a month, $2,000 a month, even $10,000 for some of those new wellness centers that are coming out in New York, for instance, and at that point you're not going to be really selling online. So now I'm getting a little off topic here, but I want to diminish. That's what you have. You have your volume and you have your value.
Speaker 0:Gyms usually and studios usually should fixate in the middle, especially if you're a small boutique studio, you're not franchising and you're not building 50 plus locations. If you're boutique, it's still okay, but you should focus on a price range that's kind of in the middle. People are at the point now where they want more value out of their location. They want value out of where they're going. So much online stuff happening these days. It's actually working out to the benefit of these studios because what it's doing is it's allowing you to find a space for people to be. So people are willing to pay.
Speaker 0:So one be okay with verbally communicating your price. Talk about your prices. Talk about and we're not getting into the visual right now but like talk about your prices. Always have one or two. If you have multiple different packages, have one or two prices. That you say. I always like a tip, a tip of thumb, which we'll get into a strategy a little bit in one of our next episodes is you kind of want to do the situation where you're like starting at and then to have a very simple like starting at $90 a month when reality that's your, that's if they do a 12 month commitment or something like that, because that still gives you a certain price and allows you to showcase it clearly, but it also allows you to have a conversation with them about oh yeah, you get that from 12 months and then your competitors won't just steal your price, right, because they won't see all the bait, the bigness, but you have this ability where you can still showcase your price.
Speaker 0:So back to the volume and value. You'll see volume based companies, large big box studios e commerce brands is a great example where you see prices everywhere because it's cheap, it's a product in the gym itself is a product for big box. So you have this ability to showcase that value based stuff. You don't show prices because you're like well, they're going to look at the price run away, we have to have a conversation with them. So, funny enough, something happened in the industry where people are just assuming that studios that they don't need to visually communicate their, their pricing, which I think it's the exact opposite.
Speaker 0:I think the problem is right now is that you're you're getting all these crappy leads and you're wondering why you're getting all these crappy leads and not these good ones. And it's because you're trying to validate. You're not letting these people validate themselves. So utilize your price so that you can validate. I promise you getting 10 leads in and selling five and then them leaving the next month, versus having three calls and selling all three and having them stay for multiple years. That last one, that's definitely what you want out of your studio. So it's very important that you verbally communicate all of your pricing and then simplify it down to a couple pricing examples that you can give, especially if you're a la carte and you have huge pricing structures. So let's talk a little bit about the visual element side, like with pricing visuals, visuals in general, and this is where I'm going to tell you a story, because I think that this story is really going to align.
Speaker 0:I was talking to a studio owner and I've kind of posted this a couple of times and they have talked about it before. They had, we'll just say, a value based offering. It was a thousand plus dollars a month. They came to us and they said hey, we're just getting crappy, crappy leads in the door, and so I looked at their brand and it was very. It was a very approachable brand, very approachable, and I told them you know, your brand is very approachable, you're communicating that you're approachable and they're like that's what we want. I'm like you want to be like McDonald's, because their color scheme and they're communicating visually and messaging why they look like a McDonald's, even down to their experience of their location didn't really shout out $1,000.
Speaker 0:If you're going to sell high ticket offers, you need to communicate yourself from a visual standpoint too. When it comes to the website, you want your website to really visually communicate Don't get rid of the conversion stuff, but really visually communicate that style. When it comes to your marketing materials, when it comes to even the menus you create, you want them to be simplistic and you want them your marketing materials to have the right messaging and very unique differentiating factors, because the thing that makes you different is what is going to make people buy these higher packages. So that's another way. Communication, not just. You thought I was gonna talk all about verbal, right. That's why visual communication is also very important and visual communication's very much.
Speaker 0:What people have gotten away from, which they shouldn't, is simplicity. It's harder to be simple, right, but the more simplistic you are, the less options a person can choose from, the more likely they are to purchase one of those. Perspective. There's nothing wrong with having a nice instead of a large one sheet or with multiple options and pricing on it. Having something for your sales reps or your trainers that are selling for you to have a sheet that literally just has three prices and they can tear that person towards it based off of the conversation. And then, internally, you have another sheet that you have which has all of the rest of your prices on it. That can move people for that.
Speaker 0:And I'll give you an example here. Let's say you have a group, like a group oriented studio, and you have a package of moving away from how many classes you do. Let's just go a commitment rise right, like, let's say, you have $120 a month commitment, instead of having a $120 commitment and then moving down to oh, but it's $110 if you pay six months and it's $90 if you pay for 12 months. Instead of showing all of that stuff from a visual representation, just showcase the low price, the lowest price possible, the $90 for 12 months, and say, as low, as you know, one of our starting packages is as low as $90 a month. You're communicating that this is what the price can be now, but you're in the middle of communicating to your prospects before they touch you. Before they touch you, this is all before you touch them. Website menus, marketing material all marketing is usually pre-sale stuff, right? So all that stuff, it's okay to do that.
Speaker 0:And two, it allows you not to be fearful of your competitors? Because if you're, you're thinking your competitors are going to steal your pricing. I mean, I trust you, it's more for operations. If they look at your price and steal it, nothing's gonna effing change. But you have the ability to actually screw your clients over. And I was talking to one of our clients earlier today when we were showing him his pricing structure and how we visually communicated that to his audience, and we told him that hey, like, look how simple this is. $90 commitment for $90 starts at $90. I'm like your competitors are going to come and not realize that this is for a 12 month commitment and so they're going to start doing that for like a one month. And, yeah, they may bring someone in, but you're not big box, and so their operations is going to go to shit. They're not making enough money. So, like you have to think about that kind of stuff, right, and so it's okay to showcase your price, it's okay to do stuff like that.
Speaker 0:And so let's talk about some of those common pitfalls, right? What are common pitfalls that weakened pricing credibility? I would say that inconsistency is huge in communication. You're changing your prices too frequently. If you're changing your prices too frequently, then what ends up happening is people just don't trust you. They have nothing in their head to remember you by. And so I mean a great example is if you did a new challenge every month and then you came in and said, oh, our group classes are 150. And the next week they're 1200. That's a big difference, but just using it as an example, so really kind of look into the consistency of making sure.
Speaker 0:So a good way to get around that is really utilize maybe a once a year type overall campaign focus. Sit down with your team on your yearly annual goal and go over the goals for the year and your annual retreat for the next year and say, hey, do we need to up or drop our prices at this point? And that's why I said this was getting a little bit more advanced, because if you're just starting out, you're probably not doing goals yet. But once you get to a certain point here and you're bringing team members on, you're probably going to have to start having these types of meetings. And so every year, just look at the pricing, look at the people, look at the retention rate and see if your pricing is affecting the inconsistency of purchases, the inconsistency of refunds, cancellations, and if there's a possibility to move your price up. Have is they think that if we visually communicate our pricing and we have a higher model, that it's actually going to detort people from wanting to have a conversation?
Speaker 0:What is the hardest thing that you're doing from a sales perspective? The hardest thing you're doing is you don't want to look at sales as a convincing matter. So start thinking of pre-purchase ways you can save time and energy on pre-purchase. And what do I mean by that? Showcasing pricing, showcasing, communicating from different perspectives what your brand is, how it's measured, so that people start to trust you more, so that when they come through the funnel they already are like oh yeah, like I know your beginning package was $93. It doesn't intimidate me, or it's. I know it's $1,000. And I know you work with this audience that's trying to fix this or fix that, you know, and so fixing something, and so they will already know. So that's communicating in different ways.
Speaker 0:Information, making sure your website is a positioning type situation. It's not just there and we'll get into the website stuff later. But vagueness back to vagueness, and you could counteract the vagueness with we're saying you know $90, as low as $90 a month. You can consider that vague, but that's not what I consider vague. What I consider vague is not explaining to people what the types of things that are in these classes are, depending on your price point. You know the lower your price is probably going to be more for beginners, the higher your price point. You know the lower your price is probably going to be more for beginners, the higher your price is going to be for people that are really into fitness, fitness enthusiasts and then you know higher prices is probably going to be. You're in a rich area and they're fitness enthusiasts, right. So you have to think about pricing in that way not being too vague on your pricing Overall.
Speaker 0:Once you master offers and pricing and you start to actually look at how you can price out your studio, pricing should be something you're looking at every year, something that I really hesitated on when I first started my business, as I told you, and not really looking at that as a leader, as the person that owns the studio. This is the right that you have is not just setting a price and leaving it, but starting to look at your audience and ebb flow forward with lowering, hiring, changing a service, adding a service, deleting a service and looking at how you can simplify your pricing structure. That can easily help you evolve and systematize, to start making it to the next stage. Again, I want to thank everyone for jumping on this video and, you know, if you want to hear more of the 50 Grit cast, definitely subscribe to the channel, follow our podcast if you're listening to it, and I'm your host, zach Coleman, and I will talk to you all next week.
