This post is a little different… this one is for all of you who’ve been thinking about whether UPCF is a good fit for you. OR it’s for you to send to your friend who’s been on the fence for weeks (or months or years). If you’re not in one of those groups, feel free to skip this one!
Ok, let’s get into it.
We start everyone at our gym with what we call a “No Sweat Intro.” You could also call it a consult, or a goal setting session, but when I set that appointment with people, I tell them that it really just amounts to their first coaching conversation with us.
There are no fitness tests, no workouts, no movement screens, and no measurements. You come in with a problem and I, as a coach, show you how we can solve it. This typically takes 20-30 minutes. That’s it. No Sweat (get it??).
We sit down together in one of a couple of spaces at our gym where we can have a 1-on-1 conversation. There’s a binder with our membership options in it (closed, to start), and I have a clipboard and a pen to take copious notes.
My goal, first and foremost, is to help whoever is sitting across from me to the very best of my ability (even if helping them means sending them to a different professional). Now, “help,” is pretty vague, so to be more clear: I want whoever is sitting across from me to leave that conversation feeling clearer and more hopeful than they felt when they came in, and for them to know exactly what their one next step toward their goal is going to be.
Meeting my goal starts with asking a lot more questions than most people expect. I want to know what your goals are. I want to know why those goals are important to you. I want to know what you’ve done before and why you’re not doing it now. I want to know what your warning signs are that tell you you might be in danger of dropping your new habit. I want to know what to say to you if you tell me you want to quit. I want to know what you imagine life will look like a year from now. Then, once we’ve gone through all that stuff, I want to know about what you eat, how you sleep, how much stress you face, what your past injuries are, what health concerns you might have, how often you want to train, what you want that training to look like, and what you need most from a coach.
It’s a lot. It gets deep. Sometimes tears are even shed.
But I ask all those questions because I want to help. I want to know what you need. And there’s a lot that goes into what a person needs.
Once we’re through all of that information, I make what I think is the best recommendation for you. You come to me with a problem and, as a coach, my job in that conversation is to show you how we can solve it together. The majority of the time – 85% maybe – my recommendation is going to be one of our programs. But once in a while, my recommendation is going to be to check out one of another gyms or coaches or professionals I know and respect who I think might be a better fit.
We’re excellent at helping ordinary people get extraordinary results. We’re not excellent at training Olympic weightlifters to win championships. If I don’t think you can reach your goals with us, I’ll point you to someone who I think can help you better.
But if I do recommend one of our programs, you will likely have one of three possible responses:
- “Let’s do it!” This is obviously my favorite. I love helping people. I believe that our gym and staff and community are great at it. Walking with someone new along their fitness journey is one of the most rewarding things I do in life. And gaining members is obviously good for our business too.
- “No thanks.” This one doesn’t happen very often. If we are not a good fit for someone, I can usually catch that pretty early. But believe it or not, this is my second favorite response. I really value clarity and I really want to work with people who I can help. And so maybe I can tweak the recommendation I made so that it fits what you’re looking for better. But if you don’t believe I can help you, I want to know! And I want you to put your money and time somewhere that you think can help you. And if you don’t know who that might be, I work really hard to make my network as broad as possible so that I can help you find a great match.
- “Let me think about it” / “Let me look at my finances” / “I didn’t bring my wallet today, can I pay later?” This is my least favorite, by far. Not that any of those things are unreasonable! But if someone says that, it tells me that I likely missed something. I either didn’t get deep enough into what might be obstacles for you, or I didn’t do a good enough job explaining exactly how my recommendation will help. I started this whole thing by saying that my goal, first and foremost, is to help people through this conversation – even if that means pointing them somewhere else. The let-me-get-back-to-you response is my least favorite because, when people say that, 90% of the time I either never hear from them again or they text quick to say they’re going to do something else. I’m not pulling that number out of nowhere. I’ve tracked this stuff for 11 years over hundreds of these conversations. Do I wish we had made that sale? Sure. But much more than that, this is now a person who I am very unlikely to be able to help at all. I’d much rather they said “No thanks,” and then I could have followed up and gotten more clear about what they were looking for and then pointed them toward another professional who would do a great job.
But if you stick through that conversation with me, and if you like what I recommend, and if you say, “Let’s do it!” then from there we get to work! We get all your information in the system, we schedule your first session, and if that first session is not with me, I’ll introduce you to the coach who’s doing it. You go home with exactly one action step: come to your first session. And when you come to that, we’ll give you another one. And little by little, one step at a time, we’ll guide you and walk with you to where you want to go.
People often say that starting is the hardest part. That might be true. But we try to make starting as easy as possible.
If you want to see for yourself what one of these conversations is like, you can book a No Sweat Intro for yourself HERE.