Emma:  

I would say health is the new wealth, we have a new member now a new person and class a new person that we're training, whatever it is, who wants to be active and wants to do it for health reasons. Health is now further up at that scale rather than just losing weight, or just getting the six pack.

Will:  

Hey, I'm Will Brereton, founder of SH1FT Fitness. And this is Group Fitness Real Talk, a show about how to survive and even thrive in group fitness in 2021 and beyond. Hello, and welcome to the Group Fitness Real Talk podcast. Okay, so today is a mini podcast, I'm not going to keep you for too long. And the reason for that is that we're coming to the end of summer, you guys might still be on holiday, you've just come back. And I want you to start thinking and focusing on what you're going to do in September. So we're going to call this podcast "The September Issue". Now, as anyone that has been involved in fitness for a long time will know, September is a key month for the fitness industry in the Northern Hemisphere, in particular. It's a place when people come back from their summer holidays, it's a little bit like January, and that they're refreshing their approach to fitness. And it's an opportunity, particularly this year when the rest of the year has been so start stop and difficult with COVID to really focus in on getting people back into fitness, creating a program creating a habit that they will continue to do.

Will:  

So in today's podcast, we're just going to split it into three short sections. In the first section, I'm going to give a little bit of Real Talk about a topic that I'm hearing a lot about as we come back into live classes, which is Instructor pay. Then I'm going to ask fitness authority, Emma Barry, what her view is of what instructors should be thinking about as we go into September. And then we're going to finish up with some data based on what we saw during the pandemic. And now coming out of the pandemic. And what I think instructors can do to really make the most of the data, the learnings and the changes that have happened. 

Will:  

Okay, so first up instructor pay. Now this is something that I'm seeing talked about a lot in instructor groups and communities. And to be honest, it's a conversation that we have been having for a long time, I've appeared on panels, five or six years ago talking about instructor pay. I've made little videos before the podcast or I've talked about this on social media. I've represented instructors interests when talking to gyms. And unfortunately, I'm just going to be honest, and say it's not a conversation that has gone in a positive direction for instructors, the positive direction instructors wanted to go in is pay increasing, and it just hasn't. Now let's look back 1015 years and look at what has contributed to the current state of instructor pay. So, instructor pay has been stagnant for a long time. But it became particularly problematic around the time of the financial crisis. The financial crisis was obviously very difficult for a lot of businesses industry wide, globally. So it wasn't the fitness industry alone that was impacted by this. However, the financial crisis coincided with two massive shifts in consumer behavior when it comes to the fitness industry. Prior to 2007, big box gyms were the predominant force in the fitness industry. It's where most people worked out. It is where most of us as fitness instructors had jobs, and is where pts worked. It was the locus of fitness. And we've talked in this podcast about how the locus of fitness has shifted out of the gym. But prior to the financial crisis, it was really there. Now as we come out of the financial crisis, and perhaps it's linked to this, but it's also independent of it, you have the rise of boutique, which are obviously things like soulcycle, or F45, Barry's Bootcamp, one rebel, that were providing a premium experience a hyper personalized experience a more expensive experience. And you also had the growth of the budget, end of the market, high volume, low price, low entry point, low service provision, but cheap costs, and they just flourished and grew extremely fast. So you had boutiques at the top and low cost at the bottom. And they squeezed the mid market, the mid market was already hurting because the financial crisis and then you had these two forces changes within the industry that split it down the middle, and just meant that that classic big box gym was no longer the place that everybody was going. Now what that mean for instructors is that there was less money in those big box gyms to pay instructors more. So obviously, I'm a firm believer that group fitness brings a lot to a club. And there are a lot of club operators that are very, very, very aware of the value of group fitness. But that doesn't change the fact that their p&l, their profit and loss, their revenue, the return they have to give to their owners or shareholders was really tough, and therefore they had to make cuts in certain places. So you've got a situation where you have people within clubs that don't value group fitness, and they're happy to make the cuts and you have people that do value group fitness and do appreciate and understand all that we do to create a community, but they are still forced to find cuts somewhere. And group fitness is just an easy place to make those cuts. Now what that resulted in is pay freezes or pay reductions for Group Fitness Instructors in big box gyms where a lot of us had taught and also moved to shorter classes. And by doing a 45 minute class, you might only get paid three quarters of what you've got paid for a 60 minute class, which is all fine and good until you consider that you have to do the same amount of travel the same amount of prep the same amount of practice for that 45 minutes as you would have had to do for an hour. So flash forward to now and we're in a position where pay has still stagnated. And if you're teaching at a gym or a club, it's likely that as an instructor, you're a little bit unhappy with what you're getting paid. And here's where the concept of this podcast comes in, which is real talk. And so I'm going to give you an honest appraisal of how I think the situation is with respect to instructor pay, and some hard truths I think you need to hear, because the reality is the reason that we created this podcast was to have real conversations with people within the industry and about the industry, that were really pragmatic and honest and open about the realities, not what we hope to be because here's the deal, you will be told by training providers do this extra qualification, and you'll get paid more because you'll be more qualified. I'm sorry to say it's just a bit of bullshit. It's not the truth. And I say this as a person that provides training as well. The reality is that it's very, very difficult to justify why you should get paid more at club level. And that's because especially coming out of the pandemic clubs are hurting, there's just not enough money to go around. And it's not because they don't want to pay you more. It's not because they don't value you. It's because they're being forced to make cuts at every level. And therefore expecting instructor pay to go up now, as opposed to any other time when it also hasn't, is just asking too much. And so I think that as instructors, we need to all reckon with the fact that instructor pay in a classic club scenario is not going up anytime soon. And the sooner that we all realize that accept it and move on from that and think about ways to do other things or get around it, the better off everyone will be because we've been having this conversation for a long time. And now we also have the effects of lockdowns and pandemics. So instructor pay ain't going up. I'm sorry to say guys, I would like it to I think it should, but an ngon. Okay, so that's the real talk that the tea. But what are the strategies that we can use now that we accept that instructor pay isn't going up, to continue to find joy to find financial compensation and to be happy and being grid fitness instructors. So the first thing I want to do is to acknowledge that there are broadly two groups of people who are instructors are two types of instructors. And you may fall somewhere in the middle of this, you may go to one end of the spectrum or the other. But essentially, you have the career instructor, and you have the hobbyist. Now the hobbyist is someone who has another career, perhaps outside of fitness that teaches classes because they love it. And those of you that know a bit of my background will know that I used to be a commercial lawyer. And for all of my 20s I was a hobby instructor, I had the great opportunity of doing heaps of travel for Les Mills, and trainings and conventions and all that sort of stuff. But essentially, I worked as a lawyer, that was my day job. And then my passion, more than my hobby. The other job that I had was instructing but the thing is, my day job gave me the money. And therefore, the money that I earned teaching was a nice bonus, but I didn't necessarily need it. It wasn't the thing that was getting me there. I was there because I loved teaching. And I was willing to do it for less money than I might have been worth just because I wanted to be there and I loved it. Now contrast that with someone that relies on teaching as their sole source of income. It's a completely different approach to how you should be valued. But here again, I'm going to give you the real talk. The reality is that group fitness is an industry where there are loads of people who do it as a hobby as a pastime, as a passion as a joyful experience. Therefore, it's really, really hard in an industry where that is the case, to lobby for more pay, because there's going to be someone who doesn't care about the pay that will step in if you complain too much. This is unfortunate, I guess it's not a great situation if you are someone that relies on the money that you make, but again, it is just the fact of the way the industry is the Group Fitness teaching industry will always have people in it that do it for the fun and have another job outside of it. And that is always going to impact the ability of those who need to get pay rises to actually get them. So if you're a hobby instructor, then what I'm about to say may not apply to you. I want you to keep teaching your classes in the place where even though you wish you got paid a little bit more, it's not the central concern for you. But if you're someone that is semi or mostly reliant on grid fitness as a source of income now here are the tactics that I'm going to give you to actually make more money. And the way you're going to make more money is not by getting a pay increase because as I've already talked about, I don't believe that that's going to happen in the sector. It may happen in boutique sure, if you're a peloton, instructor you're gonna get more money. But in the classic scenario of teaching classes in a gym, it's just not gonna happen. gyms are struggling. Here's the reality guys. Eight big chains in the USA filed for bankruptcy, you had the same situation with David Lloyd and virgin active in the UK 17% of United States gyms have closed their doors permanently in 2020. There's not enough money to go around to give instructors a pay rise. But what can you do? Okay, here's strategy number one, my viewers, you should avoid expensive license formats. Because if you're paying a lot to teach something, and you can only teach it in venues that also pay, then you're severely limiting your ability to make money, it is what it is. I just gave you the stat. 17% of gyms closed in the USA, eight major chains filing for bankruptcy, most of them are going to be coming back in different ways. But they're going to be looking to cut costs that so therefore it's no surprise that that means cutting licenses. And so you're seeing licenses being dropped by clubs left, right and center all across the globe. And if you're teaching in licensed format, you can no longer teach that class. So you've just lost that opportunity simply because there's not enough money to go round the same reason that instructor pay isn't going up. So the first thing to do would be to audit what you do. And what you teach and consider is this investment in energy, motivation, time and money worthwhile when I can't teach that class anywhere. Number two, related to number one is that you need to take control of your own career. Now I personally love teaching in gyms, I like going into a studio where there sometimes was a microphone that you could use, but there's a sound system set up and I could kind of rock up before the class do my pre class interaction to deliver a great class in the studio, checks the members after and then leave and go home. I enjoyed that. And I even visit more now that I've had a year of delivering digital virtual experiences. Because while I am a massive proponent of virtual and digital, it's super stressful, it's really really stressful to be setting up your resume and worrying if your take is going to work. And if you have a small apartment having to set up the space every time. It's tough. So I love teaching in gyms. But the thing about a gym is that if you're relying on a third party creating a schedule that you will hopefully get a spot on, then you're never going to be in control of your own career or in control of how much money you're going to be earning. This is not a suggestion that you don't teach for gyms, you should absolutely still teach for gyms because it's really, really fun. It's also a great way to build up your skills, but you need to be thinking of the things you are doing outside of teaching at the gym. So that brings us on to number three. If you still haven't explored digital virtual, then you need to do that. If you want to make money in fitness, you need to be exploring your ability to commercialize and monetize digital ways of teaching. Now we've got loads of podcasts on this, we'll link to them in the show notes. I'm not going to get too much into this because we've really gone into how to go digital in detail. But it's just something that you need to do. Strategy number four, you need to teach in the community, you need to get out and get away from the same groups of people that gyms and digital fitness providers and boutiques and marketing to, which is the high exercise user, the same people that have always been marketed to for the last 50 years, get out into the community and think about different types of communities, different groups of people that will be willing to pay you for your expertise, because they are there. And in the later part of this podcast, we're going to delve into some of the stats that prove that that's where you should be focusing your attention. And then finally, point number five is that you need to diversify. Here's the real talk one last time. And this is something that I've said for a long time. Being a group fitness instructor is not a full time career for most people. Now I acknowledge that there are some people that can make this work. But even before the financial crisis, even when pay was pretty, pretty good. It was quite difficult to make a career just as a group fitness instructor. Now that doesn't mean you have to leave the fitness industry, it just means that you need to think about what are the other things that I can do? What are the things that I can do to make money? And how can I potentially leverage what I'm doing in my classes to make that money. Now the classic example is personal training. I know a lot of personal trainers that have taught classes as a great way to have the spotlight on them. get people to try interacting with them and then they convert them into paying customers is a really really great way of ensuring that you have a marketing funnel. People come to your classes they develop a relationship with you Then you sell them a personal training package where you make more money off them. And now you could even sell them a digital package or a virtual package, there are so many more opportunities available. Or you could go down the management routes and become a studio manager, or you could work in a club. Or you could think about how am I going to leverage my skills outside of the industry, I know of a lot of Group Fitness instructors who have gone on to really great careers in training, because obviously, you're a motivator. You're someone that's comfortable speaking in front of groups, you know how to deliver material in a way that impacts with listeners. And so there are loads and loads of ways that you can leverage that out. And I've got a podcast with Barb Brodowsky, that I will also link to in the show notes where she talks about that in detail. But the reality is, very few people can make group fitness alone work for them. And the sooner that everybody accepts that and thinks about how they're going to strategize around it, the better off we will be. 

Will:  

Emma Barry, global fitness authority., want to ask you a question for our September issue of the podcast. So we're taking the old fashioned September issue, but we're turning it into fitnesss. Coming into September 2021.,eptember being the biggest year normally for fitness in the Northern Hemisphere, this year, being a year quite unlike any other maybe every year from now on is going to be a bit like that. What is the most important thing that you think our listeners should be focusing on? So if you're a great fitness instructor, about to finish your summer vacation, whatever there has been coming into September, what's the number one thing that you would focus on?

Emma  

Right, so I'd say September is the new January, we've all been sent to our room to think about what we've done. We've all had our priorities rearranged over the last year or two. I would say health is the new wealth, we have a new member now a new person in class, a new person that we're training, whatever it is, whose much wants to be active and wants to do it for health reasons. Health is now further up at that scale, rather than just losing weight or just getting the six pack. So to do that we must be welcoming to a more diverse audience, we must have more welcoming language, we must make people feel good, even though they're potentially going to be out of shape, or this is a foreign environment to them. So be more welcoming. I would also say do things that allow them to create healthy habits. And I'm just going to lean into a couple of great quotes from from really good friends within our industry. One is from Professor Ginger Gottschall, which is "don't go too hard too early". We're trying to create habits before we add the intensity, before we add the duration. Coming regularly and really loving it as something. And the second thing I'd lean into Les Mills, who's at the namesake for Les Mills International, who in 1968 had those wonderful words, "just help people fall in love with fitness."

Will:  

Yeah, for sure. I mean, can't go wrong with those, right? 

Emma  

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

Will:  

The other thing that I think is really interesting is that, looking at the data, what we see from the pandemic is that if you split people up into buckets of non exercisers or low exercises, or people that did zero to one, or moderate exercises that did two to three, or, you know, elite exercises that did four plus sessions, both of those two lower groups really increase their physical, physical activity during lockdowns, the group that did went to the gym every day, they dropped off a little bit, because obviously, they lost a bit of motivation. What that means is that that whole expanded bucket and open that funnel of people that are looking for entry level fitness experiences is really where the opportunity is.

Emma  

That's exactly right. So the pie has got bigger. And you're always gonna have people who are motivated and not motivated. But we must get better as an industry at really targeting those different motivations. And I think if people are saying health, and I just want to move more, because I now know what it feels like to have that taken away from me. And I've watched what happens when I'm not resilient, and I'm not a fully functioning human, and I'm not happy. And then let's just talk about the mental health you and I know that it's inextricably linked to moving your body. But when we sit in place, you know, our whole body shuts down, every system. And one thing I don't like is when we separate them all out, and what am I doing for mental health? And what am I doing for physical health, and it's all one system. When our life is in balance, and we're in joy, and we're doing work that we love, and we're moving our body in ways that we choose and we're with other people, and we're watching our food and we're feeling vibrant, that's it. You know, it's this broader lifestyle, feeling of I'm living on purpose, I feel vibrant, I can do the things that matter to me and I think the fitness industry has been too myopic. It's been too one dimensional for too long. We must bring in all those things and think more longitudinally, like rather than workout by workout, think about what do I need in a week, a month, a quarter a year to make myself happy? How much sunlight? How much social time? How many movement minutes awake when I'm moving through the day. I mean, I you know, there's me thinking I'm an elite athlete, you know, doing morning, been sitting on my ass for 12 hours and basically going sedentary and I'm not alone. A lot of us have done that. So we think we're being healthy and we're not. It's moving often, it's the annoying closing of the rings of apple. If you don't stand up and move, you're actually not functioning as a human was designed to function. So it's getting back to those basics, but in a way that really brings joy to your life, you know?

Will:  

Perfect. Thank you very much. 

Emma  

You're welcome. 

Will:  

Okay, so now you've heard what industry expert Emma Barry thinks that instructors should be focusing on as we come into September 2021. Now, I'm aware that the first half of this podcast was a wee bit of a slap in the face. And I'm sorry for that. But I wanted to make sure that we were all starting out from the same position. And that position is that you cannot expect to be paid more for group fitness classes this year, or next year, or potentially ever again, because digital has just changed the game. If you work in boutique or you work in the community, it's different boutique, you will always get higher money because it's premium and the community, you can choose to set your own prices. But if you're working for a gym, I'm sorry, but the amount you're getting paid right now is probably close to the limit of what you're going to get, at least in the next few years. It's tough for gyms, they're struggling, it's not that they don't want to pay you more. It's not that it don't appreciate you, it's just the reality of where we are. But as I mentioned, in the first half, there are loads of strategies that you can use to make money around the sides. But wanting paid to increase and doing nothing is not going to achieve anything. But there is some really, really great compelling data that has come out of the pandemic, that shows us as an industry. And when I say us as an industry, I'm talking about group fitness instructors, where we should be focusing our efforts. So let's deep dive into that data and think about what it means for us. First things first, we all know this already, but around 75% of people used at least one fitness app during quarantine. And in some surveys in the US you had 60% saying that they enjoyed their home workout so much that they planned on canceling their gym memberships for good. And so you had articles with headlines like most americans believe gyms will become a thing of the past after Coronavirus or our gyms did. The answer to that is no, all of the data is showing us that people are returning. But the way people are returning is different. Obviously, there's still social distancing guidelines, in some places, you have users who have changed their behavior and have obviously had digital uptake. And so they might be comfortable using the gym a little bit less, you have people that are still scared about going back in. And then obviously you have your people that jumped back into the front row the minute that they could. But the thing to note before we get into this conversation is something that I think we often forget, and that is the gym penetration. So the number of people within a population that are actually a gym member is really, really low in the most successful markets and that Sweden and Norway setting it about 22%. In the United States, it's about 20%. And in the UK, which has a very, very big fitness market 15 and a half percent of people are currently members of gyms or fitness, fitness locations, let's say. Now, what that means is that in the UK taking it as an example, 85% of people are not gym members, some of them may do grassroots sports, they may be involved in other fitness activities, but you've got 85% of people who just aren't part of the gym. And so if we start to worry about what's happening with gyms and get to focus in on that, then we forget that there's this whole other group of people that we could be servicing. Now, the reason I think that's so critically important to you guys as gryffindors instructors, is that the recovery that boutiques and gyms are focusing on is the same market that they were focusing on prior to the pandemic, the reason being that that's what their tools are created for and suited for. So big box gyms are using mostly the same marketing strategies they use before they're targeting the same people. And as we talked about in the first half of this, those people are people who had a propensity to exercise already, they're marketing to people who had an interest in fitness. And that is where Apple fitness and peloton and your big box gyms and boutiques are all focusing their effort. It's on that 20 to 25% of people, often their 18 to 35 that were using exercise using exercise services using on demand before the pandemic and they're trying to get them back in. But what you as an instructor have a really unique opportunity to do is to focus on that big chunk of people who are not being targeted by existing fitness companies. Now the reason this is important is because if we just look at the US and the UK, the UK has 15% penetration, the US has 20. If the UK could get itself up to the US level of penetration, so could get people that are not currently exercising into exercising, that would equate to 3.3 million people exercising on a regular basis. So that's a big chunk and all we have to do is move the needle 5%. Now here's the particular data point in the statistics that I think is the most interesting for us as instructors. And this is a study that came out of the Nordic Region, but it's been validated in most places where they are looking at this data. And this is around how do people's habits and exercise behavior change on the basis of what they were doing prior to the pandemic. So we're going to split people up into three buckets, here, we're going to have low or non exercises, so they will people who normally exercised zero, or one times per week, then you have moderate exercises. And these are people who might have exercised up to three times a week. And then we have high exercises. And these are people who exercise you know, four plus times per week. This is what I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast fall into, I know that I do I work out every day unless I'm hung over. But you have high exercises. And that high exercising cohort is also the cohort that gyms and boutiques and digital fitness are marketing to most often. Now, the really interesting thing is that if we take these three buckets, we see vastly different behavior and different changes during the pandemic. Now for low exercises, so these are people that was 01, their physical activity, on average increased by 88%, during the pandemic, so they almost doubled the amount of activity they were doing before. Now, granted, they were coming from a low baseline, they're only exercising one time a week, so they increased it to two. But that is a massive, massive change. And that also represents a huge population, a large amount of the people that you could be servicing. Then we have the middle bucket moderate athletes, they increased by 38%, almost 40%. So they increased by their exercise by one or two sessions, they were previously doing three or four. But then you had like the high exercises, the avid athletes, the people that were going to classes every day, or exercising every day using the gym the whole time, they actually dropped by about 15%. So you have overall fitness sessions dropping because the people that were doing the most are doing less, but what you've got is non exercises, low exercises, and moderate exercises, who are all doing more in the first few months of the pandemic than they were doing before. What were they doing, they were walking, they were jogging, they were jumping in on digital fitness classes, they were doing all the things that are not in gyms. So that's what the data says, people that were not exercising very much are now exercising significantly more significantly, proportionately more people that were exercising loads during the first few months of lockdown exercised a bit less. Now, that's the data. The data doesn't tell us why but we can infer things into that. And talking to a lot of people within the industry. I think we're all settling into the same reasoning for why this happened. And that is that the pandemic put health first You heard him say it, fitness has often been positioned around aesthetic change, you will go from looking like this to looking like this before and after. Get Fit for summer get fit for your holiday get fit for a wedding. But the pandemic put it into really, really stark relief if you do physical activity. And it doesn't matter what type of physical activity This is because any type of physical activity is good, you will be far less likely to have negative effects from COVID. But also from every disease or future pandemic that there might be. So people's behavior has been challenged and changed. And whatever the mental process that each individual went through, what that resulted in is more physical activity. Now I'm sure that there's also some other things thrown into the mix, like being stir crazy and being locked down and therefore desperately wanting to go out for a walk. But that is something that we can harness. For so long, we have been talking about reaching out to the people that don't currently find themselves serviced by the fitness industry. And now for the first time, we really have the ability to harness that. And I strongly believe that it's something that instructors at the community level can harness better than any company better than any gym, any boutique or any digital fitness provider. And that's because these people who have increased their exercise by 100%, that are now exercising that understand the value of health are also the ones that need the personal care. They're the ones that need to be concierge through their fitness experience. They're the ones who when life starts to get back to normal may fall off the wagon. And these are the people that as instructors, we should be aiming to service and help because gyms can't access them in the same way that we can. And you do that by using your community networks and community connections. Again, this is something that I've talked about at length on this podcast. So I'm not going to delve into it too deeply on this shorter version other than to say, go back and listen to the podcast with Corinne. I'm going to link to in the show notes, because she delves really deeply into how to connect with a community audience and what you can do to build that up. But the key thing I want you to take away from this discussion is that the data shows to us that this is where our biggest opportunity is. And then there's something on top of that, that isn't related to the data. And that isn't related to financial success, even though I think that that will come from focusing on this group. It's that by focusing on the people that need the help the most, we are going to be doing the best for our communities. And even if we are financially motivated by reaching out to these groups, because we're not getting paid boring gyms and we think, Okay, this is a good opportunity for me to monetize my community and monetize my fitness, use my networks, provide a living wage for myself, because that is all fine and good, you should never feel bad about wanting to make money for the effort you put in. But if the other benefit of that is that we are introducing exercise to people who hadn't done it before, we are improving health, we are improving the overall healthiness of our society, as well as creating all that social cohesiveness and connection, you will be doing good and that will bring you joy, trust me it really well. So this is where I want to leave the podcast. As we come into September, I don't know what day you're listening to this, but it's being released on the 31st of August. So we are right about to start September. As Emma said September may be the new January. We don't know what will happen. But what I do know is that if you focus on how you can, as an instructor, reach the people in your community who are now very understanding of the benefits of exercise, but don't necessarily know how to get on board with doing it that are too scared to go to a gym that don't see themselves reflected in digital fitness solutions online. If you can reach out to them and find ways to bring them into your community through walking groups through low impact classes, through beginner classes, through all the things that you can do that we've talked about on this podcast and other podcasts. Then you have the opportunity to change your community and make more money. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitness.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.