The Age of The Empowered Instructor
To properly introduce this post: I originally wrote this post on December 6th 2021. I was temporarily living in Orlando, FL in order to participate in the leAD Sports Tech Accelerator. indiFIT was doing… just okay and I was starting to ask myself the “quit, stick, or pivot” question about my business. As you likely know, the final result of that question was to shut the company down in February of 2022, but what fewer people know was that for a brief period of a few months before that our answer was “PIVOT!” (that was a Friends reference.)
The idea was to pivot our platform from business management software for independent fitness instructors to a middleware platform that helped boutique studios incentivize and reward their most beloved instructors to fill their classes. The platform would equip instructors with lightly co-branded “link in bio” microsites with built-in booking for everything they offer in one place, potentially including a combination of independent and in-studio offerings. We would integrate directly with studio softwares like Mariana Tek and MindBody to facilitate booking directly from an instructor’s social pages and give studios valuable attribution on which bookings were studio-led vs. instructor-led so that they could measure and reward the value of their talent.
We were fired up about the idea, and to be honest I still to this day (two years later) think it had legs. The problem, however, was that the market size and monetization potential of the idea was uncertain and indiFIT had less than a quarter of financial runway left to figure it out. It ultimately didn’t pass the test as a viable idea, but I look back on this post that I wrote while we were in the thick of our conviction in the idea very fondly. I’m proud of our team’s ability to be resourceful and to see the business through new and innovative lenses. Now back to the original post…
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One of my favorite parts about the holidays is the opportunity to pause in reflection and spend time focusing on the big picture. This year, for me, much of my reflection centered around the dynamics that we’ve saw play out in a very “not boring” and rapidly evolving fitness space over the last year as well as where we believe the industry is headed and how indiFIT fits in (read: exciting things ahead.)
indiFIT got its start addressing a shift that has become widely referred to as “The Rise of The Fitness Creator,” but recently it has become very clear to me that the explosion of micro-entrepreneurship in fitness may only be part of a much larger story. If you widen the frame a little more, what is playing out is a complete paradigm shift to how fitness careers are built and how brands in the industry partner with and retain talent.
I believe that this shift is more holistically named “The Age of The Empowered Instructor,” and I thought I would spend a little time unpacking that with my first post of the new year.
Let’s start with a brief history:
The big box gym era - Group fitness classes were baked into gym memberships and instructors were commoditized, earning the same pay regardless of how many people came to class. Instructors couldn’t lure clients away from the gym even if they wanted to because gyms protected their captive audience with difficult-to-cancel memberships and contracts.
The boutique fitness boom - High-end group boutique fitness experiences emerged at a price point of $25+ per class. Rockstar instructors became the single most important factor for a client choosing a live class. Instructors began to build large social followings of clients who love them, but It remained difficult for an instructor to monetize those loyal clients directly because of their reliance on the physical space and equipment that studios provided.
The rise of the fitness creator - A black swan event instantaneously ejected hundreds of thousands of fitness professionals from traditional employment, simultaneously forcing consumers to adopt virtual offerings en masse. The shift to virtual lowered all barriers to entrepreneurship for instructors, democratizing the industry and allowing them to monetize their communities via independent Zoom classes, on demand videos, and programs.
So, what’s next?
Are instructors going back to studios? Will consumers tire of digital fitness and flock back to in-person experiences? Will everyone just buy a Peloton?
Industry signals have emerged that point in conflicting directions. Peloton and Mirror have both recently slashed projections, citing a decrease in consumer demand for digital fitness. During a similar timeframe, Planet Fitness shares hit a high after membership levels returned to 97% of pre-pandemic levels, fueling the related narrative that the world will simply return to a pre-pandemic way of life.
On the other end of the spectrum, strategic capital has continued to flow into our small, but mighty, fitness creator niche based on conviction that the future of work as a fitness professional looks less like employment and more like building an independent business as a digital creator.
My stance is rooted in my belief that the world is not black and white. If we’re going to address how fitness & wellness professionals monetize their passions holistically, that has to include the relationship that they have with studios. I do believe that 2022 is the year we will see a great re-marriage of talent and studios, but on drastically different terms than the industry has known previously. The way that studios adapt to a changing talent culture will be the most important decision they make in 2022.
The Age of The Empowered Instructor:
The “empowered instructor” is a fitness professional who has had nearly two years to become a personal branding and business expert - armed with a large network of support around them from platforms like indiFIT and coaches/ experts who specifically cater to fitness professionals (like Forever Friday Consulting, Christie Evenson Design, and Gold Toast.)
When Instructors got laid off en masse, they not only landed on their feet; they leveled up beyond the industry’s wildest imagination. The 400k strong network of fitness professionals in the US alone are now armed with gorgeous websites, thousands of social media followers, hundreds of email subscribers, and business acumen - and there is no way to put that genie back in the bottle (and why would we ever want to!?)
The empowerment that we have seen play out in the instructor community in recent years is incredibly personally exciting to me, but unfortunately there are also very real challenges for independent fitness instructors that we’ve had the opportunity to learn about first hand at indiFIT.
Many fitness entrepreneurs struggle with:
Frustration with being constrained to virtual-only offerings - Without a scalable way to gain access to physical space or specific types of specialized equipment, many fitpros are feeling trapped inside the virtual box (though there is innovation happening to solve this problem that I am super pumped about - Maverick Community, BOLD, and SiloFit to name a few.)
Intense anxiety about standing out in a crowded space - As entrepreneurship surges and consumers have more fitness options than ever, many instructors are feeling the stress that comes with finding growth channels with little to no marketing budget, standing out from the pack, and finding stability.
A sense of loneliness and/or burnout - Many instructors miss the sense of community that comes with teaching in a studio or gym, having traded a physical place with high-energy coworkers for a much more solitary path hustling hard from their own home. Many turn to online forums and communities, webinars, or coffee chats with other independent instructors, but still often experience a void.
Building the future of work in health and wellness:
In 2022, we believe that it’s time for studios and instructors to get re-married. And indiFIT wants to officiate the ceremony.
As I alluded to previously, I strongly believe that as an industry, we need to embrace the “grey” that sits somewhere between the two extremes of exclusive studio employment relationships and studios and instructors being separate (or even worse, estranged) entities. Lolita Taub coined a creator economy term that I love - “businessized humans” that acknowledges that in today’s world, the line between the individual and a business is blurred.
For the fitness industry to find its new “equilibrium” that maximizes value for clients, instructors, and studios, things have to change. Gone are the days of studios paying instructors an average of $26 per class ($15 per class in some extreme cases .) The directive in this new chapter is for studio owners and operators to truly figure out how to partner with a savvy and empowered instructor.
3 pieces of advice for studios and consumer fitness brands:
How you will attract, retain, and nourish talent could be your most important strategy this year (and if you’re thinking “growing my business is my #1 priority,” I assure you these two things are in fact one in the same.) The industry is certainly buzzing about the importance of talent retention, landing at #3 on Les Mill’s list of 10 key fitness trends for 2022 - rooted in market research that “Rockstar instructors” are the single most important factor for clients choosing a live class.
Ways to build a differentiated talent strategy in 2022:
Embrace co-marketing and data-driven attribution -Your instructors are not only a marketing channel, but possibly your most powerful one. You have a brand, but they have a human identity, and humans have a unique ability to connect with other humans that transcends even the best consumer marketing in the game. We’re all familiar with the age-old model of paying instructors more depending on class attendance, but the future is more sophisticated than that. There is enormous value to be unlocked by equipping instructors with the tools and resources to co-market their classes more effectively, and doing it in a way that is fully trackable unlocks new ways to recognize and reward your people.
Create a “bring your side hustle with you” culture - Exclusivity is dead, full stop. When you allow your talent to maximize their autonomy, ability to pursue their passions and entrepreneurial itches, and earning potential - you are maximizing their value to you as well. I’ve learned that this one can at best be counterintuitive, or at worst a tough pill to swallow. The reality, however, is that if an instructor’s in-studio and independent offerings can co-exist, there is opportunity for a flywheel to emerge in which each one fuels the others.
Be open-minded to untraditional ways to partner with talent - As many instructors move away from traditional employment or contract relationships, new opportunities are emerging to partner with influential talent in creative ways. think renting your space out at off-peak times for independent instructors to film on demand content, allowing independent instructors to do guest residencies on a revenue share model, or renting space out on the weekends for events.
3 pieces of advice for instructors:
Build the career of your dreams this year armed with the knowledge that you are a hot commodity.
Advocate for your worth - the landscape of fitness talent can unfortunately make it easy to let comparison be the thief of your joy. There are a lot of people who do what you do, free content that is plentifully available, and a continued trend toward “pay what you want.” We’re two years into a pandemic and there is still something of a stigma in fitness about demanding your worth and pricing your talents appropriately. Fight that urge. Go big, fam. You are the heart of the industry and everyone knows it now.
Invest in personal branding - Setting up a personal website, investing in high quality photography, writing about your story, mastering the art of social media marketing, etc. can feel like daunting tasks. Know that you are not alone - the hardest part is getting started. Everything that comes afterwards is gradual improvement and iteration. Launch the website, even if it’s not perfect. Challenge yourself to post regularly on social even if it feels vulnerable or not “newsworthy.” You will find your voice via repetition and iterative learning, but you have to start.
Use platforms and tools to track and nurture your community - There is a really good chance that there is a community of clients out there whose lives you have touched. They might be hiding in your Instagram followers, that old private Facebook group you created a year ago, or even in the archives of Classpass. Take the time to make sure you are tracking and nurturing a client community as directly as possible. An easy win is to set up a link in bio that does email capture for you. Grow your client list passively over time, so that you have it whenever and for whatever reason you need it in the future.
Are you ready?
If you’re a studio owner or operator ready to embrace collaboration and re-define the talent narrative in fitness, we’ve got the tools to help you do it. Give me a shout.
