3 mistakes when going digital

Adding a virtual offer to your business is NOT the same thing as building an online business. This is one of the most common misconceptions we see when people come our way. The system we’ve created isn’t JUST leveraging an audience that exists on the internet, it’s also a mechanism to scale and grow your current business, but without more sessions, more time, or more staff.

Implementing a virtual asynchronous (not tied to time) offer, which we call a Prescriptive Exercise Program, can be an absolute game-changer for coaches and rehab professionals. 

This process is meant to create freedom from a physical facility, flexibility to generate revenue in a recurring fashion so you don’t lose money when you aren’t seeing clients, and has the potential to double the lifetime value of your client! 

But, if you don’t correctly implement a solid foundation, it can just feel like a burden or headache to manage effectively and in some cases, might end up costing you money….

“I’m going to try and implement this myself” - a common strategy we see with adding a virtual offer to an existing in-person business…. If that’s you, pay attention to the rest of this article!

If you’ve struggled to implement a digital management process for your coaching or rehab business, let me highlight the top three mistakes I see clients make when they try to execute this strategy by themselves:

1. Adding lengthy check-ins to the digital management process. It’s not uncommon for people to want to add value to their digital process by leveraging the value of time. The moment you do this to your digital process, you’ve effectively gone back to your old habit of trading time for money. Let’s say you’re charging $400/month for a digital client management offer, and you have a 1-hour check-in per month as part of your experience. In addition, it’s taking you 30 minutes per week to manage the client program. In this case, we have 1 hour + (0.5 hours x 4.3 (avg # of weeks in a month)) = 3.15 hours of management per month, which equates to around $127/hour. Not bad, but not great if you’re charging more per hour for your in-person sessions. Remove that 1-hour check-in, and you’re at $187/hour - better. Now, halve the time to manage the program, 15 minutes per week, $372/hour - THERE IT IS!
2. The virtual asynchronous management offer simply turns into a fully encompassed “fitness” program. Now, this isn’t bad, so long as you’re charging for the addition of fitness, which would likely send the cost of this offer north of $500/month, but most people simply equate “programming” to “fitness programming,” and that’s really not the point here. By adding the fitness component, I’ve found it takes about 3x the amount of time required to manage the client per week. So take what you’re currently making and times it by 3, the difference there is your lost opportunity per month.
3. They have no system to make the program construction simple, easy, and effective. Oftentimes it’s throwing exercises at a wall and hoping it sticks. I want your assessment to seamlessly turn into a program that expands all the way to return to activity! What are the areas of opportunity that you’re going to target? What are the reassessment processes so you can show change? What are the metrics you’re looking for to return to activity? When you have this dialed in, the entire process is sped up. Generally, for me, it takes about 20 minutes to create a program after the data collection process and 4-6 minutes per week to manage. No longer are my outcomes tied to time. This is how you create freedom for yourself while you deliver results to your clients. 

If you’re serious about making a shift to leveraging virtual offers, don’t hesitate to take action and begin executing your vision of freedom away from a physical space and the ability to generate revenue even when you travel. 

The only risk you take is staying exactly where you are. Will you make a move?