Webinar Rewind: How to grow your business and get paid faster with GymNet

Read the Webinar Transcription

Liz Christenbury Thank you so much, everyone, for taking the time to join the Gyet webinar today.

My name is Liz Christenbury and I'm the founder of GymNet where we aim to democratize access to physical activity.

I was interested to learn around the founding of GymNet that the average US consumer spends over $800 per year on exercising, which may not come as a surprise to some, but the US has actually ranked 20th in physical activity participation, which was a a shock, a surprise to me, which means that access to physical activity or exercise is really not the same for everyone in the US.

It's difficult for folks who aren't affluent or already healthy to engage in physical activity and experts have determined that there needs to be a more democratic approach to exercise.

So this is where GymNet comes in. We give consumers unlimited access to a free app where they can search, book and pay for workouts nearby.

There's no membership required and users simply pay per workout or per package that a trainer provides. It's really super easy. There's no points involved. There's no calculating anything like that.

And so consumers have a personalized experience by filtering based on their fitness needs and can work with a trainer in person or via live video feed on the app. And consumers can stay on top of their goals in between workouts in an asynchronous manner with trainers through our one-on-one messaging as well.

And so GymNet is really the only app of its kind where a consumer can book any kind of workout with any kind of trainer or gym in just a few clicks.

So a little bit about GymNet - I founded GymNet in 2022 with a mission of just making it easier for folks to live an active lifestyle. Our core values are health, community, sustainability and creativity. A portion of our revenue is set up to combat climate change, and we use creativity to solve problems in the community and prioritize the health of our team and our customers.

So we're very grateful to have support from two amazing women, Crystal Yohng and Natalie Kalmar. Crystal leads our product development and Natalie has been partnering with us to grow our trainer partnerships. Crystal has been working on one of our long-awaited features where trainers can create monthly subscriptions which we're going to show later in the webinar.

I've just been really grateful to your support in really bringing high value features to our trainer base.

In terms of our trainer benefits, you may be asking yourself, you know, why should I join GymNet? So one of the benefits is increased profitably. So, lowering your operating costs while also increasing the option for you to gain revenue. When you join the app, you are then added to our marketplace or our directory where new clients can discover you and book sessions.

You also get a dedicated website where you can manage your bookings, your schedule, and get paid directly through our partner, Stripe.

You can also decrease your admin time. Instead of using multiple apps, you are able to manage your schedule, get paid and manage your availability through a single app, GymNet, and even message back and forth [with your clients].

You have access to an annual tax form to make that tax filing process a lot easier.

And we're going to be offering monthly subscription soon in the next week or so.

We're very excited. Yeah. And then improved experience for both you and your clients!

So, no more, you know, following up via text or Venmo, it's a very intuitive user experience. Folks get appointment notifications. We also have an exclusive slack community for trainers and we have white-glove support. So we're here to support y'all as you you're looking to set up your profile or if you have any issues, we're here to to support you.

I did want to point out that unlike other apps, GymNet offers a very low cost solution that works really well for trainers that are aiming to get up and running with a dedicated online booking site or just to have a more streamlined process.

We currently charge just 3% per transaction. Unlike other companies that may charge upwards of 10%. You'll also have direct access to our team and be able to influence the product in a very direct manner.

So you may be asking, you know, how does GymNet work? So I wanted to pause here and go for a little bit of a demonstration so that you can get to see how GymNet works in real time.

So let me reshare my screen here. All right. So let's say I am a client and I've come to GymNet here and I'm looking to find a trainer. What's great about GymNet is I have the ability to narrow down my search by different workout types, by different price points, or even class type, keywords, even certifications if we need to.

Now, let's say I am interested in working with a trainer on a monthly basis. I can go ahead and buy this subscription. And when I purchase this subscription, Melissa, the trainer, gets paid up front, which is super great for trainers to have that reliability um of income.

And then as that subscription gets activated, the client can go ahead and book a session on GymNet. With our calendar syncing with Gmail or Outlook, [GymNet] looks at the trainer's real-time availability. So if you have another client that's booked during the day or if we have, you know, a doctor's appointment, it respects that and it only shows the client when you're available.

So I'm going to go ahead and schedule. Maybe let's not do Christmas Day. Let's do the 23rd, and look to schedule, you know, at 10 o'clock in the morning. So as I make that appointment, you'll see here that my credits used have gone up to one. So I've used one of those 10 classes per month. I have access to view my subscription history as that renews every month and the sessions that I've booked.

If I need to cancel, I can go ahead and cancel that, and it will give me back that credit so that I can rebook that session. So, then I also have this ability as a client to view the plan details, all of the costs; if I need to update my payment, I can do that, or you can cancel it if we need to figure out something else.

But this is really powerful in that for clients, it's an easy experience. They can book that session and all of those sessions in the package based on their availability.

We keep track of how many sessions the client has used for you. So train as a trainer, you don't have to worry about, you know, noting down on a on a notepad and how many sessions, Kelly has taken this month.

It's all managed for you and you get paid up front. It also auto reviews every month, so until the client cancels that subscription, as a trainer, you're guaranteed that payment every month as well.

Now, some trainers also work on kind of an hourly drop-in type of structure. So we support that. We also support [the sale] of fitness products or fitness events. We also have live video training sessions as well. So it's a very flexible platform in terms of what types of interactions we support for clients and trainers.

Now, I want to flip over to the trainer side for a moment. So as a trainer, you'll see here I got this message from Liz, who booked this subscription. And what's great about this is I can message back and forth with Liz throughout that subscription.

I can even, you know, set up a single date workout from any message. This could be a multi-date or even another subscription. So GymNet allows trainers to really meet their clients where they are, and is flexible enough to support any kind of adjustment to that customer's plan or strategy. So, you know, if we need to do a one-off session, you know, next month, I can go ahead and send that offer over to Liz for her to look at and accept, so there's no slippage in payment. It's all seamlessly managed through the GymNet app.

We also offer the ability for trainers to get a sense of their analytics. So we have widgets in here that track, you know, how many bookings we have, how much business is coming in. This is all in real time as well.

And then you have the ability to create as many listings as you want. So there's no cap on the number of listings. So if you've adjusted your business to then do some live video training, um we support you there as well with built-in video. So, you don't have to worry about sending a Zoom link back and forth or, you know, another app in that regard.

And just to summarize what we've seen, so as a trainer, the main steps in signing up are to create a listing for each class or each type of workout that you teach. You can set your weekly schedule and stink your calendar. You have automatic booking notifications and reminders and you're paid automatically and securely through our partner, Stripe.

We've gotten some awesome reviews from our customers, both Natalie and Natalia worked out with some GymNet trainers recently and just we’re just grateful for their feedback, and glad that the trainers that they've worked with have helped them achieve their goals.

Every review that a trainer gets is automatically posted to their profile page. And we're looking to add soon the ability to import past client reviews from other, you know, platforms or experiences to really showcase those all on GymNet.

So we do integrate with Google reviews, so if you have a physical Google place or a physical location that has Google reviews, you can show that on your page.

And then we are going to be adding the ability for a trainer to upload like a an offline review from someone or if you have like a website that has reviews, put that all on your page as well.

Yeah.

So I did want to just really quick summarize that GymNet is a zero dollar per month membership, right? So there's no monthly fee. We just charge a small transaction fee per booking or per monetary transaction, and that's that's it!

It's very simple. Our goal is to help trainers run their business more smoothly and be able to work with more clients in different ways.

And so I mentioned a couple of things we've been working on. Our monthly trainer packages are coming out very, very soon. We're also going to be looking to add those external reviews from clients among other small fixes and updates. In the next year, we're looking to launch an Android application and update our mobile apps as well.

Noah Hodgin Oh, so you don't have Android yet. Wow, I.

Crystal Yong You are using Android?

Noah Hodgin No.

Crystal Yong I’m on Android

Noah Hodgin Okay, yeah, I was just surprised that you didn't because it's like it was kind of, you know, 50 people, 50% of people that use Apple and 50% that use Android. So that's why I was surprised.

Liz Christenbury Yeah, yeah, no, It's definitely a focus area. One thing that is really nice about GymNet is it's a mobile responsive site. And so if you open it up on Safari or Chrome or Firefox [on your mobile device], it looks like an app. It functions very much the same as if you were on the desktop which is great.

So it's it's not that it doesn't work on the phone, we just don't have a dedicated Android app yet at this time.

Awesome. Well, we really appreciate everyone's time! To get started today, you can head over to gymnet-fitness.com or check us out on social. We have presence on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.

We just want to thank everyone for their time today and hope you enjoyed watching the recording. So we appreciate it.