MindBody is great if you have lots of time and money.
As an entrepreneur and self motivated fitness and wellness coach, I’m sure your time is focused on your clients. Designing classes, promoting them, reaching back out to past clients about a new offerings… are just a few of the many things that come with running your own business and practice. The administrative tasks are endless. You don’t want to get side tracked from doing what you do and it is not always an option to hire a full time assistant to manage it all for you.
For large fitness businesses, MindBody is one of the more popular choices when it comes to helping you run your practice. Handling client appointments, class booking, invoicing and so forth. Getting started with software like MindBody can be very scary and difficult to learn, especially for people that aren’t technical experts. For any software, if you have to enroll in a class (much less a university like for MindBody) to understand how to use it is a major red flag. Your goal is simplify your work and save time not increase your workload with a complicated tool.
No Software Please
MindBody requires an in person seminar to onboard new users to their platform because of the complexity and the overwhelming number of features that are included. Users must become experts in the desktop software and mobile application and their clients have to download and log into a portal (which clients don’t love). If you are a large corporation or a gym owner with multiple locations, it makes complete sense why you and your team would be willing to invest weeks into customizing your administrative settings and training your people on how to use the mobile app. For independent personal trainers, yoga and pilates instructors, as well as health and well professionals; however, it is just plain too much.
It’s like learning to ride a bike… once you learn to balance it comes naturally… but try riding a bike and putting on an 80lb suit. That additional weight changes everything. Same goes for a mobile app that helps you run your business. You’re balancing your time between booking and payments as well as delivery of amazing client service, which is where you would like to spend 99% of your time. If you have a heavy suit, your focus is inevitably tilted away from doing what you do best to operational logistics.
PocketSuite would like to help you take the suit off.
Higher Price Always Means Better Right?
MindBody charges 3x to 6x more than other business apps for the health and wellness industry, How else can they pay for expensive onboarding classes and instructors. The fact that an average user has to dedicate 4 to 5 hours on average to learn the basics is extreme. If you are a Pro that has lots of clients, but no time to figure it all out, don’t invest resources in a solution that will require a lot of time and ongoing effort to maintain. You need something that is designed for your existing workflow, requires minimal setup, and automates all of the repetitive tasks that you do every day to schedule clients and collect payment.
The World is going Mobile
There is no denying that the world is going mobile. To meet client expectations for speed, transparency, and predictably you need to have systems that enable clients to book you from anywhere, at anytime, on any device. By definition, desktop solutions don’t make the cut. You don’t have access to them when you are in the field or in session with clients (which is everyday for most of the day). You need to be able to do anything from confirm a booking request, charge a card, look up a client’s payment history, and send a contract at a moment’s notice. When you go mobile, everything comes together. The simplicity of scheduling messages and follow ups with clients is literally a game changer. Mobile helps professionals build deeper, stickier, longer, and more loyal client relationships.
Try PocketSuite today… simplify your daily booking, payments, and client messaging. Automate your work and save yourself time and money.
Over 5,000 fitness, health & wellness professionals use PocketSuite’s free set of features:
- Packages Services & Classes
- Package any set of services or classes that you offer
- Sell packages to clients for immediate and upfront payment
- Track all package sessions by client
- Recurring Client Payments
- Set clients up on recurring payment plans
- Auto-charge any client’s card after each week, month, or any period of time
- Just a 2.9% + 30¢ processing fee for credit card payments, and 2-day direct deposit
- Direct Client Import
- Add any client directly to PocketSuite or import clients directly from your mobile phone contact list
- Track all income earned from each client
- Take notes (text, photos) on each customer for private viewing
Appointment Calendar Sync - Sync all PocketSuite scheduled appointments and sessions directly to iCal, GCal, etc.
- Pick and choose which calendars sync (i.e., Google, Outlook, etc.)
- Use a single calendar app to manage both client and personal appointments
- Mobile Messenger
- Send instant text messages to any of your clients
- Clients receive messages via SMS text and respond in real-time
- Share photos, share contacts, share GPS pin location
3. Your Payments: Cardio
Payments are what keep the engine going!
You want to not only give your clients an incredibly convenient (and pleasant) payment experience, but you also want to give yourself a very simple tracking system to ensure no payment ever slips through the cracks.
Give your client easy options through which they can pay you. Don’t force them to lug around a check book or make sure they went to the bank to withdraw cash. And avoid making the act of asking for payment feel awkward or uncomfortable. Create a simple system allowing your clients to pay you remotely so you don’t have to be physically in front of them to collect, and so they can even pay you ahead of time for any services you offer (reducing your payment risk completely).
Keep a log of these payments close so you can quickly get a glimpse of who owes you what, and how much you’ve made from each customer. You want to make sure you know who your best clients are and ask them to refer you to their friends…maybe even send them a holiday card! At the same time, you want to know what payments are outstanding so you can efficiently and professionally remind clients to pay, never letting a payment slip through the cracks.
4. Your Business Health: Brain
Exercising this “muscle” drives you to make all the right business decisions.
Instead of flipping through bank statements, or making daily logs of cash payments, leverage technology to know exactly how your business is doing each day, week, or month. Having all your client information, appointments and payments in a central location will allow you to leverage all this data to understand the overall health of your business. This health score gets increasingly difficult to measure as you start to grow as an solo professional, as there becomes so much more information to keep track of. And don’t fall into the trap thinking you have to pay an accountant to tell you how you’re doing!
A major factor in growing a business is also understanding how much to invest for growth. If you know how much income you’re bringing in vs. last month, then maybe spend some of that extra income on marketing or leads or advertising, to bring in more clients.
If you’re making less this month than the previous month, understand why – Were you working less? Did certain clients take up too much of your time? Are you waiting on payment?
Help is Now Here!
Following the above simple steps sounds like a ton of work, but the reality is it’s not. Technology is starting to offer independent and solo professionals (of all industries) valuable tools they need to help them compete, grow, and drive their business to success. The trick is finding the tool that’s right for you, without paying an arm and a leg. But little tips like the above can help you grow your business in incredibly efficient ways to reach that scale you need to succeed.
