How Montana Athletic Club Expanded Group Fitness Offerings

Liz Rodriguez at the Fitness Business Association recently sat down with Doug Mahlum, Owner of the Montana Athletic Club, to discuss member engagement strategies and how his partnership with Fitness on Demand and impacted his business.

Listen to their entire conversation below for more info on how to integrate live classes and digital experiences, minimize new member intimidation, and create experiences that keep your members coming back year after year.

You can read the full transcript below:

Liz Rodriguez (00:03):

Hey everyone, my name is Liz Rodriguez. I'm the video communications manager at FBA. With me today is Doug Mahlum. He has been in fitness for over 35 years. He owns seven facilities with over two 20,000 members in the state of Montana and has done quite a bit of consulting work with fitness businesses all over the us and really his motivation is to help make health and wellness more accessible to more people, which is really great. So I'm going to be talking to Doug today just to learn more about his experience working with Fitness On Demand and really kind of how it's helped him with his business. So I'm going to turn it over to Doug. How are you doing today?

Doug Mahlum (00:44):

Just another day in Paradise,

Liz Rodriguez (00:47):

Right? That's what we say in fitness. It's always a good place to be. So we're going to kind of hop in. I know you got a pretty extensive background, but why don't you tell the audience a little bit more about why you kind of got involved in the fitness industry?

Doug Mahlum (01:01):

Well, being from Montana and being in a small town in Montana, what we're trying to do is provide an opportunity for people that they may not normally have in a smaller community. And that's to be able to give them opportunities with health and wellness to be able to live a better life. And we're also very much into the social aspect of fitness. We provide another opportunity someplace for people to meet each other because that's not a bar. And so we do a lot of social stuff to bring people in and try to help them with that.

Liz Rodriguez (01:50):

Yeah, and tell us a little bit more about what are some of the offerings and stuff within your facilities? I know you mentioned, which is great, you're doing some social things, which is great for building that community.

Doug Mahlum (02:02):

Well, all the facilities that we have here, and they range anywhere from about 17,000 square feet to over 200,000 square feet. They're all basically set up to provide a little bit of everything to everybody. And in Montana, because a lot of the towns are smaller, our largest town that we're in is probably 45,000. And it really precludes the opportunity to going into any type of a niche because there's just not enough people in that particular niche. So a lot of our facilities have everything from indoors, tennis, indoor water slides, to obviously any type of spinning, fitness, aerobic studios, turf areas, that type of thing. What we have to do is once again, be a little bit of everything to everybody in order to have that opportunity to get them as members.

Liz Rodriguez (03:05):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And why did you guys begin working with Fitness On Demand? Tell me about that.

Doug Mahlum (03:13):

Well, Fitness On Demand for us was something we were looking for. And really to go back to where we are, not only do we have a smaller population to get our members from, we also have a smaller population to get our instructors from.

In order for us to offer different mind body classes, spinning classes and Group X classes, we have to find those instructors. Now in the town, for example, I'm in Bigfork, we've got 4,000 people. There are not a whole bunch of choices. So for us, what we need to do is be able to offer that to our members. And that's when we first started working with Fitness On Demand seven years ago, I think. And the idea was if we can't find an instructor, we'll bring one in on video, provide our members with a class opportunity that exceeds their expectations, both in the matter and what offering as a class and also in the production of it.

Liz Rodriguez (04:33):

Absolutely. And so obviously you mentioned just being able to expand that, we'll say pool of candidates with instructors and probably specialties and things like that. Was there anything else that you were looking to change business wise, getting involved with Fitness On Demand?

Doug Mahlum (04:53):

Well, and really it just centers around member satisfaction. If they can find what they need, they'll stay members. If they can't, they'll either go someplace else or not attend. And once again, Montana's a unique environment in the summer. It's great, beautiful weather. In the wintertime, that's not the case. Many times we will have classes scheduled an instructor can't make because they're snowed in or that type of thing. So Fitness On Demand gave us an opportunity instead of telling people that came in, all classes canceled. We say our instructor couldn't make it today, but we have an awesome ability to run that class for you with a top rate instructor on Fitness On Demand. And I think really the important part of Fitness On Demand is, I touched on this briefly, is providing an experience that is memorable because if they don't enjoy it, they won't come back and use it. So you do have to do a big screen, do an awesome sound system so that people walk out of there and they go, wow, that was fun.

Liz Rodriguez (06:13):

Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of what types of classes have your members been interested in, what have you been able to add because of it?

Doug Mahlum (06:28):

The spinning classes have been very popular. And it's interesting because the spinning classes go anywhere from Les Mills, the trip to MicroVision, that type of thing where you're just peddling around an English countryside and those have all those, it just really depends on what the person's looking for. And those have been popular. Some of our offerings like Tai Chi, that type of thing, have been also very popular. Simply we can't find the instructor for it, but there is an opportunity to do that. And the other thing that we've used in the past, it's worked pretty well too, is there are a lot of kids offerings and kids games and kids fitness. And that has been very popular. Also, a parent comes in, doesn't know what to do with the kids, they take them into a studio, dial up and gets fitness game, and they all go home tired.

Liz Rodriguez (07:36):

That's nice. A little bit of everything for the whole family, which is nice. I don't think that that's not always the case, depending on where you go.

Doug Mahlum (07:44):

Well, once again, you have to have something for everybody.

Liz Rodriguez (07:47):

Yes, exactly. So in terms of, talk to me, you mentioned it, but talk to me a little bit more about how Fitness On Demand has kind of helped you stay connected with those members that maybe aren't always at the gym.

Doug Mahlum (08:02):

Well, we do offer an opportunity for members to download. We have an app and to watch Fitness On Demand videos through that app. Obviously going through Covid was interesting and trying to be able to, we offered a lot of, not only Fitness On Demand, but our own produced videos, that type of thing. And we found that once Covid was over, that the overwhelming desire for our members was to come back and do classes at the club, be either a live class or a Fitness On Demand class, but to be in a social environment where they can be with their friends and do that. So I would say we do offer the opportunity for them to do the app, and people do take advantage of that. But I do see a swing back towards getting people in the same room with a Fitness On Demand class.

Liz Rodriguez (09:10):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Talking about your studio spaces, how often are they being used when you don't have a scheduled class?

Doug Mahlum (09:20):

Well, we started Fitness On Demand. We started two ways doing it unscheduled and also scheduling classes. As I spoke, we had, for example, a Tai Chi class that we wanted to put in at four o'clock on Thursdays. We would schedule a class in or spinning class at a certain time, group X class at a certain time. And what we discovered was that we were not getting the use that we thought we would was scheduled classes. And so we took those off and we just had unscheduled classes and we educated our membership in that if they wanted to take a class, they just merely walked up to the kiosk. And the buttons that we have on there, there's four buttons and one of them says, Fitness On Demand. They hit the button, either the big screen TV comes on or the projector comes down out of the ceiling and the class starts and they pick their class and it starts. And we saw a tremendous response to that. Whereas somebody couldn't make a class at four, they could make it at four 15. So they would come and take that class and they would bring in a group of classes that a group of people they would bring in to take that particular class. So we're finding that unscheduled use has jumped in this particular facility in Big Fork. We have Three Fitness On Demand. We have one in our mindbody studio one, the Group X and one in Spin, and they're all used quite a bit.

Liz Rodriguez (11:10):

Nice. Very

Doug Mahlum (11:11):

Cool. I would say, I think my last number I looked at was last year we had 1200 Fitness On Demand classes between those three studios.

Liz Rodriguez (11:25):

Wow, that's great.

Doug Mahlum (11:27):

That's awesome. And being an operator 1200 times whatever you're paying your instructors is a lot of money. And you don't have to pay that with Fitness On Demand, I'm not saying that live instructors are obsolete, they're better, but this is definitely and gives us an option to give more opportunities our members.

Liz Rodriguez (11:54):

Absolutely. Well, at the end of the day, I mean, it doesn't matter what facility you have, your dues revenue is typically, if you're a full service facility, that's going to be your largest line item. So the more that you can keep those members happy and things, that's the name of the game. Right?

Doug Mahlum (12:10):

Yep. That is very true.

Liz Rodriguez (12:13):

Well, last two questions for you. Any parts of Fitness On Demand that you knew you were surprised that helped your business?

Doug Mahlum (12:22):

Well, it definitely helped us with retention. I think one of the most interesting parts of that though has been and marketing. And when we take a new member on a tour of the club and we walk them around and then stop in front of a studio and tell them, this is how you can take whatever class at whatever time that you want, and then run them how to do it. Every single one of them goes, well, that's awesome. And they may never use it, but the opportunity is there for them to use it, and they really, really enjoy that. So as a marketing tool, Fitness On Demand works really well that way too.

Liz Rodriguez (13:04):

Yeah. And then last question for today, what would you tell others when it comes to recommending using Fitness On Demand for their business needs?

Doug Mahlum (13:16):

Well, I would recommend Fitness On Demand, and it is like anything else, you need to spend the time and the effort to, not only for your staff to understand how to use it, but also your members. It's not something that just automatically appears. It does take work like anything else. But once you put that work in and Fitness On Demand there, their support has been awesome. When we first started years ago, there was a few glitches. There were a few things that we had to correct, but in the last several years, they have been spot on and we haven't had any problems with it. But I would say, yeah, it's like anything else you put in the time and the effort and the payback is awesome.

Liz Rodriguez (14:13):

Awesome, awesome. Well, I want to thank you for your time and responses today. This was really great, Doug.

Doug Mahlum (14:19):

You bet. It's been nice talking to you, and I appreciate you giving the opportunity.

Liz Rodriguez (14:26):

Absolutely. And for those of you guys watching, if you are looking for more information about Fitness On Demand, just go ahead and fill out the brief web form right below where this video is playing. Until next time, everyone, take care and we'll see you soon.