731 – Fitness Business Transformation Case Study With Dahlas Fletcher

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Dahlas Fletcher

In this case study:

01:12 – How getting pregnant opened a whole career
03:37 – Making the transition to business owner
06:03 – Working the pregnancy and postpartum niche
09:34 – Platforms and tech stacks
12:18 – “I don’t want to pay for another 10 different systems…”
14:36 – Ease of use and peace of mind
18:26 – The BodyFabulous customer experience
20:40 – An Aussie marketer’s point of view
22:48 – The super tool advantage
27:37 – What to do when the studio isn’t an option
29:19 – Engagement as key marketing activity

Adapt the business model that’s right for you with James’s help

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to jamesschramko.com. This is Episode 731. We’ll be talking about an online fitness business transformation. And for that I’ve brought along a special guest, Dahlas Fletcher. Welcome, Dahlas.

Dahlas: Hi, James.

James: It’s good to be chatting. You have a website, BodyFabulous.com.au. And you’re one of Australia’s most respected and successful certified pregnancy and postnatal trainers. Would you like to explain what that means?

How pregnancy opened a whole career

Dahlas: Yes, sure. So basically, it pretty much happened by default when I had children myself. So I’d been in the fitness industry for a long time as a personal trainer. Since I was 17, I’d always loved sport and dove into getting certified as a personal trainer back then. And then it was a great part-time job through university. And also when I had a corporate career in marketing, I worked in group fitness and personal training.

But then when I became pregnant myself, I was a little unsure about what I could and couldn’t do. And that was, my eldest son’s 12 years old. So that was back sort of a while ago when there wasn’t too much knowledge and information, and you know, online about pregnancy and postpartum fitness. So I took myself off down to Melbourne, in Australia, and trained with some physiotherapists down there to become certified in pregnancy and postnatal exercise.

And I loved it. I loved it. So I really decided to niche down into that area. And I guess, all the information and tools and strategies they gave me for exercise that I’d tried myself then from, you know, a second and third pregnancy, I found really worked and I wanted to basically share that with the world, not just locally as one-on-one training, but also globally as well.

James: It’s definitely a challenging market, because, as you know, once the baby comes along, life can be pretty much tipped upside down for people. They’re not getting as much sleep; they’ve got this new responsibility that’s going to be there for the next two decades, at least; financial considerations. And I imagine squeezing in a bit of exercise here and there could be hard for a new mom.

Dahlas: Oh, completely. And even exercising during pregnancy, it’s such a short window of opportunity, that sort of nine-month market. I guess my whole premise is, you know, what you do during pregnancy sets you up for a better postpartum and it also sets you up to learn how to manage how to exercise within short windows of time and also to give yourself something back, you know?

And it’s really, I guess I come from the whole perspective, which took me a while, personally, to change this mindset that it wasn’t about the quantity of exercise I was doing, it was the quality. And I didn’t need to spend an hour in the gym. You know, you could actually do things in little 15-minute increments at home and still get a lot of benefits, whether that be during pregnancy or as you recover postpartum, or even as a busy mom.

Making the transition to business owner

James: Right. And, you know, the interesting thing for me about this is, on the fitness side and the health side, you’ve got an abundance of qualifications and training. There’s so many things you can go and learn from. But you’re registered and certified. You’ve got first aid and CPR, you’ve even been a ski instructor. You’ve done Pilates and you’ve done body step, body pump. You got any number of certifications. But when it comes to running your own business, it’s a lot different, isn’t it? You’ve got a few loose ends to try and figure out when it comes to saying, Okay, I’ve got my message, I’m good at the thing I do, I know who I’m helping out. But now I want to go out and serve these people. Can you just talk me through how that transition went? When you said, Okay, I’m a fitness expert. I’ve got my target market, how do I go and help them? What sort of learning curve did you have there? Did you find it’s not quite as structured and step-by-step as the fitness training?

Dahlas: Oh, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess from the perspective with the fitness training, and having all those qualifications was, I guess it gives me a little bit of a toolkit to offer different styles of exercise to a broad range of people, even if they are pregnant or postpartum. But transitioning from fitness to business, I think I was lucky that I had had a corporate career and worked in marketing and I did work back in the day on a very large telco client. And this is before digital marketing happened. And it was in the direct marketing area of the business. And that was when snail mail happened, and they were really big on segmenting their business. So from mobile customers to, you know, landline, all of that. And that really taught me the value of a database and the value of knowing your customers’ details.

And from very early on, I was capturing that information from my customers, you know, with my opt-ins or with my lists, whether they were pregnant, whether they were postpartum, and having links in my email messages to say, Hit this link if you’ve already had your baby. So I knew that I was sending them the right message. But that was a massive learning curve, even learning how to do that and to funnel it down and to make the message, as you said, it’s a really short window of time. But I still learned that that would be the backbone. It wasn’t just about having a YouTube channel or this many Instagram followers. I needed to be sending these women the right message depending on their journey through pregnancy and post baby.

Working the pregnancy and postpartum niche

James: So as a product owner, and you’ve got this short-window customer, I guess it’s kind of like a wedding, right? And, you know, even the most prolific people who have a lot of babies and a big family, you know, it might get to six or seven or eight or nine, that’d be rare. Most people probably have one or two kids, right?

Dahlias: Yeah.

James: How do you approach that? Like, do you have anything you can provide for people other than that? Or, you just said, Okay, I’m going to niche in on this and be the foremost expert on it. And that’s my window, and I’m going to shine in that particular period.

Dahlas: Yeah, so I really began because pregnancy was something that I’d really specialized in. So I began with a pregnancy course that I really niched down and I wanted to make it not just a library of exercises that people dive into, I wanted it to be a guided step-by-step program that would take them through basically from the start of pregnancy to the end of pregnancy and even how to return to exercise postpartum. And not not just the exercise, but also nutrition and you know, preparing for birth, etc. So I really decided to niche down into that.

But I guess now since I’ve launched that course, a year ago, a lot of those ladies are, as you say, now postpartum. Some, yes, have gone in and you know, are preparing for second babies. But I am now at the point where I want to open that up into more membership. And what is quite interesting from, you know, my experience, even the customers that I see, or the clients I see one-on-one or face-to-face, is sometimes it’s just not even the mother of the baby exercising, sometimes the grandmothers come and join the sessions as well. So I kind of guess I’ve realized, this scope of how you exercise and how your body does change during pregnancy and postpartum does continue through life. And women need to kind of look at how they’re training afterwards, whether that be six weeks, six months, or even six plus years, post baby. And it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything, it just means there just needs to be a different strategy. So that’s, I guess, the stage where I’m at to try and broaden that offering and that niche.

James: Yeah, it is really interesting, because I know when I was going to the parents group, there was only one other guy there. Sometimes guys hang around. I think that was more of a condition of who’s usually the primary caretaker of the baby and who’s usually the primary income, you know? Which, obviously, in my case, it’s very different. We’re a home family. You know, yesterday, we were all there, baby, wife and I. We did a Mick Fanning surf workout, and we did a yoga workout from YouTube. So it’s easy to access workouts online, but what I have noticed is we tend to train together. So that’s an interesting consideration for you.

Dahlas: That’s awesome.

James: And I imagine you’ll get the same thing that I experienced with SuperFastBusiness membership, ispeople love the content and they definitely want coaching. But the community aspect is incredibly strong. They rally together, they come together at live meetups, they do local meetups traditionally, except for right now, where they’re now doing virtual meetups, online meetups. But the community side of it’s strong, and I think I’ve noticed that from parents groups. Often those parents groups can last throughout the life of, you know, the kids all grow up but the parents still stay friends. So I imagine there’ll be some aspect for you to run cohorts through your upcoming membership.

But I do want to talk a little bit about that transition from early on recognizing you should build a database, which is great. If more people spent time building a database, they’d be set, because that’s the most important asset.

Platforms and tech stacks

What platform did you choose for your database?

Dahlas: ActiveCampaign.

James: Right. Did you start on that? And now you’re still on it?

Dahlas: Still on it. Yeah.

James: It’s very popular in my community, as a platform. So that’s been that. And then, of course, at some point, you decided you’re not just going to build on social media platforms, because that would be very risky and dangerous. You wanted your own website, and you’ve got your own domain. How did you go about your tech stack? That’s our fancy way of saying, what tools did you choose there?

Dahlas: The tech stack. So this was challenging, and I think this was a massive learning curve for me, because I’d invested a lot into the website, and I wanted to keep basically everything in that platform, and decided to go with Thrive to do the membership with the WishList Member. But because my website, I think my website was created back, mid 2010, eight. So it was heavily coded.

And every time I would do a plugin update, there would be something go wrong. It would either spit the members out, or someone couldn’t get in, or even just simple things. Like, there was a WishList Member update, and they had trouble even fixing it for me, and it became actually a real headache. And I guess I’ve got to the point where I was like, I’m not going to launch this membership and have these tech headaches.

And for me as well, I’m not often in front of a computer. So I see a lot of clients still one-on-one or I’m teaching group classes. And so when it comes to trying to fix something, I have small windows of opportunity. And I did not want to have that headache of, you know, just thinking, okay, every time I hit a plugin update, is everything going to actually still work?

James: Who was doing the plugin updates?

Dahlas: I had just a freelancer.

James: So you have to go out and find a freelancer and get them to troubleshoot and pay them to fix it?

Dahlas: And pay them to fix it and paying by the hour and that started really add up.

James: And was it the same person, or do you have to change?

Dahlas: Yeah, the same person, and she actually had trouble, and then had a friend who was based in the US who would help. She seemed to sort of have a head around it a lot better. So yeah, I was having these middle-of-the-night conversations too, with her.

James: So you basically never felt truly confident that it’s all smooth sailing.

Dahlas: No, no. And it’s hard after you invest so much time.

James: You’ve got sunk cost on the platform. You choose a platform, you do have to commit to the platform unless it’s really causing a problem. And like so many of us, you’ve gone for the platform that is, you know, really well known. It also comes with downsides. Yes, anyone can work on it, but also it does need a lot of work. And it’s open source, so it means it’s a popular target for attacks and so forth.

“I don’t want to pay for another 10 different systems…”

You know, you popped up on my radar at the end of 2019, responding to an offer that we made regarding 10XPRO, and you asked me a few questions about it. I could tell you knew what you were looking for, because you asked if it works with ActiveCampaign, and you asked if it does webinars live or pre-recorded? And I said yes, yes, yes. And then I didn’t hear from you for a while, and then three months later, I heard from John Lint from 10XPRO that you’re doing really well with it. I’d love to know what happened.

Dahlas: Yes. So, I guess basically I’m a big fan of your podcast, James. So I listen to that and I listen to a lot of, you know, John talking about 10XPRO and a lot of other Aussies using it as well. And you know, by this stage, I’d run a few challenges followed by a webinar for my membership launches, and they were going really well. And I thought, okay, with this pregnancy market that I have, it’s an evergreen market, you know, there’s always someone looking for it. The open, closed membership thing really wasn’t working. And I had that at the back of my mind from the start. And I was like, Okay, I’m going to have to put this webinar on evergreen.

And I looked at other systems to do that. And I was like, I just need to find something that does it all, that has, the shopping cart has, you know, a place where I can set up the webinar as evergreen, as you know, I can transfer, you know, my membership platform to it. And there was not a lot out there. And you know, I’d run the webinar on another system. And I thought, I’m not going to be paying. I don’t want to pay for another 10 different systems that I have to be trying to update and talk to each other all the time.

And then just the fact that, you know, again, that was my big question. It needs to feed into ActiveCampaign, because I’d spent a lot of time setting up my funnels there as well. And that’s why my first question to you is, does it work with ActiveCampaign? And it did. I did the trial with 10XPRO, and the first thing I tried was actually just the shopping cart. I thought, okay, I’m running external classes here in Brisbane, and I’m doing my group classes. I’m just going to get the ladies to pay through the shopping cart. And I was like, Okay, that was really easy, because you could set it up as an external product as well. And I was like, Okay, this is really good. Big tick.

Ease of use and peace of mind

And then I had the webinar recorded. So I went through, and it was just so easy as a step-by-step to set up as an evergreen webinar. In fact, it was almost too easy. I kept second guessing myself and going back and watching those awesome tutorials that John has, going, I’m actually doing this right, this seems a little bit easy. And I didn’t have to also get a separate, you know, countdown timer. It was just all there. And so I was sold. Sold from very early on. And I transferred my costs from the existing platform over to the new platform really quickly. I had a VA help me do that, which again, was very easy to get her up to speed.

James: You can get a VA that doesn’t have to code or do programming.

Dahlas: No.

James: That’s what we’re finding. We’ve been putting a couple of our products across into our brand new 10XPRO website. I’m loving how it looks and how it’s laid out, and I know it’s going to make it easier for people to learn by going through the smaller modules and to have a completion checkbox to know which ones they’ve done. So yeah, the fact that you can drive it with a more general virtual assistant than having to find someone technically clever is good.

Dahlas: Yeah, completely. Because, you know, to be honest, I actually spoke to Justin about transferring the program over. And he was like, “Well, I’ll speak to you, but I reckon you’re going to have a lot of this done by yourself, by the time you get going.” I’m like, Really? It can’t be that easy.

James: Well, see, Justin works with WordPress and with 10XPRO.

Dahlas: Yeah.

James: And he’s really familiar with both systems now. And he’s been really heavily leaning into just how incredible this tool is. He told me at SuperFastBusiness Live, like, he’s just blown away. How much it’s really thoughtful in how it’s covering those things.

Dahlas: Yeah, completely. It’s just taken a lot of the headache out of it. Yeah, as you say, from even training the VA, it was very simple. It was simply a Loom video to tell her what to do. A 15-minute Loom video, and then she just dove in and transferred a lot of it.

James: And there’s pretty much a help video on every single possible question you could ever ask in there. I think John has made a bazillion videos on what to do, like how to do this, how to do that.

Dahlas: Yeah.

James: He just finished up a Streaming Like A Boss course. So you can run live streams. Because we’ve noticed a lot of activity lately, people who had traditional businesses. Like in your industry, especially – fitness, yoga, those sort of things, when they’re not able to perform in the physical environment because of government restrictions, etc, they want to get online, and they need to do it now. So big demand for tools like this. And you’ve really pioneered this for your industry, to go from the real world to the virtual world, and you got in there at a good time. And so basically, you’ve now got a system that’s just in one place, that does all the things you need, and it’s giving you a bit more peace of mind.

Dahlas: Oh, completely, a lot more peace of mind. And as you say, anytime there’s an issue, I just google one of John’s tutorials. And the best thing is they’re not long, they’re like 5, 10 minutes, you find the answer instantly. And then I always find another little tip in there, and I’m like, Oh, wow, I can do that as well. And the help desk is incredible, too. So it’s just been pretty seamless and not many headaches and really opened my mind to a lot more. You know, I think particularly now you know, in the current climate, the opportunity, having a system like this and what else I can do.

James: I think what I’ve discovered from speaking to 10XPRO users is they’re learning about marketing, because they’re learning the tools they can do to get things that they weren’t doing, like the upsells, the webinars. You can have deadline funnels, you can have individual courses, you can have a membership, etc. So there’s a lot of things it can do that once you discover it’s got this option, you might add it to what you’re doing.

The BodyFabulous customer experience

So tell us about what it looks like for the customer when they come into your environment, because of the timely nature of it. You’ve got the ability for them to watch an on-demand training, it sounds like. And by course, is that roughly what you’ve got set up?

Dahlas: Yes. So currently, I have a course set up, probably at a bit more higher price point, which is lifetime access because it’s quite a comprehensive course, with option of a payment plan as well. And I guess, you know, the current climate as well as made me shift that offering. People are looking probably for a lower price point. There’s a lot of free offerings out there. So I’m still running a lot of free, you know, exercise options as well, and little lead generation samples just to keep building my list as well.

And, yeah, so basically, they come into the platform and they have an offering of a whole nutrition program, an eight-module pregnancy program, which pretty much guides them right through to the end of pregnancy. And then I’ve got a couple of added little bonuses in there as well, which as you say, I have the opportunity to slice and dice and offer them as little separate smaller programs or they could be bundles within the membership as well. And with this current climate, it’s been a great opportunity to film more videos, to add more to it, which is really good.

James: What are your next steps?

Dahlas: So my next step is I do want to launch the membership by May by Mother’s Day, which is probably appropriate for mothers, no matter what journey they are on. And from there, really, as you say, grow the community. Because I think, as you said, for a lot of women at the moment, either being at home just with one child or being at home pregnant, they are feeling isolated. Because I know the ladies who used to attend my group classes, it was a little social outing. They’d all go and have coffee together or connect together. So I think that community connection is incredibly important for anyone, no matter where they are in the world. And I do have had a lot of ladies who are based, you know, in country Australia, also another lady who was in country Scotland, who found you know, just connecting with other ladies on this journey from all over the world has made a big difference, as well. So that’s my next step, is to really grow and nurture the community as well.

An Aussie marketer’s point of view

James: I want to ask you that from an Aussie marketer’s perspective. You’re running on a .com.au. What currency or currencies do you sell in at the moment?

Dahlas: I sell in Aussie dollars. I sell in Aussie dollars, which I guess having a higher price point course, it has been attractive to the international market. I don’t know if that’ll change, but I guess predominantly my core market is in Australia. So I only think that’s fair that I offer in Aussie dollars.

James: Is that because you’ve targeted Australians?

Dahlas: Yeah, I think so. And I don’t know if that’s come from default having a .com.au site or just from…

James: It’s probably a combination of the fact that you started offline and offer offline services from time to time in the local market, and the second thing, most definitely the domain extension and the currency will, to a large extent, dictate what geographic footprint you might attract. One of the advice I give most of my clients is to go .com in US dollars, and go for the most globally-known currency that opens up the bigger markets.

And for anyone who’s listening who has an Australian business, there is an export marketing grant that will fund you and help you develop your export market, so that you can go out to the US market in particular. Because there’s so many people in the US, and they will feel more comfortable buying in US dollars. And for me, 65 percent of my business is outside Australia, because I was early to target .com and US dollar. Australians won’t mind US dollars if you calibrate the price to an acceptable level, and certainly the US market is going to be most comfortable with it. But the fact is, it’s just a massive population over there. We’re only about 2 percent of the world market in Australia. So that’s really good news for you.

Dahlas: Yeah, that is good news.

James: One of the clients I spoke to today is helping another one of my clients take an ecommerce business from Australia to the US market, and they’ll probably 10X their business within the next six months, just from that one move. So, exciting times and big considerations. But I imagine they’re still having babies in other countries.

Dahlas: Yes.

James: Then there you go, probably a lot more of them.

Yet another 10XPRO advantage

Dahlas: Yeah, probably. Yeah, it’s definitely I think, in this current climate. So yeah, that’s a great tip. Because I guess now I’m at the point where I am going to launch that, and 10XPRO gives you that opportunity, doesn’t it. You know, you can customize your domain name to suit, to do a .com domain name as well.

James: Exactly. Basically, John was explaining this to me, that makes it special, and without getting too technical. When you get 10XPRO, what he does ia he asks if you’d like to host it on his domain, or if you’d like your own, and you can choose your own. But what he does that’s special, and it’s very different to most other platforms, and it’s important, is when you choose your own domain name, he installs 10XPRO onto that domain name on a separate part of his server. So it’s on a different database. What that means is, even though there are other 10XPRO users, every user who’s on their own domain name has got their own installation or their own database of 10XPRO, so it won’t matter what anyone else does, or if anyone else gets hacked or whatever. Your installation is just unique to you. And that’s what’s different. Whereas most other platforms that have courses and memberships, they just have one database and they’re sticking everyone on the same database, which is kind of dangerous.

So yes, you get to choose your own domain, and you can basically just have it installed there or zapped across to that domain name. And you can also copy things very easily. You can copy entire campaigns with the click of a button, which makes it great for anyone who is – say you wanted to go down the slightly franchisee route for what you do, (and I’m not going to say the word “franchise” specifically, because I’m sure there’s probably laws and regulations around that) but let’s say you want to be the master of your market, the pregnancy market and you would like to coach other fitness professionals to niche into your space. Then you could have a pre-done campaign or funnel, like, all the things that they need, all ready to go, and then you could just keep selling the program and then they can just install it with one click on their own domain. So it’s good for coaches who coach coaches.

Dahlas: That’s awesome. I didn’t know that as well. And also, that app that John’s about to launch, an app as well, that got me my interest piqued as well, because as you know, the fitness industry apps are pretty popular. So having that, as you say, the flexibility from your own .com to coaching other coaches, and then you know, the sky’s the limit. And that’s why I originally started with having the platform on my own domain, because I thought, well, I don’t want someone else’s domain to get hacked or it to go down or whatever.

James: The worst one is when you’re responsible for it.

Dahlas: Yes, exactly.

James: It’s on your server, you’re paying the money and you got to get your web developer and your tech guy and the virus remover. Like, it’s just nice to have a team who can just put in a ticket and say, Hey, can you help me with this or that? You know, rather than to have to be the person responsible. Because most of us, like, you’re good at fitness; I came from a sales background. I’m not a technical person, I need people to help me with those things. And it’s just nice to know it’s taken care of.

Dahlas: Yeah, completely. And it’s such an ever-changing environment. So knowing that what they’re doing is quality and they’re ahead of the game in, as you say, managing it, and, yeah, the support. I’ve found anytime I’ve asked a question, no matter how big or small, there’s always been a really good answer from 10XPRO’s end, which has made everything so much easier.

James: Love it.

So you’re pregnant…

So what advice would you have for anyone who’s just found out they’re pregnant?

Dahlas: I would say, start exercising. Don’t think. There’s a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of confusion and saturation in the market about what you can and can’t do.

I would say, Congratulations, as well.

And also, you know, my big thing is safe and effective exercise. It’s really easy to just google and Dr. Google everything, everything throughout your pregnancy. So, you know, finding a trusted source is really important, and working, you know, with someone who’s had experience and expertise in that area makes a big, big difference. And that was from my own perspective of being pregnant. I mean, I’ve been in the fitness industry for 12 years, and I was confused about what I could and couldn’t do, regardless. And other fitness professionals couldn’t tell me either. So finding someone, which was what I did, who could actually guide me in the right way, made a big difference to not only my pregnancy, but my birth and my recovery. And just that confidence, the confidence that I knew what I was doing was right for me and my baby. And it really set me up to basically have consistency exercising, and my nutrition consistent throughout pregnancy and beyond, with that confidence.

What to do when the studio isn’t an option

James: Perfect. Well, you’ve definitely got a clear handle on your target market. What advice would you have for other fitness professionals who maybe were operating in a studio or going out to the local park with their clients, who can’t do that right now?

Dahlas: I would say now is the opportunity. I’d just say now is an absolute perfect time. I think there’s a lot of people panicking, and rather than being on the defense beyond the offense. If you’re filming videos or filming one-on-one sessions with clients, that can be part of your content or part of your marketing strategy.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect. I think I came from the perspective that the videos have to look really polished and really perfect. And people don’t expect that. And I think even more so in this current climate, everyone’s seen everyone’s lounge rooms. Like, it doesn’t matter.

James: Well, I’m watching Oprah cook carbonara, you know, and Ellen on her couch. Like, life has really leveled off for everyone, and the celebrities don’t look nearly as polished when they’re just using their iPhone. Pretty much everyone in my community has a higher standard of home studio.

Dahlas: Oh, completely.

James: It’s fascinating.

Dahlas: It is, it’s fascinating. And you’d look at everyone out there now who doesn’t even have any equipment to exercise.

James: Right. It all sold out instantly.

Dahlas: It’s all sold out. People are using tin cans and sauce pans and everything, it doesn’t matter. And I think that’s really good. It’s a lot of opportunity for everyone out there. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be tech savvy to do it. Put up your iPhone, film it, find a really easy system and platform that you can use like 10XPRO, and you know who you can get support from, and just go for it. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Maybe you just need to run, like, it could be a three-module course or just a series of videos or some live streaming. You know, just start small and go from there.

Engagement as key marketing activity

James: Such great advice. And just to round out, once you’ve got your machine set up, what are you doing to get people to find out about it, like that frontline marketing? We hear “TOFu”, top of funnel, etc. What are your key activities for your market?

Dahlas: So I guess my key activity is I have a few opt-ins, which I found are really, really good, because I guess a lot of women, as you say, do a lot of Dr. Googling and can I do this, and how do I do that? And can I eat this? And also word of mouth. I think that community, I get a lot of business through word of mouth, and really in connecting with my Facebook community, as well. And just a lot of women on social media just asking me general questions and making that personal connection. Because people get a shock, like, when I personally respond to an email or respond to a DM. And I think that’s really important, in this kind of business, is responding to the emails and answering their questions directly. And that creates, you know, a customer almost for life, because there’s that trusted response. It’s not just a cookie cutter generic bot responding.

James: Yeah. It’s so important, you know, and there’s nothing more infuriating than when you send a support question or something to a company when they’ve emailed you. Like, for example, I got an email the other day that said my car may need service. So I replied back and I said, Well, this is how many kilometers it’s done, and this is how long I’ve owned it. Does it need a service? And I got bounced back, you know, no reply at this email; if you want to…. Like, okay, you’re just making it really hard for me as a customer to fall in love with your business.

And, you know, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of a conversation. I know people whose entire business philosophy at the moment is to drive conversations. They drive people into a message on Instagram, on Facebook, in their inbox. You want a customer engaging with you, trying to buy your things, if you help them – In fact, Dahlas, that’s actually how we started our interaction as well. You asked me a question.

Dahlas: I was going to say that, as well! And I’ve had several conversations with John as well.

James: Yeah.

Dahlas: And that is, it’s just so important. And yeah, there’s nothing worse than that no-reply response. And even when I was having tech difficulties with my previous site, that was also opportunity to have a conversation with the customers. And they were so, you know, forgiving. And they would then ask me other questions while they had me on the line. And I was like, well, this is great. You know, I’m here for you, whether it be tech or exercise. I’ll try and help you out.

James: Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, there’s some big tips there. And I appreciate you sharing, because I’ve even got people in my own family doing this exact transition from physical studio to online business on 10XPRO. There’s some big gold nuggets. It’s great to see you having success. And clearly, this is a winner for you. It’s going to scale too, now. I think you’ve got some things that you can do to make that business fantastic. And I appreciate you coming and generously sharing.

And also, just from my own observation, having seen a lot of people sort of interact with me and then go off and do things, you had a pretty rapid turnaround. You’re a great implementer. I’m sure that’s your training background, and that fitness discipline is definitely serving you well in business, and it’s a recurring theme that I’ve seen.

Dahlas: Thanks. Well, when you have a system like 10XPRO, it did make it very easy. And I don’t know if that is a bit of the competitive fitness background, but just how John takes you through the step-by-step process, no matter what you want to do, whether it be an automated webinar, it’s like a template. It’s set up there, and it’s really just filling in the gaps with your own content and being creative with it, too. So it’s fun. It’s fun. It’s not scary. It’s actually fun, and I think if people view it from that perspective, there’s a lot of opportunity.

James: Fantastic. Well, thank you, Dahlas. So check out Dahlas over at BodyFabulous.com.au. If you are pregnant, going to be pregnant, you’ve just had a baby, or you know someone – and there’s got to be plenty of people on that list – send them over to the website and let them know you heard this episode at SuperFastBusiness, episode number 731.

Thanks so much for listening. We’ll be back on a future show.

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