LIFTS Episode 128 - One PhD. 5.5M Members | Retention Science That Could Change the Industry | with Dr. Paul Bedford

0:00Well I think traditionally operators have always looked at it as they are our members and we're going to ring fence them they belong to us and we're going to stop them going anywhere else. I think members nowadays are going actually I don't want one experience I want multiple experiences. And if we ran it parallel to something like restaurants, you don't go to one restaurant exclusively and not go anywhere else in your spare time.

0:37Matthew Januszek:Right, we're live. Welcome to this week's episode of Lifts. I'm Matthew Januzik, and I'm here with my co-host, Mohamed Iqbal, who for the first time I can remember for quite a long time, seems to be in his home studio. So, Mo, how are you doing today? Good. I am in my home studio. I feel like I've been on the road a lot, but some of it just happens to be when we're recording the episodes. But I'm traveling, but I'm trying to think where I was last week. Was I in London last week? I was in Dallas, actually. Yeah. I'm sorry. Thank you. Dallas on the way to Los Angeles. There you go. I know more than you now.

1:12Yeah, I was on the way to Los Angeles, and I was in London the week before that. And next week, you actually don't even know this yet, but I'm going to be in Minnesota.

1:23Matthew Januszek:Oh, very good. And then I'm going to see you in person for the Athletic Summit, which we are pretty excited about. We've got a really special event planned there. Matthew, how about you tell the audience about the event we've got planned? yeah well we're looking forward to being part of the athlotech event in new york it was a great event last year and then this year we're having we're doing something a little bit special where we're collaborating with the team at connected health and fitness and we're going to be doing a private dinner on the tuesday evening where we've got about 30 select guests that are going to be there for conversations podcasting and uh and a great steak dinner in uh what is it i'm i I can't remember the restaurant, but it's, what is it?

2:08Matthew Januszek:Was it like Prime Rib or something like, I always call it Prime Rib. I don't want to give up the name because we don't want people to just crash and - Okay, all right, there you go. It is a very exclusive dinner. For the first time, we've never paired, we've done the dinners before, but we've never kind of done the podcast live with three very special guests, industry leaders, with an audience of industry leaders. and then we're going to have a private Q &A that we're not going to record and we I'm excited for the honest and very transparent open conversations in addition we're going to be at the event as well we've got a very special guest on I think I think we've had this gentleman on at least two or three times he always throws in a number of curveballs so I'm I'll let you do I'll let you do the honors Mo and introduce our guest today today today's guest has spent more than three decades studying one of the most important questions in fitness.

3:01Why do people join gyms? Then why do they leave? He started on the gym floor as an instructor and a personal trainer, went on to become a fitness manager, then a GM, then built one of the deepest research bodies in the world around member retention. His work has analyzed the behavior of five and a half million customers across more than 4 ,500 clubs and facilities. He's delivered almost 200 international presentations in 31 countries. He's worked with more than 100 companies across four continents, including companies that I'm at. He's completed a PhD in behavioral science, focused especially in health club retention.

3:39The industry has called him the retention guru, which I still call him as well. We know him also as Dr. Paul Bedford. Dr. Paul, welcome to Lyfts. Thank you, Mo. Hi, Matt. We can't talk about retention typically the way that the industry talks about it. I've spoken about this a few times at some events early this year. Here's some examples. For years, retention was treated as a metric. We talked about things like how many members joined, how many members canceled, what the average length of stay was, what the attrition rate was. And in many markets, operators had some protection, right? These were in the terms of long-term contracts, a lot of friction around cancellation, low usage was still translated to recurring revenue.

4:27and a consumer who had fewer fitness options than they do today. But fast forward to 2026 and even looking forward to 2027, that world is changing very quickly. Today, the fitness consumer has choice like they've never had before. They can join a low-cost gym, a premium club, a boutique studio. They can do fitness at home. Then there's a wearable ecosystem. There are influencer-led programs. There's AI coach. There's recovery studios. There's one clubs. and even events like Car Rocks, which are coming up with their own training programs. So the competitive set is no longer just that gym across the street.

5:04It's really anything that can replace the actual habit of going to the gym. And that really matters because our industry is growing rapidly and it's also growing globally. Here are some examples. In the U.S. today, fitness facility membership reached more than 81 million people in 2025, with more than 100 million people using fitness facilities in some form. And usage was incredibly strong as well. And this is a crazy stat, which I found out from researching for this episode. We had nearly 7 billion visits recorded in the US in 2025. And the share of members not visiting at all falling down to an all-time low of just 4.6%.

5:48And that is very different than 10 years ago. In Europe, the market continues to grow as well, reaching more than 75 million members and close to 40 billion euros in revenue. And yet, when we zoom out globally, the public health challenge is still enormous. We talk about the World Health Organization estimating that 31 % of adults and 80 % of adolescents do not meet the minimum standards of physical activity. So we have two large things happening at once. On one hand, the fitness industry is growing. But the need for fitness, health, movement, and behavior change is still much larger than the industry itself.

6:25And I think that creates a huge opportunity for us. But it also creates a much harder retention challenge. And that's because the modern consumer has more options. They have more information, more flexibility, and more ways to leave. They expect things like convenience and personalization, digital support, transparency in pricing. They expect flexibility. and increasingly they expect to be able to cancel as easy as it was for them to sign up. So if you operate a gym or studio today, whether you are a Planet Fitness, a Basic Fit, a Good Life, a Crunch, or a local boutique studio, retention might be one of the most important problems in the business.

7:04It's no longer enough just to sell a membership. You have to earn the next visit. You have to earn the next week. You've got to earn the next month. And ultimately, and I talk about this a lot, you've got to become a part of someone's life. And that's why I'm really excited for today's conversation because our guest today has literally spent decades studying why members stay, why they leave, and what operators often misunderstood about retention.

7:30Matthew Januszek:Very excited to have you back on. We've spoke a lot, Paul, and I was digging as I was preparing for this exercise, I was digging and you've been blogging quite a lot recently. And I found some of your, well, one of your blog posts that you did a couple of months ago, and it was referring to this, I think it's a book actually from the exercise sociologist, Mary McElroy. And her argument is something that the industry doesn't seem to have wanted to pay too much attention to. And it says that inactivity isn't apathy, it's resistance. And in your post, you refer to this self-protective response to environments that make people feel exposed or judged or like they don't belong.

8:15Matthew Januszek:And it references that mirrors aren't motivation for someone that's already self-conscious. They feel like they're surveillance. And that the fitness culture has spent decades moralizing exercise, trying to characterize it when someone stops coming. they don't just feel unfit, they feel as though they've morally failed in some way. And some of your data shows that members are avoiding things like the front desk after a gap, walking back in saying they've been bad or there's some kind of shame as opposed to a motivation problem. And then when they cancel, they lie about why they're canceling because the real reason is uncomfortable to say, which means that operators seem to be building retention strategies on data that doesn't necessarily reflect what you think is the actual reality.

9:06Matthew Januszek:So the question to you, Paul, is you've spent 20 years telling the industry that when members leave, it's not necessarily the members' fault. In some cases, there's a big impact that the operators have on this. So I wanted to ask you, do you think they're listening yet based on what Mo said? you know it does seem to be getting better but are the operators actually in the business of building fitness habits or do you think they're still selling memberships and causing churn some kind of personal failure of the of their clients okay so i think to answer this you know there's multiple parts to that but i think if you the industry's certainly growing um we're opening more clubs i do believe we're getting more members but one of the things that i think the industry is misinterpreting is they're counting memberships as members and so they're into if you've got i think in your introduction mo i think you said there was like 80 million memberships now or 80 million members now i already know three or four people that i speak on a regular basis who have three or four health club memberships.

10:22And if you ask the operators directly, you know, how many members have you got? Club one says I've got 1 ,000. Club two says I've got 1 ,000. So does three and four. But that one person could be members of four clubs and get counted four times. And if someone joins and leaves within a year between, you know, when you're surveying them, you could get counted twice because you were in one club and now you're in another. So I do think there's a little bit of not deliberate misrepresentation. I definitely don't think it's that. But I do think it's how we're counting check-ins and how we're counting members.

11:05I've just got this thing of I'm thinking some of that's memberships and it's not members. so i'm just curious how should operators think about retention in that case when the membership journey is really so frag frag because you're today and i've got a couple examples here right even if you look at apps most fitness if you're into fitness and you belong to the gym you have about 3.5 apps yeah that you're using yeah they might belong to low cost them they might be taking a Pilates studio as well. They may use this digital platform. They may be doing a Hirox. And right to your point, attending a sauna studio somewhere else.

11:47But how should we be thinking about retention? Because I think what you're saying is, are you one capturing all the value of that member or are you allowing them to go and have that experience somewhere else? Well, I think traditionally, operators have always looked at it as they are our members and we're going to ring fence them. They belong to us and we're going to stop them going anywhere else. I think members nowadays are going, actually, I don't want one experience. I want multiple experiences. And if we run it parallel to something like restaurants, you don't go to one restaurant exclusively and not go anywhere else in your spare time.

12:33You might have your favourite restaurant that you go to when it's a special occasion or on a regular basis. Then you might have somewhere else you go for something else because they do a different type of cuisine. And I think we're seeing much more of the consumer treating fitness like they would restaurant behaviour. and so I think the operator's role is to rather than saying we need them coming three times a week four times a week and fulfilling all their experiences here is it's thinking along the lines of if they're coming one or two times a week here and they sustain that behavior we should celebrate that and we should be focusing on how many weeks and months of membership we're generating rather than the visits per week just as a count of what's going on.

13:26I use my niece as an example, you know, case study of one. She has a membership at a low cost, high volume operation. She does hot yoga regularly, on a regular basis, but not every week. She's part of a run club and she doesn't see that as abnormal. normal that's just part of her fitness suite of activities so I think operators are going to really have to start thinking about we don't own the whole member experience and I know the big boxes are trying to do that and that's why they adopted a lot of the boutique approaches sort of post-pandemic and a lot of them are signing up to things like high rocks like you mentioned in the introduction to get people in or to keep them there.

14:15But I think the days of one member, one membership are coming to an end. And your role is now going to be, I need them to use my facility for as long as possible. So retaining them, but don't expect exclusivity from that member so then should the focus i guess otherwise said be to say identify the thing that you do well knowing why you remember it's a part of that gym and really yeah key in on that because you know that in the example of your niece she's going to go back to that facility whether it's that look hvop provider the boutique studio the run club over and over and over again as long as you don't change that and i think and i know that there's a rory sutherland the guy from ogle v who does a lot of really clever stuff on marketing you know he's always talking about doubling down on the thing that your competitor can't do do more of what they can't do that you can do really really well and I do think that's an approach I do think that's the approach we'll look at and it's you know from my side of things it's trying to measure retention is going to become even more difficult over time if you're talking about the individual and tracking everything that the individual does because one club won't be able to track all of that.

15:35Because like you said, they'll be doing alternative activities or other preferred activities with other suppliers.

15:41Matthew Januszek:So going back to this question then, Paul, about the post that you make in terms of the psychology of the member, feeling judged, feeling self-conscious. So if we sort of dovetail that into the previous comment, okay, we've got to figure out how we measure retention because people are using many different locations. That's one part. But what about when they do come in and how they feel about that experience? Like what would you do to comment on that point? So I'd start with, I think, if you're talking about new exercises and, you know, we have to, a lot of the way the industry markets is sort of markets to activity in terms of come and do this class, come and use the gym.

16:29But once they're in, I think we should be segmenting on behavior, how many times they're visiting, how long they're visiting for. So there's a different because they sort of after a while, they blend into more than one activity. But I think the. What's the best way of putting this? It's anxiety management with new exercises, but it's also anxiety management with experienced exercises in new environments. so I'll give an example I um my daughter trains she's a martial artist she trains at a Muay Thai gym and I take her training on frequently frequently I was sitting watching her train one night standing next to one of the other parents and we got chatting and she said she represented the UK in taekwondo at the Olympics and I was like wow I said how come you're not in there she goes oh no no no that's far too intimidating and I'm like you're an Olympian and you're anxious about going into that room because it's a different style of combat sport and so she goes in there almost as a beginner again and I think we underestimate the anxiety that drives behavior negatively in terms of if I come into an environment and I feel out of place.

17:55I don't feel like I look like everybody else. I don't feel like I've been accepted yet. Why would I stay? You know, I might as well sit at home with a packet of chips and be comfortable in my discomfort rather than go there and, you know, highlight all of that. So I think for new exercises, it's about that early stages of onboarding. It's the early creating or reducing anxiety keeping things really simple for people so they become successful really quickly um and that will help build the idea of an exercise identity i'm the type of person that does go to the gym to a studio to a class and works out because certainly when people first start they don't have that identity now all three of us have that identity no matter where we are in the world, even if on days we're not training.

18:52But we've built that over time. And it's taken us, you know, if you think back to when you very first started exercising, we had to be resilient in environments we weren't necessarily comfortable in. Yeah, that's a good point. And I wonder, you know, this goes back to, I talk a lot about the idea of having that brand be an identity or creating a lifestyle. I'll give you a couple of examples. I've had the good fortune of working with what I would call more premium brands, especially here in the US, very early with SoulCycle. And I got to see how they were able to leverage the hero instructor, the scarcity of classes, as they were scaling up, you could not get in the premiumization of it and just little things as it relates to even how the studio is set up, having the small hallways, bumping into each other, the creation of community and all of those things.

19:50At the same time, looking at brands like Equinox, you know, really the idea there behind what we've got to do was to make that your entire lifestyle, make that a part of your identity. But fast forward 10 years later, and I think identity is very personal. And in some ways, so you've seen brands that are outside the gym, such as High Rocks, become that identity. You've seen wearable companies like an Aura will become that identity. You might even see a digital company like a Peloton become that identity. Do you think, you know, if you're a gym, that how important does identity play into retention overall?

20:33Because for HLP brands, it's obviously something that's hard to create. No one's going to say identify with Planet Fitness, but they might identify with David Lloyd's. They might identify with lifetime i think that the premium segment has an identity component to it yeah and i think some of that identity with some of the premiums also status it's like i'm an equinox member or i'm a david lloyd member i'm you know i'm a member of a midtown athletic the identity part for me initially is all about the management of anxiety and improvement in terms of confidence and competence, their ability to exercise independently if required, and perform the exercises like in a way that they feel comfortable doing.

21:18The challenge with the low cost operators, whatever we refer to them as, is that then becomes the identity is generated by the other members. So if I go back to my niece and I said, you know, she's a member of a low cost, she's a member of a run club the run club are all members of the low cost but it's nothing to do with the low cost she's also a member of their social club which is nothing to do with the business is organized by one of the members and so people will form communities and create these identities they align with independently of an operator if there's someone there to facilitate it So you don't need, so, but the independent, the low cost operators are at the mercy of whatever the culture is within the club.

22:17Whereas someone like an Equinox, they're creating the culture, they're helping create the identity. In fact, their marketing pushes the identity of, you know, I'm more affluent, I'm health conscious, and I'm not like everybody else. How would you see that?

22:38Matthew Januszek:Paul, just to jump in there for a second. Like, I think you make an interesting point. And certainly many of the, a lot of US brands I've seen, I could see how that works. One of the interesting things I would like your view, if you look at the UK, there's two kind of low-cost brands. You've got Pure Gym and Gym Group, and then also now you have people like Everlast, JD Gym, that kind of fit into a similar category. Now, I would say that there'd be a very different identity for me. Like, I would see my mom and dad probably going to a Pure Gym and Gym Group, where I'd probably see a much younger person going into a different one, purely because of how the brand has positioned itself.

23:18Matthew Januszek:So how does that play in? Does that override what you've just said in any way? No, I don't think so. And I think depending on where, I think it's still locationally biased. So, you know, where I am, all four of those brands, only three of them exist in where I live. But if all four of them did, I think they would still generally attract a lower age group market. because the alternative for someone like your parents' age or someone of my age, I do train in those types of clubs, but I use them as a utility. It's a place to go train and leave. I'm not thinking of hanging about. It's convenient. It's got a lot of equipment.

24:00It also happens to be near somewhere I visit frequently, so I can pop in and have a workout. whereas the sort of the more mid-market are much more likely to start to generate this sense of I'm part of something because it becomes a destination rather than just a utility as a product.

24:35Matthew Januszek:AI-powered training programming, and corporate wellness via WellPass, eGym is leading the way in smart fitness. Visit eGym.com to learn more.

24:47I'm sure we could spend an entire episode on this next question I have for you here, but because your work spans with operators really around the world, how do you view, I guess I'll take one step back, when you've seen international brands, not that experience having Equinox go to the UK, or SoulCycle go into Canada and then the UK. Pure Jim will recently acquire Blink and come to the US. They don't find the success that they have in their domestic market. You're seeing brands like BasicFit go internationally, pick up a different modality like they did in Germany to go into franchising. You're seeing brands like Jim Nation do a tremendous job in the Gulf region.

25:30And I think the strategies really, one, consumers are very different and fickle around the world in their own way. The strategy needs to be very, very different. I guess the first part of the question is, what do you see differently around the world? And maybe you could break it down by markets at US, Europe, the Middle East. And then how should operators be thinking about these markets? So let me work backwards. How do I think they should be thinking about them? I think it's, and I can't remember the exact term, it's driving me mad, but it's like nationally representative, locally relevant. So it's modifying your product to match the environment you're working in.

26:17You know, I travel, like you said, I travel all over the world. I see Starbucks all over the world. I don't see the same products in Starbucks all over the world. There might be some core products, but you go to some countries and there's a much greater emphasis on the food rather than the beverage or the types of beverages that are available. You know, you go to some of the one of the ones that I was aware of when I was in the Middle East recently was the home brand from its home country would often have, I'm going to call them carpet tiles. That might sound a little bit old fashioned, but it's a carpet type flooring throughout the gym.

26:59Every locally developed brand had hard tiling. And everywhere you go, it's hard tiling because that makes sense in that environment. But I think, you know, the the operator coming in when this is what we do in our home country, we're going to drop that in. And it just didn't work. even down to how people use showers. I was in Norway last week and I was in a gym that has no staff. It's fully unmanned. Like if you can be fully unmanned, it's like no staff. They have some personal trainers work there, but there's no staff. Culture in Norway is when you arrive, you take off your outdoor shoes and you put on your workout shoes.

27:47and there were racks full of shoes of people who that's the normal thing to do whereas i think if a uk operator went into norway and didn't know that was the culture they wouldn't provide the things in the first place because they wouldn't think to do it because we don't do it in the uk you know so i think they have to be really mindful and i think having a local understanding of what's going on um can really really make a difference i think uh and i could be wrong with this when pure gym in the u.s converted the blink clubs into more of a pure model people are outraged by the entry pods because of the way they opened and closed it was weird for me i i was like what am i gonna get stuck in this thing yeah but here it's either that or like traditional turnstiles we're used to seeing that because they've always built them that way so our first impression is oh that's how they control excess you know there was even a joke at one point that in those pods they would weigh you to see to make sure that your weight was what you it was each time to prove that it was you not like using someone else's memory it wasn't it never did but you see it as creepy i see it as normal you know it's because i think it's where the brand originates from there can often be these you know we've seen a lot of u.s brands come to the uk as big operators and not be successful and i think it's because it's like and i don't and it's not just with the us brands if you were solid core who's now coming they've announced that they're coming to the uk I don't know how familiar you are with SolidCore, but if you were talking to them, what are some words of advice you would give to them?

29:41They need to make sure they've got a really good UK marketing team that can interpret their traditional marketing into what's acceptable here. And also have a really strong operations person who understands the UK market. So what I refer to as COI, different businesses call them different things. but someone who really understands how to operate a business in the UK and then look at the solid core model and go, OK, that might work in the US. We'll try it here, but don't stay wedded to it. I think what I've seen in the past over the years is people wedded to their original concept and not prepared to modify it regionally.