76: How to boost retention by helping your clients build habits that stick

The Business of Fitness Podcast

This is part two of a conversation between Tim Karajas and Dan on the Extension Fitness podcast.

Tim and Dan we explore how to improve retention by helping our clients and members build long-term exercise habits within your business. They talk about practical strategies and mindset shifts you can use to turn your customers into life-time exercisers.

We work so hard to increase retention rates in our business, but if you’re not building habits in your clients, you’re fighting a losing battle against human psychology. Today, Dan explores how to win that fight.

5 things you’ll learn in this episode

• Why making exercise laughably easy at the start is essential for building lasting habits.

• How identity-based motivation increases adherence to exercise and turns actions into lifelong behaviours.

• Why loss aversion is a powerful psychological driver—and how to use it to help clients stay consistent.

• How to apply the minimum effective dose to avoid burnout and ensure sustainability over decades.

• What mindset traits, like growth mindset and life-structure alignment, are common in people who succeed with long-term exercise.

Your action steps:

1. Help clients design a starting exercise habit that feels so easy it's impossible to fail.

2. Ask clients to picture their worst possible week and build habits they can still stick to even then.

3. Reinforce identity-based language by helping clients move from “I exercise” to “I am an exerciser.”

4. Use loss aversion by tracking progress and helping clients see what they risk losing by stopping.

5. Check for alignment between a client’s stated values and their calendar—then help them close the gap.