The Menu Keeps Growing. The Experience Doesn’t.

I feel like every conversation in fitness and wellness is about what we’re adding next.

Red light. Peptides. Float tanks. Saunas. Cold plunges. Pilates. This class modality, that class modality. Another service, another room, another thing to put on the website.

I understand the pressure. There’s competition everywhere. Somebody down the street just opened with something we don’t have, and now we’re wondering whether we need it too.

But I think we’re getting way too comfortable adding things we haven’t figured out how to do well.

You walk into a club and ask what the red light is supposed to help with. The person showing it to you can tell you how to turn it on, but that’s about it. They can’t explain why you’d use it, what to expect or who can answer your questions.

Then you take a class advertised as Pilates and wonder what makes it Pilates. Maybe it’s a good workout. But the description promised one thing, the class delivered something else, and nobody can really explain the difference.

We’ve added the offering. We haven’t done enough work behind it.

And the member is finding that out after they’ve paid.

Adding something is easier to talk about than getting better.

A new service gives us something to announce. We can take pictures, send an email, run a promotion and give the sales team another reason for someone to join.

Getting more consistent with the service we already have is less exciting.

That might mean observing classes, giving an instructor difficult feedback or spending a month fixing how we introduce new members to the club. It might mean admitting that something we’ve been selling for a year still isn’t very good.

There’s no big reveal for that work. But members feel it.

If the classes are inconsistent, adding recovery doesn’t fix the classes. If the team can’t explain the memberships we already sell, adding another tier gives them more to struggle with.

Sometimes we need something new. Other times we’re looking for something new because we haven’t dealt with what’s already there.

A new offering gives us something to sell before we’ve fixed what people already bought.

That’s where I think we need to be honest with ourselves.

The equipment is only part of the offering.

Go back to the person who can’t explain red light.

I wouldn’t immediately assume we have a bad employee. I’d want to know what we gave them before we started selling it.

Did we train them beyond how to operate the equipment? Do they know what they can accurately say about it and what questions need to go to someone qualified? Have we given them clear instructions for getting a member started?

Or did the equipment arrive, somebody show them the power button, and we start taking appointments?

The same question applies to programming.

Putting Pilates on the schedule creates an expectation. If we’re offering a strength class inspired by Pilates, we should be able to say that clearly. We should know what we’re teaching, why we’re teaching it and what qualifications we expect from the person leading it.

A member shouldn’t have to work out what we meant by the name halfway through the class.

I’m less interested in arguing over labels than I am in whether we can deliver what we’re selling. If it’s a great strength workout, call it that and make it a great strength workout.

We make this harder when we choose the name because it’s popular and figure out the actual program afterward.

Every addition gives the team more to carry.

We usually budget for the equipment and the buildout. We’re less thorough about what happens once people start using it.

Someone needs to own the service. People need training. There are booking rules, cleaning requirements, maintenance, questions and problems to resolve.

Even something that doesn’t require a dedicated employee still requires somebody’s attention.

And that attention is coming from somewhere.

The manager who was supposed to be developing the coaching team is now coordinating another installation. The front desk is learning a new booking process while still struggling with the last one. The sales team has more benefits to explain but no clearer understanding of which membership is right for the person in front of them.

We can keep saying the existing team will handle it. At some point, we need to look at what they’re no longer handling well.

The space has a cost, too. A room can look great on a tour and sit empty most of the week. Before we call it a valuable amenity, I want to know whether members use it, whether it contributes to the business and what else we could have done with that space.

More offerings can support a higher price. They also have to support the cost and work of delivering them.

What do people actually come to us for?

I’d ask that before asking what we should add.

What do members tell their friends about? Which part of the experience would they be disappointed to lose? What do we do consistently well enough that they trust us with it?

Maybe it’s the coaching. Maybe it’s a particular program. Maybe we’ve built a full-service club where people can train, recover and get everything done in one visit.

That last one can absolutely work. I’ve helped build concepts with multiple offerings. I’m not arguing that every business should have one studio and one service.

But we need to understand how the pieces fit together for the member.

A good coach who remembers what someone is working on gives them a reason to come back. So does a class they can count on being good regardless of who’s teaching. Those things take ongoing work.

If that’s why people joined, we need to protect it as we grow.

The part of the business people joined for shouldn’t get worse while we’re building the next thing.

It’s worth asking existing members what they would improve before deciding what they’re missing. We may be planning another service when they’d much rather have a better schedule, more consistent coaching or equipment that gets repaired faster.

Before we add it, we should be able to explain it.

Who is this for?

“People are really into recovery right now” doesn’t tell me enough. Which of our members would use it? How often? Why would they get it from us?

Then I want to know who’s responsible for making it good.

Who sets the standard, trains the team and checks the experience after launch? If the answer is that everybody will help, we still need someone responsible for whether it works.

We also need to decide what we’ll stop doing, postpone or add resources for. We can’t keep giving the same people more work and assume nothing else will slip.

And we should agree on how we’ll judge the addition. Usage, revenue, member feedback, the cost to deliver it. Enough to know whether it’s doing what we expected.

There are good reasons to expand an offering. Members may be asking for something that fits naturally with what we already do. We may have the team and space to deliver it well. It may make the membership more useful and the business more profitable.

That’s worth pursuing.

But if we can’t explain the service, train the people or give someone responsibility for it, we’re not ready to sell it.

Otherwise we end up good at everything and great at nothing.

I’d rather walk into a club with six things the team understands and delivers well than fourteen things they’re still trying to figure out.

Before we add the next one, I’d spend some time being a member of the business we already have. Take the classes. Go through the booking process. Ask the questions a new person would ask.

We may find plenty to work on without adding anything.