Over the last two years or so my retention at RISE has been the best it’s ever been.
It’s always been better than industry average but how long people stay for now and few people leave each month is even better than it used to be.
The programme has sold out every month for over a decade now.
But the spaces that do come up each month are much easier to fill and the waiting list often gets longer.
But I’ll be lying if I said that people don’t stop with us each month (ignore any facility that claims that “no one ever leaves” – they are either clueless or lying to you or both).
And I have ongoing conversations with people who have expressed an interest (more and more through messages as people’s interest in getting on the phone has dropped).
Some of these people do start (or join the waiting list)……..
And some don’t.
And over approaching 24 years I must have had thousands of these kind of conversations with people considering starting something like this.
And for those that don’t, it’s very rare that they actually say that they’re not interested or don’t want to do it.
It’s very rare that I get an actual “No”.
It’s nearly always what you can call a “stall”.
Kind of a “I want do it but now’s not a good time because…….”
And those “becauses” are nearly always time and / or money.
And I get that.
We all have finite budgets that we need to plan around.
And only so many hours in the week.
But whilst we will tell ourselves our reason(s) for doing something (or not)……….
That isn’t always the entirety of the story.
And I very much see it as my job to help people question their reasons for doing things (or not).
They might end up back at the same answer (and that’s cool if they do)………
But often better questions can help us get answers that serve us better.
I actually reckon, in a fairly high proportion of cases, people’s reasons not doing something like this are……..
Effort and uncertainty.
If I could click my fingers and, by magic, you would instantly have the body, health, fitness, energy, etc that you wanted………
Zero time and effort required………..
I’m pretty confident that many of the people who had told me before that they “couldn’t afford it”………
Would suddenly be able to.
I actually reckon I could charge at least 10 times more.
Or if it turned out that an extra three hours a week of watching Netflix (feel free to replace this with any other easy activity that you enjoy) got us the results we wanted………
But they were putting their prices up hugely………
I reckon most people would pay that bill.
It’s the having to go and do something……….
And its our uncertainty as to whether or not it will work, that’s the issue.
I know, from countless conversations, that people trust me and the process we have at RISE………
They just don’t trust themselves to actually follow it.
To do the Sessions.
To make the changes to their eating.
They’ve tried kind of similar things in the past and, for various reasons, not done it enough to get the results that they wanted.
Ultimately, our reason for not doing something like this usually boils down to a concern that we might regret doing it.
I can’t think of many decisions that we wouldn’t make if we had zero concern that it would work out anything less than perfectly.
——- That’s why I literally guarantee that someone will love the first four weeks with us and be super glad they fid it – do the 4 weeks, regret it it hasn’t cost you a penny, so it’s risk free –> www.myrise.co.uk/apply ——
And, from my experience (lots), the biggest thing that will minimise our chance of regretting doing something like this………
Is challenging that ‘all or nothing’ mindset.
The one that means we don’t come in for weeks or months and end because we missed a few sessions.
The one that causes to overconsume more because we overconsumed once.
Who won that tells us that there’s “no point” doing one workout this week and we might as well “leave it till next week”………
When all the research shows that it’s the first workout that’s the most effective………
And that doing one workout this week will make three next week way more likely than zero would.
‘All or nothing’ isn’t something that we fundamentally “are”.
We’re not born with a condition.
If it was it would apply to all areas.
We’d not leave work for a week and then not go in for months.
We’d do all of the kids pickups and drop offs or none of them at all.
It’s just a justification that we’ve learned to use.
Been taught to use by society and experience.
Challenging it and making fresh decisions, unaffected by previous decisions is key.
The key to not regretting doing something like this is to do what we can………
Not beat ourselves up over what we can’t and make it mean something it doesn’t have to……..
And make more forward progress than we were without.
Much love,
Jon ‘Je ne regrette rien’ Hall
