Little Gym, Big Heart with Devin Gage
Sep 24, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
Summers in the Fitness Industry are notoriously tough. But in 2026, our companies GREW by a large margin, and maintained a 96% retention rate all summer long. In this video, our COO Jeff Schumacher…
Devin GageHost
Jeff SchumacherGuest
So the month of May, what we did was we had all the locations do retention calls.
And this is something we've used in the past, again, more as a reactive measure.
And so what our managers did is they called 100%, either called them or they did this in person at the gym, but it had to be an actual one-on-one conversation with a member.
What we did was we asked them, what do you have going on this summer? What's going to get in your way of getting to the gym? What's going to get in your way of hitting a goal? Setting a goal and coming up with strategies to play defense and set a plan for them to stay engaged at the gym.
where we fell off the year before was we just took every request for a suspension and I'm doing this and I'm doing this.
I'm going to Disney World for a week, so please cancel my membership for the entire month.
That was what we did, right? So this year was you're going away for a week, awesome.
The week before and the week after, we're just gonna increase you to three times.
And we were able to provide support to keep people in the gym, which if someone is gone for a week, two weeks, the likelihood that they even come back the next week is not high.
The two week vacation, we see it takes four weeks for someone to come back in the gym if they do.
Gage strength training is kind of like our testing ground for a lot of the stuff that we roll to engage.
So last summer, We rolled this out with the retention calls and we had an amazing retention summer at Gage, but we didn't do it with all the Engage gyms because we wanted to test it first.
And just so for context into this, here's the reason that these calls are so powerful.
So the month of May, what we did was we had all the locations do retention calls.
And this is something we've used in the past, again, more as a reactive measure.
And so what our managers did is they called 100%, either called them or they did this in person at the gym, but it had to be an actual one-on-one conversation with a member.
What we did was we asked them, what do you have going on this summer? What's going to get in your way of getting to the gym? What's going to get in your way of hitting a goal? Setting a goal and coming up with strategies to play defense and set a plan for them to stay engaged at the gym.
where we fell off the year before was we just took every request for a suspension and I'm doing this and I'm doing this.
I'm going to Disney World for a week, so please cancel my membership for the entire month.
That was what we did, right? So this year was you're going away for a week, awesome.
The week before and the week after, we're just gonna increase you to three times.
And we were able to provide support to keep people in the gym, which if someone is gone for a week, two weeks, the likelihood that they even come back the next week is not high.
The two week vacation, we see it takes four weeks for someone to come back in the gym if they do.
Gage strength training is kind of like our testing ground for a lot of the stuff that we roll to engage.
So last summer, We rolled this out with the retention calls and we had an amazing retention summer at Gage, but we didn't do it with all the Engage gyms because we wanted to test it first.
And just so for context into this, here's the reason that these calls are so powerful.
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