Today, an episode partially inspired by this article, titled “The Tyranny of Convenience.” Mago and Evan detail a few different ways seeking convenience can lead us astray, both in general and specifically in studio businesses. Our lives are often miracles of convenience, it can be refreshing and even crucial to add a little inconvenience to your life. As Mago says, “There’s a word for all those inconvenient things we do. We call them hobbies, or passions.”
Each host has their own recent examples of taking the path less-paved. Mago spent a weekend camping, wondering to himself, why is it we like leaving our comfy beds to walk around in the woods and sleep on the ground? Evan talks about a friend who refused to ever load his bike onto his car; driving to a ride was anathema, even if it meant plowing through an hour of traffic and stoplights before getting to the trail.
Convenience is seductive, for our business and for ourselves. In everyday life, the idea that we can make our life more convenient, more efficient, speaks to our inner accountant, always measuring off the seconds and trying to squeeze a few more out of each day. And convenience is often a synonym for “easy,” another adjective we’re often directed towards. But an easy day doesn’t necessarily mean a worthwhile one.
“There’s a word for all those inconvenient things we do. We call them hobbies, or passions.”
This is true in studio businesses as well. Mago introduces the concept of “diffusion of innovation,” which simply says it’s hard to get your idea out to some people. Any idea you’re floating out to the market (e.g. “Open house and intro classes this Saturday”) will hit the early adopters first. These are the folks who had a Blackberry, who try the seasonal plum ice cream flavor, whose facebook login ends .edu. But the best estimates are that these people make up only about 14% of a given market. It’s the majority you want to reach, that’s where your idea can really find fertile ground and grow. You’ve got to get past the early adopters.
And this is where following the convenient path can, ironically, make our life more difficult. Especially in a studio business, there’s an irreducible amount of inconvenience when enrolling a new student or client. They need to learn about your program, sign up for some kind of trial, come do the trial, and finally enroll. There’s no getting around these steps (okay maybe in some cases they don’t need a trial because they’re crazy psyched or something, but you get the point). Certain tools of convenience like online enrollments or automatic email marketing services don’t make the process easier, they shift the difficulty from the studio to the prospect. Online enrollments are much easier for you or your front desk staff, but harder for the prospect.
These kinds of services promise a more streamlined, efficient, easy business day, but so many of them don’t work for your business. And when your online enrollment process confuses and frustrates the father of three trying to sign his kids up for hip-hop classes, you’ve just lost three new students. In a case like this, working harder up front and making your life more inconvenient will yield much bigger dividends later.
Listen below to the episode to hear about the “inconvenient” email our clients sent out that, in three cases it: 1) Got five prospects signed up for a trial in less than an hour, 2) Generated 120 responses in one day, and 3) Caused one client to say they’re never sending the email again because their front desk staff couldn’t handle the response.