[Webinar] Implement metabolic performance testing into a profitable service

0:00  that. Welcome everybody again to this webinar about how to use metabolic testing as a profitable service. Let me show you what we are going to talk about today, what to expect. So I want to address a little bit the whole workflow from booking an appointment to the end of the client visit. I will start a little bit with some marketing and messaging for that and address some of the most important points here that help you get people over the line in terms of booking an appointment reaching out. I will talk about equipment, what is needed and the cost of it

0:53  will be a little bit more. I will talk about testing protocol briefly and give you a timeline of an appointment. So what I am trying to do here is really paint you a picture of how the whole process will look like, especially from a client point of view and that should enable you to understand how this will look like for you as well. And I will also talk about some tips and tricks, tips, especially about upselling strategies, how to, you know, have people coming back for retesting,

1:32  so customer retention, and also how testing can act as a gatekeeper or the starter to get people into ongoing coaching and training support. And with that, going to run some example numbers of the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other, you know, the other,

2:19  a better set of questions afterwards. So, getting straight into it, the whole process of this testing and making testing profitable starts, this is a marketing. And what I mean with that is primarily is a communication, how to communicate, and especially who to communicate to. And I have here four ICPs, so ideal customer profiles, or four cohorts of athletes, of clients you might be catering to. This is endurance coach athletes, so athletes who are interested in getting coached. Then you have athletes who are in endurance sports, like running, cycling, same thing, but who are maybe not interested in getting day-to-day full coach support.

3:12  Then we do see an increasing interest of the, in the space of preventive healthcare, longevity, general fitness improvements. And there's also an increasing demand in hybrid athletes, so CrossFit and especially higher-ups. And if you are currently only trying to cater to endurance coach athletes, you might want to consider the other cohorts as well, because again, there is a huge pickup and a growing interest in that space. And what you want to do is, that's the bottom line here, for every of those ICPs, for every of those cohorts and potential customers, you want to have your own landing page and your own communication.

3:59  And I'm going through this a little bit. Okay. Now, when it comes to communication, there's a common mistake that you will find a lot out there. And there's no offense to anybody here who does that. On the left-hand side, you see in the red box how testing is often communicated. It's often communicated more from a technical perspective and more from a perspective how you as an expert would maybe describe the testing. So you might describe more in detail, you know, how the testing is done and how your testing differs in terms of, you know, you maybe have better, longer step durations, or you maybe have a metabolic card and others don't, or which kind of metrics you will provide.

4:51  And all these details. This is having your testing protocol in mind. However, what is more successful in marketing is the green side here, having your customers in mind. And that means when you describe the testing, don't describe it as how the testing looks like, or, you know, what kind of metrics people will get, but describe what the outcome is. What is the actual benefit? That's maybe the most important word. What's the actual benefit for your client, for your customer? And that would be, for example, on top of my list here, identify what limits the performance so that you can make, or the client can make an informed decision on how to break performance limits, how to improve performance, right?

5:41  Another one would be training zones based on their own physiology. That resonates with people quite a lot. Depending on who you talk to, you can, of course, also as a trustee. Building topic. And then, especially endurance coach athletes. If you're testing. Then, especially endurance coach athletes. And again, this is some examples. I will go more in detail now for the different ICPs, for the different at the types of client cohorts. Fueling strategies is something very important that resonates very well. And then, of course, you can list some of the most popular markers, like a FEDMAX, for example, or VO2MAX, which is maybe more popular than an RCP or something.

6:26  But really, you want to focus on the benefits. So that is high level. Let me explain more in detail. For example, if you look at endurance coached athletes. So endurance athletes, which are coached, right? Again, one of the most important and most compelling statements you can make how to advertise your testing is to say, identify what limits the athlete to reach their goals. And we're going to come back to that. The next one would be tracking progress. And then you want maybe to give a little bit more background in why physiological testing is better or basically is better for driving training decisions and just looking at critical power, critical speed, which is just the outcome of whatever the underlying physiology is.

7:19  Again, fueling, if you have triathlon running and also cycling in mind, fueling is a hot topic you should definitely address in your marketing. Designing specific efforts and zones, for example, using the training zone builder is something that also resonates very good. And then to explain that, and I'm going to come back to that, that regular testing can help breaking performance plateaus. The self-coached endurance athlete is similar, of course, because we assume the same kind of sports or the same kind of needs. But here you should focus on the consultancy.

8:03  A self-coached athlete is primarily interested in being able to get more information to coach themselves. And that is often the expectation. The expectation, often, you might have come across this as well in your practice, that people come to the test and say, hey, just give me the data and then I know what to do with that. And that is important that you don't dismiss that statement, even though it might change after the test. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

8:34  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

8:46  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

8:58  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

9:11  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

9:23  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that.

9:35  And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. And I'm going to come back to that. So for the hybrid athletes, you might need to do a little bit more education as well,

9:53  compared to the endurance athletes. You will likely get them with metrics like VO2max as well. You also, similar to the longevity athletes, want to focus on Fatmax and explain that this is helping with lower body fat as those cohort is aware of their body. And, you know, maybe also interested in better look, so to speak, and not only in performance. But you might need to explain, which is the top bullet point here. You might need to explain a little bit, especially for the hierarchs athlete, why testing and running

10:30  is so important. And that's a very fast thing you can explain because the majority of the time in hierarchs is spend running. So you can easily explain that, hey, you know, the biggest contributor of your hierarchs performance is running, so let's test the running. And then, of course, you can add other testing modalities like a rowing machine or a skiing agometer, if you have some possibilities. But it would start with running. And most people that we work with that do test hierarchs athletes primarily focus on running

11:05  and have great results with that. Then, once you have convinced people, it is really advisable if you give people the ability to book straight on your website. There are certain tools you can use with that, like Calendly, for example, to make appointments. There are tools like Stripe where you can, or some kind of web shop technology where you can have people book directly and pay directly. Okay. So what you want with that is you want marked here 01, you want to reduce friction, right? That is very important.

11:42  And, of course, the overhead for you from an administrative point of view. Now, the blocker, and what you need to do is you need to create trust. Okay. Basically, what you're asking people to do is they come think about it from a, always think about it from the client perspective. They come to your website and maybe found you on Google or something or buy an advertisement. And you basically ask them, hey, Stripe your credit card here, pay me whatever, $200 upfront, and then you can come to my facility.

12:11  That's a big ask. In order to do that, you want to show on your website as many trust building information as possible. So your name, photos about you, about your team, who you work with, but also legal information. Like I've seen a lot of remote coaching businesses that don't have their street address, for example. That is not trust building, and that will make it more unlikely that people will book with you. So that's very important. So one thing I didn't put in here, but what I did in my first human performance lab that I had, we made a video, you can still find it on YouTube, three minute video about the experience, what people expect.

12:58  So it was basically, this video started with somebody entering the door for performance testing. And then it showed the test on a high level. There was some testimonials, so the guy, you know, talked about why he came and what is the outcome and motivation and so on. But, you know, you want to paint people a picture of what they get. Okay. And then you will need to, another way how to make people book with you, you want to lower the risk. So for example, offering payment masses like PayPal or something where people can ask their money back is a way to do that.

13:34  You can also collect down payments instead of a full amount. It's good for you. You have some people have some skin in the game. You have some kind of assurance or a little bit more assurance that people actually will show up. And it's not asking, you know, it's obviously reducing the risk on the client side that they don't need to pay everything up front. You want to show cancellation policies, refund policies and all that. And if you feel like that's not picking up and people don't book with you, another CTA could be, as you see in the bottom statement here.

14:06  You can make or offer people to book a short 10, 50 minutes pre-test consultancy. Something like, hey, you know, unsure if the testing is for you, you know, book a quick call to find out. That's something that can also work if you don't see pickup in the appointment booking. Then when you have people book the appointment, the common mistake is asking for too many informations. Right. Many people ask stuff like reasons why to test motivations, sent a whole list of what to bring and yada, yada, yada.

14:50  The more complicated you make it for people to book, the less likely people are going to book. You can capture that information afterwards. OK, so all these tools like Calendee allow you to send reminders and follow up emails automatically. And there you can ask for that information. OK, what you want is you want to have name, email, phone number. You want to understand maybe, maybe, you know, what kind of sports exercise in. You maybe want to have on the right hand side, he has clearance consent. However, that could also be striked through and crossed out.

15:28  You can do all this later. OK, so the less information upfront people need to enter, meaning the faster the booking process, the better. Then you can capture all this information in appointment reminders. OK, send people guidance, how to prepare and what to bring through reminders, appointment reminders. And again, the great thing these days about these booking tools like Calendee others is that you can have this all automated. Right. You can have this all automated, put in a list what to bring, how to behave and so on and so forth.

16:11  A trick or tip is or hint. Remind people that the testing is done for most people to better steer their training decisions. And therefore, the preparation for the test should mimic normal training situations. So what I'm trying to say is you will not get representative data when people, for example, have an unloading week with less training, two days rest, no coffee in the morning and so on and so forth. Then you might get slightly better data in terms of view to max or whatever. But it's not representative.

16:55  And therefore, you want to remind people to really use the patterns they normally have, whatever it is in terms of drinking coffee in the morning and so on and so forth. Okay. And I would put a checklist and all this stuff in the workbook. So you can then download all this information in the workbook, what to send and what to ask for. Talking about what you need in terms of inventory. I will come to equipment first, but I want to give you an overview of what you need for lactate testing.

17:26  So you need strips, the lactate strips, assuming you don't have a tabletop device, especially in the US, that's not very common. In Europe, there's the EKF machine, which costs about 10K. If you do a lot of tests, that's a good investment because the cost per strip go down here. You can see at the bottom you will need about 10 to 12 strips, which is about 20 to 25 bucks a year. Then you need lenses, gloves and so on and so forth. So the overhead in terms of initial investment is relatively low.

18:00  You know, you will likely stay below $200 ish for the initial investment to get the consumables. Then core equipment. Of course, you do need a lactate meter and lactate strips. And then whatever kind of test equipment in terms of treadmill ergometers. You don't need all that I show here. Of course, you just need some. Assuming you do indoor lab kind of testing. If you're doing outdoor testing, which works as well, then you don't need any of that. Right. And then you even save money on that. However, maybe you do already have a gym or some other kind of facility and you might already own a treadmill or a bike ergometer.

18:50  And then on the bottom right, you see skin fault caliper or bio impedance scale. You don't need both. You just need one of them. And then the first reaction is skin fault caliper. It's maybe difficult with some kind of clients for endurance athletes. It might be acceptable for longevity. Health. If you really want to touch your client at seven to 10 points on the body. I would recommend the bio impedance scale. I put in the workbook a specific model that came out as one of the most accurate ones in a scientific

19:33  meta analyzer, looking at validity of different models. We have deployed that smart scale, so to speak, to several federations and Olympic organizations, which also compared it to bot pot, air displacement, gold standard and DEXA scans gold standard. And it always came back with one and two percent difference only. So that's a model I can really recommend. Again, I will put this in the workbook so you have all the information. Same with the lactate meter. We made a meter analyzers on all validation studies, validity studies, accuracy studies on lactate meters.

20:11  There's two devices out there which have the best accuracy similar to lab tabletop machines. And I put this in the workbook as well. Then most important part here, let's talk about the appointment itself. Now appointment is booked. Do you know about the equipment and so on? How does it normally look like? So I start on the left here. Approximately half an hour, if you want to play it safe, if not, you can also do 10 minutes or 15 minutes. You want to check that you have everything in place.

20:51  You want to be ready before the client arrives. Check everything is in place. And then, you know, if the client comes 10 minutes early, you're ready and you don't get caught in surprise here. You can do, you know, between setting it up and client arrives, you can do emails or some other tasks which are easy to interrupt. Then maximum 10 minutes, zero to 10 here, welcome. And some contacts, some chatting, smart, small talk, so to speak, can be only five minutes. But in some cases, you want to reserve 10 minutes to get to know your client who just came in a little bit better.

21:31  Of course, everything I'm showing here is assuming it's the first visit of the client and not a recurring customer. Then approximately five minutes for your client to get changed. And then main part, obviously, 15 to 45 minutes, so 30 minute duration. It can be shorter. That's already the maximum time. I'm going to show the protocol in a bit. You will understand that's the maximum time. And you can see that I have test and listen. Okay, I'm going to come back with on that. Then approximately 10 minutes for the client to change, shower, whatever you have, your possibility you have in your facility.

22:15  And in the meantime, you are processing the data. That is a crucial, that is a crucial part of the whole process, that you are able to process the data and get a quick view on the results within five minutes. So that then afterwards, you have the better of half an hour or 45 minutes to call for consultation and next steps. Okay, so then. Here, we are looking at the testing protocol. We are looking at the testing protocol. The testing protocol is going to be a total of 20 to 30 minutes.

23:08  Five to 10 minutes warm up if you need that, especially in treadmill testing, formalization. And let me pause you for a second. You guys can still hear me. I have a note here that there has been some critical issues. Okay, sorry for the interruption. I have a, I'm very sorry, I have a note on my screen that I have been locked out. So that's kind of weird. Okay, cool. So protocol, 20 to 30 minutes, you start with a warm up, especially if you have people on the treadmill, you want to familiarize them with the treadmill, then I would really recommend 10 minutes.

24:08  Okay. And then the test itself is three submaximum steps, which you can organize as like a conventional incremental test. Three to five minutes for each step. That assumes three minutes. If you don't use a VO2 analyzer, then three minutes is enough. Then you don't need to wait for the VO2 to get up. So there are three minutes is enough. Then the third step should end. And again, I put this in the workbook with all details. The third step should end somewhere threshold a little bit higher, four or five millimeters of lactate.

24:49  High enough that you might want to do a second post-exercise lactate to see if it's increasing. And then an all out effort. And if you sum up the time, even this five minute recovery time to take lactate and so on, it's about 20 minutes pure test time. If you assume another, you know, five to 10 minutes to take the lactate post the all out, you end up somewhere between 25 to 30 minutes. What you get from that, you get the full KPIs VO2 max, VL max, fat max, MLSS, LT1, so on and so forth.

25:23  You get fat and carb combustion rates. You get lactate clearance and accumulation and something you could describe as a digital twin. I'm going to explain that a little bit shortly what I do mean with that. During the test, I said, we have the timelines as test and listen. What do I mean with that? That is a very important piece here of the whole process. Maybe not so much on the all out, obviously, but during the warm up and during the easier stages and in between when you take the lactate samples, you want to talk to your client and get context.

26:09  Okay. You maybe have that a little bit already from the initial five to 10 minutes welcome. And if somebody didn't book an appointment straight but had a 10 to 15 minutes consultation call, the other alternatives that I presented, then you already have some context. But the more context you have, the better. You might see that people are already asking questions about their training or nutrition or whatsoever doing that. Any questions that can be linked or the answer might depend on the test results. You don't want to answer in that moment.

26:48  Here, what you really want to get for yourself, you want to understand the context, the motivation, why the client is there, why the client booked an appointment with you. What is the outcome? What is the outcome that the client is expecting? What is the problems the client is trying to solve? And so on and so forth. Everything you learn here, you will be able to leverage and use later when it comes to explaining the results of the test in a way that it's meaningful that it resonates with a client.

27:23  And as we're going to explain, possibly also to upsell the client afterwards for training programs or retesting. Then after the test is done, you, we are looking at the post-test consultation. So, of course, it starts with explaining the results. I would even recommend to first give a general explanation about the physiology and how, for example, you know, lactate is the link between the glycolytic metabolism, where lactate is produced using carbohydrates, and then lactate is used as a fuel in the aerobic metabolism. That can be a five minutes, maybe eight minutes, quick walkthrough using, I always use examples of like a production belt where you see like one belt is producing lactate out of carbohydrates, the other is consuming it.

28:29  Again, I will put this into the workbook. So you will have a cheat sheet, so to speak there. And my recommendation is print something out some visualization on the energy metabolism, print that out, have it on the table, so to speak, to look at. So when you look at the graphs, people can go back to that general explanation. Then we come to number two, translate the results of physiological data to the client goals. This is where you leverage what you learned during the conversation with the client during and prior the test.

29:06  Right, because you want to know if, for example, a VLMX is important for the client, if a higher VLMX is better because it's a road cyclist who wants to sprint, or if it's a, you know, client who's primarily interested in carbohydrates bearing, depending on the goals, your client might not know. Okay, so don't expect that the athlete you test, the client you test knows that, for example, lowering VLMX improves fat combustion. Okay, so that's information you need to decipher, you need to translate from the context what the athlete is trying, what the athlete is trying to achieve.

29:42  Okay. The first two steps might be pretty obvious. The first two steps might be obvious. Where it becomes critical is number three. You can highlight or you maybe want to highlight on a high level how things can be achieved. What I mean with that, for example, you identified that it's important for the athlete to spare carbohydrates. You identified that one part to have better carbohydrates bearing is, for example, increasing VO2max or decreasing VLMX, just as examples. Then you can give high level explanations on how this is done.

30:28  But especially if you also provide coaching as a service, you need to have some kind of line which you don't cross, where you, you know, need to understand for yourself, hey, this is a testing service. It's a client booked. And not coaching consultation or, you know, write down what I'm telling you in terms of a training program. That is more or less than a next step. So, again, going back to depending on who you have in front of you, it's an athlete you coach, you, you're coaching already.

31:05  The testing is part of, you know, regular testing as part of the coaching package, fine. If it's somebody who is self coach, you just want to give high level explanation and then maybe in step number four, offer, for example, a framework. Because, you know, maybe the client wants to stay self coach, but needs some guidance. Okay. So that is very important to go from step number two, where you basically explain the metrics in the context of what's important to the client to high level explanation, explanation how to change it.

31:45  But again, this is a post test consultation about the test data. And this is not a training consultation. If you are, if your main business, for example, currently is selling coach support training programs, then this needs to be a separate offering. And what is the underlying assumption here, which I also mentioned briefly in the timeline, is that you are able to create this report to process the data and create a report immediately after the test. And I'm going to explain why that is so important, because if you sense a report later, if it takes you half an hour to create a report, nobody's wanting to wait for that.

32:35  In that case, you would need to send, for example, a report afterwards or screen recording or a video, you know what I mean? Or book another online meeting, whatever it is. But that is not as efficient, especially, you know, when it comes to, you know, selling retests or trying to sell coach support and so on. It's much more beneficial when it's in the moment when you are sitting down with the athlete and say, look, you told me this is what you're trying to achieve. The test data tells me a, b that, x, y that.

33:13  And therefore, this is what you need to do in training. And I'm going to show you a quick video on how this looks. If you haven't seen it yet. Such a quick report creation. And I'm showing this you this to you because there's another upsell opportunity, which I would like to explain. So what you see here is the creation of a report, customizable, different layouts, different languages. And there are different templates. There are different templates that you can use. And the templates are customizable. And you can decide what kind of pages, what kind of metrics, and therefore what kind of content you want to have in any report.

34:00  Okay. And so with that kind of functionality, it allows you to do what we just mentioned, which is creating a report in a very short timeframe. Okay. Okay. And why that is so powerful. And that is something, a trick or a tip, which maybe you haven't thought about is you can create different product tiers, different offerings, right? You can have a lower tier for a lower price. There's less data. For example, very simple would be just a lactate profile, jump, basic training zones, and the thresholds like an old school lactate profile test.

34:49  Okay. And then maybe you want to add something which is super interesting for people in endurance coach athletes and also longevity. For example, it will likely be something like fat and carb combustion. There's a specific page just for fat and carb combustion. And so maybe one lower tier offering is training zones, threshold, lactate profile, and fat and carb combustion. Fat and carb combustion is being, so to speak, a very compelling metric in here. And then you sit down. So somebody signed up for that. You do this test.

35:23  And then you sit down with the client. And it's pretty much impossible to avoid that you end up with, or you come to the point where you talk about, hey, what drives better fat combustion? What drives carbohydrate sparing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing?

35:51  What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing?

36:10  What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? What drives that you're doing? VLMX, VLMX, VLMX, or whatever you package, however you package it.

36:33  And therefore, you have the ability to upsell on the spot. And this upselling is not doing another test. It's not doing another RAM test or sprint test or whatsoever. It is just clicking some buttons and printing, creating the bigger report with more data. Okay. So that is a very unique thing I've seen some of the most successful businesses do to leverage that functionality, offer something lower tier, get people in the door, gain their trust, makes them understand the additional value from additional metrics. For example, more, you know, individualized training zones, this is more physiological metrics,

37:18  specific FedMax, so on, so forth, and then, you know, upsell them on the spot. The other thing, and I'm going to showcase a virtual test of performance projection using the digital twin that I mentioned before. Another thing that you can do very powerful is offering a retest on the spot. A discussion likely can end up, and again, performance projection, as I'm going to show, is very useful for that. A discussion can end up a consultation talk at, hey, this is the numbers you want to improve, and that pretty much triggers a question, okay, how long does it take to improve it?

38:04  And that triggers a question when to come back and retest. Some people offer very successfully the retest, the booking for the retest on the spot, of course, with the ability to reschedule if, you know, time changed, at least at six, something else changes in their life. And many people offer retesting at a slightly lower price, which makes sense because often consultancy time is less, so it's a little bit less effort for you. And it's a good trigger to do that, to offer that, because that might help people sign up immediately.

38:41  And my last bullet point here is you should use time-bound effort. So either somebody signs up immediately for the retest or you say, hey, if you book your retest within 24 hours after this one, you know, I give you a discount or something extra or better than a discount, for example, the next test going back to different tiers, the next test will be higher tier offering. And then same thing is upselling to a training program or framework. What I mean with that is either training program in terms of ongoing support, full coaching, or for a self-coached athlete, just a framework.

39:25  And how this often happens is really by the athletes being a little bit overwhelmed in a positive meaning from the wealth of data they get from an inside report. So don't be surprised if people originally came primarily just for training zones or a lactate profile or just for VO2 max number. And then the self-coached athletes often seems like, hey, you know, I know what to do with the data. But then when they sit down with you, and again, if you start this explaining the physiology, for example,

40:01  that creates a threshold and how glycolytic and aerobic metabolism are interconnected, and you're able to show that in the load characteristics graph and so on, then often people get more questions and they don't feel that sure anymore. They can decide their training program entirely on their own, but they still might not want to be fully coached day by day. Then a framework and outline might be something that's something you would then create after the test and sent by email, or many people actually then many clients then get the idea.

40:41  Maybe it's better to get coached actually instead of trying it by myself. And that leads then to, you know, a full day by day, so to speak, coaching, and often regular testing bundle. If you do that, if you sign up people for that, then it's similar for the retest instead of selling them the retest. You have people sign up on the spot for ongoing coaching. So if you sign up for coaching, I would strongly recommend to bind this to a minimum coaching duration, three months, six months, whatever makes sense.

41:22  And here is another trick or hint what you can do. And this goes back to pricing. So here's the scenario. Imagine just for the sake of an example, somebody booked a test for you, with you, and let's say it's 300 bucks for the one time offering of the test. During the consultation, the client gets interested for a full ongoing coach support with ongoing retesting. And let's just imagine just to make up some numbers, that's 200 bucks per month. So instead of the client paying the 300 bucks, which a client paid upfront already anyway, and then 200 bucks ongoing, you basically say, hey, you know what?

42:20  We allocate this test today to the coaching bundle. And then basically you just have already paid 300. It's in my example here, 200 bucks per month. So maybe next month, you just have to pay 100 bucks and then an ongoing 200. Of course, it creates a little dip in your cash flow, but long term, it's obviously better. And that's why, again, if you make minimum commitments of six months, for example, or 12 months, especially 12 months, then this makes a lot of sense. And it lowers the barrier for the client to enter that because the client thinks, hmm, you know, psychologically, I already paid 300 bucks.

43:03  So, you know, the next 200 bucks payment is almost in three months from now. And that makes it much, much easier for people to sign up for that. And with that, I wanted to show the performance projection or what we call virtual test, especially I have learned that even long term inside users don't leverage it to the full extent. So what is happening here? Let me show you. This is just a screenshot of the dashboard or what comes out of test data. Okay. So this is a real test, a lactate test in this case in cycling.

43:44  And of course, you do have all these graphs, load characteristics, which again, you explain in the consultation. And then what you do is you create a virtual test, which is basically creating a copy of that real test data. And you can manipulate in that copy anything you want. Body composition, running economy. If it's a running test, VO2 max, VL max, whatever. Any metric you can just change. So you can simulate what I'm doing here in this case, you can simulate, for example, a higher VO2 max. And then look at the test results.

44:23  What a higher VO2 max would mean, for example, for fat max, for thresholds, for carbohydrates, bearing, for all these metrics. So what you do is you identified based on the test data and based on the context that you learned, you identified what is important for the athlete, for the client. And then you can virtually change the underlying physiological data. Like if you have to max for example, to show like you see here on the screen, right? You see the dashed line of fat combustion rate. So you can show, hey, if we are able, if you are able to increase your VO2 max, then look what's going to happen to your fat combustion rate.

45:04  Look what's going to happen for you to your threshold. Look to what, look what's happened to your carbohydrates, whatever is important. And that triggers two questions normally. First question is, how do I do that? What's the training to increase VO2 max? Second question is, how long does it take? Because I want to come back and see if it works. And this of course opens the gate to exactly what I just described. It opens the gate for retesting for self coach athlete, for a framework for self coach athlete, or what you just explained.

45:45  It opens the gate and the conversation triggers a conversation about, hey, would you want me to help you out this ongoing training support? That's why this is such a powerful tool. And I'm telling this here right now. If you are in this webinar, you're listening, you're an insight user already, and you don't leverage that, then reach out and we give you a free virtual test for every real test that you do. So you can leverage this feature on your end without any additional cost. Talking about cost, giving you an overview, depending on where you are in the journey.

46:29  If you already have testing as a service or you're thinking about starting it. The upfront basics, I accounted for a lot for the consumables. 250 bucks is a lot. You can easily do it for 100, 150. This is US prices. It might differ, of course, depending on where you are. The lactate meter is approximately 450. The scale is what I mentioned is approximately 250. And then, yeah, if you buy a few lactate box strips, that's another 250. So you end up somewhere short of $1,000 as a pre-investment and then exercise machines, depending on, you know, if you have those already, if you want to do field test or not.

47:17  Then the per test economics. So depending on where you are and which country, what is your purchase power and your tier of offering like very, very basic offering or like a higher tier. 150 to $400 in the longevity space, maybe even more. You will spend approximately 30 bucks on consumables. And then in order to do what I just showed, performance projections, automated reporting and to get all these numbers, especially if you have to max and substitute utilization. Without the need to buy a metabolic card, 20 to 50 bucks.

47:53  So that means you will, depending on the offering, you can have a raw profit of 100 to $350 in about one and a half hour of labor time. And this depends, this creates approximately 66 to more than $200 power. And then you are off course, you have the absolute potential return potential for the customer. So you can for upselling and retesting. Again, it's another like, you know, another testing service income from testing service in the same ballpark. And then you have LTVs or lifetime value of the customer.

48:34  If you are able to sell coaching and test on a regular basis, that's obviously a wide range, depending on how long you are able to keep the athlete from a few hundred dollars to easily in the thousands. If you think about you have an athlete for several years and you offer ongoing coaching and testing. So these are some example economics. Again, it might change a little bit on where you are, but just to show you how this should look in general. And of course, a big part of it is being able, and that is the key here, being able to do the whole process in approximately one and a half hour.

49:13  I know some people will spend two hours and the consultation will be longer. That's fine. That might be beneficial actually for upsell and recurring and retaining customers. But in general, 35 minutes is a starting point. It's a good ballpark. And with that, I hope you enjoyed this presentation, explaining a little bit of the best practices, how to integrate testing into a business. If you want to learn more, explore how you want to do that for your own case, schedule a meeting with us. And again, there will be a workbook with all the descriptions, checklists, and so on and so forth, sent by email a few days after this webinar.

50:09  And I know I'm repeating myself, but if you are an Insight user already, and you're interested in trying to use this performance projection virtual test for upselling as described, then reach out and we are happy to give you that for free additional to your existing package. With that, I'm looking forward for any questions that you guys might have.