Who is Colleen Conlon?

Colleen Conlon is a leading New York based fitness professional where for the last 7 years she has been a group instructor at Equinox as a kettlebell specialist, spin, tabata and strength instructor as well as privately training her clients - some of which have been with her for over 4 years.

The Challenge

When the world went into lockdowns, Colleen adapted quickly along with her industry peers by moving online. New tools like Zoom became second nature in a matter of days and with a manual process to manage bookings and payments she was able to continue supporting her incredibly loyal clients through a challenging transition.

“Initially I was managing bookings for my classes via email replies to my client newsletter and via Instagram which was fine. But as the weeks went by it ended up being the reason I was staying up later and getting up earlier - the admin was becoming overwhelming”. 

The time spent managing bookings, reconciling against payments to Venmo and then manually sharing links was tedious and vulnerable to error. Colleen was committed to automating the admin of running her virtual business as a fitness creator to free up her time and focus on her clients. 

Whatsmore her clients were used to the slick interface of her former gym where they could view and book into her classes at their leisure - offering a similarly professional client experience was important.

The Solution

With the COVID-19 lockdowns being extended, Colleen began looking for a solution that would allow her to recapture hours in the day lost to admin and deliver clients a great new experience both in and out of the virtual classroom.

“I thought about paying someone to develop a website from scratch… but I knew onPodio would give me the simplest way to manage the booking and payment of classes to deliver a great client experience and the flexibility to consider offering new things such as memberships”.

After a 30 minute personal onboarding session, Colleen was able to setup her custom mini-website, add her class schedule and have her clients booking and paying on the onPodio platform. 

Within 24 hours Colleen had shifted all of the booking requests via email and Instagram DMs to onPodio. And by automating over 50 bookings a week, onPodio freed up a lot of Colleen’s bandwidth to focus on her clients and on growing her business to the next level. 

The Results

onPodio helped Colleen build and deliver a seamless booking experience for her virtual fitness program and deliver an exceptional experience for her clients. Her clients book at their convenience from as far as weeks in advance to minutes before class. 

onPodio’s website builder and automations have been a huge time saver for Colleen as well as her clients who can securely book a class at their leisure and receive a confirmation within seconds.

Colleen usually used to spend around 90 minutes a day, reading, replying and managing email and DM booking requests, reconciling it with payments and then sending an email with the right Zoom link. This entire process became automated with onPodio. 

“I can now set and forget my class schedule and focus on showing up for my squad at class! onPodio is really easy to use both on Desktop and Mobile.”

Importantly, onPodio is optimized for mobile so Colleen is able to keep track of her business and make changes as needed on the fly.

So what’s next for Colleen? 

“I’ve been working on a big program launch that I’m excited to share with my clients that will use some of the more recent onPodio platform features including memberships. Super excited to share it... but you’ll have to wait a little longer!”