Here is something that should trouble anyone running a climbing gym: the person who visits twice a week, never competes, never buys a protein bar, and occasionally monopolizes the same 6b overhang for forty-five minutes – that person might be your most valuable asset.
Not because of what they spend. Because of what they signal.
We have become oddly obsessed, in the fitness industry, with metrics that feel rigorous because they involve division. Revenue per member. Conversion rate. Retention percentage. These numbers have the satisfying weight of mathematics behind them, which means we trust them far more than they deserve.
But consider what retention rate actually measures: whether someone didn’t leave. It’s the business equivalent of judging a restaurant by the fact that no one called an ambulance. Necessary, yes. Sufficient? Absolutely not.
