Because The Bigger They Are…

As the big guys get bigger, and keep pouring cash into their fitness center locations, you might think that they would be impossible to beat. It’s just a fact that large corporations have all the money and other financial resources at their disposal that anyone could wish for. That does not mean they have a monopoly on innovation or competitiveness. The independent gym owner can still do much to fight back effectively because having capital resources is only part of the equation.

You have to have a human side that doesn’t crush customers in the process of daily operations. That is problematic with large corporations because of the abstract metrics available to the decision-makers and pressure for blame avoidance at the lower levels. There are plenty of resources that help to give the advantage back to locally owned small gym companies, in opposition to the big box franchises. Many are free or inexpensive, or just require a little bit of lateral thinking to your multiply effectiveness.

Ivory Towers And The Blame Avoidance Game

The weakness that large companies have in this area is that decisions are often made at such a high level that executives are looking at abstract data and making policy decisions by the numbers. Without realizing it, they are causing unintended consequences down at the membership level. An example is where a package deal is split up or changed because the numbers say that there is a more profitable way.

Somehow the charges to clients get duplicated so they are double charged and then, when the member calls to investigate and fix the problem, no one is willing to take responsibility because it puts them under the spotlight in management reports. There are thousands of variations on this theme as big companies find it all too easy to keep their employees nervous and afraid of rocking the corporate boat. The source of this kind of pathology is, as companies scale up, they have to add layers between the decision makers and those who are most likely to be impacted by them.

The Ultimate Resources

An attitude of discovery and exploration is something that the twenty-first century demands of everyone. When you engage your curiosity to find out what is out there two things happen: You discover the joy of finding things out and you find out there are a lot of free and inexpensive resources available that will give you the leverage you need to build a place in the market. This attitude will serve you well these days because whatever facts and skills you learn as part of your formal education are likely to be obsolete by the time you know what you want to do with them.

Disruptive technologies are making it easier for the little guys to compete. But you have to be able to recognize opportunities when they appear. This doesn’t apply just to small business or gym management, they apply to every aspect of our lives in the modern era and we should be teaching children to be creative, curious, and comfortable with complexity. In this case it means always be on the lookout for new apps and trends to jump on and drive your business.

Building Your Business On The Right Software Platform

The final point I would like to make here is that Gym Insight gym management software tools are designed from the ground up to be exactly the kind of application suite that owners and managers need for any small gym situation. Gym Insight will address the issues of customer service and scheduling that could easily cause chaos. It is also easy to learn, and adapt to your gym’s particular case.

We have years of experience now, helping customers of all sizes and gym types. I developed this system as a solution to my own situation so I know what it is to struggle to bootstrap your way up from the bare bones of a business idea. My knocks and hard lessons are there to help you get through it more easily. If I had been able to sign up for software like Insight it would have saved a lot of time and energy in the process. The good thing is that extra work is now saved for everyone who has the chance to save time and money because of that long arduous path to delivering the final product.

Bibliography

Richardson, Adam. Where No Child Left Behind Went Wrong. 17 October 2011. https://hbr.org/2011/10/where-no-child-left-behind-wen (accessed Jaunary 12, 2015).