Crossing The Streams For Fun And Learning I'd like to think that there's some extra value hidden within the Gym Insight Blog: This is a company that crosses the two industries of software and gym management to help gym owners be competitive and offer better service levels for their customers. The software industry has some great lessons for all business owners. When you need to come up with results such as opening a new gym or creating a franchise, taking the actions that get results is the difference between success and failure. The software development industry is very competitive and [...]
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There are people in the world who are naturals at selling and performing in public situations. Personally, I am not one of them. It amazes me when someone seems to be naturally cool and confident when eyes are all on him or her. Also, those people tend not to be trainers or managers working in gyms. I suppose that figures, helping people motivates most of the trainers that I know but they tend to have a history in jobs that are not sales related. I love working out and hanging out in the gym So do most of the trainers [...]
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20 Things Successful Gym Owners Do Everyday Part 2 This is the second part about the things that gym owners should be doing every day to be successful. If you haven't done so yet, go back and read the first part of the list before reading this final part. Dave Ramsey writes about a whole raft of great stuff. He discusses things like getting out of debt and building wealth. If you want to develop a successful abundant life and also make a big contribution it's easier than you think. The list of things that the wealthy do and don't do touches [...]
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20 Things Successful Gym Owners Do Everyday Part 1 I was recently reading a post entitled: "20 Things The Rich Do Everyday" on Dave Ramsey's Website. If you're not familiar with Ramsey and his teachings his website is truly worth giving a close inspection if you're a small business owner or gym owner. He writes about finance and emphasizes getting out of debt and building wealth. When this first came out, it seemed to spark controversy because of the direct percentage comparison with the poor. Regardless, these are great healthy habits to incorporate not only into your own personal life but also carry [...]
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If you have opened a new gym, you must know that it is, after all, a new business. So you should be prepared to run and develop that business as a business. To do so, you must acquire knowledge about the fitness business industry, and also be aware of the pitfalls of why new gyms fail so you can be sure to avoid them. In my opinion, here are the top 10 reasons why new gyms fail... #1 - No proper business plan No business plan can be fatal to your new gym. Before starting a gym know: Successful gyms watch finances, [...]
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People Person Persona Are there gym member personas that describe the typical groups of members of your fitness center? In marketing, a persona is a profile of the ideal customer for your products or services. You create them as character sketches of the consumers or businesses most likely to benefit from your fitness center. Well-researched customer personas will also help you grow your membership and profit margin by describing the patrons who are right for your business goals. Professional marketers who specialize in inbound marketing strategy use as many personas as required to define the buyers for their products and [...]
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When you work very hard to build something significant, and someone makes what sounds like an unjustified remark, it hurts. If you don't restrain yourself from attacking it can turn into a circus in all the wrong ways. Ever see a minor complaint turn into a public relations disaster? It seems like it happens all the time these days and companies still miss opportunities to turn customer griping into chances to amaze larger audiences. Negative Reviews Can Make Your Service Better When someone makes a complaint in public or gives you a bad review, it's going out to the whole [...]
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It's Not What You Think So, what does a small fitness business or startup look like? From the outside, it might resemble any one of a variety of business models that have nothing in common. Inside it's likely to be a different story. Your business probably has an architecture that fits into a format that any gym manager will recognize, a club with a subscription membership. It's a service business that has consumers for members. You have to deal with a competitive market, fight against lots of similar companies, and also contend with the giants that have unlimited resources. These [...]
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The New Age Of Getting Hacked Security is taking on a whole new meaning now. There are still all of the general concerns about physical security risks and the need to secure credit card transactions with the new chip card systems. Now, everything's connected digitally too, it's not just a new-age-y saying, it's true that even the smallest businesses depend on either a computer or a tablet to handle business transactions. Arguably, that makes your digital devices and connection the weak points that bring digital security risks into your business. You have to protect customer information and credit card numbers; [...]
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On today's screen cast we teach a new gym owner the basics of gym sales and marketing and how to discover and improve areas of your business that are failing. (more…)
Do The Dip With Your Credit Card Chip How are you doing with taking credit cards at your gym or studio these days? The term is "dip"; you dip your chip card to pay now. That is, of course, if your gym is using the EMV chip card slot on the merchant terminal, rather than still swiping the magnetic strip. As a quick reminder, magnetic strips are "bad" because they carry your account number and information in the open, for anyone to read. And that is what criminals have been doing; they are reading the unscrambled account information on magnetic [...]
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Think About What Each Customer Means To You Individually, unless you have a specialized studio that caters to an elite clientele, each customer is just a marginal element of your monthly revenue. Not that you should ever think of them that way literally. Instead, you should look at the big picture: The total value of a customer is quantifiable, and once you've measured it, you can systematically improve it. Who cares about lifetime value? If you own a gym, or you manage the operations of a small gym for someone else, you need to care about such things. Customer lifetime [...]
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The Chip Yet Again Have you started using the appropriate slot for taking payments by chip cards? As I wrote earlier many large companies still have not done so. We have reached the time of the retailer taking more responsibility for fraud and at this point I hasten to add yet again too many still have not done so. I think in all of the card transactions I've used in the last few months, with a chipped card and a chip capable terminal only once have I been instructed to use the chip port instead of the strip swipe port. [...]
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There are so many things that have to work together to make any business successful. But if the employees can work together as a self-supporting team you are winning the most difficult part of the battle. Any business that works with memberships and requires selling and customer service needs a tightly knit team that's stronger than the sum of its individual parts. In gym management for the independent gym owner there are a specific set of concerns because of issues like staff turnover and the need for sales by staff to current members. In this post I'd like to talk [...]
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Working in the fitness business is a really rewarding way to make a living, as many of the readers of Gym Insight Blog know from personal experience. There are some great lessons from training and working out that apply well to the practice of small business ownership. What follows here are some lessons from fitness, applied to the business of fitness, which I have picked up along the way that I want to pass on as thoughts to share, food for thought if you will. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone As trite as it sounds, no pain no gain. It [...]
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