Welcome back to our gym owner business profile. In each profile, we interview successful gym owners to learn what it takes to start, run, and own a health club. Everyone tells a new and interesting story. We hope you find their experiences as inspiring as we have! 300 Fitness Gym and Bar The idea of 300 Fitness Gym and Bar began like many other health clubs: Two guys who enjoyed exercising together saw an opportunity and jumped on it. In the small city of Pontotoc, Mississippi, there were plenty of other gyms. Four, in fact, serving a population of no [...]
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Why sell branded products at your gym Have you ever considered selling a branded product in your gym or online? They could be water bottles, hoodies, equipment or towels. Whatever. The point is your health club’s name would be on that item, wherever it travels. All the while, reflecting your gym's unique identity and generating a bit more cash for your company. What is the difference between a product and a brand? Products are what you sell but a brand is who you are. Brands are created through advertising, intent, and creativity. Your carefully crafted flagship image is your brand. The [...]
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In the modern era, few businesses can get by without taking advantage of all the myriad technology upgrades available. Utilizing the best business software can propel your gym to a new level of productivity, security, and success. What can great gym management software do for you? Save time and money When your software takes over the automation of menial tasks and shoulders the burden of the everyday work load, your staff is set free to do more important work that only humans can accomplish. Your employees' time is much better spent in face to face interactions with clients and trainers [...]
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Being a great leader to your gym staff is similar to being a great boss or manager in any business where you lead a team. Team management principles are mostly universal regardless of your business, but with some creativity, you can utilize fitness principles you already use every day to hone your management skills and build a strong and cohesive team of employees for your gym. Maintain a good working relationship with your staff. Remember that happy people work more efficiently. It's a fact that employees with the highest mental and emotional satisfaction work harder and more efficiently than employees [...]
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The new technologies of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are set to change the fitness industry if the current trend continues. Both VR and AR have threatened to do something interesting for years now. But this time the promise might turn into VR products that consumers can use. Your gym members may soon demand fitness equipment that allows them to connect to digitally rendered worlds and games while they work out. Digital devices and smartphones have changed the way consumers use technology; they don't think twice about exploring and testing new apps. Keeping up with your neighbor means having the [...]
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Paperless Contracts and Digital Signatures!: Paperless Contracts and Digital Signatures! We released the paperless contracts and digital signature feature about a month ago to all of our beta testers and today we're releasing it to everyone. No more paper contracts, no more filing cabinets! Create and sign agreements right from the Billing Info tab on any account! For more information and step-by-step instructions click on the link below. Learn More Save
Sometimes keeping your small gym business lean is just a matter of tying your proverbial shoelaces, sprucing up your operational practices and squeezing that little bit of extra mileage out of your resources. Even a fundamentally sound business needs to protect itself against the risk of squandering resources and frittering away advantages in a competitive market. Keeping costs down takes a mix of flintiness, shrewdness and negotiation skills. There are different parts of the business that give you opportunities to cut costs. If there is any fat in the cost of creating sales removing it gives you a bigger return [...]
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Going From Zero To One One of the most interesting books about startups and innovation is Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters. The principle is that a running business is one, and you start at zero. Everything that you do in between is the hard work of founding a business. Once you are in operation and making enough income to survive you can think about expanding. Beyond one you can use the principle of duplication to repeat the initial success in a second, third, and further locations, this is the empire-building phase where you go from one [...]
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Choose Your Application If you could develop a mobile application or app for your gym members what would it be? Would it be purely account information or training records? Would you want to make it a stand-alone Giga-download giant or a lightweight gateway app? Would it help you communicate with your membership or just dole out the advice? I've been giving this subject some serious consideration lately and I'd like to share my thoughts here, as a sort of roadmap. The best part about it is that it's a roadmap to membership retention. Allow me to explain with a simple [...]
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Gather Round For The Gym Insight Founder Story More businesses are creating mobile apps to either support their businesses or from which to bring forth a new enterprise and it is helping smart marketers to promote products and services in the most cost-effective way. The use of any digital offering is an awesome way to bring attention to the core service or product that you deliver. I am sure that you won't be surprised to hear that what we've done here at Gym Insight is a great example. Because I studied and worked as a programmer and also happened to [...]
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Building On Previous Discussions Some time ago, Gym Insight was fortunate to have a guest post from Mike Hedlesky. It was an in-depth piece that has been a real asset to the Insight Blog and, judging by the traffic, a useful source of information and validation for the readers. So first, thanks Mike! Second, I thought it might be good to go back, review and build on it with some further insights into running your own small gym business. Training is always easier to impart to your staff when you are clear about the basics of the company vision and [...]
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Parallels In Gym Ownership And Software Services Companies I am fortunate to have had the privilege to see the inner workings of two different industries. My background and education is in computer science but my passions and enterprises have always been in fitness. That led me to having both a career in computer sciences through gyminsight.com and in gym management by owning a small but successful local gym business. Since the readers of the Gym Insight Blog tend to be fitness professionals I thought it would be useful, as a contrast, to talk about the computer industry and the differences [...]
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One of the most disruptive trends in technology in the last few decades has been the leveraging and (pardon the fancy talk) disintermediation of the old ways that made the wheels of commerce go round. That means that new technologies that are labor saving and disrupting of the status quo cause big changes. Here's an old-fashioned example: Long before there was MS Word there were typewriters. These days, typewriters are an antique collector's pride and joy, more than objects of any functional uses. For previous generations the typewriter was a labor saving essential for the workplace. Companies had entire typing [...]
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When television production companies catch onto a formula that's cheap to produce and popular with viewers, they really work it for all it's worth. Having an expert, who rescues failing small businesses, is a simple and compelling formula within the genre of reality TV. The premise is usually that a business, in some specific industry, gets help and a makeover just as it's about to go under. The super-expert, no-holds-barred host comes in with a camera crew and they proceed, in a period of about three days, to whamp the tar out of the downtrodden business owner. They clear out [...]
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Limber up your jargon muscles and stretch out your vocal cords! We're talking gym management and fitness center business vocabulary again! It's been a while since I wrote about jargon in the gym business. So I think it is time to review some more of the terms that you need to use and know to understand gym professionals, in reference to the business and the activities that support it. Gym Insight has posted articles written about this before but I think it's an important topic and there are some terms that need to be added to the original list. There [...]
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