Management Metrics and Where You Find Them Like fitness programming, gym business management is about setting goals and defining improvements. It’s how you measure them that provides the framework to get the work done. You can’t know what you’ve achieved until you’ve measured it. Whether it’s measured in lean body mass, inches of muscle, or maximum deadlift weight, measurement tells you how much progress you’ve achieved relative to your workout goals. It’s the same for business goals. If you want a leaner company, better sales performance, or higher rates of retention, you measure your actions to hit your targets. The [...]
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Of Belly Laughs and Leg Lifts I was listening to some comedians talking on a podcast recently. It seems to be a thing in comedy for comics to interview their friends and idols. However, I was struck by the similarities between owning a gym and running a comedy club. The fitness and entertainment professions both appeal to the general public as markets. They each bring in people to participate in some sort of experience. Although, they do it in different ways, perhaps. The Changing Culture of Comedy Lately, comedy clubs are growing in popularity and revenue. The number of would-be [...]
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More Business Hacks for Ambitious New Gym Owners There was a recent report in Club Industry that Kohls, the retailers are partnering with big box chain Planet Fitness. It seems that the shrinking need for bricks-and-mortar store space led to a creative opportunity. That’s definitely a “get lemons, make lemonade” solution to the changing retail market. In the fitness industry, creative thinking can be the difference between getting kicked to the curb and pivoting to a new business model. Obviously, in this case, hacking means finding low-cost gym marketing solutions by applying creative thinking. So, why not use some creativity [...]
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Insight was my solution for my own gym management headaches. As a computer science graduate and fitness club owner, I had some options. I didn’t hesitate to dive in and write my own code when the business started to get complicated. Great idea, right? Well, it turned into a bigger project than I had expected, which is an understatement! Each solution seemed to reveal new problems, at least in the first version. I’m not going into too much detail because I’ve covered much of this over the years on the Gym Insight Blog. Multiple Gym Management Tool Sets There’s a [...]
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Fitness is one of the more efficient industries, in the economic sense. The same is true about gym management software. It’s a good thing in that competition leads to better products and services. On the other hand, it goes in the opposite direction as well. Economics drives free markets toward commoditization, which means cheap, bland products. Here at Insight, we recognize that, and we work to deliver a stand-out club management platform that defies the odds. As a gym business owner, so should you. The best strategy for small gym business success is unique offerings that command premium fitness club [...]
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Make Your Name in The Business As an independent gym or fitness club owner, have you considered your personal brand? I’m not talking about the fitness club brand of the gym that you founded (or plan to start). What I mean is your public name and reputation as an entrepreneur. If you have worked with an executive coach, you may have heard of personal branding. Chief-level executives, ambitious corporate VPs, and high-tech start-up founders often work with a coach. The goal is to enhance your credentials and be more valuable as a leader and public figure. Personal branding opens doors. [...]
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Gym Management Software And An Inquisitive Mindset I think there is only one way to survive in the fitness industry in the next few years. As a gym business owner, be ready to make changes quickly and often. Be curious about what’s around the corner. The changes that are going on around us right now are world-shattering, and you have to keep up to survive. There will be many companies that get lost along the way. Insight gives you the gym management software tools to respond proactively to changes. Of course, other things demand your attention too. But First, The [...]
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The Principle of Winning For all of the modern technology in the world, the principles that make the foundations of business are as accurate as they are old. While we designed the Insight Gym Management Software Suite to be a tool that will drive efficiency and profitability, it does so by the fundamentals of business management. One of the most fundamental concepts in business is this: Nothing happens until somebody sells something. Selling is the most fundamental principle in business, and much of everything else follows from it directly. If you can transform the culture of your gym into a [...]
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Policies Policies Policies Have you ever heard about black swans? If not it’s because these birds are alien to the Northern Hemisphere. When you think of the graceful birds that inhabit lakes and rivers, you probably think of a magnificent white waterfowl with a long and graceful neck. These dark, red-beaked swans are native to parts of Australia. If you see one in North America, Europe, or other parts of the world, it’s likely to have escaped or wandered off after being introduced by humans. Most people don’t know that black swans exist until they see one, and not many [...]
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Leverage These Life Hacks to Produce More Results Technology has brought a whole new style of entrepreneur into existence. Independent trainers, small gym business owners, or even franchisees of big-box chains, like Gold’s Gym, can make the most of some of the life hacks that complement the things they already do daily. I’ve written about some of these tips and tricks on the Gym Insight Blog before, but a few are new. 1. Do Remote Training Sessions with FaceTime or Skype It’s the human contact that clients want from their training sessions, as well as fitness, and almost everyone has [...]
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Fitness clubs should always have new projects in development and owners should be continuously searching for the next big thing in gym business niches. Special populations represent many different niche specializations that have been boiling up for some time. Reaching out to special populations will benefit everybody involved. Your club can grow in a new direction, a part of the community that might otherwise be underserved gets a new resource, and your trainers can justify adding a new certification that will be a positive step in their careers. Special Populations Within The Community The need to support special populations is [...]
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Getting Organized Is The Key To Winning Organizing your gym members, prospective future members, and members at the edge of retention, is much easier if you have an automated system to manage the process. It’s one thing to have a list of customers and something completely different to have a system that maintains your contacts with them and reminds you of important dates and alerts you to changes. In fitness clubs, Gym Insight is your best tool to stay on top of the customer juggling game. It is a specialized package that, among other things, does the parts of customer [...]
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Going green is a great idea, and it also happens to appeal to many consumers, including many of the people who’re likely to join your gym. You may be hearing the term Sustainability; it’s basically the technical term that means going green. Sustainability For Gym Facility Endurance As a buzzword, sustainability is popular in commercial real estate (CRE) circles. As you probably know painfully well, when you establish a gym facility, a substantial slice of the cost of being in the gym business will go to real estate, along with the associated costs of occupying a commercial building. Sustainability is [...]
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Let’s Talk About Success What does it mean to have a waiting list? First, you should be thrilled that your fitness club is so in demand! If you have a strict upper limit on capacity such as class spaces adding new members beyond that limit can be a dangerous game. When your gym is overcrowded, service delivery tanks and cancellations skyrocket. Keep A Steady Buzz with A Waiting List You might even want to have a contingency plan that includes cutting off new memberships and waitlisting applicants to prevent chaos. If your gym gets overcrowded or the staff overwhelmed, service [...]
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Blink these days, and the state-of-the-art in fitness has changed. That being said, these are some trends, events, and concepts that will dominate the gym management world in 2019. These six fitness industry news items may sound off-the-cuff or random at first glance, but what they say to me is that club owners, and managers need to plan for change the way a batter needs to be ready for a fastball from the pitcher. 1. Acquisition Strategies abound in 2019 Do you have an exit strategy? When you start your business, you should keep in mind the alternative paths out [...]
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