New gym owners come to the business with many different levels of expectations. It depends on things like their previous experiences in management, small business ownership, gym operations and leadership, to name but a few. The one thing that consistently catches new owners off guard and causes much stress is how many routine, repetitive tasks need to be handled on a daily basis. In theory you just sign up new members and they give you a payment each month, so you build up a nice little stream of revenue to enjoy.

Well, it sounds a little fanciful when I put it that way, doesn’t it? The truth is there are numerous tasks and routines that go into daily operations. That’s why I love the analogy of the swan floating gracefully on a river, with it’s little webbed feet paddling away frantically, hidden below the surface.

Cleaning As A Career Choice

Gyms live and die by their reputations for being clean and tidy. The easiest way to clean up messes is to do it before they get too big. Everybody who works in your gym must understand that they will have to be a cleaner at least part of the time. Cleaning is literally the dirty job of the gym business but there are other dirty jobs too. These are the tasks that are boring, tedious or that just make you feel awkward when you’re doing them.

When you start your own gym there are so many administrative chores in the back office and at the front desk that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do them all by hand. Even if you have good gym management software there is plenty to do. However, if you don’t have the support of automation then you are just making work for yourself. There are many tasks that are listed out in reports and spreadsheets that you can minimize with the right software support.

Administrative Dentistry

It seems like the only calls that a gym’s staff likes to make is to say “happy birthday”. Otherwise, getting them to make calls is like pulling teeth. Having an automated system that deals with most of the repetitive and routine tasks does much to reduce the headaches (or toothaches). The three following examples are just a few of the ways that using the Gym Insight software system can save time and effort:

– You can use the enhanced Gym Insight Billing Model to reduce the number of phone calls that you. The beauty of this set up is that we can now help you handle account management while you still maintain full control of who your merchant vendor is and over the money that you earned. We can automate activities like the "task" cues that are reminders for your gym employees to contact clients. Tasks cues include the following:

1. Making contact with a member to wish them a happy birthday;
2. Reminding members of an upcoming prepaid account expiration;
3. Making sells to members to see if expiring prepaid accounts would like to renew;
4. Notifying members of payment delinquencies;
5. Updating credit card payment information; and
6. Handling the paperwork for collections.

– It’s important that you make sure that inbound phone calls get answered in a timely manor. You can prevent some of the most often asked inquiries by having the information posted in an accessible and clearly written way on your website An online sign-up form that feeds information straight into the system through Gym Insight can free up a nice chunk of time.

– Another way that you can save time through automation is when your gym management software system generates reports directly from your payment system. When you do your reports manually you’re going to spend more time putting them together than actually using them.

There are always going to be dirty jobs when you run your own gym business. Fortunately, you can minimize the repetitive tasks that can be automated and more easily resolve issues that do arise by using Gym Insight. Owning a gym business should be a positive experience even if it is hard work. Accept that there will be tough times and dirty jobs and do everything that you can to minimize the impact they have on your gym and you can enjoy the satisfaction of being a successful business owner in the best business you can own in the world!

Over to you…

What has been your experience with unexpected dirty jobs encountered at your gym business?