Guest Author: JoAnn M. Eickhoff-Shemek, PhD, FACSM President, Fitness Law Academy, LLC Introduction This blog will describe the types of legal liability risks that health club owners/managers can face due to an employee’s negligent conduct and effective risk management strategies that can minimize those risks. Large companies and healthcare organizations have risk management (RM) departments that employ experts who develop and implement RM strategies to protect the company or organization from all types of risks including legal liability risks. Because most health clubs do not have a RM department, the owner/manager has the overall responsibility to minimize legal liability risks [...]
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In our latest Gym Owner’s Podcast, “Your Burning Questions Answered,” sales managers Anthony Pasquale and Natalia Schulte cover common questions sent in by gym owners as they struggle to balance customer service and growing a profitable gym. For a full listen, go to our YouTube page at The Gym Owner’s Podcast. Check back often because our sales duo will take on your questions again soon. Q: What do I do about members who don’t want to leave a card on file? This often happens in gyms that start without software in place. And since many members don’t use the gym after [...]
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Guest blog authors: Mariann Murphy, Vice President, Medical Fitness Association Cosmo Wollan, Senior Executive, Synergy Cubed Approximately 45 million adults in the U.S. have a gym membership. Sounds like a lot, but the sad reality is that’s only 14 percent of the population (Source: Realbuzz). Baby boomers alone make up over 21 percent of the population. According to ACSM’s Worldwide Surveys of Fitness Trends for 2023, the number 4 top trend is: “Fitness Programs for Older Adults.” It’s no secret that people are living longer, working longer and, most important, wanting to stay active longer. Tap into your client’s wellness [...]
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If building your dream fitness center includes offering members a wealth of services beyond free weights, then it might be time to consider partnerships. Health One is an on-site, national weight-loss program that combines in-person support with prepared, nutritionally appropriate meals. In future blogs we will profile other companies whose services and expertise compliment and support growing gyms. But for now read on to discover how you can incorporate a formal weight-loss program into your gym. Health One Weight-loss programs tend to get a bad rap when they include prepared meals. It can seem as if the marketing emphasis shifts from [...]
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Danny Fagan, director of customer service Here’s the inside scoop — Daniel’s the guy who’s in charge of keeping our customers happy. We count on him to direct a team of U.S.-based customer service pros who reflect our gym-obsessed focus. Then, because he’s so close to the customer and understands their day-to-day so well, we made him our training specialist, too. Here, he and his team ensure our customers know how to use every feature built into the software, recognizing that no matter how well-designed a product is, there’s always a hurdle to overcome. Read on for the lowdown on Daniel. [...]
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Our Gym Insight Sales Guru© software is changing for the better this season as we unveil our newest version of Insight. Soon, users will have the choice to create a membership that will auto add a scheduled payment to the new account. This will eliminate common mistakes made from entering a yearly enhancement fee by hand after the sale is complete. Enhancement fees, sometimes also called maintenance fees, often act as a financial buffer for owners, providing that extra cushion needed between rock-bottom pricing and a well-managed gym. The money has to come from somewhere, right? But adding those annual [...]
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Ah, history … it repeats itself. If you’re old enough to remember Gold’s Gym before it turned into an aerobics studio, then you’ll appreciate the irony in the American College of Sports Medicine’s “Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2023” results. It originally published in the January/February 2023 edition of the ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal. Now in its 17th year of publication, the Worldwide Survey identifies 42 top-rated trends gleaned from past World Survey lists and emerging trends. Selecting the trends are editors representing corporate, clinical, community, commercial and academia. The list is then sent by Survey Monkey to more than 125,000 individuals involved [...]
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As a gym owner, customer service may be one of those catchphrases you don’t think about much. To stay competitive and keep costs down, you’ve leaned into online sign-ups, digital keytags, and reducing employee payrolls. It’s working, too. With an emphasis on cost reduction and adapting services to customer needs, small gyms have stopped disappearing from the landscape. Truthfully, if you’re a gym owner reading this blog, you’ve survived quite a clean-out. In 2019, gym ownership hit record levels, with more than 41,370 gyms in the United States, according to Statista’s research. Today, that number hovers at about 31,000 clubs. Congratulations on being among the fittest [...]
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Welcome to our newest series within our blog. Here we profile employees from throughout our company to both introduce them to you, our valued clients, and spotlight their unique contributions to Gym Insight. We believe each employee offers a special blend of talents that together create the robust set of gym management software tools our fitness club owners enjoy. Dancing with Natalia Natalia Schulte, our newest sales manager, brings a sprightly enthusiasm to her job with Gym Insight. We’ve asked her to support our Head of Sales, Anthony Pasquale, in our critical mission to grow Gym Insight’s core customer base [...]
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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 [...]
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Gym Insight customer profile: Abb’s Muscle & Fitness Gym Abbe Hockaday started Abb’s Muscle & Fitness Gym the morning after she retired. After a career in the corporate world, she was ready to launch her own brand of fitness. It would be a place of harmony, peace, healing, and growth. Or, as her Silver Sneakers members wrote on a handmade entrance sign, “Welcome, you will fit in here.” Six words to define a workspace. And a future. Profile of an unlikely gym owner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVzTE9nUJTU Many of Gym Insight’s clients are gym owners who discovered fitness early and spent their lives in the industry [...]
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Sales can be a numbers game. The more people walking through your gym door, the more likely you are to close a few of them. That’s true, but it’s a tough way to make a living. A better idea is maximize each sales prospect by following a specific sales protocol and applying it to every person who visits your gym. First — Conduct a Proper Tour Don't leave membership sales up to chance. Here are five steps to an awesome tour: Introduce yourself and ask their name. Slow down. Find a quiet spot. Ask them a few questions, cover the [...]
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Why Gym Insight is the right gym management software for your fitness center Choosing the right gym management software for your fitness club is probably one of the hardest decisions you’ll make as an owner. Not only is it the track on which your gym runs, but if you need to switch software companies, transferring data can be brain-numbingly difficult. So you want to get it right, if not the first time, at least the second go-around. As a holiday gift to you and to us, we’d like to express why we believe Gym Insight is just the best possible [...]
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Health club owners still need — and want — employees. These friendly faces greet guests, handle minor emergencies, and keep the business running smoothly. It’s the human dimension that adds the zip to the brand. The tough part is keeping these employees busy and on track. Often, as we wrote in our "We Call It 'The Money Catcher'" blog, the only time an employee may start working is when you show up. How can you fix this problem and gain employee buy-in at the same time? As simple as it sounds, it may all come down to making a list. [...]
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Let’s talk switching gym management software as a goal for January. If your fitness center is using a management system that takes a percentage of every sale, now is the time to switch to Gym Insight. The process is simple and the results are worth the effort. We know it’s the holiday season. We understand you’re busy with family, friends, and the slow drizzle of diehard gym members. Changing software is the last task you want to add to your to-do list. But listen to us. Why would you not want to switch software right now? After all, January and February are [...]
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