It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessential. This quote from martial arts legend Bruce Lee is so simple, yet it says so much of what success is all about, in gym ownership, in business and life in general. You can spend hours doing little things or find the big things that matter; they may look the same at first. But when all the other things drop away you can still take the essential factors and use them to achieve the final outcomes you desire. This is what sculptors do when they carve [...]
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Starting a gym can be complicated. Instinctively, launching a health club seems simple: equipment + passion = success, right? True, but gyms also involve people, liability, capital investments, promotions, regulations, and expenses. Juggling all this is where success is achieved. The following blog is a short overview of four of the most significant responsibilities affecting your new company. Below the blog, we’ve included helpful links for research and assistance. Four tasks every gym owner faces: Insurance coverageCapital equipment purchasesMarketing expensesEmployee management 1. Required insurance coverage: General liability Commercial propertyProfessional liabilityWorkers’ Comp Although the cost of insurance varies widely based on the size [...]
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If you’re ready to own a gym, it’s time to think about the best location. You'll be wise to research this one carefully as it can have a big impact on your long-term success. Here are some key ideas to help in landing the perfect spot to launch your new business. 1. Start the search for commercial space on the Internet LoopNet.com is a commercial real estate marketplace that allows you to identify available space easily and effectively. Whether you’re interested in leasing or buying space, this national aggregate for available commercial space allows you to narrow your search by neighborhood, [...]
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You’ve got the energy, ideas, and passion for your sport. But what about some solid facts about how to open your own club? This June, we’re going to help you learn what it takes to start a gym. Each week, we will cover an important step to your successful new business launch and provide some common sense advice from established gym owners. First, do you have a business plan? Why do I need a business plan? Too many small business owners open their first fitness center without creating a strong plan of action. A business plan is a written guideline [...]
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Gym Management Have you considered raising your gym membership rates yet? It’s a scary thought but the truth is inflation is running hot with no signs of cooling off. As a gym owner, you get the big picture: higher fuel prices, limited labor market, and costly commodities. This all adds up to less cash in the bank. And, even though you didn’t start a gym to make a fortune, that buffer between income and expenses — aka your profit margin — is the foundation of a well-run business. Profit is where growth, reinvestment, and risk-taking occur. In order to keep [...]
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Gym Management Netflix recently made headlines when it came clean on its subscription sharing problem. Too many users are slipping passwords to friends and family. To rectify this bottom-line problem, they are pivoting to new policies and trying to stem the leak. However, if sharing passwords can make a company the size of Netflix quake, imagine its impact on small, privately held gyms. For gym owners, the answer to account sharing lies in digital keytags, a QR-embedded phone app nimble enough to save money and build customer loyalty. Gym Insight’s digital keytags eliminate unauthorized users by providing a dynamic QR code [...]
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As a gym owner, you’re a natural entrepreneur. Capable of weighing risks and making decisions. Yet, diversifying companies or running multiple gyms is a difficult leap — powering through even one gym can seem insurmountable. How can you run multiple gyms successfully? To answer this question, we turned to Troy Barnum, who owns two Total Fitness gyms and a successful ATV ecommerce store. He bought his first gym in 2011 after running other ventures. Here’s his key advice. For a full recount of our conversation, go to our “Gym Owners Podcast” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZ2Q5ExbQ0 10 Tips for Running Multiple Gyms 1) Expect to work hard. Barnum puts [...]
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Many smaller fitness centers offer specialized services that justify a higher monthly rate. Yet, selling that price requires a more refined approach to customer managment than it would at a cut-rate gym. To figure out the details, we’ve interviewed a Muay Thai studio owner on what it takes to sell and manage high-dollar gym memberships. Read on to learn his four critical steps to managing high-dollar memberships. Step 1 — Sell value, not price Tampa Muay Thai membership is $145 per month. The 17-year-old fight gym sits in the heart of a growing medium-sized city and competes with other martial art studios. To [...]
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Gym Insight's management team has always been laser-focused on the success of its gym owners. That's why we started The Gym Owner’s Podcast on YouTube five years ago. We created the original podcast to provide our customers with easy access to software training videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GHsKOL5wZk&t=27s Yet, at the start of the pandemic in 2020, we decided to ramp up our content. Turns out, our amazing sales guy Anthony Pasquale enjoys chatting with customers – he loves talking shop with you guys. What can one business owner teach another? As a former gym owner himself, Anthony wondered: What’s going on in the fitness world today? [...]
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What your fitness business should do in 2022. At first glance you might think that I've already covered this topic for the year. But this is a little different; it's intended to be a straightforward list of resolutions for the New Year. I want to make this a post about looking forward and in the last post on making plans there was a lot of content that I left out simply because there was too much good stuff for one post to cover. So, this is a list of what a fitness business should resolve to do in the New [...]
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GHsKOL5wZk Reduce paperwork this New Year by implementing a gym management software system. How Does It Look? What Does It Mean? What Needs To Be Done? It's a great time to draw a line under the past year by looking at what was good, what was bad and what looks to be changing. I'm not talking about Taylor Swift or politics here, but specifically in the marketplace that you serve as a small gym owner. I've been writing about a lot of different topics this year and it's worth a review to remind readers of what's been covered and some [...]
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Buying used gym equipment for your business can seem like a cop-out. Why would you invest in second-hand gear for an industry seeped in an Instagram culture? Don’t looks matter here? Uh, no, actually. What matters is keeping your health club in the black so you can stay in business. Last month, Gym Insight’s sales representative interviewed Steven Harvalias, owner of Superfitness New & Used Gym Equipment, based in Burlington, North Carolina, about starting a successful fitness business. In this podcast, Steve and Anthony Pasquale discuss how keeping start-up costs low and customer service at top-of-mind, safeguards an emerging gym’s success. Originally [...]
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There are lots of interesting ways to do promotions. Once again, with the holidays upon us, I think it's time to take another look. One of the most accessible is selling gift cards as part of your retail operation. Even if it means just a desktop display at your reception you can boost your return on investment by offering this popular, high margin product to your membership and the general public. Promotions With Gift Cards Sell gift cards in your gymSell gift cards at the local sporting goods storeDistribute them through your trainers There is a reason that you see [...]
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It takes passion to run a small gym. Not just an interest in hanging around weights, but a true desire to be in the industry, to pull it off when so many factors are pushing against you. We all want you to succeed, but what does it take to make it in today’s competitive fitness industry? Who are the ones succeeding? Most Americans are not gym members! Fewer than 40% of people in the United States currently have gym memberships, according to Policy Advice’s research. That totals about 64 million people who visit a club regularly. So although the number [...]
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Digital marketing is here to stay. Chances are you’ve already dipped into online advertising by promoting your fitness center on social media. However, when it comes to spending money on digital advertising, where should you start? To understand the fundamentals of digital marketing we turned to Get Amplified Marketing Group owner Nick Sakkis for some answers. First, what kind of budget do I need? There are two main players in the digital ad world: Facebook and Google. If your budget is $1,000 or less a month, Facebook (which also owns Instagram) is the most cost effective promotion. Facebook and Instagram attract different viewers, [...]
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