By Sam Monempour, NAI Capital Commercial Real Estate Services, Worldwide Opening a gym/fitness center is a challenging and complex venture with many moving parts. Before diving in, it is essential to carefully plan and prepare for the ever-changing aspects of the fitness industry. Over the years, gyms have gone from standard places of exercise and bodybuilding to a social environment with integrated social media influences, new technologies, new formats of exercise, and many various forms of build-out. 1. Decide gym style and market before signing a lease. The first step in signing a well-designed lease is to determine the type of [...]
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Every gym owner knows summertime is one of the slowest times of the year. Gyms historically see a jump in membership at New Years’ and in the spring. Unfortunately, by late May this universal urge to slim down fades as summer arrives. Sadly, many of these newcomers are ready to cancel their memberships as well. Many gym owners are tempted to just ride out the summer months As a fitness club owner, summer is a great time to refresh equipment, renovate interior or exterior gym areas or go on vaca. After all, burnout is real in this business. However, it is [...]
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As 2023 enters midyear, recession chatter is building. The stock markets are tilting sideways. OPEC just announced a hold on production. Inflation is still high and, for the first time in years, job openings are declining. What does this mean for your gym? How can you take advantage of an economic downturn? Well, let’s remember three years ago, the world shut down. And despite the 2020 pandemic eliminating thousands of mom-and-pop gyms, your company made it. Many gyms, indeed, thrived once doors reopened. How did the best gyms survive the COVID shutdown? The owners kept spying opportunities instead of barriers. Lawrence, Gym Insight Here [...]
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Welcome to our monthly customer profile. This spring we are speaking with Claude Mumpower III, owner of Iron Mayhem Strength and Conditioning in Bristol, Virginia. He brings an optimistic, growth-focused perspective we are excited to share with you. Lessons learned while growing a gym Mumpower established Iron Mayhem in 2014 after retiring from a career in law enforcement. His first fitness center maxed out at 2,000 square feet, which he quickly outgrew. Unfortunately, Mumpower jumped into his next location without vetting the lease and found an expensive secondary agreement that cost him both time and money. Using that mistake as a lesson [...]
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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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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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