Choose Your Application If you could develop a mobile application or app for your gym members what would it be? Would it be purely account information or training records? Would you want to make it a stand-alone Giga-download giant or a lightweight gateway app? Would it help you communicate with your membership or just dole out the advice? I've been giving this subject some serious consideration lately and I'd like to share my thoughts here, as a sort of roadmap. The best part about it is that it's a roadmap to membership retention. Allow me to explain with a simple [...]
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On Orangetheory Joining Communities The new HIIT concept gym business Orangetheory has been expanding like crazy across the country of late. I'm glad to see that there is a fitness ethos behind the boom. It looks like they're selective in whom they hire; only properly trained and certified exercise science graduates need apply. Beyond doing the basics right, Orangetheory is doing something else that I am all in favor of, which is encouraging locations and managers to get involved locally and give to the community as this link shows. Overview Of Fitness Business And Charity Giving back is really important [...]
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Some Thoughts Based On Recent Events Human resources issues may seem like a long stretch for the Gym Insight Blog but this is a serious set of issues that could easily cause any small business to lose the farm. I'm talking about the fast changing and very sensitive issues of equality and diversity in the workplace and the gym. Recent incidents in fitness centers, where the key issues were the poor handling of diversity and the rapidly evolving legal environment, have made this something that every gym owner should be prepared to confront. That basically means getting along with people [...]
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Gather Round For The Gym Insight Founder Story More businesses are creating mobile apps to either support their businesses or from which to bring forth a new enterprise and it is helping smart marketers to promote products and services in the most cost-effective way. The use of any digital offering is an awesome way to bring attention to the core service or product that you deliver. I am sure that you won't be surprised to hear that what we've done here at Gym Insight is a great example. Because I studied and worked as a programmer and also happened to [...]
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Give Great Customer Service To Secure Your Business Future I've come to the conclusion that there's one simple key to effective customer service. It's a principle that's so obvious that it is quite simply missed most of the time. Sometimes genius lies in the simple, the unsophisticated and the literal. The key that I'm talking about here is the practice of hiring only people for customer service roles who are naturally inclined to help others. One of the best business practitioners of this sort of policy is Southwest Airlines, which has long known the importance of finding the right person [...]
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The Gentle Art Of Doling Out The Tasks There is an old aphorism that a job is like a treadmill, one where you have to keep moving to stay in one place. I would ask you, the reader who is also a gym business owner, whether you intended to form a business so that you could pay a lease on a treadmill and walk on it yourself, all day long? Or was that equipment lease supposed to enable others to pay you to work out on it, to your profit? Remember the post about learning what to eliminate? Well, reductions [...]
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I think that you would agree me when I say: "Marketing is one of the biggest problems gyms owners will ever face" What if there was a marketing system that automatically just prints cash for you... Wouldn't that be great? There is a way to have a marketing machine that works for you. It's not a secret. In fact, most successful gym owners do the same things. They build the right systems and develop a magnetic message that attracts clients automatically. This is the system and "secret" that I'm about to share with you within this article. A Sea of [...]
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You know, we're in a resolutely business-to-customer service industry, are we not? So, you might be forgiven for thinking that attending trade shows would be a waste of time. Don't you believe it for a minute! It may be individual customers that you serve that earn your revenue but it's the relationships with your peers that keep you going. Your business is built on the relationships that you form within the industry and between professionals that makes the best B2C service possible. Let's take a look at trade shows (IHRSA 2015) and what they can do for you beyond being [...]
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When You Have To Do What You Would Rather Not One of the biggest challenges that a gym owner can face is moving the physical location of the business. Perhaps this is even more of a pressing issue if you already have a location that your clients love. Everything else being equal the best advice is to stay put; don't, at least unless you have to. Of course, there are many reasons that you might actually have to move, so I'm not going to go into the whys and what-fors. Assuming that it's a necessity that you move your small [...]
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Building On Previous Discussions Some time ago, Gym Insight was fortunate to have a guest post from Mike Hedlesky. It was an in-depth piece that has been a real asset to the Insight Blog and, judging by the traffic, a useful source of information and validation for the readers. So first, thanks Mike! Second, I thought it might be good to go back, review and build on it with some further insights into running your own small gym business. Training is always easier to impart to your staff when you are clear about the basics of the company vision and [...]
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Sounding The Data Breach Alarm Again Once again I'm writing about the issue of liability in financial data. Data breaches can affect more than credit cards, although the driving force is the card companies' clamp down on fraud and identity theft. As the merchant, that is the account that is taking the payment will soon be responsible for the loss of information and fraudulent payments, as well as the theft and fraud that can be had with stolen identifying information. As the owner of a small gym business this means you are going to need to be extra vigilant. Having [...]
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Sharing The Conversation With Podcasting When you own a twenty-first century gym you really should support it with all the up-to-date media resources you can get. In my opinion, using the available tools of the Internet is the best way you can leverage even the leanest budget; many of them for free or less than the cost of an ad in the Yellow Pages. Podcasting is one of the most intriguing of these potential resources. It's under-utilized as yet but it could be a really powerful voice for your business. It's a way to connect with likeminded business owners and [...]
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Stages Of Building Your Empire The readers of Gym Insight are a pretty diverse group of people; some have aspirations to gym ownership and others are already there. So let's look at one of the sexiest ways to get business funding. This is how the tech startups go about bootstrapping up from nothing and how the process can be applied to your situation. The levels of investment and startup success that have come from the tech industry works in stages as follows: Seed Money from your own pocket Friends and Family investment from those who truly believe in you Early [...]
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We all know that daily exercise is important for staying fit. However, there are plenty of excuses that keep many people away from daily workout routines when they are at home or work. One of the best ways to ensure regular workout is being enrolled into a fitness academy where the trainers will make sure you do not skip your fitness regime. This also shows that developing a career as a fitness trainer has a lot of prospect. You can not just get a good financial return, but you will also be able to maintain your health in good state. [...]
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The Fitness Experience Companies like SoulCycle and Spartan Race are focused on the experience you have during training or as goals to meet for preparatory training. Other systems like CrossFit demand much of your body and even with proper supervision by certified staff you can easily strain muscles and joints in practice. SoulCycle is a great example of a fitness business carving out a niche because it defies the trend away from spinning classes, which are apparently in decline. By matching charismatic instructors and style with what might otherwise be a limited format the company has created an enthusiastic base [...]
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