Proper Preparation for The Gym Business Getting prepared and qualified to be a fitness club founder is like laying the foundations for a home or a mighty fortress. The better the foundations, the longer the structure (of your fitness business) will last, and the higher you can build. If you’ve had a long career as a trainer, or been a successful manager for a big box fitness brand for many years, you’re probably ready right now. On the other extreme, if you’re just out of school or starting from scratch, now’s an excellent time to seek a fitness certification or [...]
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Management Metrics and Where You Find Them Like fitness programming, gym business management is about setting goals and defining improvements. It’s how you measure them that provides the framework to get the work done. You can’t know what you’ve achieved until you’ve measured it. Whether it’s measured in lean body mass, inches of muscle, or maximum deadlift weight, measurement tells you how much progress you’ve achieved relative to your workout goals. It’s the same for business goals. If you want a leaner company, better sales performance, or higher rates of retention, you measure your actions to hit your targets. The [...]
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Of Belly Laughs and Leg Lifts I was listening to some comedians talking on a podcast recently. It seems to be a thing in comedy for comics to interview their friends and idols. However, I was struck by the similarities between owning a gym and running a comedy club. The fitness and entertainment professions both appeal to the general public as markets. They each bring in people to participate in some sort of experience. Although, they do it in different ways, perhaps. The Changing Culture of Comedy Lately, comedy clubs are growing in popularity and revenue. The number of would-be [...]
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Insight was my solution for my own gym management headaches. As a computer science graduate and fitness club owner, I had some options. I didn’t hesitate to dive in and write my own code when the business started to get complicated. Great idea, right? Well, it turned into a bigger project than I had expected, which is an understatement! Each solution seemed to reveal new problems, at least in the first version. I’m not going into too much detail because I’ve covered much of this over the years on the Gym Insight Blog. Multiple Gym Management Tool Sets There’s a [...]
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Fitness is one of the more efficient industries, in the economic sense. The same is true about gym management software. It’s a good thing in that competition leads to better products and services. On the other hand, it goes in the opposite direction as well. Economics drives free markets toward commoditization, which means cheap, bland products. Here at Insight, we recognize that, and we work to deliver a stand-out club management platform that defies the odds. As a gym business owner, so should you. The best strategy for small gym business success is unique offerings that command premium fitness club [...]
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Gym Management Software And An Inquisitive Mindset I think there is only one way to survive in the fitness industry in the next few years. As a gym business owner, be ready to make changes quickly and often. Be curious about what’s around the corner. The changes that are going on around us right now are world-shattering, and you have to keep up to survive. There will be many companies that get lost along the way. Insight gives you the gym management software tools to respond proactively to changes. Of course, other things demand your attention too. But First, The [...]
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How Do You Connect With Prospective Members? Across all of the activities that you organize to market your gym business, do you know what the critical touchpoints are in the structure of your membership marketing and management process? Touchpoints are the events and situations that define how you monitor and measure the customer journey that your members experience throughout their customer lifecycles. Converting Lookers Into Loyal Members When a prospect walks into your facility and asks to get more information it is probably not a spontaneous impulse that brought them to that point; they most likely had been thinking about [...]
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When you work very hard to build something significant, and someone makes what sounds like an unjustified remark, it hurts. If you don’t restrain yourself from attacking it can turn into a circus in all the wrong ways. Ever see a minor complaint turn into a public relations disaster? It seems like it happens all the time these days and companies still miss opportunities to turn customer griping into chances to amaze larger audiences. Negative Reviews Can Make Your Service Better When someone makes a complaint in public or gives you a bad review, it’s going out to the whole [...]
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This One Hack Will Generate Early Feedback Here’s a tech term that you can use as a principle to drive your small gym business empire ahead: In tech jargon, they call it Dogfooding. The expression, to “eat your dog food” is not a literal thing, obviously. I don’t think that trend has gotten off the ground yet thank goodness. However, if you don’t take heed and begin to practice this brand-building principle, you might literally end up sleeping in your back office. Dogfooding applies most intensely when you’re attempting to make significant changes. For example, when you roll out changes [...]
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Retention, Retention, Retention! The subject of retention keeps coming up on the Gym Insight Blog because it keeps gym owners in the business. In fact, any business that depends on periodic payments and satisfied customers must make retention a priority. As long as you maximize the length of time that you retain your members, you’ll minimize the cost of replacing them. Retention touches on issues such as membership turnover and the lifetime value of a customer. So let’s review some of the things that you can do to hang on to your clients for the long haul. Build Trust In [...]
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The Latest Gym Insight Turnaround Success Recently, on the Gym Insight Blog, I wrote a post about small gym business turnarounds for struggling gym owners. That post referenced a video published by Grant Cardone, which followed him through the process as he coached a struggling fitness center back from failure. Well, we’re celebrating the turnaround success of one of our customers! So, how could I not share the experience? Video Coaching Podcast With Anthony Pasquale Our gym-software and gym management trainer-expert, Anthony Pasquale worked with one of our customers recently, who had asked for help in improving sales. The client [...]
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I recently finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, which I thought was a fascinating life story. There are so many things about this guy that pertain to any business that it’s an irresistible topic to tackle on the Gym Insight Blog. But I promise to visit the subject only one time, unless there is a call for an encore in the comments of course. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple computers, Next, and Pixar Entertainment was a complicated person to be sure. On one hand, he had a genius for design and business. Jobs had an amazing eye [...]
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If Humans Use It The Internet Of Things Will Connect It The world is changing around us all, and we here at Gym Insight are working to track the new trends, and attempting to relate them back to gym business ownership. If you can start a fitness business with a laptop or tablet, the right membership management software and a rack full of kettle bells, congratulations! You are probably on to a good thing. That accessibility comes from the power of your hard work, people skills and Gym Insight software. We would certainly love to help you find your success. [...]
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Updated the Dues Change Report to add year-over-year changes: The Dues Change Report will now show you a comparison with how you’re doing from the same date a year ago. This helpful snapshot can show you in a split second if you’re making progress or if you need some help! Remember, under your user profile you can have the Dues Change Report automatically emailed to you every night if you turn that option on! Learn More Added welcome letter, past-due letter, and past-due email previews: If you go to your location settings, you can now see a preview of the welcome letter, past-due [...]
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Parallels In Gym Ownership And Software Services Companies I am fortunate to have had the privilege to see the inner workings of two different industries. My background and education is in computer science but my passions and enterprises have always been in fitness. That led me to having both a career in computer sciences through gyminsight.com and in gym management by owning a small but successful local gym business. Since the readers of the Gym Insight Blog tend to be fitness professionals I thought it would be useful, as a contrast, to talk about the computer industry and the differences [...]
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