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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Powerlifter at Celli's Fitness Center is ready for next move Ryan Celli founded Celli’s Fitness Center in 2007 catering to strength athletes and power lifters. Since then, his privately owned gym has relocated, expanded, and added automated membership sign-up. Like many small gyms, he relies on technology to keep costs down. As he grew, he added cameras, a door controller, programable music, and a self-serve drink station along with a better gym management system. The investments allowed him to scale back hours and employ a staff of only his wife and son. However, he soon found well-placed technology returned more than [...]
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Opening a new gym can be really stressful. You’ve put a ton of money into this new business and now it’s time to switch on the lights and hope members sign up fast enough to cover mounting bills. But it does not have to be that way. Established gyms know the best way to promote a new location is Pre-sales. This simple idea takes the pressure off opening day and provides much-needed cash for final construction snafus. What are gym membership pre-sales? These are sold prior to your fitness center’s opening. Marketed through social media or an advertising campaign, this [...]
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Ensuring your fitness center appears in an internet search engine's local business listing feed is one of the most important marketing steps you can take as a new gym owner. Your health club needs to be on the list when a potential member types in “gyms near me.” Here’s how to make sure you’ve got a shot at the top spot. Which are the top business citation sites? There are literally hundreds national directories, but you need to make sure your gym is listed in the top business citation sites. As well, your gym should be listed on top industry niches. Niches [...]
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After students leave for college and the costly fall shopping season starts, many health clubs experience a surge in gym membership freezes. But these short-term fixes can be costly to a gym owner. With a little planning, though, your fitness center can avoid this seasonal ritual and come out ahead — with happier customers and, maybe, even more personal training clients. Why do members freeze their gym membership? Customers are on the defensive when they're ready to cancel or freeze memberships. Often, freezing a membership is just a polite way of saying “cancel my membership.” The customer wants out but is looking [...]
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Why sell branded products at your gym Have you ever considered selling a branded product in your gym or online? They could be water bottles, hoodies, equipment or towels. Whatever. The point is your health club’s name would be on that item, wherever it travels. All the while, reflecting your gym's unique identity and generating a bit more cash for your company. What is the difference between a product and a brand? Products are what you sell but a brand is who you are. Brands are created through advertising, intent, and creativity. Your carefully crafted flagship image is your brand. The [...]
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Should your gym add an enhancement fee to offset the increased cost of cleaning materials and procedures? We asked two fitness center owners their opinions. Here’s what we learned. Photos courtesy of Fit247 Does not charge an annual maintenance fee: Don Roberts, owner of Fit247, Durango, Colorado Roberts has owned his gym for 20 years and decided against charging his customers a maintenance fee. The 7,000-square-foot, 24-hour facility is in a small city with a close-knit group of customers, and he prides himself on running a very clean, organized gym. Nearly 20% of his 600 members have been with him almost [...]
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Let’s be real. Many gym owners run their clubs via spreadsheets and direct deposit. We call that “pen-and-papering” a gym. How do we know? Because we owned fitness studios for decades. That’s why we started Gym Insight. We know the right gym management software can help owners grow their gyms without costing them a fortune. Profile of ProFitness of Greenville, South Carolina In 2014, Pete Marston bought a small, struggling 24-hour gym with a friendly crowd ready for a hands-on owner. The recently retired manufacturing executive ran the club without gym software, manually renewing clients. It was time-consuming, but he [...]
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In the modern era, few businesses can get by without taking advantage of all the myriad technology upgrades available. Utilizing the best business software can propel your gym to a new level of productivity, security, and success. What can great gym management software do for you? Save time and money When your software takes over the automation of menial tasks and shoulders the burden of the everyday work load, your staff is set free to do more important work that only humans can accomplish. Your employees' time is much better spent in face to face interactions with clients and trainers [...]
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Breaching the Barriers of the Fitness Business Gyms should always be about positivity and overcoming obstacles. So, it's worth taking a look at a few of the hurdles you're likely to encounter in fitness entrepreneurship. I'm not saying you should forge ahead recklessly. You need a plan and contingencies. However, don't let the inevitable difficulties and the nay-sayers turn you away from your dream of becoming a fitness club owner. Big Box Brands Take All the Business False! You don't have to invest a fortune in a primo location, lease one-hundred tons of the latest Internet-connected equipment, and then compete [...]
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Building Your Dream by Starting Your Own Business in Fitness If you are the kind of person, like me, who enjoy fitness and being at the gym, the dream of starting your own business in fitness is the logical next step. Fitness is so wide-open because it's a people business. If you can gain a following of one person, you have a fitness business. That sounds crazy but, if you're in the right place at the right time, celebrities and the super-wealthy do sometimes hire trainers full-time. That may be a bit extreme and takes a lot of luck. However, [...]
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Survey of What Is On The Horizon for Special Populations in Fitness Specialty Fitness Fills Niches and Gyms Humans come in a delightful diversity of shapes, sizes, and physical needs. I think it is super-rewarding to see people achieve spectacular levels of fitness achievement. It is even more rewarding when you can help special populations take small steps to better health and enhanced mobility. Special Population Niche Opportunities The fitness profession offers opportunities to assist people at all stages of their fitness journeys, as well as their extended sojourns through life. Special populations present you with many unique niche opportunities [...]
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Glittering Membership Management Performance Indicators If you can do things that keep and reduce change to the minimum your club might just be on the path to finding diamonds. Retention is the key concept of club management. It brings your small gym business dreams to life. That is a constant, but, unless your retention rate is one-hundred percent, it means change is the only constant. Setting Retention to Maximum If you have a limit to your membership management capacity, the longer members stick around, the less you have to invest in recruiting new ones. The difference is like that of [...]
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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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