David Flench, president Medical Fitness Association. Recently our Gym Owner’s Podcast welcomed David Flench, president of the Medical Fitness Association, for a conversation on how gyms benefit from offering medically integrated healthcare services. Here's the lowdown on what we learned. To listen to our podcast, click on the embedded YouTube link. What is the Medical Fitness Association? It is a nonprofit professional membership organization providing industry standards, certification opportunities, educational programs, benchmark data, professional development and networking to improve the operational success of medically integrated health and well-being centers. It strives to be the resource for new and established gyms [...]
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Gym owners, wake up! You're all fighting for a piece of the same market — slim, fit people. It’s time to embrace the nearly 70 percent of people in the United States who are overweight or obese. They want to exercise, too — just not for the reasons you may think. For this article, we spoke with Louise Green, founder of the Big Fit Girl campaign. Green is a personal trainer, spokesperson, and author who has created an online community supporting, encouraging, and training individuals in larger bodies.From a founding bootcamp for plus-sized women to creating a weight-neutral fitness movement that includes [...]
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How can you find good employees for your gym? Individuals who express your values and create an environment in which members will thrive? It’s never an easy task, but we’ve brainstormed multiple ways you can scout and hire good people. These ideas are culled from our discussions with other gym owners, as well our own experiences in the job market. Four tips to finding good gym employees 1. Recruit from your membership The people who visit your gym already love it. Why not bring them in on the action? We’ve spoken with more than one gym owner who found particular members [...]
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#GymInsight: Flexing muscle in an industry growing as fast as the Internet. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube Why go social now? Over the past 13 years, our company has grown from two gym owners-turned-software-developers into a buzzing hive of professionals, each offering talents that enlarge and improve our software’s capabilities. At Gym Insight we created our gym management software to improve how fitness businesses were run. From converting “pen and paper” gyms, to competing against the world’s largest software management companies, Gym Insight has charged forward on a relentless path of improvement. Through reputation, word-of-mouth, advertising, and now social media, our [...]
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Company Profile: Raegan Reed, The Cardio Club Welcome to our monthly customer profile series! This May, we feature Raegan Reed, owner of the Cardio Club and Delhi Dance Studio in New York state. Read on to discover how she built a successful, multi-faceted fitness center in a small town along the Catskill mountains. Raegan Reed’s living her destiny. There is a saying, “You are the sum total of all your decisions.” Nowhere is this wise adage truer than when considering the life of Raegan Reed. With a servant’s heart and a dancer’s energy, she’s taken an established aerobic studio in [...]
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Employee Profile: Steven Cole Manning, customer support It takes gumption to work, go to college, and raise a tween, but our customer support pro Steven Cole Manning makes it look and sound easy. He’s one the newest members of our team and has quickly revealed a multiplicity of talents that are reshaping our social media outreach. Hired to support Danny Fagan, our director of customer support, Steven Cole brings an eclectic background as useful as it is interesting. Read on to discover how a gift for gab and an ear for music are moving our software company into the future. [...]
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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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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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Let’s talk switching gym management software as a goal for January. If your fitness center is using a management system that takes a percentage of every sale, now is the time to switch to Gym Insight. The process is simple and the results are worth the effort. We know it’s the holiday season. We understand you’re busy with family, friends, and the slow drizzle of diehard gym members. Changing software is the last task you want to add to your to-do list. But listen to us. Why would you not want to switch software right now? After all, January and February are [...]
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November 2022 Profile – The Gym at 214 Main, Fort Mill, South Carolina The Gym at 214 Main is located on a busy main street in a small town in South Carolina In 2020, current owner Jovon Times, along with his wife Keisha Unger-Times, decided to make a bid for the twice-sold gym after training clients there for 12 years under the moniker of “Exercise Times.” He and Unger-Times soon owned the 24/7, 5,500-square-foot gym — a turnkey operation with a roster of clients, excellent equipment, and a contract with the Jazzercise brand. Now, everything else, as he says, is gravy. Times went from [...]
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As your gym grows, so does your need for dependable staff. Although good gym management software and 24/7 access can streamline much of the day-to-day operations of smaller gyms, a smiling face behind the counter is always a good way to run a business. That’s a tough nut to find, though, in today’s environment. Since the evolution of what’s been called the “Great Resignation,” finding and keeping employees has become a job in itself. To give you an idea of what some experts recommend, we scoured multiple resources to uncover and share a few good tips to keep gym employees. [...]
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Who Are You? Where You Are Going & The Vision Thing This is a follow-up to the article about the key values that you need to consider in regard to your customers. There are three things which customers value most, in my experience, that I elaborated in the first article of this topic. Beyond that, you will need to decide on your own list of values, because only you know the reason that you got into the gym ownership business in the first place. Likewise, only you can decide on the vision for your organization. The vision statement of your organization sets out [...]
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Who Are You? A Foundation of Values You know in your heart why you founded a gym and what you want to achieve with it. But as a small business owner, your success depends on the support, hard work and cooperation of all the people who are part of your organization. Your employees need to know why they are doing their jobs and be able to see a road map to find their way on the journey. Once you start to build your business, you may still be the one in control but your entire organization needs to have an [...]
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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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We invite you to test our newest product – digital keytags. If you've ever worried about customers sharing keys or have lost business because you can't get to the club in time, this key is for you. Gym Insight's newly released, app-based digital keytags are equipped with a QR code that can never be copied or shared. At the same time, members enjoy immediate, secure mobile access to your fitness center within minutes of sign-up. How does our digital keytag work? Customers download an app on their mobile phones. Embedded in the app is the digital keytag. Your member simply pulls [...]
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