Accounting For The Details There are so many ways that paying attention to your costs will save some money and keep you earning a profit. Think of it like lacing your shoes before you workout. A better fit might only mean a slight advantage, but that could be the difference of winning the race or only taking second place. Small savings add up when it comes to supplies. When you factor in the behavior of staff it tends to have an even greater effect. Gym Insight gives you some great tools for measuring things like attendance and payments. There is [...]
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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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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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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 [...]
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Do Premium Gym Memberships Have A Future? Why are there some gym business models that seem to be in huge demand while still charging top dollar for memberships? I think that the simple answer is that there are enough members who are shopping by value and not price. It's not about competing based on what the gym across the street is charging, it's about finding the things that you are truly great at and which are in demand and matching the two together. Too many small businesses fail to understand this important distinction, not just in the gym business but [...]
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Taking Your Reputation Forward By Asking For Testimonials If you have a system that currently gets testimonials and positive reviews from your membership that is a gift! If you can get testimonials easily, you're golden. If not, join the club! It's not usually easy to elicit praise from customers on the record, even when they are completely happy with your service. The secret is to ask, and to ask at the right time. Two Words Explain Why Customer Testimonials Work So, the question is: What do testimonials matter? Getting testimonials and positive reviews from your membership is worth a lot [...]
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When The Unboxing Experience Feels Like Your Birthday I recently set up a local service with a card reader. The company that sent the reader seems to have a real insight into the concept of experience, particularly the unboxing experience. The reader is well designed but so was the box that it came in. It contained three cleverly designed and satisfying layers of wrapping that had to be peeled away or opened and then a final layer of protective plastic that was strangely the best part to remove. These days, it's no surprise that people unbox their tech-toys and upload [...]
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One of the most disruptive trends in technology in the last few decades has been the leveraging and (pardon the fancy talk) disintermediation of the old ways that made the wheels of commerce go round. That means that new technologies that are labor saving and disrupting of the status quo cause big changes. Here's an old-fashioned example: Long before there was MS Word there were typewriters. These days, typewriters are an antique collector's pride and joy, more than objects of any functional uses. For previous generations the typewriter was a labor saving essential for the workplace. Companies had entire typing [...]
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As a gym owner, health club operator, or as a freelance personal trainer, without a doubt, one or more of the following questions crosses your mind daily... How much personal training did our Brentwood gym sell last week? Who is the top grossing salesperson at our Freemont club? How did our Spring Valley team perform against their goals last month? How much EFT do we need to set up at our Downtown club to hit our goal this month? Which one of our health clubs is selling the most annual membership agreements? How much EFT did we set up yesterday? [...]
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Over the years, independent gyms and their counterparts like training studios and bootcamps, have been moving from cash transactions to online payments. This is done through a system called payment processing. A payment processor is a company used to handle credit/debit card transactions through a payment gateway which in turn sends a transaction request to your bank and/or an Automated Clearing House (ACH) provider. When a gym membership is being purchased via a credit card terminal, the information is sent to a system that stores the account details of your customer in order to verify if the customer has sufficient [...]
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Health Clubs or training studios that have just opened their doors will require an efficient system of receiving payments. Instead of having a landscape system, it is much easier if your accounts are taken care of through a payment gateway online. Additionally, payment gateways configured with a gym management system has many advantages. This post will focus on one payment gateway, PayPal. PayPal specifically is set up to where a new health clubs and personal trainers can easily acquire a merchant account in a shorter amount of time than most other payment gateway options. 1. Simple and easy to use [...]
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Insight has recently received several requests to integrate with PayPal. Well, we heard you loud and clear! Now, Insight will work seamlessly with PayPal once you've entered your PayPal API settings. Anyone, no matter how small your business is or if your business is just getting started - can start using Insight! Insight even has documentation giving step-by-step instructions on how to get started!
We're extremely pleased to announce that we've started beta testing Insight version 2! Version 2 will combine all of the features of our two primary products and will provide a seamless platform for member management, billing, access, sales, and payroll! We'd also like to extend a special thank you to our loyal clients who are helping us with this beta test. Version 2 will be available for public release by the end of March!
