As a gym owner, customer service may be one of those catchphrases you don’t think about much. To stay competitive and keep costs down, you’ve leaned into online sign-ups, digital keytags, and reducing employee payrolls. It’s working, too. With an emphasis on cost reduction and adapting services to customer needs, small gyms have stopped disappearing from the landscape. Truthfully, if you’re a gym owner reading this blog, you’ve survived quite a clean-out. In 2019, gym ownership hit record levels, with more than 41,370 gyms in the United States, according to Statista’s research. Today, that number hovers at about 31,000 clubs. Congratulations on being among the fittest [...]
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What if I told you there was $500 in monthly gym memberships sitting in your computer? As an owner of a studio, would you search for it? Well, it’s right there — in the cancelled customer column. Let’s look at how we can bring these old friends back into the fold. Make a Plan to Contact Everyone knows turnover is high in the gym business, and lately that number’s crawled upwards. However cancelled and frozen accounts are a golden opportunity. These customers signed up once. They know your club. Now it’s up to you and your sales team to rekindle [...]
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What benefits does partnering with a physical therapist bring to your gym members? As the collective age of United States citizens continues to rise, so does the rate of exercise-related injuries. For many people trying to stay in shape, effectively rehabilitating an injury now means that they must see both a physical therapist and a personal trainer, often at different facilities with no communication between them, and hope that the information they receive is consistent, safe, and helpful. This is why, immediately, it seems obvious that bringing a physical therapist into your gym space would be of huge benefitto your [...]
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If you are new to the fitness industry, you probably have some amount of trepidation toward the time of year known as the "slow season" for gyms. Typically, when people talk about the slow season, they are referring to the summer months where most gyms struggle through a dip of low memberships and class participation. Assuming you have just opened your gym, or you are still preparing for a grand opening, you have not yet been through a slow summer in order to judge how it will affect your business personally. However, in this post we'll run through the basics [...]
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You would be hard-pressed to find a more polarizing and controversial modern exercise trend than CrossFit. Known for extremely intense workouts that combine core concepts from weightlifting, cardio, gymnastics, and even yoga, CrossFit is a "love it" or "hate it" experience. Regardless of your personal feelings on the topic, we're here to examine whether CrossFit as a business model could benefit your gym in the long run, or whether you should steer clear and stick to more traditional methodologies. Since every gym owner has different needs, financial situations, and business overhead to consider, this decision is often a personal one. [...]
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Experience And Community from Shared Values There is a level beyond converting prospects into members and inspiring them to keep coming back. That is where your club is the center of a community of people who love fitness and who associate your gym with connectedness. There are three authentic values at the core of your gym business. Fostering all three of these is something you have to do to succeed as a competitor in the fitness profession, and it all filters down to transforming your club into a community. Build Communities for People The guys and gals who are super-committed [...]
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Client programming is all about personalizing the experience and service you provide. Members want guidance for fitness and an enjoyable, rewarding experience that gets them there. You can adopt a client programming system or invent one of your own. Either way, this is a vital dimension that will help to establish your position as a force in the fitness industry. Everyone Wins With High-Quality Client Programming Personalizing the experience that you provide to individual members gets right to the very heart of what consumers value about fitness club memberships. Your members place their hope and trust in you and your [...]
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Put your own logo on our PDF membership agreements!: We never intended the ridiculous barbell logo to last for as many months as it has. As of last week, you can now replace the barbell generic logo on our membership agreements with your own logo! Give it a try now.. Learn More Save
Beating Functional Obsolescence Gym ownership is actually a pretty dynamic business, in case you didn't already know that (you're welcome). Rapidly changing trends mean that you always have to be on the lookout for a shift in what the membership expects. On a more basic level you need to reinvest to protect your assets, as they say. You can't have old, broken-down exercise machines that just take up space. You can't afford to have shabby signage outside with burnt out lights or missing letters. That is why, as a gym owner who sees other gym operations all the time, I'm [...]
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I founded Gym Insight because I wanted software that catered directly to how I manage my fitness center, and I just couldn't find that on the market. At least, not up to the standards that I expect from a dedicated business application. Insight has been so successful because other owners of small fitness center and their managers face the same demands every day. One of the most important things that the best gym management software must do is integrate with the customer experience. It has to help the curious browser or window shopper to pull the trigger and commit to [...]
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A lot of jargon is thrown around in the world of fitness. Walk into any gym at any given moment in any part of the world and you will hear a conversation about too much muscle one day going through some magical, Narnia-like metamorphic journey to fat. Well, if muscle cells can somehow break the laws of everything humankind has discovered about biology, then be careful because your fingers could just as likely turn into a pack of hungry wolverines at some point. Many popular fitness terms are riddled in conversations like the one mentioned above. Probably the most popular [...]
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So you are opening up your own fitness center. Congratulations! I am sure your head is spinning with how to implement your business plan and to start your build out. On top of everything else, you also start thinking about all the necessities that you believe your members will want and that will set your fitness business apart from the rest of the overwhelming competition out there. Finding your niche is the hard part, but that is not what this particular post is about. Sorry :( However, what I want to help with is the consideration of a disguised accessory [...]
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Why It is Vital to Hire a Competent Manager Hiring someone to manage your fitness center is one of the most important decisions you will make regarding the business. Management staff can make or break your business in a relatively short time. Your manager is your representative; your main customer service person as well as the person who manages your employees and makes all pertinent decisions when you are not there. It's no wonder that many fitness facility owners are reluctant to hand over the reins of their business to a manager. Your facility manager needs to wear a lot [...]
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Group training involves a fitness trainer from your gym leading a group of participants in their path of fitness. Participants, apart from group camaraderie, also benefit from access to a knowledgeable fitness professional at shared costs. These basic benefits of group training are making more and more fitness enthusiasts go for it in today's world. It is therefore essential that gyms look at this trend and provide an avenue for such people in order to stay competitive in the fitness market. The effectiveness of group training is mainly because of the following factors: Social interaction: For most people, workouts are [...]
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The Typical Turnover Rate for Personal Trainers One of the biggest problems facing a gym owner or manager is that of finding and keeping a team of top notch personal trainers on board. Gym members expect to have access to personal trainers as part of the membership package and in most cases are willing to spend a fair amount of money to pay for training. The hard part is that while thousands of men and women attend school and become certified personal trainers each year, the turnover rate for this career field runs between 80 and 90% on average. Why [...]
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