Read About Our Updated Task List Feature Recently, in response to customer requests, the software team at Gym Insight updated our tasks application. The newly redesigned Task List is robust and easy to use, resulting in increased employee initiative and fewer lost opportunities. Here are five ways the Task List feature saves you money. 1. Encourages employees to begin working before you arrive. The truth is, many employees don’t start doing stuff until the owner walks through the door. To get them moving on time, our new “assign task” feature allows owners/managers to do just that — assign tasks. This way, when an [...]
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Welcome to our newest gym owner business profile. Offered up once a month, these profiles are created to share ideas and challenges between gym owners. Each privately owned gym fuels from a unique set of circumstances. Hopefully, you will find inspiration in their experiences. Gym owner profile: MorGainz Fitness, Pennsylvania It started as a retirement plan. After careers in nursing and police work, Kelly and David Morgan were ready to switch tracks. Always total gym people, they dusted off a business plan written for a college nursing course, and decided to fix a problem. Their small Richland, PA, community did [...]
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Growth This summer, drive gym membership for college students by offering them a great deal on your awesome club. Last year, we wrote a blog urging gym owners to reach out to cooped-up college students tired of learning online and alone. Your gym would become their oasis – a place to meet friends, expend some energy, and prepare for a new year on campus. A refuge from a rough, COVID-crazy year. This year, the kids are back home for the summer and ready to hit an exercise class or two. Let’s look at some reasons it’s the perfect time to target this [...]
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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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Selling gym memberships is the lifeblood of any fitness center. Yet most gym owners don’t think in terms of the sales process, instead leaving the most critical component of their business unscripted and unmanaged. To help club owners better understand how to train their employees so they can guide clients skillfully, we are running a five-part series that breaks the gym sales process into discrete, manageable training points: Introduction and goal assessment How to conduct a proper tourPrice presentationClosing the saleAsking for (additional) business Part 1. Introduction and Goal Assessment Introduction: Say My Name It seems elementary, but the first step [...]
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What is awesome gym customer service? Customer service is important for any business to succeed. If you own a gym, your revenue source will be directly linked to your membership base. In order to ensure your gym business survives and remains competitive in today's fitness industry market, you have to consistently provide your members with high quality service. Customer service plays a vital role in member acquisition and member retention — research by IHRSA shows interaction with fitness staff significantly decreases member dropout. Gym members that are satisfied with the service being provided by your fitness business will automatically come [...]
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How does your gym sell personal training packages? Does your fitness staff avoid bringing the idea up with prospects, afraid they’ll walk right out the door? They shouldn’t. In fact, personal training services should be sold at the point of sale – when new health club members first tour your gym. We all know personal training is good for a fitness center’s bottom line. A client who hires a trainer stays on at your health club three times as long as a regular member. It’s a win-win. Selling personal training To sell personal training effectively, your gym needs a standardized [...]
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There are plenty of good reasons to coax your health club members outside - autumn weather is perfect, they can benefit from the shot of vitamin D, and their participation supports their favorite gym as it regains footing after the COVID-19 shutdown. Regardless of the motivations, creating this "gym without a roof" concept is an excellent option for every club at this time. These impulsive opportunities to pack in 10 pushups or swing across extra-wide monkey bars build stamina, muscle endurance, strength, and agility - all in a few moments' time. In many ways it's because exercising in the fresh [...]
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Remember when fitness was an exploding rocket, taking off like a firebrand in everyone's consciousness? The future seemed endless with new innovations blending technology and health, fun and funky athletic trends, and a swath of boutique and health club options catering to every age, income, and preference. The future will be "virtual, gamified, and totally immersive," claimed a January 2020 Fast Company article. Then came the COVID-19 shutdown and gym attendance petered out, to the point where an estimated 70% of health club members have not returned to their local gyms. Many turned to exercise at their home - a [...]
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Dirty Work Continued... As a business owner there's a plethora of rules regulations and certifications that you have to navigate through. Of course, on top of that, gym ownership comes with its own specific headaches. When you own a business of any description you quickly find out that there are all kinds of tasks that seem to have been designed to distract you from your purpose and the mission of your enterprise. As always, I try to avoid the controversies and politics of ownership but we all have to deal with them. So, my discussion point here is how to [...]
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I recently posted a blog about statistics in the fitness business. I really only just scratched the surface with that one. In this blog post I want to address a few things that I had to leave out, and tie up loose ends. It's always good to know where the next generation of competition could come from. I tend to think the source of competition to watch is self-employed trainers building followings through social media and then establishing studios once they have enough of a revenue flow. Also there were some statistics that relate the demographics of the industry to [...]
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Recently I wrote about New Year promotions and also about working with and connecting to your local business community. Anything that gives you increased standing and respect in the community is a good thing, in my opinion. The importance of marketing and promotion can't be overstated. Unless you've hit on something that takes all the capacity you can produce without you lifting a finger (let me know about that please), marketing and promotions must be ongoing activities. My point here is that you have to be in the habit of actively pursuing promotion opportunities. They won't all work out but [...]
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I've occasionally had some casual inquiries about adding the ability to manage time-limited part-time customers to Gym Insight. That means time selective memberships that use your gym when you have excess capacity, the quiet times of low attendance that comes from the natural ebb and flow of membership demand. I haven't fully written the code to support this yet but, if there's serious interest in the health club community, I would be happy to consider adding an update or expansion module. The Off Peak Trial Period Membership For the kind of offer I'm talking about, here you need a connection [...]
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Getting your certification as a personal trainer can propel you into a new and satisfying career. But before you launch your website, start your Twitter feed, and begin to look for clients, there is something you need to do first. Pass your certification exam. Okay, so that may seem as easy as doing 50 one-armed pushups. Which exam should you take? ACE? ISSA? NASM? AFAA? ACSM? Or one of the many other accredited personal trainer certification exams? What should you know before you take the exam? What's the exam like? Where should you start? A Beginner's Guide to Personal Trainer [...]
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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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