Built To Grow

Relying on somebody else to run critical aspects of your gym business like lead generation and lead nurturing doesn’t sound like a good idea. For one, you would face big problems if they were to disappear. Secondly, you don’t know what they are saying to the leads before they walk into your door. They may be promising them something that you can’t deliver.As a business owner, you have to own the process. The problem with some gym owners is that they don’t want to do the work. Having processes and systems in a business is a lot of work and you have to be ready to do it. Tim reckons that if you don’t want to do the work, you shouldn’t be in business, to begin with.The best way to look at your business as the owner is by making it sellable. Make your business sellable by doing the right things and this includes taking control of aspects such as marketing, delivery of your product, having process and systems, communication, and all other pieces. Key TakeawaysZach Columbia new book, Directing fitness and his new c

Customer experience is what differentiates your gym from the rest but you have to ensure that your clients are showing up. When they show up, you offer them the opportunity to get the results they want and this is what customer experience is all about. The main reason why your clients pay you to come to the gym is for you to hold them accountable. They want to get the results but you have to hold them accountable.Now, if they are now showing up, you can’t deliver the results and you can’t hold them accountable. Following them up with calls, emails and messages can easily be pushed aside in favor of other tasks in the gym. We have developed an automated system we use here at Pulse Fitness to follow up with the clients when they don’t show up.Before we automated this system, we used to have the coaches and front desk staff make the calls and send the messages. This was not working until we created the automation around outreach. This is just one of the many automated systems we have built in the CLA.Listen in t

Coming out of the shutdown, you may feel obliged as a gym owner to give back to those clients who have supported you throughout the time you were closed. How do you give back value to these clients? Should you give them free months or free upgrades or do you drop their rates? We thought about it and tried out something in our gym which worked very well for us. Basically what we did was to upgrade members who supported us by offering them two months free upgrade to the next higher-priced package. This has worked well for us because we have had some members choosing to remain in the higher-level pricing once the free upgrade is over. The higher-priced packages help them get better results while helping the gym get more revenues. This is a win-win situation for both the client and the gym. Tim highly recommends that you try this strategy to thank your clients for supporting you as well as nurturing them up the higher-priced packages. This will mean more revenues for your gym. Key TakeawaysNurturing clients up th

Every business loves getting referrals. But how can you consistently get referrals without hounding your clients and putting a bad taste in their mouth? Well, in this episode we talk about how we have built an amazing system around this that really helps the gym as well as our clients.There is no better time than now to get referrals. Many gyms are in a situation where they have lost business. It’s time to lean on your membership and ask them to support you so that you can continue to serve. Your clients understand this and are ready to help.We built a loyalty program that highly incentives referrals. It also rewards other good behaviors and actions in the gym but referrals earn the most points. This whole system is automated. We figured out that our clients were motivated by status more than anything else as a reward  for their points. We created a levels board with six levels where clients can climb based on their points. Tune in to this episode and learn more about our system and how it gets us referrals w

Staffing for a semi-private model is not hard. We have primarily three roles that you will need as you grow and scale to multiple locations. The first role is the fitness director role. This is a very important role in any gym. This is the person in charge of the gym and acts and thinks like the owner. His primary duty among others is the sales process. He is also the person who the clients consult for any queries they have. The fitness director helps the owner remove themselves from the operations.Next up is the program director role. This is the person in charge of workout programs and other projects in the gym including the promotional work. They are in charge of program design and events. The fitness director manages people while the program director manages the systems.The other important role in this model is the training team. These are the coaches who facilitate the workouts. In a semi-private model, they ideally get the programs from the program director or the fitness director. They ensure the clien

Are you having trouble transitioning to semi-private training? We get this question a lot in our business talk with fitness professionals Facebook group. In this episode, we share some of the things we do here at Pulse Fitness. To begin with, you have to make it clear with the marketing and initial consultation that it is semi-private training, not small group training.The workouts need to be done diligently for semi-private training. Each client gets their own customized workouts based on their goals. Having a system in place that helps with this will help any the coach with the workouts and the needs of every client and train them accordingly. With this, every client can train with any coach and they will get a standardized experience.One more thing that you’ll need to do is to decide the number of clients per coach. Tim recommends you start with three per coach and progress from there. Here at Pulse, we are doing six clients to one coach but we have progressed from four since we started this model 10 years

What are you doing with your time during this downtime? It is a great time to take a deeper look at the business and identify major weaknesses. Even if the problem seems big, do not get stuck and hope for the best. Start tackling it today.There are many areas in the business which you can improve. It may be the operations, accounting, sales, marketing, systems, taxes, or client experience. The problem many gym owners face is that they focus more on the training part and ignore other areas of the business. Training is just a small part of the fitness business, the other areas are just as important. These other areas are what will differentiate you from the other gyms down the road.There are different things you can do right now. Take a deep look at the business as a whole and start working. Client experience is particularly very important. How the client interacts with your business right from the parking to when they leave the door. Take a look at that and make improvements to it.Listen in to this episode and

If you are wondering what you should be doing for marketing, give today’s episode a listen. We break down the differences between Facebook ads and Google ads. We also talk about Google’s smart campaign feature which is excellent for marketing. For our case, we have transitioned over to Google ads where we are seeing more success. Facebook ads are good for targeting specific demographics. The problem with this is that the user may not have the intent. The user may not be interested in the ad. This is the opposite of Google. They may not have the data on demographics that Facebook has but your ad will appear to people who are actively searching the keywords that fit the criteria of your ad. Google has a feature called smart campaigns that helps launch an ad very quickly and easily. You can launch an ad within 2 minutes and the cost per click is very low. We tried it and the cost per click was 50 cents, which is much lower than Facebook ads.  If you haven’t tried it, try it now. Key TakeawaysUpdate on the state

The first thing you need to understand if you are to run a fitness business is who you want to serve. To understand the type of client you want to train, you have to look at the bigger picture of who is in your market and how many people you can attract with your model.  This is a business decision that you make early on.Some gym owners do not want to look at the accounting side of the business. You have to understand the balance sheet, P&L, income versus expenses numbers in detail. This is the health of your business and ultimately your score. It shows how well or bad you are doing.Another thing that determines if you are running a business or a hobby is whether you, as a gym owner do everything yourself. To run a business, you need systems. You need to automate, delegate, and eliminate tasks. Your business should be able to run without you. You also need to prepare job descriptions for your staff. Lastly, you need an effective business model. Listen in to this episode and learn more about running a prof

Most gym owners don’t think about maximizing their revenues and increasing their profitability initially when they open their gym. They just want to open and start helping people. However, at some point, as they get deeper into the business, they start thinking more about the value of their time and how they can maximize their profitability.This might lead to transitioning your fitness model from what you are currently offering to a more profitable one. Some gym owners are fearful of changing their model even when their current one is not serving them. They have some self-limiting beliefs. They are afraid of the unknown.In any gym, you only have so many hours to train clients. At our gym, we do it from five in the morning to nine in the evening. That is 13-hour time slots minus the noon slot where we don’t do any training. Maximizing your revenue during the hours you are open will increase your profitability, which will help you serve your clients even better. In our case, semi-private training makes the most

Do you have a value ladder built into your fitness business? If you look around, all successful businesses have a value ladder built into their business, whether intentionally or not. A value ladder is when you get your client into your ecosystem and gradually ascend them into the higher price tiers where they can get the most help.In your fitness business model, you should have layers of service so that you are offering your clients the opportunities to get a different level of service. This allows you to grow your business and increase your profitability without necessarily adding in more clients.As a business owner, you shouldn’t view the value ladder as just a way of making more money, rather as a way to help your clients better achieve their goals. At higher price points, they should receive better results. It could be customized programs or individualized attention. The user experience goes up as they go up the value ladder. Listen in to this episode and hear more about how you can ascend your clients u

In this episode, we talk about integrity and doing the right thing in business and in life. So many businesses especially in the digital marketing space are falling short on integrity. They fail to do the right thing. However, most fitness businesses have integrity which is a good thing. Most gym owners want to help people.Tim gives an example of how he hired a company to do some explainer videos. The company despite numerous delays and being four weeks late submitted a horrible final product. More time to work on it and still the guy doesn’t come up with anything and doesn’t refund the money despite acknowledging that he didn’t deliver.Coming back to the fitness industry, running your business with integrity should your guiding principle. It will serve you for years to come. Doing the right thing for your clients and having the mentality that you are there to serve them. Do not always look at the money and the contracts, some situations call for empathy. We look at several situations in the gym where we have

We begin this episode by sharing our thoughts about the CrossFit situation. The CEO replied to a tweet and many people took exception to his reply. Some people thought that his comment was racist. Things sort of snowballed from there with further accusations of sexism at the top in CrossFit. All this led to the CEO stepping down and many affiliates seeking to move away from the brand.The statistics of gym owners wanting to disaffiliate are huge. In about one week’s time, 1500 gyms wanted to step away from the brand. This is about 10% of the total numbers of Crossfitters and this number may still rise. However, gyms are not disaffiliating because of this one incident. Rather there are many problems with CrossFit and this is like the last straw. Some of the affiliates leaving had one foot of the door and were just looking for an excuse to leave.  As we learn from our guests who had disaffiliated earlier, there are many issues surrounding the brand that some gym owners feel they are better off without it.  Tim a

Once you reopen your gym, there is a possibility that one of your coaches or members ends up testing positive for Covid. This is the reality. It has happened to a few businesses here in Arizona. How you respond to this situation may mean success or failure to your business.You need to have a plan in place on how to handle this situation if it ever comes up. Get your team on board about the plan. Once it happens the first thing you need to do is to take extreme accountability of the situation as the business owner. Every decision you take from this point either makes or breaks you. The perception of the marketplace on how you handle the situation is key to the future of your business.Transparency is the key thing when dealing with this situation.  You have to make a decision fast. Having an action plan and being prepared will help you in this. Communicating transparently, having protocols in place, and being properly prepared is the way to go about this tricky situation. Key TakeawaysBeing prepared for the pos

Many gym owners when starting out will have a hard time choosing clients. You don’t have a lot of clients and it’s hard to say no to any of them even when they aren’t a good fit. However, as your business grows, you get to point when you can choose your ideal client.However, cutting ties with clients who are not a good fit is never an easy thing to do. You must hold tough conversations with them. Many gym owners dread doing this but it gets to a point where you must do it for the sake of your other clients and your business.The key to holding a tough conversation with a client is first, doing it in person and privately. Do not send a text message or an email. Secondly is coming from a genuine point of care.  Burning bridges is never a good thing to do. Then you need to address the issue at hand. Some of the stuff involved is very sensitive. You have to act decisively. If you have to fire a client, then go ahead and do it.Listen in as Tim shares some interesting and some weird client stories from the gym and h

Some gyms are still closed, not allowed to open yet. This must be hard for you as a gym owner but you must continue building your ecosystem. Acquire as many leads as you can and continue providing value to your clients through virtual training. Once you are allowed to open they will come back.For our case, once we reopened, we saw a surge of clients coming back then a drop and now we are getting back around. A few, about 10% are not comfortable coming back yet. A few clients are still on freeze and have chosen to wait but our schedule is still packed. The clients that are still hesitant are still important and as a gym owner, you should look at ways you can meet them where they are. How do you serve them, how do you communicate to them?There are some marketing angles you can take to persuade this type of client who is afraid. You can offer them a 30-day program where they train virtually at home. They get to see your coaches and hear from you. The direction of the program is to build trust so as to eventually

During turbulent times like these, there are opportunities that you can take advantage of. Things like the stock market offer a great chance to invest when the stocks are low. But as a gym owner, you may feel like this situation has handcuffed you. You've been forced to close the gym and aren't allowed to reopen yet. However, there are numerous opportunities outside of your daily routine.Being an opportunist means you are always ready to see opportunities even in a difficult situation. As gym owners, we should not just sit there in our box and wait, because these opportunities are only there for a certain period of time. You should grab any opportunity to grow your business or make some money. There was an opportunity to make as much as 3000% returns on the stock market during this time. In our case, we took advantage of some stocks that are now doing well.When an outside of the box opportunity presents itself, you have to take action quickly. You may be wrong, and all opportunities come with some ris

We begin this episode by Gerry taking us through their story from when they started their first gym and how they operated without any systems. They went out of business in 2010 when the economy crashed but later came back with one location. A mastermind they signed up for was the game-changer for them. It taught them systems and how to run a business and the importance of having mentors. Currently, they have 5 gyms in two states.Their business model is having smaller facilities and running lean operations in a highly profitable way. This is mainly to avoid the hassle of a big facility with numerous staff and huge expenses which can quickly drain you. They have found great success with their model. As for the training model, they run large group training in a unique way. They call it large group personal training.In addition, they have a unique way of opening new locations. They find one superstar coach who has worked with them for some time. This person should be a good person with the right ethics. They groo

The question of raising rates is almost a taboo in the fitness industry. However, this something you must think about because the costs of operations of your gym keep increasing and at the end of the day, you need to make a profit. The fear of losing clients is what holds back many gym owners. However, even if you lose a few of your clients, your revenue will go up and your net profit.We look at the example of a gym that charges $150 and has 200 members. This leads to revenues of $30,000 a month. This gym owner feels like this revenue is not sufficient to run the business and make a profit. They have three options to increase it. Either they increase memberships, sell other things like supplements ,T-shirts, etc. or increase the rates.If they were to raise their rates to $200 for every member and assuming all of them stay. That will increase the revenue by 25% to $40,000 per month. If they lose 50 clients out of 200 due to the increase, then they would have a much leaner operation and lesser costs for the sam

We recently made some big changes to our business model. We made the decision to slowly phase out team training and move to semi-private training. We talk about these changes and how gym owners who want to transition in their business model can go about it. We go through how we analyzed our business model and all the data we used to make the decision that led to the changes.For gym owners, your model should be helping you provide maximum value to your clients while increasing your net profit. It’s not about high gross revenues which helps your ego but about the net profit. It’s all about looking at where your income is coming from and where the expenses are. For gyms owners that are still closed, it’s a good opportunity to dive deep into the numbers. Where does your revenue come from? What’s the attendance per class? What’s the revenue per client? These are some of the numbers you should be looking at during this time to help you make changes. Your clients are expecting changes once they come back. Now is the