How to Grow and Expand Your Business

Starting your first fitness business takes commitment, determination and the will to succeed. Scaling that business takes all of that AND the willingness to tackle challenges that don’t apply to a single location. Smart planning now makes the eventual transition (it will happen!) smoother. The following are four steps that fitness businesses take to successfully grow their operations.

1. Scaling the Member Experience

In the beginning, you have time to interact with every member. As your membership increases that won’t be the case. That makes being intentional about the member experience critical.

Job one is getting people in the door. Recruiting new members can be expensive and follow up is critical and time-consuming. Technology like lead management, business automation, and CRM can streamline your processes and provide reporting and KPIs that identify your most effective marketing programs to maximize your efforts.

Joining a studio is the experience that cements members’ impression of your studio. Remove friction in the experience and provide visibility into class and spot availability with class services, and booking management available on any device, including a custom-branded mobile app. Extend that frictionless experience to your staff with an integrated POS and Inventory Management System.

To keep members returning you have to deliver results. Interactive performance data and power training provide objective measures of progress. Enable members to track data including heart rate, calories, power, and RPM and keep them engaged after workouts with progress check-ins on their mobile device.

2. Don’t Go Alone

You don’t know what you don’t know. Nowhere will that be revealed more painfully than in the small business world. Don’t pretend to be an expert where you aren’t. Mistakes in accounting or hiring and firing have long-term disastrous impacts. Contracting in many areas outside of your core focus is a smart decision for studios looking to expand.

Putting energy into your passions is how you’ll differentiate your club, build members, and find success. Spend your time helping your members achieve their fitness goals, not managing past due communications, triaging customer service calls, and compiling financial, payroll and tax reporting.

3. Simplify Billing and Payment Processing

You are probably not in the fitness business for the love of paperwork. But getting everyone paid – including you – can’t be understated. With additional studios, you’ll need consolidated reporting for insight across your business, with the ability to drill down to each studio. It’s how you’ll know the position of your draft, the profitability of your business, and when it’s time to expand (or expand again). Incorporate the billing and payment processing that’s best for your studio including chargeback and returns management, accounting and reconciliations. Automated billing tools will provide your studio with economical and streamlined direct processing as your studio continues to grow.

4.  Create a Corporate Playbook

You have a business, but do you have a system? In other words, can you replicate the experience at your current success with a new group of staff and members at another location? What interactions and touchpoints define your unique member experience? How will you communicate that information? The answer can’t be “we’ll figure it out.” It has to be documented and the processes need to be consistent. This is one of the greatest advantages of the right technology. When you can put your playbook processes into the technology you’re ensured of consistency across your multiple studios at every touchpoint.

Thinking further down the road, having those processes and getting required information from each studio dramatically simplifies the process of royalty and fee management, staff management, and payroll.

Plan your future success now with this guide.