Management
The Major Roles of the Modern Group Fitness Manager
A look at the key reasons that motivate facilities to offer classes without a group fitness manage, and why this ends up costing more.
What Do Instructors Want in a Group Fitness Manager?
Eight veteran group exercise instructors share their insight on the attributes needed to successfully take on the role of fitness manager.
Hiring Checklist: Find the Best Talent
Thereโs a checklist for every task, it seems, even if itโs purely mental. However, when it comes to hiring the best group fitness talent, itโs important to formalize a checklist…
Whatโs Your 2020 Vision?
Do you have a 2020 vision?
Do you have a clear view of what youโre going to do in the new year to grow your business even more?
As 2019 closes, itโs important to take stock. What can you improve to ensure a higher-quality customer experience and more revenue in 2020?
Letโs take a look at four areas that impact your business going ahead so you set yourself up to succeed.
Three Ways to Keep Your Clients
You know the work it takes to get a new customer in the door. Youโre spending money on marketing, time making sure your website listings are right, and energy on promotions and intro offers to get the word out. Itโs not easy. But rememberโit costs less to keep an existing client than it does to acquire a new one. Getting them to return again and again will help you keep your lights on and your business bustling! With that in mind, letโs look at three actions you can take to retain your clients.
Is a Franchise the Right Fit for You?
A number of tried-and-proven options to attract new members and clients can help you grow your business without reinventing the wheel. You can join a franchise system, license the rights to an established brand or invest in instructor training to build a specialty business. Each option has an opportunity cost (what you might lose if you don’t choose the particular option), as well as benefits that you might gain. Among these choices, franchise systems offer many advantages.
Small Town Group Fitness
An experience: That’s what exercisers want in order to feel inspired and motivated. In the fitness industry, one of the key places where this experience occurs is within a group fitness community. It doesn’t take a big-box gym or a trendy fitness boutique to give participants an amazing experience. With some creativity, flexibility and determination, even the smallest fitness facility or studio can offer a dynamic group fitness program that will give members the experience they crave.
Sexual Harassment and the Fitness Industry
One day, while stretching my client Jim, I was taken aback when I realized he wasn’t wearing underwear. His shorts were swim trunks with interior netting. I quickly looked away and continued to stretch him. This happened with Jim on several other occasions, but I never mentioned it because I wasn’t sure how to broach the matter. I also didn’t feel as if he was doing this intentionally, nor did I believe he meant harm.
Are You Ready to Sell Your Fitness Business?
Are you thinking about selling your personal training studio or fitness business? Your business is probably your primary source of income, and selling it will mean you’ll lose that annual income but achieve a one-time capital gain. Are you prepared for that? IDEA member Toby Davis, senior adviser at Sun Acquisitions, Chicago, shares the following tips for anyone preparing to turn over the keys:
9 Simple Ways to Keep Your Clients
The success of your business relies solely on your ability to attract and keep clients. Use these tips to enhance the client-trainer relationship so that you can focus more on providing quality service to your current clients and less on finding new ones.
How to Compete Against Discount Clubs
You’ve worked long and hard to get your fitness facility off the ground, and while you’re doing okay in your community, you’ve noticed some of your membership base trickling away. Upon further investigation, you realize that while you’ve had your nose to the grindstone, managing your facility and planning for growth, a discount club has opened up not far from you. Not only that, but a handful of specialty boutique studios have carved out some market share. Where do you fit in, and what can you do to keep your place?
Learn, Connect and Thrive at the IDEA® World Convention
Education is the foundation of the IDEA World Convention, but this fitness event offers plenty more than stellar instruction. For Jonathan Bernath, publicist-turned-personal-trainer, it’s where he discovered the “fitness family” that would guide him in his new career.
How to Find Your Epic
The fitness industry is a rewarding and inspiring place to be. However, it’s not without its challenges, and getting ahead with passion alone can be difficult. The most successful fit pros know that to build an epic life and career, they must invest in education and learn from those who’ve been there and done it.
Fitness Facility Membership by the Numbers
In 2016 America, traditional commercial health clubs—multipurpose, fitness-only and corporate facilities—served 32.2 million members, a 3% decline from 2015, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association. Studios served another 18.2 million, a 15% improvement.
Nonprofit facility membership rose 6.9% from 2015 to more than 24 million. Collectively,
studio facilities claimed 40.7% of total membership.
Gym Memberships Pay Off
Many people who want to join gyms are skeptical that it will actually help them reach their fitness goals. A new study from Iowa State University may assuage those doubts—and help gyms to convert more browsers into buyers. According to the research, published in PLOS ONE (2017; http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/jour
nal.pone.0170471), gym members tend to have significantly higher levels of strength and cardiorespiratory fitness and are generally more active than nonmembers.
Do You Need a Better Technology Policy?
If you've spent any time at all inside a gym, you've likely experienced this scenario: You're humming along on your treadmill when Joe Talksalot hops onto the machine next to you and proceeds to speak loudly into his smartphone. To distract yourself from Talksalot's not–so–private conversation, you scan the gym floor—and over in the corner you see a woman doing backbends while contorting her neck to maintain a visual on her tablet.
Seven Reasons People Join a Fitness Facility, Part Two
Fitness facility owners and managers often focus on what they offer instead of why they offer it. In the first part of this series about why people decide to join a fitness facility, we explored the roles that inspiration, motivation and doctor’s orders play. In this second part, we’ll discuss four more guideposts.
The Best Interview Questions You’re Not Asking
The search for top talent can be difficult and is often made no easier during the interview process. How do you choose questions that will elicit the information you need to select the right person for the job?
Top Traits of Great Business Leaders
Bosses. We’ve all had them. Good, bad, indifferent. What sets the good ones apart from the rest?
If you have difficulty relating to or mobilizing your staff, perhaps it’s time to do a little self-assessment and determine what leadership qualities you may be lacking.
“My favorite project manager always had my back,” recalls Susan Wall, a freelance instructional designer from Lisbon, New Hampshire. “He also trusted me to do my job, and he challenged and encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone.”
GROOMing Habits, Part Two
If you’ve ever struggled to fill open classes or you’ve ever wanted more qualified fitness pros on your staff, it’s time to get proactive and ensure that you have the team of your dreams. GROOMing Habits is designed to arm you with the tools to make it happen. In the first installment, we covered Groundwork and Recruitment. Now let’s explore the final components: Options, Opportunity, and Manage & Meet Expectations.