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Implementing Kids Programming in an Adult Facility
You can implement children’s programming in your adult facility with a strategic plan of action. The benefits of adding the programming outweigh any of the challenges...
Archived Articles from Step by Step: Clubs
Implementing Kids Programming in an Adult Facility
You can implement children’s programming in your adult facility with a strategic plan of action. The benefits of adding the programming outweigh any of the challenges...
Is a Fitness Franchise Right for You?
Do you dream of running your own business but aren’t sure how to get started? Buying a fitness franchise could be the solution...
A New Alternative to Access Working Capital
With many health club owners unable to qualify for a traditional loan, accessing working capital is a serious challenge. A cash advance is one option that club owners can consider, as long as they are aware of its advantages and disadvantages...
Equipment Maintenance
As you know, many incidents at health and fitness facilities arise out of equipment failure. Many of these incidents could have been prevented if a regimen of regularly scheduled equipment maintenance had been implemented at the club...
The Three Cs of Equipment Leasing
In today’s lending environment, I am asked frequently if any lending is being done. The good news is that lending is indeed being done...
Surprising Funding Source for the Fitness Industry
The saying “Liars never figure and figures never lie” is an appropriate starting point for reviewing Small Business Administration (SBA) loan financing within the fitness industry...
Putting Together Incident Reports
It is important that each and every owner create an effective and efficient incident reporting protocol that will enable the people involved in the defense of claims to complete the most comprehensive and helpful investigation possible....
Conducting Incident Investigations
The occurrence of incidents at your facility is inevitable. However, you can take many steps to make the investigations of those incidents as effective as possible...
Market Segmentation Improves Competitiveness
Market segmentation is a strategy that relies on the notion that all consumers are not alike....
The Three Rs for Staffing Success
As a manager, would you rather be known as proactive or reactive? Most of us would choose the former, as it implies we're on the ball and making things happen. But do your hiring practices reflect that?...
Five Quick Tips for Cutting Expenses
Typically, you can increase your profits in two ways. One is by increasing your sales. The other is by reducing your costs...
How to Create the "Wow" Factor for Customer Service
Although we may occasionally encounter good service, more often than not, customer service is quite dreadful. Think about the last time you received such outstanding service that you actually gasped, wow, that was incredible....
Is There an Escape Hatch in Exculpatory Clauses?
Virtually every health club agreement contains language limiting the labiality of the club in case a member or visitor is injured...
Please Don’t Go: Seven Tips for Retaining Employees and Heightening Workplace
With today’s fluctuating labor pool, you may be forced to compete not only for customers but also for employees....
The Health Club Master Success Formula
Understanding something called the Health Club Master Success Formula is critical to building your club...
LEAPing in the Right Way
In our everyday operations, we will always come across members who are not entirely happy with our business. For some of these people, this is the chance they will take to explain their feelings about how we are operating as managers and owners—good or bad...
Seven Ways to Keep Your Staff Members Motivated
While working with health club clients who are struggling and attempting to turn around their existing situation, one of the common things I see are managers and owners who mistakenly think that money or the job itself is the primary motivator for their staff...
Budgetzilla: Eight Tips for Defeating the Planning Monster
Plans should precede budgets. Too often management teams create budgets as if financial improvements will happen by magic and without specific plans, and then they wonder why they can’t make their numbers...
From Royalty to the End of the Road: How to Get the Most From Your Staff
Results matter. But how employees get results—their personality and behavior—matters more. ...
How to Implement a Progressive Discipline System
In the business world today, it is important for an owner or manager to protect his or her interests. ...
10 Ways to Better Communicate with Medical Professionals
Misunderstandings and communication problems remain one of the most common problems in the professional environment. Communication is essential for effective functioning in every part of an organization, whether it is one-on-one, in a group setting or through e-mail. ...
Fourteen Powerful Ways to Be a Fitness Rainmaker
A rainmaker is someone who has the intellectual and social clout to bring in huge revenues for a company. Specifically, he or she is a professional who consistently does two things well...
Total Member Satisfaction: The Key To Health Club Profits
When I first became involved in the fitness industry, member satisfaction seemed to be an afterthought. At the time, health clubs’ focus was primarily on new member sales. However, in today’s highly competitive health club market, member satisfaction represents perhaps the most powerful survival strategy....
A Five-Point Tune-up for Your Health Club Web Site
Many health clubs create a Web site because everyone else is doing it. However, this isn’t the best reason to start one....
The 5–7–9 of Hiring, Staffing and Retaining Quality Staff Members
Daniel Carlin Frey started his career in the restaurant industry but later moved to the fitness industry after helping his trainer build his business....
Why Should You Make the Effort to Provide Training for Your Staff?
Jim Thomas is the founder and president of Fitness Management USA Inc., a management consulting and turnaround firm specializing in the fitness and health club industry....
Our Salvation: The Fitness Professional of the Future
No matter how we run our club businesses, the “M” word drives our successes and/or our failures: membership recruitment, membership retention and membership referrals....
Promote Your Personal Trainers as Experts: The Quick and Easy Way to Write and Promote Fitness Articles
Personal trainers are often viewed as more of an afterthought than fitness experts. If they were so terribly important, why are members given free sessions with them? People automatically assume that if their time is given away so readily it must not be very valuable....
Does Your Management Style Inspire Others in Your Health Club?
In working with many different types of clubs across the country, I’ve seen varying styles of how to inspire others in your health club. Some are very demanding, while others ignore everyone and hope things will improve...
Just Blog It
There are currently more than 71 million blogs with 175,000 new ones launched every day. Sure, the vast majority of these will never have more than a handful of readers, but, done right, a blog can be a crucial element in your marketing mix...
How to Win the Nutrition Game
March is National Nutrition Month. To remain cutting edge and competitive in today’s market, you must do something to separate your business from the competition, and celebrating National Nutrition Month is one way to do that—as long as you do so properly....
15 Tips for Developing a Fire-Safety Plan for a Fitness Center
Imagine it is 6 p.m. on a Monday night, and your facility is packed with members. All of a sudden, the fire alarm goes off. Would you be able to safely evacuate your members and employees? ...
Lifestyle Medicine: Essentials For Improving The Health Of Your Club
It is abundantly clear that our industry is not offering most of the general public what they want. We are only capturing 14 percent of available customers in most markets. Maybe as Michael Scott Scudder questions ...
20 Steps to Better Business Health
Club owners and managers often get so preoccupied operating their club, responding to member complaints and staff issues and solving problems that they don’t have enough time to sit back and reflect on how to improve their ...
Five Easy Steps to Start a Profitable Weight-Management Program
Some of you may already teach your clients about weight loss, but you also need to reach out to the untapped market. The nice thing about a weight-management program is that you maximize your time, maximize your...
Developing and Retaining a Professional Staff
In a business where member retention and referrals are dependent on customer satisfaction, recruiting and hiring candidates with the right personality traits and skill-sets is crucial. ...
How To Ride the Baby Boomer Wave
The influx of Baby Boomers is the surest and most powerful trend to hit the fitness business. Every time the Boomers hit a new decade, they drive an industry to new heights. First the growth of colleges, next starter homes, then home furnishing stores, then the nursery furniture and stroller industries, later on second homes and time shares. ...
View Your Fitness Facility Through the Eyes of Your Consumer
It’s not my job. These four words can be the downfall of any customer-driven business. Think about it. How often do you frequent a business that reluctantly offers you service?...
Unleash Your Leadership Potential
If your employees were interviewed and asked to describe their “ideal” boss, would they describe you? A key stumbling block to the development of great teams today is often weak leadership skills in the leaders themselves. If you are experiencing high staff turnover, low employee morale and your team’s performance is not where it should be, then it may be time to re-evaluate the situation. ...
The Common Cold in the Fitness Industry
Every year millions of people around the world suffer from symptoms of the common cold: sniffling, sneezing, stuffy head, fever, headache, body aches and so on. What happens? They run for the nearest OTC: DayQuil, NyQuil, Sudafed or maybe they try herbal remedies of some sort....
Five Steps to Build Your Physician Referral Network
Health care referrals are a terrific source of new clients for fitness businesses. Make this approach work for you by combining specialized marketing with great client skills...
Your Missing Contributor to the Bottom Line: Group Training
Fitness Consultants Kim Pace and Bob Esquerre explain why circuit training is a missing contributor to your bottom line. ...
