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Remember These Pre-sale Steps Before Your Health Club’s Grand Opening
Holding a grand opening for your fitness facility can be a lot of work. To prevent yourself from being overwhelmed, keep these pre-sale steps in mind before your health club’s grand opening....
Archived Articles from Step by Step: Clubs
clubs
Remember These Pre-sale Steps Before Your Health Club’s Grand Opening
Holding a grand opening for your fitness facility can be a lot of work. To prevent yourself from being overwhelmed, keep these pre-sale steps in mind before your health club’s grand opening....
The Legal Obligations of Health Clubs to Maintain and Use AEDs
Although legislation in several states requires health clubs to maintain AEDs, many states are silent with regard to the duty of staff to use the AED. ...
A Template for How to Close or Sell a Health Club
Follow these tips for how to prepare for the sale or closing of a club. ...
Restructuring at the Gym: Not Just Bodies but Debts, Too
With declining memberships and greater competition, some fitness facility owners have taken the opportunity to regroup by filing for Chapter 11. ...
The Benefits and Challenges of Buying or Selling a Health Club
Although mergers and acquisitions are natural and desirable in a maturing industry, they nonetheless generate considerable anxiety among employees and members of the targeted company. ...
It Is Time for New Approaches to Health Club Membership Packaging and Pricing
Instead of sticking with the past, some industry visionaries are changing their packaging and pricing by doing some of the following....
Get Your Health Club Members Involved in Helping the Community
Here are a few ways to enlist your members' help in your club's charitable efforts....
Lessons in Budget Club Operations from International Health Club Operators
European club operators have a different way of operating their budget clubs that U.S. operators can learn from. ...
A Technique for Effectively Training Your Fitness Facility’s Staff
New employees need a competency sheet and an accountability grid for effective training....
The Warning Signs of Trouble at Your Health Club
Spot the key warning signs of a troubled club early so issues can be resolved before becoming major problems....
Why Your Health Club Should Have an AED
With a well-trained staff, fitness facilities with AEDs can respond quickly to cases of sudden cardiac arrest....
Planning Four Types of Meetings for Maximum Effectiveness in Your Health Club
Meetings are critical for communication, resolving issues, building unity and planning effectively. For most fitness facilities, four types of meetings with would be beneficial....
How to Write a Mission Statement for Your Fitness Facility
Many club owners never go through the process of developing a mission statement. A mission statement is a strategic management tool to describe the business’s objectives. It provides a cultural contract between the club, its owners, employees, vendors, customers and partners. The mission statement includes the club’s values, goals, beliefs, codes of conduct and so on....
Ten Rules for Being an Effective Fitness Manager
Follow a few basic rules to become an indispensible part of your club’s team. ...
Technology’s Increasing Impact on the Health Club Business
How can club professionals address the growing threats and opportunities that technology is creating? Begin by understanding these five key trends....
The Problem with a Low-Price Strategy for Health Clubs
Low-price competitors have exposed the lack of a strategy for many independent health clubs. ...
How Mobile Devices Will Affect the Health Club Industry
Smart health club operators will begin to use mobile devices more in marketing and sales....
How to Turn Around a Failing Health Club
Club owners with a failing business may feel hopeless, but you can reverse the decline and restore stability to your business—most of the time. ...
Raise Your Health Club Prices and Outshine Low-Price Club Competitors
Club owners should raise their dues rather than lowering them to compete with low-priced health clubs....
Why Strategic Planning Is the Best Way to Long-Term Success
Business owners who strategically prepare for the future will come out ahead. To ensure your long-term success, you need to continuously plan. More specifically, a Harvard Business School study suggests that it is important to have a written plan. ...
How to Fix Poor Staff Performance in Your Health Club
The following are key things a health club owner can do to improve on poor staff performance....
Corporate Fitness as a Profit Center for Clubs
Few health club owners are talking to CEOs about starting up an exercise program on-site for their employees. That leaves a huge opportunity for smart health club owners. Why not let that health club owner be you?...
Three Ways to Increase Your Profits from Ancillary Programs
As the economy continues to struggle, club operators are looking for ways to increase their revenues. Ancillary programs provide a good source for increased revenue. ...
Putting in Place a Culture of Service Excellence
The biggest reason that people leave a club is poor customer service, not competition. Tips on how to provide exceptional service....
How Will Health Reform Help or Hurt Your Health Club?
For years, our country has focused on medical management of chronic illness rather than on prevention of health issues. The recently passed Health Reform Act would help shift the trend from disease management to prevention. ...
Six Steps to Successful Community Events at Your Health Club
Special events are the best way to develop community, create excitement, set training goals and offer something to look forward to. ...
Give Back and You'll Get Back
Why did you become part of the fitness industry? Maybe it's because you love to exercise, or maybe it's because of the joy you experience helping people reach their goals...
Top 10 Fitness Trends for 2010
What does 2010 hold for the industry as far as fitness trends? Here are my thoughts on what to watch for this year...
Fitness Management: The Expected Evolution in 2010
As each year passes, I can see the evolution of the fitness manager position in the industry. Once seen as a glorified class coordinator and/or top trainer, the fitness manager of 2010 has grown to be a true retention manager...
Social Networking – Don't Miss the Party
There is no hotter topic today in any business than social networking. In fact, just having a Web site seems very last millennium, and if you're not Facebooking, Tweeting, blogging and MySpace-ing...
How to Handle an Emergency
After the LA Fitness shootings in Pennsylvania this past summer, some club operators began to think about what their staffs would do in a similar emergency...
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....
